Podcast: Sundance Buzz and SAG Awards Chatter

Nathaniel,  Nick, Katey, and Joe vape with Leonardo DiCaprio at the SAG Awards. Also we share the Sundance titles we're most curious about...

39 minutes 
00:01 Sundance Winners: Swiss Army Man, Netflix and Amazon
09:30 Birth of a Nation and other black films that could take the pressure off of it as the #OscarsSoWhite corrective
13:52 Most anticipated titles
16:30 SAG: Boosts for Spotlight, Alicia Vikander
22:20 Don's Plum vs. Flora Plum
25:15 Brie & Leonardo & final SAG thoughts

Related Reading For Context:
• Best Ensemble Choices -From Nathaniel
• Best Ensemble Choices -From Joe
• Nick's SAG Blogging - a first for him
• Leo's Vaping - via E!

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes soon. 

SAG Reactions

Bye Instant Watch: Terms of Endearment, Tom Cruise, Big Fish...

What's leaving Netflix Instant Watch?

We should probably start covering that. It seems like a boring topic but we jazz up your public service announcements. I'll close my eyes and play with the control bar and wherever I freeze the movie I'll share the image. This weekend is your last chance to watch these films for free for who knows how long. Since there are Oscar titles in the mix, perhaps you can fill some holes in your Oscar lists of Things To See or Rewatch.

Ready? In chronological order of their film year, seven films leaving Netflix on February 1st...

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)

EMMA: I've got some good news. I'm unofficially pregnant. I mean I haven't got the tests back but I'm never late.

AURORA: [Pause] Well... No, I don't understand."

Look how crazy young Jeff Daniels is! Shirley Maclaine is so hilarious and complicated in this movie -- that long pause with cascading rejection of possible responses under frozen 'I don't understand' face. She's going to lose out since she doesn't want to think of herself as a grandmother. A well deserved Best Actress win, with Shirley obviously relieved about it "this show has been as long as my career."

Oscar Note: I know we've asked this before but how long before we get another girlie Best Picture winner it's been FOR-EV-ER. Terms of Endearment was nominated for 11 Oscars (an astounding amount for a contemporary-set film), winning 5. 

six more movies after the jump

THE TERMINATOR (1984) 

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Box Office: Grandpa Debuts, Revenant Holds, Carol Falls

What did you see this weekend? Aside from three new films catering to three different audiences (adult comedy with Dirty Grandpa, horror with The Boy, YA sci-fi with The Fifth Wave) which grossed about the same this weekend, moviegoers stuck to the familiar. They were still enamored with Leo's bear fight and that galaxy far far away. Some people are still catching up with Oscar hopefuls as all the Best Picture nominees continued to do solid business or see new life (especially Room which had been fading to a whisper and now has finally lept into wide release adding another $1.4 million to its cumulative gross).

This could be a still from Neighbors really, outside the Abercrombie & Fitch store. How many movies will Zac Efron star in where the joke is how fit and sexy he is compared to his co-star?

Spotlight and Brooklyn, which didn't wait for Oscar love to expand were already word of mouth successes so their new energy is gravy for them. But as we discussed last weekend, the Best Picture snub has killed Carol's momentum and now it's losing theaters having never spread to even 800 (so if you haven't yet been, find it quick). The Danish Girl will also be dropping fast given its similar fate (decent nomination count, no Best Picture). That's the danger of resting your box office and release patterns on Oscar attention alone, if anything goes wrong, you collapse. Nevertheless Carol will love on forever as classics do and that's the best any movie can hope for really. A lot of classics were barely blips at the box office in their day.

BOX OFFICE WIDE
01 The Revenant $16 (cum. $119.1) Costumes, Production Design 
02 The Force Awakens $14.2 (cum. $879.2) Review, Podcast, BB-8
03 Ride Along 2 $12.9 (cum. $59.1)
04 Dirty Grandpa  $11.5 new
05 The Boy $11.2 new 

BOX OFFICE LIMITED
01 Ip Man 3 $.7 new 103 screens
02 Carol   $.6 (cum. $10.5) 692 screens Oscar Snub, Adapting Highsmith, First Impressions
03 The Danish Girl  $.5 (cum. $9.7) 794 screens Podcast, Screenplay
04 Anomalisa $.3 (cum $1.4) 143 screens Podcast, Review, Festival Capsule
05 45 Years  $.2 (cum $.7) 40 screens Capsule

"The Big Short" takes PGA

Adam McKay's The Big Short got a big boost in the Oscar race last night by winning big at the PGA. This is an important win for the film considering that this Best Picture race is more slippery than we've seen in the past few years. You have to go back almost a decade to Little Miss Sunshine to find a PGA winner that didn't align with Oscar (though Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave shared a tie with Gravity).

This win also poses another setback for Spotlight, which is really going to need to win that SAG Ensemble prize this coming Saturday to stay in the game. The Revenant, while it may still be rocking the box office, also missed an opportunity here to claim its post as frontrunner after its hefty nomination tally and Globes success. Any chances Mad Maxy: Fury Road had are probably now cooked, but George Miller is still viable as a Best Director winner, especially if he takes the DGA prize.

Inside Out and Amy gained more distance from their respective competition. Both won PGA's Animated and Documentary prizes and are unlikely to be deafeated on Oscar night. The big television winners were Transparent, Game of Thrones, and Fargo.

Oscar in Panic Mode. This Rarely Ends Well...

Readers I'm getting nervous. I love the Oscars. Ever since I saw the shiny gold man on a TV guide cover as a little boy and was all "what is that?" I've been hooked. So their history means a lot to me.

It's actually because of that history that it's fun as well as uplifting to chart their progress over the years in dealing with diversity -- and there has been a lot of progress no matter what the current cultural rage would imply. It's been a thrill to see the "first this" and "first that" over the years. 

But this year things are getting ugly. The Academy often makes terrible mistakes when they're criticized (note all the 'we can't make up our minds' volatility with the rules following The Dark Knight year) and now they'll be meeting on possible rules changes including returning to 10 Picture nominees. President Cheryl Boone Isaacs promises "big changes". Some people are even floating acting fields as big as 10 nominees. This is probably the worst idea I've ever heard in relation to the Oscars. [More...]

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