Film Bitch Awards Finale - The Medal Ceremony

by Nathaniel R 

Cue trumpets and confetti!  The 18th annual Film Bitch Awards have finally reached their conclusion with the "best scene" page fully up and complete with nominations and medals for BEST KISS, BEST ACTION SCENE, and BEST MUSICAL SEQUENCE and the like.

64 movies were honored over our 40 regular categories for the 2017 film year. Lady Bird and Get Out led this past year's crop with 13 nominations each and 10 and 9 medal wins respectively. Other top ten entries that scored multiple medals were Call Me By Your Name, Baby Driver, and Atomic Blonde. The films that made the strongest showing without scoring in headline categories or the top ten list were: Phantom Thread, The Greatest Showman, and Blade Runner 2049.

Some curiousities: The Florida Project won only gold medals, never a silver or bronze. Oscar's best picture winner The Shape of Water was nominated in six categories but only took home one medal (gold for Production Design). And the film that Oscar completely ignored that performed strongest here was --  no surprise I suppose -- France's Oscar submission BPM with 8 nominations, 1 gold, 1 silver, and 4 bronze medals.

Part 1 - Film, Director, Picture
Part 2 - Acting Categories 
Part 3 - Visuals
Part 4 - Music and Sound 
Part 5 - Non-Traditional Acting Categories
Part 6 - Character Prizes
Part 7 - Best Scene Work *NEWLY COMPLETED*

...and in case you missed it, the top ten list write-up. We hope you enjoyed all our 2017 coverage. Now on to 2018 as Spring begins!

Podcast: Nick's Oscar Adventure!

For the season finale of the podcast Nathaniel R and Katey Rich grill Nick Davis about his FIRST TIME ATTENDING THE OSCARS!

Hear how the room responded to the Coco, Shape of Water, and Get Out wins. Name dropping galore ahead: Justin Paul, Aaron Sorkin, Sandy Martin, LaKeith Stanfield, Roger Deakins, Greta Gerwig, Jordan Peele, etc 

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Intro: snack boxes, commercial breaks
02:30 Gags, speeches, celebrity sightings
11:00 Wins and spreading the wealth
18:00 Song performances, mistaken identity
21:00 Laura Dern and Timothée Chalamet
24:30 Time's Up and "inclusion riders"
30:00 Los Angeles and Nick's Faye photoshoot
35:30 Moving on from these movies
42:00 Byeeeee 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Nick at the Oscars!

Three Cheers for Jordan Peele

Chris here with some quick affection for one of the heroes of the season, Jordan Peele. While some (including yours truly) had predicted a Best Picture win for Get Out and its timely instant classic, it ended up being the other genre mashup to take the top prize. After Saturday's big win at the Indie Spirits and the rapturous standing ovation that greeted Peele's Best Original Screenplay win, it certainly looked like it might go all the way and you'd have to imagine it was a very close miss.

But the prize that Peele did win shouldn't go without its own celebration, triumphing in perhaps the tightest race of the night. As Nathaniel already pointed out, it's the category's first winner for an African American and horror film. Remember this time last year when people questioned if a horror film from a comedy outsider could even stay in the conversation? This win makes those reductive talking points look quite silly and serves as a trailblazer in more ways than one. Whatever Peele has coming next, you'd be a fool to doubt him any more.

Spirit Award Winners

by Nathaniel R

Get Out won Feature and Director at the Spirit Awards (but no other prizes)

The headline prizes
BEST FEATURE "Get Out"
BEST FEMALE LEAD Frances McDormand “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”
BEST MALE LEAD Timothée Chalamet “Call Me by Your Name”
BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE Allison Janney “I, Tonya”
BEST SUPPORTING MALE Sam Rockwell “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”
BEST DIRECTOR Jordan Peele “Get Out”
BEST SCREENPLAY Greta Gerwig “Lady Bird”

It says a lot about the intrinsic problems of awards season and rampant conformity that even at the Spirits they aren't willing to budge from the Oscar frontrunners, except when they're forced to (Gary Oldman wasn't eligible here so we happily get one big Timothée win)...

Click to read more ...

Film Bitch Awards Pt 1 - Oscar Correlative Crafts

by Nathaniel R

Had hoped to meter these out as we usually do but time ran out and here we are at Oscar weekend. So herewith the Film Bitch nominations in all the Oscar correlative categories (plus one as we have two "Score" categories since there are largely two types used for movies these days). The acting categories are the only thing not completed yet but they'll hopefully be up tonight. Blade Runner 2049 and Get Out are the leaders thus far with 6 and 5 nominations respectively.

Part 1 - Film, Director, Picture
Part 2 - Acting TBA
Part 3 - Visuals
Part 4 - Music and Sound 

...and in case you missed it, the top ten list write-up.