The Academy Welcomes 395 New Members

by Nathaniel R

Harry Yoon (Editor), Lee Isaac Chung (Writer/Director) and Christian Oh (Producer) were all invited to the Academy post MINARI

Each year the Academy releases the names of their potential new members. Reports range a bit at how many voting members the Academy actually has. Deadline suggests that if all 395 of the new invitees accept membership, AMPAS will be around 9,750ish members while the LA Times places the number around 10,700. We're not sure where that discrepancy of nearly a 1000 voters comes from but let's just say it's hard to track. We rarely learn who declined membership, for example, and of course people die from year to year since many longtime members are elderly. 

As per usual, even before the Academy's largely successfully diversification and gender parity drive, a good portion of the invitees go out to fresh winners and nominees from the previous season. If they accept Youn Yuh-jung, Maria Bakalova, Steven Yeun, Paul Raci, and H.E.R. (to name a handful of examples) will now be Oscar voters. 46% of the new invitees are women and 39% are from underrepresented groups. One really interesting number is that over half of the new invitees, 53% to be exact, are international invites. Whether that translates to more international titles winning Oscar favor, who knows...

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Lunchtime Poll: Oscar omissions... the ones that sting?

by Nathaniel R

A lot of people -- including me! -- wanted to see Delroy Lindo nominated

Cláudio will be sounding off on the "almost there" class of 2020 soon but until then, let's get the disappointments out of our system before we concentrate on enjoying the rest of the Oscar race, which has now entered it's second phase. 

Here's to the fallen! Which misses on Oscar nom morning -- our Christmas! -- are the closest things to coals in your stocking? I'll start with the five I (virtually) weep for outside of the acting categories...

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Best Editing: The Art of Disorientation

by Cláudio Alves

There seem to be two big schools of thought regarding what good film editing is. On the one hand, classic Hollywood precepts indicate a preference for the invisible, cutting so organically enmeshed with the rhythms of the story one barely notices its mechanisms. On the other hand, there's a showier style, editing that calls attention to itself and demands applause, especially in the realm of action cinema. In either case, an unwritten rule posits clarity of information and storytelling as a defining tenet. Editing should facilitate the movie-watching process by allowing the audience to follow along with the narrative or thesis, its emotional beats, spatial awareness, and chronology. Nonetheless, two of this year's biggest contenders in the race for the Best Editing Oscar do the exact opposite, choosing to engage with the art of editing as a tool of disorientation rather than clarification, chaos instead of order…

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How Olivia Colman broke my heart in "The Father"

by Cláudio Alves

We always carry part of ourselves into the films we watch. Memories, past events, half-forgotten trauma and half-remembered dreams, inform how we perceive art, how it affects us and persists in our mind long after the screen fades to black. When dealing with a work about a universal experience like aging, we can only assume each viewer will see a slightly different picture. The Father I saw isn't The Father you'll see, or even The Father its makers intended to create. Many came out of the film raving about Sir Anthony Hopkins' tour-de-force as an old man suffering from dementia, his reality warped into a nightmare of perpetual disorientation. While I appreciate him a great deal, it's the work of another thespian that most affected me.

Ever since I watched the film weeks ago, I can't stop thinking about Olivia Colman's performance, how I saw myself in her, how I saw my parents in the character she portrays, how she broke my heart…

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Thoughts on "The Father"...

by Eric Blume

It's difficult to write reviews these days, because it feels like no film is ever actually "released", and all of us are scrambling to find what movies are even available, how they're available, if they're VOD, or on a streaming service, etc.  Sony Pictures Classics might have made a fumble mostly holding back from view director Florian Zeller's The Father, taken from his own play, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman:  if more people could see it, everyone would be talking about it.

The Father is one of those Movies They Don't Make Anymore, i.e., a damn adult drama that challenges your mind and heart.  This is a film where the entire creative team treats the audience with dignity and respect, trusting that you're listening and paying attention, and they will reward you with literate ideas, high drama, and an emotional experience.  But The Father is more than just that:  the storytelling and the visual conceit of the film are surprising and demanding, and it is not a passive undertaking for the viewer...

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