Will "Call Me By Your Name" Be Ignored by Oscar?

The following article was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It's reprinted here with some updates... 

Though you might feel like you’ve been hearing “Oscar buzz” for months, it’s always good to be reminded that timetables are askew and “buzz” is a lot faster/noisier than the real thing. Academy members don’t actually start filling out their nomination ballots until Friday morning!

They’ll have one week to determine which movies and performances are in the running for the industry’s most coveted golden statues. Each year some adult-oriented movies risk going wide without Oscar’s blessing while others lay in wait, banking on Oscar favor to help sell them to a wider audience. One of the pictures that’s trying the lay-low-until-Oscar game is the gay coming-of-age drama Call Me By Your Name. Though it’s been in theaters for six weeks it still hasn’t expanded past major markets and is only on 115 screens (stateside) at this writing. It’s poised to become either one of the biggest Oscar players or one of the most “snubbed”. So this seems as good a time as any to share some anxiety about it...

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Call Me With Kindness

by Jason Adams

Call Me By Your Name is turning out to be the sort of success none of us saw coming sixteen months ago when it was first announced that the director of I Am Love was tackling a little gay love story. It just broke the 2017 record for per theater average over the weekend, and its reviews have been unanimously stellar. It won Best Feature at the Gothams Monday night, it topped the Independent Spirit nominations, and it’s expected to stick around racking up such prizes all awards season long.

And yet there’s been one complaint that’s nagged at the movie from a determined bunch of folks (including the film’s own writer, legend James Ivory) since it first screened at Sundance in January – a supposed shyness about nudity and gay sex. Ivory told Variety it’s a “pity” there's no full-frontal nudity in the film, while The Guardian called the movie “coy” and Slate called it out for a “lack of explicit sex.” One shot in particular has rankled these folks the most – a seemingly old-fashioned pan out the window just as the characters finally approach their erotic consummation.

The film’s director Luca Guadagnino, who probably had to look up the word “coy” in the dictionary the first time it was lobbed at him for this, is nonplussed by the reaction – he told Vulture:

“It’s really something I don’t understand. It’s as if you said there are not enough shots of Shanghai. I don’t understand why there has to be Shanghai in this movie.”

I’m inclined to agree with him. Not only because I found the film sexy as hell, erotic in languorous, voyeuristic ways that movies don’t really approach anymore. Its sense of tactility, for sweat and fabric and skin, and its often-prurient stares – up the legs of swimming trunks, for example - are a welcome shock to the system that makes the forbidden seem commonplace, easy...

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Dance Armie Dance!

Chris here. Call Me By Your Name is more than a month away from release and it's already a meme. One of the film's most escapist scenes has dropped online to much fanfare - a nighttime dance set to the Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way". Now I'd argue that the scene does play as meaningfully out of context (most online clips don't), but the sheer delight of Armie Hammer's moves cannot be understated. And the internet has reacted in kind, overdubbing the scene with other songs to hilarious effect. Some tracks work better than others in this silly gag, but nothing matches the heights of the film's original track. Get ready to see a whole lot of dancing Armie in the coming months and to have a classic song completely redefined for you! What song do you want to see Armie dance to?

UPDATE: This wonderful account has been suspended, likely for copyright issues.

green light by lorde pic.twitter.com/8dHrsHeJIp

— armie dancing to (@armiedancingto) October 12, 2017

https://twitter.com/armiedancingto/status/9185294214092185

https://twitter.com/armiedancingto/status/918529421409218561

Red Carpet Prayer

Dear Cinema Gods,
Please make it so Armie Hammer & Timothée Chalamet can be together on red carpets all season.
In Meryl's Name,
Amen

This is Link

screen
The Guardian talks to Armie Hammer about the peach scene in Call Me By Your Name and more - Hammer also recently got in a good dig at conservative asshole James Woods who is upset by the age difference in the film
Awards Daily Joey ranks the 101 greatest Will & Grace guest stars. Yes, 101.
Decider the 24 best episodes of Will & Grace prior to the revival
THR Netflix is losing some very major TV series on Oct 1st so if you always wanted to complete 30 Rock or Friday Night Lights, you'd best be bingeing...

More after the jump including Cher, Jane Fonda, This is Us, and Hugh Hefner's death...

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