BAFTA Long Lists

Each year the BAFTA longlists remind us that awards voters have extremely narrow vieweing habits and blind spots that are practically extend to their peripheral vision. We're SOOO glad Oscar doesn't do this winnowing in their major categories since otherwise we'd have to give us so many dreams that our favourites justmissed each year, rather than not being considered at all for their brilliance.

BAFTA voters have yet to decide on the nominations. Those are not announced until March 9th but this is the list each category will draw from so hundreds of options are now ineligible. The long lists are stunningly messy. They're after the jump if you dare... 

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Sundance: "Passing" review

by Jason Adams

I hope that after fifteen years of me writing on the internet you all will have an inkling of what a big deal it is for me to start a film review off with talk of Awards, a subject I normally pay very little attention to. Perhaps it's that this is my first Sundance -- I've heard people get exclamatory brains in these places, although it being virtual this year I don't have the excuse of the mountain's thin oxygen supply. But here's the deal -- if every single person involved with Rebecca Hall's directorial debut Passing isn't nominated for awards next season I'll eat my shoe. Hell I'll eat one of Ruth Negga's shoes, and they look complicated. Buckles and snaps. But seriously. Everybody gets an Oscar. Do they have Oscars for Craft Services? Give them an Oscar. They kept these geniuses fed well enough to make this beautiful, blessed film...

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Showbiz History: Liberace's funeral, "The" Facebook, and Lewis Tan's big test

8 random things that happened on this day, February 4th, in showbiz history

1932 Josef Von Sternberg's Shanghai Express starring Marlene Dietrich and Anna Mae Wong has its world premiere in Los Angeles. The Chinese media was already upset about it before the premiere. It will open in theaters a week later...

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FYC: Youth Acting and Breakthrough Stars

by Nathaniel R

Alan S Kim, everyone's favourite mischief maker in Minari

Each year at the Critics Choice Awards -- I just filed my ballot -- we're expected to vote in a category that gets almost no press or campaigning: Best Young Performer. The nominees tend to be whichever kid had a leading role in a movie everyone saw. I've always found this depressing since all awards categories should be taken seriously and, as with adult performances or directing or costuming or whatever, you should think about your ballot and not just pick the most visible options solely because they're right in front of you. So each year I try to help by posting my own ballot...

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Putting the Genre in Gender at Sundance

by Jason Adams

A lot of ink, possibly pink, has already been spilled on this year's Sundance marking a flashpoint for female filmmakers. (You can find the same sort of headlines if you look back at last year's fest, which included Eliza Hittman's Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Kirsten Johnson's Dick Johnson is Dead, and Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman.) Still, women's voices at this year's fest feel dominant in a way I'm not sure they ever have before, and it strikes me that the ways we're seeing women re-working genre as a tool of dissembling trauma and male-dominance is in particular fascinating, especially as the Trump years come to their ignominious, death-rattling end...

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