SXSW didn't have a festival. But they do have winners.

Shithouse (2020) was the big winner at the phantom SXSW festivalA not so secret secret about film festivals: many juries are watching their category on screeners before the festival due to tight schedules, scads of programming, and the general chaos of actual festivals. So, though SXSW didn't actually happen this year, their juries DID give out prizes. Yes, it feels like new movies are but figments of our imagination but that's always the case to some extent with festivals, isn't it? Like Saint Frances which won big at SXSW a year ago only to finally emerge just in time for the Coronavirus to strike it down in theaters, a couple of weeks ago. So maybe in a year's time we'll see these movies!

Their winners and what the juries said about them....

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Almost There: Alfre Woodard in "Passion Fish"

by Cláudio Alves

Alfre Woodard is one of the great American actresses of our time. If there were any doubts about that, last year's Clemency must have surely killed them for good. Still, for people obsessed with movie awards, Woodard's mastery might not be obvious. Her sole Academy Award nomination came in 1983 for a film that few remember, Cross Creek. The lack of recognition for that feature doesn't mean it doesn't deserve praise and it certainly doesn't reflect lackluster acting. But we're here to talk about a different performance.

The 1992 drama Passion Fish was up for Actress and Screenplay and it's easy to imagine that a third nomination for Woodard nearly materialized...

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Link, Valour, Compassion

Cartoon Brew The National Association of Theater Owners is pissed at Universal about skipping theatrical for Trolls World Tour. 
/Film Wonder Woman 1984 has been moved from June to August 14th but the other big Warner Bros summer release (In the Heights) doesn't yet have a new release date

More after the jump including a Star Wars book, a failed lawsuit, Terence McNally RIP...

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Horror Actressing: Catherine Deneuve in "Repulsion"

by Jason Adams

Oh, Repulsion! Prescient, precious Repulsion! How could you have known that one day we'd all every last one of us be boarding up our doors and dreaming about probing walls of man hands every night? ... Just me? Watching Repulsion for the umpteenth time what immediately struck me this week, after having lost track of the time indoors myself, was its soundtrack -- the diegetic bird song, distant people playing and chit-chatting through the windows, the incessant clanging of trolley bells that slip in and out of some sort of wailing, panting kazoo cry whenever Carol (Catherine Deneuve) turns her inner heat up...

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Julia Roberts' Big Mistake

by Murtada Elfadl

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Pretty Woman. It was released on March 23rd 1990. Of course now it’s remembered for making Julia Roberts one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history. It launched her career to the stratosphere and she still ranks as a major star even if the star system itself has evolved drastically in the last thirty years...

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