Coal in our stocking. 'Worst' of the Year

Each day a different year in review list. Here's Nathaniel R...

2018 was unpleasant in so many real life ways that grousing about unpleasant things within our favorite escape hatch from reality seems ungrateful. By and large, we love the movies here at TFE and I think I speak for most of the team in saying that we can all pretty much find something to love even in the worst ones. Nevertheless, allow me a quick exorcism of the things I disliked the most this year to get them out of my system. A very important caveat though: As my own boss I can skip whichever films I have no interest in or which receive intense critical drubbings. Therefore my "worsts" are rarely the worsts and sometimes not even terrible just unsatisfying, if you catch the drift. But these films and performances just didn't work for me or actively discouraged benefit of the doubt.

Much kvetching after the jump...

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Podcast: Ben is Back, Beale Street, Vice, and those pesky SAG nods

Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl welcome special guest Alfred Soto to talk new films & SAG fallout

Index (61 minutes)
00:01 SAG nomination leftover feelings
05:00 None of us liked Vice and the reviews are mixed. We still think it's an awards contender so we discuss the question of latebreakers in each awards season. 
11:45 Randomness: Ethan Hawke, Bohemian Rhapsody, and the Florida Film Critics Circle
20:40 Ben is Back starring Lucas Hedges (with sidebars of Boy Erased and Beautiful Boy)
33:40 If Beale Street Could Talk
45:00 Reader Q: A fine element of a buzzy movie that's not being talked up
49:17 Reader Q: Is Best Actress actually set already?
51:00 Reader Q: If there wasn't Category Fraud this year what would be happening in Supporting Actress?
53:30 Reader Q: Reassign an Oscar win - what's the cascading effect?
59:40 Wrap up

Further Reading / References
• Murtada's If Beale Street Review
• Nathaniel's If Beale Street Quick Take
• Alfred's controversial review of Roma
• Alfred's Florida Film Critics ballot
• Best Actress Race 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Beale St, Ben is Back, Vice

The SAG Nominations are Here

Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians) and Laverne Cox (Orange is the New Black) announced the nominations and joked about their height difference, while pronouncing all the names beautifully, being totally gorgeous, and staying enthusiastic about the whole damn thing. We thank them profusely because the ACTUAL nominations were among the worst we've ever seen in our long history of awards-watching and we might have experienced dry-heaving ourselves had we been forced to read them off.

Did the SAG nominating committees only screen 8 movies and 7 tv shows this year? 

Screen Actors Guild rules make voting your conscience about who is supporting and lead impossible (the members are required to vote however the actor is campaigned by the studio) unless you are conscientous enough to just not nominate the person if they are cheating... as we are when we vote on such things... but most nominators aren't. So this year we have even worse Category Fraud than usual -- there is barely a Supporting Actress category this year, at all, which is such a shame given all the worthy actual supporting female actors out there.

The nominations and some comments after the jump... 

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Bohemian was the dom top of the weekend

Weekend Box Office - Actuals November 2nd-4th 🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1.🔺Bohemian Rhapsody $51 *NEW* Review, Podcast	1.🔺Beautiful Boy $1.3 540 screens (cum. $3.1)  Podcast
2.🔺Nutcracker & the... $20.3 *NEW* Review	2.Johnny English 2 $1  on 552 screens (cum. $3.2)
3.🔺Nobody's Fool $13.7  *NEW*	3.Free Solo $1  363  screens (cum. $6.8)
4. A Star is Born $11 (cum. $165.5)  Review, Soundtrack, Podcast	4.🔺Can You Ever Forgive Me? $1 180 screens (cum. $1.7) Review, Podcast
5. Halloween $10.8  (cum. $150.2) Review	5.🔺Suspiria $979k 311 screens (cum. $1.2) Podcast

What did you see this weekend? Want-to-see factor on the Queen movie Bohemian Rhapsody was huge (Bryan Singer's alleged crimes and the sometimes-harsh reviews didnt deter people). Meanwhile Boy Erased enjoyed the weekend's top per screen average but at only 5 screens earning $207k -- a solid start for its platform Oscar-campaign intentions.

Links: Color Purple, Yuba County, and Rebel Wilson

Playbill very cool news. The tony winning The Color Purple musical will be adapted to screen. Smart of Cynthia Erivo to immediately focus on the screen following her Tony win for that show. Perhaps she can transfer the role now that she has a larger profile in the film industry?
Pajiba first photos of Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly offer an uncanny resemblance
Tod Phillips Joaquin Phoenix taking a smoke break on the set of The Joker
/Film Deadwood just began production on a movie with the TV series cast returning to their acclaimed roles

IndieWire held a little ceremony to honor some of this year's top film people: Charlize Theron, Amandla Stenberg, Ryan Coogler, and Alfonso Cuarón among them.
Tribeca Film Disobedience deserves a place in awards season
Variety Rebel Wilson in hot water after proclaiming (incorrectly) that she's the first plus size woman to lead a rom-com (if she had just admitted she was wrong, this wouldn't have blown up but for some reason she doubled down)
Variety Fun! Allison Janney and Laura Dern will be co-starring in a comedy called Breaking News in Yuba County for director Tate Taylor (The Help)
Awards Daily Best Song Oscar-winner Annie Lennox wrote a new tune for A Private War
Into on the erasure of both polyamory and bisexuality in Bohemian Rhapsody
Humanizing the Vacuum perceptive review of Can You Ever Forgive Me?