The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
The Cinematographer's guild has spoken and they basically went with mainstream Best Picture frontrunners as is their habit. The five theatrical nominees are...
Roger Deakins for 1917
Phaedon Papamichael for Ford V Ferrari
Rodrigo Prieto for The Irishman
Robert Richardson for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Lawrence Sher for Joker
All but Sher are familiar to the Oscar race having been nominated before, particular Deakins (14 nominations / 1 win) and Richards (9 nominations / 3 wins).
Their "spotlight" nominees -- a fairly new category -- are always more interesting since they tend to be far removed from the Oscar race...
Why were critics so uncritical of Toy Story 4's retreading?
Yes, people are still giving out prizes. We don’t say this facetiously since we haven’t even given out ours yet (still cramming in screenings!) but both the Team Experience Awards (voted on by our whole team sans me -- they don’t let me vote!) and the Film Bitch Awards (yours truly's own long-running prizes) are coming in the next week or two. But until the guild awards start en masse this week (whilst Academy members vote on the Oscar nominations) here are the five latest industry or critics groups to announce. We only wish that there were more variety since Parasite, Bong Joon Ho, Adam Driver, Brad Pitt, Apollo 11, and Toy Story 4 continually to dominate their categories with stampede like force. The only category where the groups disagreed en masse (this week at least) was Best Actress; Ronan, Nyong'o, Zellweger, and Johansson all picked up another prize. And Best Supporting Actress was dominated by Florence Pugh in this week's roundup which is a bit different than earlier in the critics awards season where it was always Dern vs Lopez.
GALECA, The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics announced their nominations for film and TV today. The Dorian Awards - named in honor of noted queer writer Oscar Wilde - showed the most love to Bong Joon-ho's Parasite and Celine Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, with six nominations each, followed closely by Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory with five nominations. Three movies not in English, two of them from Queer filmmakers, and all three of them were nominated for best director!
Other notable nominations include Alfre Woodard in best actress for Clemency, she'll compete with Awkafina (The Farewell) Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story), Lupita Nyong’o, (Us) and of course Renee Zellweger in Judy. Here’s the full list...
Is it us or are the four of the acting races murkier than they usually would be during the week of Oscar voting? We chalk this up to a bit less precursor uniformity between Critics Choice, Globes, SAG nods, and the regional critical consensus. On the other hand that regional critical consensus has been very pronounced with a clear lineup of winners that go like so: Parasite/Bong Joon Ho / Nyongo / Driver / Dern / Pitt. But what we're dealing with right now is the nomination game which is far more complex than "who wins".
BEST ACTRESS - Six women are still very much in the mix and it's quite difficult to guess who will be left out. Passion suggests that Cynthia Erivo or Charlize Theron would be in danger of the "snub" but on the other hand you're not often the snubbee if you're the one doing the biographical role... especially if there's mimicry. For now we've opted to have Saoirse Ronan be the odd woman out but that doesn't feel right either given the very current groundswell of love for that picture. At any rate we think it's between the six listed on the chart with Alfre Woodard (Clemency) and Awkwafina (The Farewell) staring to look like impossible dreams in this final decision week...
Banderas with Catherine Zeta Jones at last year's ceremony
It’s almost time for the Golden Globes. Over the years they have given us many memorable speeches that we talked about for days after and influenced the rest of awards season. So it’s time to judge potential speeches Sunday night by evidence given at other awards ceremonies earlier this season. I’ve chosen the best actor drama category because I think the nominees are eclectic in their public style and personae. And play along by thinking of which of these speeches you'd like to see a replica of on Sunday.
If Antonio Banderas were to win, I think he will be charming. However more importantly he will be sincere in paying respect to Pedro Almodovar, who will be in the audience. Wouldn’t you like to see that?
Adam Driver will be probably not be the most memorable. If we take a look at his speech from last month’s Gothams it’s mostly a list of names. He only shows genuine emotion when he mentions his wife. And perhaps that will be enough to provide a TV moment.
Joaquin Phoenix's speech might be an odd mix of earnest and weird, as evidenced by this speech at TIFF. Unfortunately he won't be able to ramble as much as he did here, or interrupt the presenter. Still he's my bet for giving a speech that might become the most unforgettable. Despite not caring much for Joker (it's fine), it looks like I'm a Phoenix voter when playing this game.
Christian Bale and Jonathan Pryce haven't given speeches this season yet. Or at least ones I could find on youtube. Based entirely on what speech you want to see on Sunday night, who do you want to win this category?
Saturday, January 4, 2020 at 12:03PM 
