'Marriage Story' Wins the Night at the Gotham Awards

by Murtada Elfadl

Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach’s LA has nothing on New York except space divorce story, fittingly dominated the Gotham Awards last night. It won every award it was nominated for - feature, screenplay, actor - plus the audience award. Awkwafina won best actress for The Farewell over Indie Spirit nominees Alfre Woodard, Mary Kay Place and Elisabeth Moss. She is not nominated for the LA counterpart to the Gothams. We doubt they’ll fall for Baumbach as hard as the New Yorkers did. They’ve seen the film and know which city he prefers.

Tributes were given to Laura Dern, Sam Rockwell, Ava DuVernay and producer Glen Basner. Baumbach and his partner Greta Gerwig came out in Raf Simmons designed sweaters adorned with Dern pictures to present her award. 

Here is the evening’s full list of winners...

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Podcast: A Beautiful Day, Knives Out, Waves, Atlantics

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R 

Index (61 minutes)

• 00:01 Happy belated Thanksgiving
• 02:01 Marielle Heller and Tom Hanks offer catharsis with A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• 14:30 Knives Out and that yummy cast: Chris Evans, Toni Collette, etc...
• 21:30 Film Bitch Awards / Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers tangent
• 23:00 Exciting new voice: Senegal's Mati Diop and Atlantics
• 29:20 Waves divides people, including Nathaniel and Murtada, and we also discuss the rush to judgment on first screenings among pundits
• 38:00 Spirit Nominations - What did we make of them?
• 48:20 Best Cinematography - Roger Deakins for 1917... but who else? 
• 59:00 Can you believe it's December already? 

Related Reading
Murtada's interview with Mati Diop
Monica Castillo's Knives Out essay

 You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

A Beautiful Day for Podcasting

"Pain and Glory" big at the Goyas

by Nathaniel R

We remain nervous about the American awards prospects of Almodovar’s wonderfully moving 'i’m not dead yet but I kinda feel like it some times' autobiography, but at least in Spain, Pain & Glory is having a love-fest. This year the latest Almodóvar movie received 16 nominations, that's two more than even Volver got in its year. The Goya nominators did not spread the wealth. We're not sure if it was a weak year for Spanish cinema or if they just didn't look around much but the other two biggies, While at War and The Endless Trench, received 17 and 15 nominations respectively. 

 BEST FILM

• “Pain and Glory” (Pedro Almodóvar)
• “Out in the Open” (Benito Zambrano)
• “The Endless Trench” (Aitor Arregui, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga)
• “Fire Will Come” (Oliver Laxe)
• “While at War” (Alejandro Amenábar)

You may recall that While at War was a finalist for Spain's Oscar submission this year...

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What did you see over the long Thanksgiving weekend?

What did you see over the weekend? General audiences were singing along to Frozen II in big numbers while Knives Out exceeded expectations with a strong opening weekend. After the jump everything still in wide release plus their counterparts at the moment in the world of platform titles...

Weekend Box Office November 29th-December 1st (ACTUALS) 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended
WIDE RELEASE (800+ screens)	PLATFORM TITLES
1  FROZEN II  $85.9 (cum. $288.8) REVIEW	1  JOJO RABBIT $1.2 on 730 screens (cum. $18.3) TIFF WIN, PODCAST ★

2 🔺 KNIVES OUT $26.7 (cum. $41.4) REVIEW, WHODUNNITS ★	2 PARASITE  $1.0 on 382 screens (cum. $18.2) PODCAST, CLASS, BONG ★

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Interview: Jayro Bustamante on 'Temblores'

by Murtada Elfadl

In this followup to his debut Ixcanul (2015), Jayro Bustamante shifts his focus from rural Guatemala to Guatemala City and both its vibrant queer subculture and strict evangelical institutions that believe in a type of gay conversion therapy. Temblores is about Pablo a seemingly straight father and husband who tries to balance both his life as an out man and his responsibilities to his children and family and does not find an easy compromise. The film won the grand jury prize recently at NewFest, New York’s LGBTQ film festival, I was a member of that jury.

I recently spoke to Bustamnate about the film and how he based it on research and interviews with many men - he called them his Pablos which is the main character’s name - who were forced to come out and some faced rituals of conversion therapy to reconcile with their religous beliefs and with their Christian families...

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