NBR loves "Killers of the Flower Moon", "The Holdovers", and "Poor Things"

by Nathaniel R

The National Board of Review, now in their 94th year (!), have released their annual winners list. They've generally been very beholden to perceived Oscar contenders. Habitually they're obsessed with already canonized American directors and this year is no exception with Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon taking their top prize. They also found room for multiple citations for Alexander Payne's dramedy The Holdovers. and Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things. Other films only scored one prize. Curiously Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron was in their top ten list but it did not win Best Animated Feature. The latter prize went to Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse (which was not in the top ten films). Such are the mysteries of awards season... and the need to fill lots of banquet tables at events with something for every distributor!

I kid, I kid. But the winners and a few more notes are after the jump... 

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Oscar Volley: It’s Whimsy vs History in Production Design

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Nick and Cláudio to talk Production Design...

BARBIE sails to a sure nomination, but can it win?

CLÁUDIO: Last year, the trenches took gold, but what will even be nominated this season? The gloomy days of WWI behind us, Barbie shines a pink promise on the plastic horizon, with Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer providing some period seriousness. Maybe it'll be Wonka or Poor Things, colorful lunacy with a candied twist. There are other musicals to contend with, more biopics than your mind can process, sci-fi, diorama-land, and even a detour into mid-00s opulence. Yes, this is the Best Production Design race, where anything is possible until it isn't. May the odds be ever in your favor…

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Best International Film: Pakistan's "In Flames" & India's "2018"

by Cláudio Alves

Considering the Academy's general disinclination to honor horror cinema, it's always surprising when the genre pops up amid Best International Film submissions. This year, Pakistan is one of the brave countries that didn't let genre bias stop them from selecting a scary movie for the Oscar race. Zarrar Kahn's In Flames is the lucky flick, a Canadian-produced meditation on grief, trauma, and poisonous patriarchy bound to unnerve viewers. Neighboring nation India didn't dip their toes into nightmare cinema but sent a disaster picture that's horrifying in its own way. Juan Anthany Joseph's 2018 dramatizes a real-life catastrophe that befell the state of Kerala…

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The Saturn Awards will also celebrate the year of "Barbenheimer"

by Nathaniel R

The 51st Annual Saturn Awards will take place on February 4th this year in Los Angeles. Universal has reason to celebrate as the nomination leader with films like Oppenheimer, Renfield, and M3GAN in the mix. While Paramount is not far behind with titles like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Dungeons and Dragons. The Saturn awards have been honoring genre film and television for decades and they once had that all to themselves but in the 21st century mainstream awards bodies like the Oscars and the Emmys aren't as afraid of genre entertainment as they once were so a few of the honorees each year are also awards player in the more mainstream ceremonies.

The Saturn Awards don't run with a full calendar year so there's always a mix of last year's titles and this year's. Avatar The Way of Water, released in 2022, is the nomination leader this time with 12 citations (a record) while 2023's atypical summer blockbuster Oppenheimer is just behind with 11 nods. Given its zeitgeist appeal, Barbie also competes in a few categories..

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Best International Film: Poland's "The Peasants" & the Philippines' "The Missing"

by Cláudio Alves

As Guillermo del Toro loves to remind us, animation is cinema. It's not a genre but a medium with its own particularities and styles, distinct idioms, and formal grammar. This year, some countries have taken these values to heart, selecting animated works to represent them at the Oscars. Curiously, two of them offer original ways to consider Rotoscoping as an animation practice, defying those who dismiss such films as lesser. They are Poland's The Peasants, from the same team behind Loving Vincent, and The Missing from the Philippines. Between painterly ravishment and digital befuddlement, these filmmakers take Rotoscope cinema to its limits and beyond…

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