Almost There: Ralph Fiennes in "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

by Cláudio Alves

With Netflix's The Dig arriving friday, let's talk about the remarkable Ralph Fiennes. Oscar-wise, the British actor hit it big quickly, earning a nomination for his third feature, Best Picture champion Schindler's List. For a handful of years, it seemed like he'd become an awards season perennial, but things turned out differently. While he conquered another Oscar nomination for 1996's The English Patient, he's won little buzz since. That doesn't reflect a decrease in the quality of his work nor a turn to less prestigious fare. Oddly, even when he gets great reviews in titles beloved by AMPAS, an acting nomination remains elusive. This was never more evident than in 2014 when Fiennes delivered a tour-de-force in one of the most nominated movies of the year, The Grand Budapest Hotel…

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Almost There: Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally..."

by Cláudio Alves

Last week, we examined a Christmas movie performance that came close to Oscar glory to celebrate the holidays. Now that we're coming to the end of this cursed 2020, it seems appropriate to choose a New Year's Eve film. When it came time to pick such a picture, my mind immediately went to f Rob Reiner's 1989 When Harry Met Sally…, a perfect rom-com whose Nora Ephron-penned screenplay earned a much-deserved Academy Award nomination. Our focus shall be on the Sally of the title, Meg Ryan giving a comedienne's masterclass…

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Three Golden Globe "controversies" that shouldn't surprise anyone

Apologies for not addressing this earlier today but of the three Golden Globe rulings that have the internet's collective tongue wagging, only one of them surprised us and only in a very mild kind of way. Perhaps this is why we didn't jump to discuss figuring that people would respond with a shrug. How wrong we were! If you're like 'what the hell are you discussing, Nathaniel?' here's a quick survey.

The three controversial rulings:

1. Minari will not be eligible for Best Picture at the Globes but instead compete for Best Foreign Language Film. Our surprise level: 0%. The Globes have never allowed pictures that weren't in the English language to compete in Best Picture and we just assumed everyone knew this but we were quite wrong. The same exact thing happened as recently as last year (The Farewell, 2019) and as recently, before that, as the year before (Roma, 2018)...

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Mae West on Criterion

by Cláudio Alves

When she's good, she's very good. When she's bad, she's better. 

Mae West was one of the great stars of the Pre-Code era, though her reign as one of Hollywood's most popular queens was short-lived and curtailed by the advent of the Hays Code. Like Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz after her, West was a target of William Randolph Hearst's ire. According to legend, the millionaire wanted revenge on West after she had made insulting remarks concerning the acting abilities of Marion Davies, his mistress. Such conspiracies are fun and it's easy to paint Hearst as Old Hollywood's perennial villain, but they're rarely 100% true. Mae West's fall from grace is more complicated than a vendetta from a mogul and a bunch of outraged Catholics. She was one of a kind, a symbol of licentiousness and indecency, a provocateur whose triumph was as amazing as it was temporary... 

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What Qualifies as a Comedy for the Golden Globes?

By Abe Friedtanzer

It was announced this week that the forthcoming Promising Young Woman (my favorite film of 2020)  will be campaigned at the Golden Globes in the comedy/musical races. There’s definitely a case to be made for its classification as a comedy, even though it’s very dark. I agree that it’s the right choice though surely some will argue. Similarly, The Flight Attendant, which just earned a season two renewal from HBO Max, is likely to be considered a comedy for the TV categories, an interesting choice given the fact that it’s really a thriller. This isn’t the first time there’s at least been room for debate about what actually counts as a comedy with the HFPA and other groups…

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