Ten Best Picture Nominees Again!

by Nathaniel R

Ah... the annual tweaking of the rules is upon us again. The Academy has been frantically trying to keep up with societal changes and has made quite a few strides with their gender parity and racial diversity inititiatives over the past handful of years. We've also seen Best Picture winners that would have seemed impossible ten years before like Moonlight (2016) and Parasite (2019). The Academy is continuing with their diversity initiatives over the next five years which you can read about here  we won't attempt to summarize it as it's definitely in the planning rather than implementing stages. But a lot of it sounds really smart like unconscious bias training and screenings and discussions and industry-focused inititatives (as we've long said, the Academy can only vote on the films that Hollywood actually makes!). 

Nevertheless there are two concrete pieces of news we must discuss...

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2002: Isabelle Huppert and the "8 Women"

As we march towards the Smackdown, we're also checking in with great supporting performances that weren't nominated. Here's Nick Taylor...

We've already discussed how Viola Davis had a spectacular 2002. But truth be told, it’s incredible how many actresses turned out multiple great performances in that film year: Samantha Morton headlined one of the best films of the past 20 years with intoxicating subtlety in Morvern Callar while delivering the most visceral, unsettling element of Minority Report. Maggie Gyllenhaal announced herself with a bang in Secretary and folded beautifully into the ensemble of Adaptation. Multiple cast members of The Hours gave equally memorable characterizations in other films - Meryl in Adaptation, Julianne in Far From Heaven, Miranda in Spider, Toni in About a Boy, and Claire in Igby Goes Down. (Side note: how wild is it that Nicole Kidman is the one who only made one movie that year?).

I’d argue Isabelle Huppert had the strongest one-two punch of any actress in 2002. Her ferocious, perverse, achingly lonely turn in The Piano Teacher ranks among the best acting feats of the ‘00s all by itself, and the fizzy, entertaining work she contributes to 8 Women is one of the funniest performances of a year defined by great comedic work...

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A Star is Born... in the Ozarks

by Cláudio Alves

Ten years ago this weekend, the public met a new Hollywood star in the making. The movie that brought the world a new silver screen goddess wasn't the sort of big studio production that in the old golden days would've been the logic harbinger of stardom. Quite the contrary, the film in question was a modest indie. Director Debra Granik's Sundance prize-winning critical hit would go on to become a sleeper hit in arthouse release. We're talking, of course, about Winter's Bone and the performer bound for stardom's was future Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence…

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Pride Month Doc Corner: The newly restored 'Gay U.S.A.'

Doc Corner is celebrating Pride Month with a focus on documentaries that tackle LGBTIQ themes. This week we are looking at a classic that has been recently restored by the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project.

By Glenn Dunks

Pre-AIDS accounts of queer life and pride that aren’t about the Stonewall riots are rare. Understandably, the violent anti-police uprising of 1969 by (primarily, at least at first) drag queens, lesbians and transgender individuals was the most significant moment in the public’s understanding of LGBTIQ people until the epidemic (gosh, a lot of these things sound familiar, don't they?). But while there is a lot to be found about the queer experience through films that interrogate both Stonewall and AIDS, just as vital to the fabric are films like Gay USA from 1977.

Directed by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr., this compendium of gay pride wraps itself in a rainbow flag of its own making and sets out to celebrate the experience of nation-wide parades and marches that for many were once an unimaginable dream. 

Bressan, who died of AIDS in 1987 after his glorious fictional feature Buddies, assembled camera crews across the country to capture the (pun intended) gaiety of pride when the future looked hopeful.

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"Die Another Day," Or, How the Mighty Have Fallen

We're celebrating 2002 this week. Here's Deborah Lipp...

When Die Another Day was released in November of 2002, it was greeted with tempered enthusiasm. Spending time, as I do, among movie fans, and within the narrower Bond fan community, there were certain very clear reactions: Invisible car: Dumb; Madonna song: Bad; Movie overall: Pretty damn great.

How the mighty have fallen. I should explain...

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