BIFA Nominations: "Saint Maud" leads the horror friendly pack

by Nathaniel R

The British Independent Film Awards have announced their nominations for the year. 27 films received at least one nomination but the bulk of the nominations went to Saint Maud (17), His House (16), and Rocks (15). UPDATE: Rocks and His House later emerged as the big winners. Higher profile Oscar hopefuls like The Father (6) and Ammonite (2) didn't do as well though The Father eventually won 3 of its 6 categories. Due to the category divisions BIFA has a lot of people that are double or triple nominated this year (they have the regular categories plus "debut" style categories). The BIFAs have a unique process in that the nominations are juried and then winners are decided in two separate ways. All BIFA vote by secret ballot to decide the winners of the nine craft categories plus Best Film, Best International Film, Discovery Award, and Short Film. But everything else is decided by discussion of individual juries separate from the juries who picked the nomination! Confusing right?! 

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH THE WINNERS 02/19/21

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Podcast: All about "Mank" plus the Best Director Oscar race

with Nathaniel R & Murtada Elfadl

We're back!

Index (63 minutes)
00:01 Mank: The stars, the story, and rewatching Citizen Kane
24:00 MVPs of the ensemble. Plus those Norma Shearer asides
32:00 How will Oscar react overall? David Fincher's career acclaim
38:00 Everybody in the (wildly open) Best Director race. Plus female directors rising!
55:30 Mank in male acting categories: Gary Oldman? Charles Dance?

Related Reading:
• Best Actor Chart
• Best Director Oscar Chart

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

MANK

What will the Golden Globes choose for international cinema?

by Nathaniel R

one of many titles that's eligible for the Globes but not the OscarsWhile we've never extensively covered the Golden Globes selection process it's worth noting that one of the categories where they historically definitely go their own way is in Best International Feature.

DIFFERENCES: Their aesthetic taste is different than Oscar voters but, more than that, they also have different rules. First, their own eligibility list is quite different and historically larger. Oscar only allows each country to submit one film (a system surely set in place to prevent France and Italy from hogging 100% of the nominations in the early years) but the Globes don't have that restriction so we've had years where they've honored more than one film from a single country. France, for instance, sent all of their Oscar submission finalists this year to the Globes. The Globes also don't get hung up on eligibility when it comes to international productions where many countries are involved as Oscar sometimes has. They also allow films from the United States to compete if they're not in the English language (so Minari and I Carry You With Me both have a shot at a nomination this year). There's one final difference: the Globes do not allow documentaries and animated films to compete in this category.

SIMILARITIES: Otherwise the rules are the same (eligibility window and no more than 50% in English) and a good chunk of the titles on Oscar's eligibility list are usually also sent to the Globes.

Here are the titles that differ from Oscar's list...

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The Furniture: Ammonite's Many, Many Fossils

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

Fossils! They’re cool.

In Ammonite, they’re also a metaphor - a simple one, I’d argue. To be frank, I found the 19th century seaside lesbian paleontology drama to be a bit dull, throwing quite a bit of symbolism up on the screen without ever making a real case that this director needed to make this film about these women.

But I did quite enjoy the sheer number of visual cues, some of which do work quite well. Victorian women, the film suggests, were like fossils. Society confined them to small, dim spaces where they slowly ossified...

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Showbiz History: Peanuts Special, Dame Judi, and Young Tom Hardy in Prosthetics

5 random things that happened on this day, December 9th, in showbiz history

1965 "A Charlie Brown Christmas" premieres on CBS, the first of many TV specials (and later feature films) based on Charles M Schultz classic comic strip. It went on to receive a Grammy nomination and win the Emmy for Outstanding Children's Programming and the Peabody, too. 

1988 Mississippi Burning (the first of Frances McDormand's three soon-to-be-four appearances in a Best Picture nominee) and two comedies My Stepmother is an Alien and Twins open in movie theaters...

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