FYC: Lucas Hedges in "Lady Bird"

By Spencer Coile 

Lucas Hedges arrived last year with his performance in Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea. His portrayal of Patrick Chandler, a 16 year-old dealing with the loss of his father, was quickly lauded and showered with awards attention -- including a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He was only 20 at the time!

Now, Hedges is having another banner year with notable SAG nominated ensemble work in Lady Bird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. While both films are prime Oscar consideration across the board, Hedges' work is being severely overlooked -- particularly his performance as Danny O'Neill in Lady Bird... 

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Podcast: The Shape of Lady Bird

Nathaniel and Nick talk two Best Picture hopefuls, the generous funny adorable Greta Gerwig movie Lady Bird and the overstuffed visually creative Guillermo Del Toro fantasy The Shape of Water. 

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Lois Smith & Lucas Hedges and lingering moments
06:00 Greta Gerwig, Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Tracy Letts are all brilliant
16:00 More Lady Bird gushing
23:00 The Shape of Water -wanted to love it more
27:00 Guillermo del Toro problems and monsters
32:00 The performances in the movie
37:40 The Best Picture field, Hollywood sexism, and the atypical versus typical within the contenders

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? 

Shape of Water & Lady Bird

The Oscar Week: Greta, Jake, and Timothée

Murtada is back with his weekly Oscars feature for a new season, following Oscar contenders and examining how their many interviews and appearances impact their chances.

Gerwig at the Gotham Awards

Are you ready for another season of Oscar campaign shenanigans? Frankly I wasn’t. In the year in which Hollywood revealed its ugly hidden true self of rampant sexual harassment, maybe they shouldn’t spend so much time patting themselves on the back. Cancel the Oscars, I cried to one in particular.

But then Greta Gerwig took me out of my dark despair...

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I'm Your Biggest Fan! - Reeves, Gerwig, and Chance

By Salim Garami

What's good? Apologies because I don't have much to say or talk about this week, except remark on how I'm still in a pretty pleasant mood moving out of Thanksgiving weekend and into the holiday season.

And part of what prolonged my pleasant mood was to find an admittedly 2-year-old video of movie star Keanu Reeves on promotional tour promoting John Wick in Japan discussing his admiration for martial arts film legend Sonny Chiba (of The Street Fighter or Kill Bill fame), influencing his physical choreography and style. Lo and behold, Chiba was in the studio ready to meet with Keanu and the Matrix star is suddenly starstruck to meet him and begins waxing rhapsodic over Chiba's work. Seeing such a household star in the industry be taken aback by the presence of figure that certainly isn't as well-known internationally as Reeves brought a smile to my face...

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NBR Goes Cuckoo for "The Post"

by Nathaniel R

The National Board of Review, which regularly has a recency bias in their awardage has gone full tilt boogie into stanning for The Post, with a couple of honors for Phantom Thread, too, which were both most definitely among the very last things to screen. Neither opens until the tail end of the year. They gave The Post their top prize and both lead acting awards for the film's iconic stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. That's unusual for NBR. The complete list of winners and commentary after the jump...

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