Oscar Mythbusting: 'Weak' Best Actress Years (feat. "Tom & Viv")

by Cláudio Alves

There's been much talk of this year being a weak one for the Best Actress category. That's nonsense. While it's easy to understand where such dreary thoughts come from, it's a foul myth. Every year has the potential to be great, you just need to look at films outside the Academy's usual favorites and our preconceptions about what constitutes awardable acting. 

Take 1994, a year traditionally considered among the weakest for the Best Actress Oscar. While it's true the nominated five aren't a particularly stellar collection, they each bring something to the table. There's Winona Ryder and her anachronistic charm, Jessica Lange's primordial rage and lust, Susan Sarandon's solid reactions, and Jodie Foster's fearlessness. Finally, there's the lead actress of Tom & Viv, a film now celebrating its 25th anniversary…

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Jennifer Kent makes history at the AACTAs with "The Nightingale"

by Travis Cragg

Magnolia Maymuru from The Nightingale wins Best Supporting Actress

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) gave out their awards at two functions this week: one was an industry luncheon where they did the technical and supporting awards, the other was a glitzy evening televised on delay with many of the gongs awarded in the ad breaks (mostly, it seemed, to people who weren’t present and therefore wouldn’t give the viewers the requisite spontaneity that ratings prefer). The two biggest Australian box office hits of the year, Top End Wedding and Ride Like A Girl, went home empty-handed, but the wealth was spread out amongst the other (limited bunch of) nominees with The Nightingale leading the pack...

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It's a very tight race for this year's Annie Awards

by Nathaniel R

Oops. So much was happening this week we completely neglected the Annie nominations. The ceremony will be held on January 25th. There's no clear frontrunner this year with Missing Link and Frozen 2 tied for the most nominations. Their nearest competitors are not far behind. In other words Klaus, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World , I Lost My Body, and Toy Story 4 were also clearly well liked enough to win big. That's 6 features and when it comes time for the Oscar nominations there can be only 5. We can't discount the possibility that another non-American film besides I Lost My Body might prove a darkhouse spoiler with the Academy's animation branch which has proven open to international films (for nominations if not wins) and isn't always keen on blockbuster sequels.  We should also keep a close eye on Japan's International Feature Oscar submission Weathering With You which got some love here at the Annies, too.

The complete list of nominations and a few comments after the jump...

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Review: The Aeronauts

by Chris Feil

There’s an eyesore on the horizon with The Aeronauts, a cynically observed aerial adventure fatally encumbered by too many pixels. Reuniting the Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne after The Theory of Everything first welcomed both into the Oscar fold, this film is a strange amalgam of influences it fails to live up to. It’s part survival actioner, part vibrant costume drama, and part uplifting women-in-science empowerment tale. But the film’s blending of the three, and its attempts to infuse some modernity to the storytelling, is too clumsy to satisfy any of its points of entry.

The film stars Jones as Amelia Wren, a mid-19th century balloon pilot grieving an unexpected personal cost of her professional on top of patriarchal limitations. Her expertise makes her a fitting partner to Redmayne’s scientist James Glaisher, aiming to prove the science of early meteorology against highly skeptical widespread thought. But Wren and Glaisher have their own clashing of methods and degree of determination. In their flight mission, Glaisher pushes for them to ascend higher than any balloon in history, turning their quest for information into a brief but dangerous fight for survival.

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Five Sundance Films to Get Excited About

by Murtada Elfadl

Sundance announced its 2020 slew of films for the festival that kicks off in Park City on January 23rd. This writer is excited to start caring about a whole slew of new movies as the festival comes in at the thick of awards season when there’s almost nothing left to say about 2019 movies.

Julianne Moore as Gloria Steinem in The Glorias

Sundance provided some statistics on their selection this year...

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