First time directors dominate AACTA nominations

by Travis Cragg

Rising stars Eliza Scanlen (Sharp Objects) and George Mackay (1917) headline the AACTA frontrunners "Babyteeth" and "True History of the Kelly Gang"

COVID hasn’t delayed ALL the awards… The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts will have two ceremonies  one remote, the other with reduced capacity, on the 27th and 30th of this month. Not that AACTA gets much press. The nominations were announced a week ago to little fanfare but we'll share them here because we value Australian cinema.  The family cancer dramedy Babyteeth (which is current streaming on Hulu)leads the nominations for 2020, receiving nods in 12 out of a possible 13 categories (only missing out on Costume Design). Often in AACTA when a film is this dominant, it proceeds with a sweep (e.g. Somersault) or near-sweep (The Great Gatsby) of the awards on the night. Despite the possibility of a Babyteeth sweep, it certainly does have competition. Full nominations and a few comments after the jump...

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Still more prizes...

Why were critics so uncritical of Toy Story 4's retreading?

Yes, people are still giving out prizes. We don’t say this facetiously since we haven’t even given out ours yet (still cramming in screenings!) but both the Team Experience Awards (voted on by our whole team sans me -- they don’t let me vote!) and the Film Bitch Awards (yours truly's own long-running prizes) are coming in the next week or two. But until the guild awards start en masse this week (whilst Academy members vote on the Oscar nominations) here are the five latest industry or critics groups to announce. We only wish that there were more variety since Parasite, Bong Joon Ho, Adam Driver, Brad Pitt, Apollo 11, and Toy Story 4 continually to dominate their categories with stampede like force. The only category where the groups disagreed en masse (this week at least) was Best Actress; Ronan, Nyong'o, Zellweger, and Johansson all picked up another prize. And Best Supporting Actress was dominated by Florence Pugh in this week's roundup which is a bit different than earlier in the critics awards season where it was always Dern vs Lopez. 

The latest prizes after the jump...

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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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And you thought Oscar voters didn't watch enough films --check out the AACTA nominations!

by Travis C

THE KING

The nominations for the Australian Academy Cinema Television Arts (or AACTA) awards were released this week. Since they changed from being the Australian Film Institute awards (or AFI) several years ago, the Cinema nominations are drawing from a smaller and smaller subset of the large amount of entrants. This year was no exception with only nine feature films being nominated in all the categories (not counting the Indie category, but more on that later). It hasn't been the best 12 months for Aussie film but nevertheless…

Best Film

HOTEL MUMBAI

JUDY & PUNCH

THE KING

THE NIGHTINGALE

RIDE LIKE A GIRL

TOP END WEDDING...

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