Best International Feature: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ireland, Lithuania

by Cláudio Alves

Historical narratives tend to do quite well in the Best International Feature Oscar race. For decades, World War II stories dominated the category though, more recently, this tendency has faded. Every sort of real-life drama enshrined in the appearance of prestigious importance is still catnip for Oscar voters. It's especially true if the film in question is European. Considering AMPAS' tastes, let's look at three submissions from the Old Continent, whose explorations of history differ in fascinating fashion. The Bosnian entry makes a thriller out of a massacre, Ireland draws western stylings from famine while Lithuania revels in the ridiculous ideas that stem from pre-war panic…

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Team Experience SAG/Globe Reactions Pt 1: Dark Thoughts & Unsurprising Surprises

Hey hey. So we polled Team Experience about this week's barrage of honors to see where their heads and hearts were at (though you know some of their loves if you checked out the Team Experience Awards). So let's start with less thrilling questions like ...

• Which SAG or GLOBE nomination left you cringeing or shaking your head?
• Which "surprises" were not actually surprises?
• Any theories about the ___ snub?

Read their answers and supply yours in the comments, please...

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Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)

by Nathaniel R

I thought Christopher Plummer would never die. Which is to say, I thought he wouldn't die for a long time yet. The last act of his career, running roughly from the one-two punch of his second Tony win in Barrymore (1997) and his much-praised Oscar-snubbed Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999) through his mischievously pleasing star turn as Harlam Thrombley the manipulative patriarch in the surprise hit Knives Out (2019), was like a gauntlet thrown down; dare to imagine the movies without me!

We'd rather not, thank you very much. But now we sadly must with the actor's death at 91 years of age...

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Sundance 2021 is a Wrap

by Nathaniel R

CODA was the big winner at Sundance and sold for an extravagant amount of money.

Thank you to Jason, Abe, Murtada, and Eurocheese for their coverage of the traditionally snowy but now virtual and room temperature Sundance Film Festival which wrapped on Wednesday. In case you missed any of the reviews here they all are in one place. As with ALL Sundance film festivals, some of these picture will fade quickly from awareness, others will be talked about incessantly upon release, and still others might strangely go into hiding for a year and all but forgotten before being rediscovered when they get a streaming deal or some such in the not so near future. But which ones? It all depends on the vagaries of distribution, media and public reaction, and future awards play. For example at the 2020 Sundance Awards Minari and I Carry You With Me (both on my top ten list for 2020) were both multiple winners but only Minari seems to have any heat going into the Oscar nominations while I Carry You With Me just kind of sat out awards season despite a qualifying week in virtual cinemas and now won't be released until May 21st, 2021 (sigh) one and a half years after its high profile success at Sundance. 

Our complete list of reviews plus all the Sundance 2021 winners are after the jump...

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The Furniture: A Centennial Tribute to Ken Adam and The Ipcress File

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on images for magnified detail)

Ken Adam in 1976. Photo © Deutchse Kinemathek

Today marks the centennial of legendary production designer Ken Adam, the artist responsible for some of the biggest film sets of the 20th century. The first that comes to mind for me is the supertanker in The Spy Who Loved Me, built on the world’s largest sound stage. Adam designed dozens of secret military facilities and hidden lairs for the seven James Bond films he worked on. But his most famous is probably the “War Room” from Dr. Strangelove, another vast interior  - and the reason he had to turn down From Russia with Love.

Adam’s legacy is intimately connected to these atomic fantasies, which continue to influence our collective memory of the Cold War...

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