Interview: Lin-Manuel Miranda on "Encanto" and "tick, tick...BOOM!"

by Nathaniel R

at the world premiere of "tick, tick, BOOM!"

I had the pleasure of interviewing Lin-Manuel Miranda in November while he was doing press for Encanto, now streaming on Disney+ with its soundtrack doing great business, too. He was energetic and smiling and gave great quote. Just a few days later, in a significantly less arranged moment, we came face-to-face the night of tick, tick... BOOM!'s premiere in Los Angeles. The response to the movie that night couldn't have been dreamier. He looked elated if significantly more tired than he had over Zoom. He admitted at the party that the entire week was a total blur. Just the week? The entire past year has been one Lin-Manuel Miranda highlight after another. So much so that we named him one of our top three entertainers of the year. In addition to questions about Encanto, tick, tick...BOOM!, and Hamilton, I made sure to ask him how he finds time for sleep.

[This interview has been edited for clarity.]

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Animated Short Finals - Pt 1: Bad Seeds, Robin Robin, and Us Again

by Nathaniel R

Oscars short film categories don't get much attention in this size queen world of ours out there but let's do our part to change that. While the preliminary "predictions" are up those were made before seeing any of the films. We'll revamp the predictions as soon as we're finished watching all 15 finalists. Let's dive in together on this first batch of three since they're all available to stream right now...

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Linker by the Dozen

• Fangoria "Romero was right" wonderful piece on modern life, resonant horror, and zombie movies
• The Telegraph Jamie Dornan, who had such a great onscreen year, says 2021 was actually the hardest year of his life
• Gr8ter Days Joan Copeland, sister of Arthur Miller has passed away at age 99

Eyes Wide Shut, new animated films, and several "best of" lists are after the jump...

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Annie Nominations

by Nathaniel R

The 49th annual Annie Award nominations are basically the Disney show this year. The Mouse House squashed its competition at the annual event with Raya and the Last Dragon leading the nominations, Encanto in second place, and Disney/Pixar's Luca in third place (albeit tied with Netflix's Mitchells vs the Machines there). The most popular international titles were Denmark's Flee and Japan's Belle, both of which showed up in Best Direction, which adds confidence to our bet that they're likeliest to spoil Disney's all American party on the Oscar shortlist. Still we might have to rethink that bet that Raya and the Last Dragon is the vulnerable film. We thought it would have been forgotten by now as it wasn't greeted as enthusiastically as a few of its competitors at the time of its release.

As is our usual reaction, we don't really understand what's going on in the selections for voice acting, which aside from two great choices from Encanto (John Leguizamo and Stephanie Beatriz), usually defaults to lead work in productions where the supporting characters feature the best vocal acting. For example Kelly Marie Tran over Awkwafina in Raya ... really? Abbi Jacobson over Olivia Colman in Mitchells vs the Machines? Does not compute.

Full list of nominations is after the jump...

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FYC: "Flee" for Best Picture

by Matt St Clair

Flee, now playing in limited release, is transcendent. The animated memoir could break records by competing in three Feature categories: Animated Feature, Documentary Feature, and, because it’s the Danish submission, Best International Feature. Both Collective and Honeyland recently made history recently by competing in the latter two categories simultaneously, but no film has found itself in contention for all three. Flee might accomplish this historic feat, but it should go even further by also being nominated for Best Picture.

A nomination would allow the glass ceiling for documentaries to finally break. In the ceremony’s soon-to-be 94-year history, no documentary has ever competed in the top category...

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