Tweetweek: Directors vs Marvel, Regina King, Parasite, and More...

 All anybody on twitter has been talking about of late is Martin Scorsese vs Marvel (which was very funny until it was sad but some good tweets came of it) but before we get to the auteurs vs the "oppressed" corporate product (lol) some Parasite enthusiasm and other random topics...

The best sexts I’ve ever gotten are friends sending me #Parasite raves after they leave the theater

— Zack Sharf (@ZSharf) October 19, 2019

FYC: "Jessica, Only Child" for Best Original Song https://t.co/6oavcG04L5

— The Wolf Matt 🎃 (@filmguy619) October 23, 2019

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Best Picture / Director Oscar chart updates !

by Nathaniel R

Marriage Story would have been a true blockbuster like Kramer vs Kramer or Terms of Endearment in a different era. Now it will just stream but could still be a big player at the Oscars.

There’s still so much we don’t know.

That’s an important fact to start with because reading online discourse about Oscar predictions each year is like pretending we live in a perpetual January when the precursors are well underway and the template is already set which will only vary slightly from organization to organization/pundit to pundit. Oscar fanatics (and pundits) never know as much as they pretend to know early on. History is filled with films with breathless first screenings that didn’t amount to much at the Oscars and vice versa. These things take time and all parts of the cycle should be considered when making predictions. If your predictions are exactly the same as someone else's this early, take a risk. Then you can be wrong in different ways instead of in the same way. Haha.

Five Very Important Things We Don’t Yet Know...

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Introducing the Panelists for "Smackdown '60"

As indicated yesterday we'll shortly be looking at Psycho, Sons and Lovers, Elmer Gantry, and the Oscar nominated supporting actresses of 1960 on the next Smackdown (get your votes in!) on Sunday July 21st. It's time to introduce you to this month's esteemed panelists!

First, a hearty welcome to two first time Smackdown panelists...

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Welcome to the Academy, 2019 Newbies!

Today it was announced that AMPAS (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences) has invited 842 new members to join them, further swelling the Oscar ranks. The Academy has recently entered a period of unprecendented growth as they continue to address gender parity and racial inclusivity within their ranks. For the first time that we recall they actually did achieve gender parity in regards to their new invites - exactly 50% of the new members are women and 29% of the invitees this year are people of color.  Most impressively given the dire previous numbers the directors branch invited more women than men this year! THE DIRECTORS. Think about what a major step that is. 

A full* list of new members follows and we threw some hearts up by people for which we went spontaneously aflutter though this is not to imply that the others don't deserve our love. It's a lot of names so it's easy to get overwhelmed...

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Posterized: Jim Jarmusch

by Nathaniel R

The Ohio-born indie auteur Jim Jarmusch first made waves in the cinematic landscape with his black and white sophomore feature Stranger Than Paradise in the mid 80s . It was a big critical success and arthouse sleeper hit. He was suddenly the "cool" new director. His career since then has been, like most critical darling careers, full of small waves of audience popularity versus indifference, sometimes not in relation to the critical fates of whichever film arrived. For example, Paterson (2016), his most recent picture prior to the brand new zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die (opening today) was a huge critical succcess in its year, but grossed just $2 million at the US box office.

Through it all critics have mostly been loyal and actors with more eclectic taste have become his regulars: Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, and Bill Murray have all made 4 pictures with him.

How many of his pictures have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

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