On the SAG winners: History making but will they prove Oscar & Emmy influential?

by Nathaniel R

Riz Ahmed was one of handful of stars hat operated as inadvertent hosts by having bits of an interview spliced in all throughout the show about their careers and such.

We watched the SAG awards last night with a mix of fascination and relief. Fascination at the winners chosen and relief that the ceremony accepted that it couldn't be a normal one and therefore became merely a swift presentation of wins with acceptance speeches on Zoom. Aside from swift "bits" where famous actors talked about their headshots or the "special skills" on their resumes, it was all just actors talking about the nominated actors and then the winners beaming from their homes on Zoom. It ran just a single hour long...

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Showbiz History: Duplicity, The King and I, and the 1951 Oscars

5 random things that happened on this day, March 20th, in showbiz history...

1949 The 20th Academy Awards are held honoring the films of 1947. The anti-semitism journalism drama Gentleman's Agreement takes Best Picture with Miracle on 34th Street probably a distant second. We had so much fun discussing this year last summer and we highly recommend you watch Crossfire (which lost all five of its nominations) because it's excellent...

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Actors Turned Producers @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

We've already posted about many records broken with this year's Oscar nominations, but one particular achievement remained unmentioned. With her double nominations for Nomadland – for Best Picture and Best Actress – Frances McDormand became the first woman to earn an acting and a Best Picture nomination for the same project. This comes after a decade when this feat became incredibly common for male performers. Historically, ever since the 1950s, when AMPAs started to list producers with Best Picture nods, instead of merely the studios' name, actors have been producing their movies and earning added honors for those efforts. Still, it was only in the late 60s that someone scored the elusive double citation by the Academy…

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Best Picture Nominees - Who's Up? Who's Down?

by Christopher James

Is Nomadland still looking like the clear winner for Best Picture?

Oscar nomination morning changes everything. What it takes to be nominated for an Oscar and win an Oscar are very different. As we enter this new phase for the Oscars, who is best set up for success on April 25th? The eight Best Picture nominees were all the most nominated movies of the year. Mank led with ten nominations. The rest of the nominees all had relatively good days, each earning six nominations except for Promising Young Woman, which received five nominations. Among non-Best Picture nominees, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom led with five nominations and News of the World with four nominations.

With the Oscar mainly coalescing around the eight Best Picture movies, which of them benefitted? Were any movies disappointments, despite a Best Picture nomination? Can anything beat current frontrunner Nomadland?

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Final Oscar Nom Predix Pt 1: Picture, Director, Screenplay, Visuals, Sound

As many have remarked, the 2020... excuse us 2020 plus the first two months of 2021 film year has been unpredictable and chaotic in film awards. The pandemic affected the race in virtually every way (a different eligibility period, a different set of films with many delaying their arrival a full year, all virtual campaigning and no red carpets, etcetera). We could have done without the pandemic of course but we love a messy Oscar race. It makes punditry very difficult but also way more fun. And it's also more generous to artists because messiness spreads the wealth around and the wealth should always be spread. There is so little point in 35+ awards bodies if they're all in lockstep agreement. 

Just about the only thing that's been "consensus" from the first few moments of the season to the very last (to date) via the BAFTA nominations is that (generally speaking) everyone is moved by Minari, laughs along with Maria Bakalova in Borat, and is deeply impressed with Nomadland  but especially its trailblazing writer/director/editor/producer Chloe Zhao. New consensuses (concensi?) began to emerge late in precursor season around one additional thing: Daniel Kaluuya for Best Supporting Actor in Judas and the Black Messiah in which he has the leading role of the titular Black Messiah...

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