Split Decision: "TÁR"

No two people feels the exact same way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the awards movies this year. Here’s Chris James and Cláudio Alves on TÁR.

CHRIS: It’s no mistake that people mistook Lydia Tár for being a real person. There’s something authentic and substantiated about TÁR, Todd Field’s third film which centers around a complicated famed conductor. Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) doesn’t necessarily have delusions of grandeur, she simply has an inability to see anything below her ivory pedestal. As much as Field and Blanchett have a laser focused idea of this character, the movie never spoon feeds us the narrative. We enter her journey in media res, trying to piece together her home life, her work life and whether the visions in her head are delusions or real threats. It’s a refreshing and engrossing way of telling this woman’s story the way she would want it told, while leaving ample room for interpretation and opinion.

I could go on and on about my favorite movie of the year, as one often does. However, tell me Cláudio, why don't you love TÁR? What elements give you pause?

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Critics Choice Award Winners, Blanchett's Speech, and More

by Nathaniel R

Last night the Critics Choice Awards were held and broadcast on the CW. They copied and pasted many of the winners from the Golden Globes, though not quite all. To their credit, though, the repeat acting winners mostly seemed to understand this (a stark change from years past where you'd hear the same speech at every show) and didn't copy and paste their own speeches. There were also a few differences in attendance that varied things up (most noticeably Cate Blanchett who didn't attend the Globes; she won at both). But it was a dull night, overall, if you weren't in the room. We've gone before of course but it's been a few years and it does feel different if you're inside the room. Especially if you manage to get a seat at a fun table. 

For the low energy, maybe we should blame the absence of awesome cheerleader Jamie Lee Curtis whose enthusiasm was very much missed since Everything Everywhere All At Once kept winning awards (it took five in total, the most prizes for anything)  The winners and a few more comments after the jump...

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Oscar Volley: Who will take the fifth slot in Best Actress?

Team Experience will be discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Nick Taylor and Eurocheese...  

NICK: We’ve arrived at the most crowded acting category of year, which doesn’t necessarily mean this category will be difficult to predict. If you look at the fifteen women in Nathaniel’s Best Actress predictions -- I think Lesley Manville should be higher for Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris -- you can see that the fifth slot is going to be a bloodbath. It makes it even harder to narrow things down when so many of the turns are fantastic. The sheer amount of chaos offered from the this category in the past couple years makes it hard for me to feel comfortable with setting anything in stone even as we reach the end of the year. 

I wanna honor the messiness of the category, from year to year, and spice up how we order this volley. Euro, of all the leading actresses from 2022 with minimal-to-no Oscar buzz, who would you rank among the very best?

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TÁR dominates Indiewire's Critics Survey

by Cláudio Alves

© Focus Features

Despite their name, one shouldn't consider the Critics Choice Awards as an accurate reflection of critical consensus. More often than not, that organization seems singularly fixated on predicting the Oscars to the point it's hard to denote any idiosyncrasies of taste. To get a better grasp of what the critics think, one should regard such surveys as the one Indiewire did with 165 critics and journalists, among them our own Nathaniel Rogers. Though various titles are mentioned across nine lists, one picture stands tall above all the others, signaling a clear favorite from the season. TÁR obliterates the competition, damning them all to hell like the maestro herself, raving like a lunatic with an accordion in hand.

The survey results, plus some commentary, after the jump…

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Tweetweek

I will miss Twitter when it's gone even though it was kind of a hellscape. Anyway, here are some choice showbiz related tweets from the past couple of weeks, curated for this crowd here at TFE...

Cate Blanchett has yet to TRULY challenge herself as an actress by playing the role of a mentally sound lady who has a nice day

— Chelsea Pope (@chelseathepope) November 6, 2022

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