TIFF Delivers an Oscar bound-surprise with "Green Book"

by Nathaniel R

Go figure. The winner of TIFF's "Grolsch's People's Choice Award" is a film that literally none of my TIFF airbnb troupe (Joe Reid, Chris Feil, Nick Davis and I) saw during our 10 day stretch in Ontario. Green Book by Peter Farrelly (yes, of Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary fame) took TIFF's most coveted prize. (the runners up were Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma). So we'll have to add it to the Best Picture chart when we update this week (we're looking at probably Wednesday night for across the board updates to reflect all the festival madness).

In the entire 40 year history of this prize, stretching From Girlfriends (1978) through Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), 16 of the winners went on to Best Picture nods at the Oscars. The 40 winners also include 7 future Best Picture winners, 6 future Best Foreign Language Film winners, and 2 future Best Documentary Feature winners. The Oscar correlation is getting stronger all the time, too...

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Roma, A Star is Born, The Favourite... Will anything flop this festival season?

by Nathaniel R

So far so good for all the expected Oscar favorites. The First Man won (mostly) raves and the next three big premieres also did. Alfonso Cuaron's Spanish language black-and-white family epic Roma, Bradley Cooper's remake of A Star is Born with Lady Gaga, Yorgos Lanthimos' comedy The Favourite with three great actresses... everyone seems to love everything! Are they all suffering from "first!" blurb whore fever or will the next wave of critics (coming soon at Telluride, TIFF, and NYFF) also fall so hard for these same pictures?

I don't personally read reviews before I see a picture (though sometimes I skim them) but if you do, here's what people are saying about these Best Picture hopefuls...

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Aug 30th - All Oscar Charts Updated!

by Nathaniel R

We've been needing to update all the Oscar charts and we've just about waited too long since Venice and Telluride have begun and soon things will be changing daily. But let it suffice to say that these are hunches just before the festival explosion. Team Experience is off to TIFF next week when we'll be seeing a lot of the contenders and consensus will begin to form around half of the titles, too. Some key November/December films will remain a mystery until just before their release, though.

The freshly revamped charts...

PREDICTION INDEX |  PICTURE | DIRECTOR | ACTOR  | ACTRESS | SUPPORTING ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTRESS | SCREENPLAYS | FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM | VISUALS | SOUNDS | ANIMATED FEATURES

And about that 'Popular Achievement Oscar' Thingamabob... 

We haven't yet added a chart since Oscar has released no details about what they plan -- have they planned any details?  -- but I've added a list of 8 films I predict could compete for it at the bottom of the Best Picture chart. Naturally half of them are already on the Best Picture chart, since we hardly need such a category.

New Academy Rulings = Catastrophe

Oh dear.

Whatever goodwill Oscar has gained recently with their commendable efforts to diversify their membership appears to have not appeased their naked NEED to more popular with people who they'll never be popular with. Three new changes have been announced two of which are potentially catastrophic.

Let's take them in order of least to most upsetting.

The Oscars will be earlier after this year. 
The 2019 Oscars will be held on February 9th, 2020. The benefit of rushing the Oscars is that it also helps alleviate (in theory) the December glut as well as the ever-tacky "one week qualifier" release tactic that feel like cheating even though it's technically just fine with the rulebooks...

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Best Casablanca Quotes

Tomorrow is your last day to vote on the Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1943. Casablanca wasn't nominated in that category but it took the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. In addition to being economically constructed -- those 102 minutes fly by every time (in fact, it's the 8th shortest Best Picture winner ever) -- it's got generous helpings of contenders for 'best line ever'. So I asked this month's panel to share their favorite line or exchange from that immortal classic.

Here's what we all chose...

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