Visual Effects Society: "Dune" and "Shang-Chi" lead among the Oscar hopefuls

by Nathaniel R

Dune Part One looks like the unsurprising leader going into the 20th annual Visual Effects Society Awards with six nominations. Shang Chi  trailed with four citations. (They have animated categories, too, and Encanto did very well in those races, scoring six nods). These guild prizes give us clues as to what Oscar's VFX branch might also like. Oscar has only one visual effects category, of course, while VES has several, since it's their whole purpose. Here's the list of nominations and aa guide to how the two correlated this year...

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Visual Effects Shortlist - Scene Breakdown

By Ben Miller

The 10 finalists for the Best Visual Effects Oscar were announced last week.  Though once reserved for films that pushed the boundaries of what films could visualize, the Oscars have since gravitated towards spectacle and bombast.  Of the 10 films, none came from an independent studio or had a budget less than $100 million.  That isn't to say their effects should be discounted, but don't expect to see something like Ex Machina or shortlisted documentary Welcome to Chechnya from last year.  This category is usually reserved for outright spectacle, and these shortlisted films reflect that.

Let's focus on one specific setpiece per film that highlights the visual effects artists...

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Links: Eternals, First Ladies, and new Broadway Shows

• EW first photos from the miniseries The First Lady with Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford, Viola Davis as Michelle Obama, and Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt
• Awards Daily Kristen Stewart getting the Spotlight Best Actress treatment at Palm Springs this year
• Deadline Leonardo DiCaprio in final talks to play cult leader and mass murderer Jim Jones in a movie about the 1970s cult leader
• Variety Squid Game is getting a second season. Nobody will let any stories be!

Steve McQueen, Sutton Foster, Eternals and Spencer stuff, guns on set, and more after the jump...

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Box Office: "Eternals" opens big, "Spencer" doesn't pack them in.

What did you see this past week/weekend? The public came out in droves for Marvel's disappointing Eternals because the public always comes out for Marvel's Anything. In more surprising news Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch held strong as it added theaters and continues to overperform while Spencer, despite a lot of Oscar buzz for Kristen Stewart, slightly underperformed. Of course you could also argue that it overperformed given the dire market these days for non-franchise* adult-oriented pictures.

Weekend Box Office November 5th-7th 🔺 = new or expanding
1-5	6-10
ETERNALS	FRENCH DISPATCH
1 ETERNALS 🔺  $71 Nathaniel's Review	6 THE FRENCH DISPATCH 🔺$2.6 (cum. $8.4) Elisa's Review
2  DUNE  $7.6 (cum. $83.9)  Elisa's Review	7 HALLOWEEN KILLS $2.3 (cum. $89.7) Elisa's Review
3 NO TIME TO DIE  $6.1 (cum. $143.1) Deborah's Review	8 SPENCER 🔺$2.1 Nathaniel's Review
4 VENOM LET THERE BE CARNAGE  $4.4 (cum. $197)	9 ANTLERS $2 (cum. $7.6)
5 RON'S GONE WRONG $3.6 (cum. $17.5)	10 LAST NIGHT IN SOHO $1.8 (cum. $7.6) Nathaniel's Review

* Director Pablo Larraín's lonely globally famous woman trilogy -- Jackie, Spencer, ?  -- doesn't count as a franchise ;)

Next weekend: a director's cut of Rocky IV and the family film Clifford the Big Red Dog are new in theaters, meanwhile the excellent Passing is in select theaters and hitting Netflix.

Review: the sprawling staccato "Eternals"

by Nathaniel R

Why am I here? What is my purpose? Who am I… really? These are essential questions in life and if you stop to think about it, they’re also the backbone of practically every superhero origin story. A hero discovers their gift. Grapples with how to use it and what kind of person they are and what kind of hero they can be.  With great power comes great responsibility. Etcetera. The reaction to Marvel’s Eternals suggests that it’s the first “spiritual” or “existential” superhero film which is, quite frankly, the opposite of the truth. 

Where did this impression come from? Perhaps it’s only that most superhero films asks these questions in a less “I’m asking these questions!” kind of way. Or, even when they're obvious about the questions, they quickly jump back into the action setpieces. Eternals wants to be more of a sober meditation but it can’t reconcile the weightiness of contemplation with the weightlessness of frequent CGI action setpieces...

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