WGA Nominations -- Good news for late breaking streaming titles

by Nathaniel R

The White Tiger is a surprise nominee at the WGA

The Writers Guild of America will have their awards ceremony on March 21st, 2021 but today they announced their nominations.  It's always a bit tricky to look at this in the context of the Oscars since the eligibility rules are different. Though the WGA also extended their eligibilty period to match with Oscar (as you'll see given a couple of their nominees), several key films each year are not eligible. You can't be nominated for a WGA unleses you're already a member of their guild; in other words at the WGA you'd never get a situation like, say, you had with Parasite winning the SAG Award. Furthermore animated films are not eligible for this prize but are obviously eligible at the Oscars; Shrek was nominated and Pixar has had 7 nominees: Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL•E, Up, and Toy Story 3)

The nominees and Oscar related commentary is after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Let's talk about Oscar's screenplay races

by Nathaniel R

"Mank" is about the writing of a legendary screenplay. That should do the trick.

Are there locks in the Screenplay categories? At the moment both races feel almost settled (aside from hugely competitive fifth slots) though the WGA nominations arrive on February 16th which could theoretically disrupt the consensus punditry.

ORIGINAL
In the original race Mank, Minari, Promising Young Woman, and Trial of the Chicago 7 all feel like certainties but are they? That's too many locks prior to the WGA nominations and leaves only one spot open. That hypothetical fifth spot battle has a lot of strong fighters...

Click to read more ...

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Nina: The Ghost of "Promising Young Woman"

by Lynn Lee

Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for Promising Young Woman. Do not read until you've seen the film.

Can we all agree that Carey Mulligan IS Promising Young Woman?  Not just that she’s sensational in it, though she is.  No, I mean she is the movie: her performance as the tormented and tormenting protagonist, Cassie, is what holds it together and propels it to its gut-punch of a conclusion.

That’s not to shortchange PYW’s solid supporting cast or writer-director Emerald Fennell, who brings impressive confidence and panache to her feature debut and whose razor-sharp script gave Mulligan a perfect opportunity to shine.  But what could have remained merely provocative on page really needed the right acting touch to sell the character’s complex blend of steeliness and vulnerability, wit and anguish, sexiness and inconspicuousness, icy calculation and seething rage, on screen.  Luckily for Fennell, and for us, Mulligan convincingly conveys all aspects of this unlikely avenging angel and fuses them into a cohesive, if conflicted, whole.

Well, almost all aspects...

Click to read more ...

The Damon Identity

Please welcome new contributor Patrick Gratton...

To succeed in Hollywood, one must finesse the art of self-branding. Moving up the echelon of struggling up-and-comers trying to break out is, often enough, an impossible task. Self-branding helps gets you through doors and to build a following. It also builds the foundation for narratives, whether it be industry, populist or award based (these narratives don’t happen in a vacuum). But brands can be a double-edged sword, pigeonholing and often crippling the potential to explore and grow as an artist.  Winning Oscars early on in one’s career is problematic too. It can either derail a narrative, or implement a forced one. Today, commemorating Matt Damon's 50th birthday, let's look at how major misconceptions of his work have plagued him through a 30 year run on screen.

As narratives go, sometimes it’s a burden to win an Oscar at the outset of someone’s career. Granted, Damon’s Oscar for Gus Van Sant’s 1997 film Good Will Hunting, was for the screenplay he co-wrote with childhood best friend and soon-to-be Hollywood heartthrob Ben Affleck, and not for his performance, but the point still stands...

Click to read more ...

The curious case of "The Red Balloon"

by Cláudio Alves

Last time we explored the history of non-English speaking films at the Academy Awards, we looked at the success of Japanese cinema in the Best Costume Design category. In 1956, two years after the historical victory of Teinosuke Kinugasa's Gate of Hell, the Academy finally inaugurated the Best Foreign Language Oscar as a competitive category. Federico Fellini's La Strada was the first winner and, like Gate of Hell, it also scored a nomination in another category, Best Original Screenplay. This time around, though, the foreign film champion lost that additional statuette. However, it didn't lose to a Hollywood production or even an English-language one. Instead, that year's prize for Best Original Screenplay went to one of the weirdest Oscar winners of all time. 

We're talking about a nearly dialogue-free French short film about a magical balloon directed and written by the creator of the Risk board game… 

Click to read more ...