Barack Obama's Top 10 Lists

Okay top 14 and top 10. President Barack Obama, who has gifted us with his favourites lists in previous years and revealed the taste (no surprise), and is now involved in the movies as a producer has released his favourites list for this accursed year, writing:

Obama visiting with a "Crip Camp" activist

Like everyone else, we were stuck inside a lot this year, and with streaming further blurring the lines between theatrical movies and television features, I’ve expanded the list to include visual storytelling that I’ve enjoyed this year, regardless of format.

His top 10 (sorry, 14) movies and top 10 tv shows after the jump...

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Showbiz History: An epic Oscar battle + Brad Pitt

6 random things that happened on this day, December 18th, in showbiz history

1941 Thirteen year-old Shirley Temple, her contract bought out from Twentieth Century Fox after two 1940 flops, attempts her first "comeback" (though she'd only been gone from screens for a single year) with MGM in a film called Kathleen about a poor little rich girl. It also flopped. A few more hits were in her future but the writing was on the wall (she'd retire, for good, from movies by the age of 21)...

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Oscar Chart Updates: Visual Effects and Makeup

by Nathaniel R

Oscar chart overhaul is upon us. Let's talk two categories that are exceptionally difficult to read without the usual supply of blockbuster style filmmaking to dominate them.

VISUAL EFFECTS
Given that most of the blockbuster style films moved out of 2020 (without those theatrical billions to win), this might be the weirdest Oscar race of the year or the dullest if they don't nominate well...

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Oscar Chart Updates: Animated & Documentary Feature

by Nathaniel R

The Oscar charts overhaul is upon us. Let's discuss each category. First up a two-fer, Animated Feature and Documentary Feature. In both instances we don't have full eligibility lists yet but we know some of the titles that have qualified or will qualify.

ANIMATED FEATURE
We currently know of 15 features that are eligible or that plan to be. Since the threshold is only 16 films to create a full five-wide nominee field, we've decided to change our previous three-only prediction. (We'd love those odds if we were animated producers. It's so crazy easy to get nominated, statistically speaking, unlike other categories where hundreds of competitors vie for 5 slots. As we've said multiple times if the same percentage rules applied to Best Picture each year we'd have like 80-90 Best Picture nominees each year. Teehee.)

The contest is shaping up to be a battle royale between Pixar's Christmas entry Soul and the wondrously individualistic Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers...

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Review: The Twentieth Century

By: Patrick Gratton

Canadian history remembers William Lyon Mackenzie King as one of our most defining statesmen. King was the longest running Prime Minister to hold office in Ottawa, and a central ally to both Winston Churchill and FDR, in mobilizing Canada in World War II. Historians commend Mackenzie King as a central rallying cry for a divided country, whose skill set helped him reach across the aisle, mending multiple differences and helping grow Canada’s Independence even as it remained a British colony.

In his feature film debut The Twentieth Century, Winnipeg-born Matthew Rankin subverts this story. Set in 1899 and told in ten chapters, the film omits all of the soon-to-be Prime Minister’s triumphs, focusing instead on Mackenzie King’s (Dan Bierne) candidacy to be the country’s leader. Rankins shows a steady hand, confidently orchestrating a film that’s equal parts  German expressionism, 1920s melodrama and absurdist satire. The film unapologetically ransacks the mythos of the Canadian identity.

The future prime minister is depicted as a precious man-child, with an overbearing mother (Louis Negin, in drag)...

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