Sundance Awards (Plus Abe's 'Jury of One' Wrap)

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

Minari won Sundance

The Sundance Film Festival is officially over, closing out yet another busy week and a half of nonstop movies. I managed to catch 41 films this year, including almost all the Premieres titles and most of the U.S. Dramatic Competition films. I enjoyed running into Murtada a few times and noting how much we disagreed on a few films (one of his least favorites is on my top ten list, and I hated Zola, which he loved).

After the jump, the official awards and the best of what I saw... 

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Best Picture in Monochrome

by Cláudio Alves

The trend of rereleasing critical darlings in black and white is apparently here to stay. After George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road and James Mangold’s Logan, it’s time for Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite to be revisited in sharp monochrome. The artistic value of such exercises is dubious, but they do offer a chance to reflect upon a film’s visual idiom and aesthetic construction. After all, do these works gain something by being in color? Is that an intrinsic part of their form or simply a consequence of convention? Would they be better, at least better looking, in black and white?

Those answers will have to remain unanswered, but as a fun exercise here are some from this year’s Best Picture nominees. They’ve been drained of color for your pleasure…

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Carol 2 is finally here…

by Murtada Elfadl

Not exactly. But look at these pictures of Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara on the set of Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. Don’t they remind you of Carol (2015)? The period costumes, the snow and winter setting, Cate’s gorgeous blond wig? 

The internet lost its mind for a couple of hours...

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Beauty Break: Breakthrough Performers of the Year

by Nathaniel R

Getting to the fun stuff now in the Film Bitch Awards. New categories are up including Best Juvenile Performances (which gives us the chance to rave about the best working child actor in Hollywood again -- that'd be Noah Jupe), Best Casting (the only time you'll hear Nathaniel praise Uncut Gems), and Best Ensemble acting. Also on that awards page are the nominees for Breakthrough Perfomer of the Year including both of stars of Waves, Taylor Russell and Kelvin Harrison Jr. The basic criteria of that category is that it has to be early in their film career and we ask ourselves the question: how badly do we want to see them again in something else?

After the jump beautiful photographs of this year's nominees as well as a history of who came before them this past decade...

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A Funny Time Loop in "Palm Springs"

Abe Fried-Tanzer nearing the end of Sundance 2020...

Time loops are cool again thanks to all the hoopla around Russian Doll, but, in the same way that experiencing the same day over and over again gets stale after a while, has the phenomenon been explored enough at this point? Hulu and Neon certainly didn’t think so when they set a Sundance record by spending $17.5 million (and 69 cents) for Palm Springs, a comedy that deals with the topic yet again...

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