FYC: Jackie's Original Score by Mica Levi

by Sean Donovan

You sit down in a movie theater to see the latest biopic that has earned a superstar Oscar heat, and after the series of trailers for undoubtedly happier movies you could be seeing, you stare at a black screen. Gradually you hear something, a strong string note that quickly careens down the scale into dissonant whine. It’s immediately upsetting, destabilizing: flat and lacking grace when you were promised a classy portrait of one of America’s most iconic first ladies. So disjunctive it possesses a strange, ethereal beauty. It reminds me of the sound of an airplane flying overhead, fitting for a film where some of the most dramatic scenes occur onboard Air Force One. 

Music is the standard-bearer for everything that makes Jackie an unusual Oscar contender...

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The Furniture: A Last-Minute FYC for the Home Décor of "Paterson" and "Jackie"

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Oscar balloting has begun! As Nathaniel explained last week, AMPAS branches have received their nomination ballots. They’re due on the 13th. The Academy’s production designers occasionally make offbeat choices, though they don’t do it as often as the costume designers or the makeup artists. So here’s a final nudge on behalf of the best work of the year.

I’ve already written about three of the five movies I’d nominate, were I in charge. The crazed fandom of the apartment in Florence Foster Jenkins is a work of precision and inspiration. So is the heavily curtained metaphor that is the mansion in The Childhood of a Leader. The hotel in The Lobster, meanwhile, is as perfectly sterile as the above settings are feverish. All three would be a thrilling surprise on nomination morning.

My other two have become less present in the awards conversation than I’d guessed...

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Podcast: Jackie, Hidden Figures, and More

Katey, Nick, Joe and Nathaniel gab about recent screenings on Golden Globe morning and we find out which actress Charlie (Katey's six month-old) is already a fan of...

Index (42 minutes)
00:01 Bright Lights w/ Carrie Fisher
01:15 Toni Erdmann & Globe Foreign Noms
02:45 Hacksaw Ridge Schizophrenia
05:50 Hidden Figures and Best Actress Movies Losing Oscar Heat
17:30 Joe's Movie Spelling Bee & Podcasting
19:50 Jackie - Nick's not convinced
27:40 Which Oscar movies need second looks?
36:00 Annoyed with Deadpool's Awards
39:00 Random Wrap-Up Chatter

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments. Next week we'll look at the Golden Globe aftermath.

Hidden Figures and Jackie

Art Director's Guild Nominations

The Art Director's Guild can give us a taste of what's to come for Oscar but that's the reductive way of looking at it. By having multiple categories they give us a much better sense of what these craftsmen thought of the work done in any given film year... or at least told us which screeners they caught up with. Instead of 5 annual nominees like the Oscars, they have 15. Or in this year's case 16 titles (there was a tie in "period film").

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS won a surprise Academy nomination for Production Design (without an ADG nomination). Might CAFE SOCIETY (which *has* an ADG nomination) make the Oscar list despite a current low profile?

Which will go on to Oscar? (I'll have to rethink our chart which has four films which didn't score with the ADG in the top ten though one of them, The Handmaiden, still feels possible as a nomination since foreign films don't generally show up at guild awards before their Oscar nods) Oscar eventual lineup is remarkably similar from year to year in terms of how it pulls from the ADG nominations. For example, here is this decade thus far: 

2015: Oscar chose 3 from ADG's period pieces, 1 each from their contemporary and fantasy selections
2014: Oscar chose 2 from ADG's period pieces, 2 film from fantasy, none from contemporary. They filled the remaining spot with a film ADG had not selected (Mr Turner)
2013: Oscar chose 3 from ADG's period pieces, 1 each from their contemporary and fantasy selections
2012: Oscar chose 3 from ADG's period pieces, 2 from fantasy, none from contemporary.
2011: Oscar chose 2 from ADG's period pieces, 1 from fantasy, none from contemporary, and 2 films the ADG had not selected (Midnight in Paris & War Horse)
2010: Oscar chose 2 from ADG's period pieces, 3 from fantasy, none from contemporary.

The safest bet is that they'll do the same as usual this year with a 3,1,1 split for ADG's Period, Fantasy, and Contemporary fields. All the nominations are after the jump...

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Here's to the Ladies Who Lush

Year in Review. Each afternoon, a new wrap up list. Today Steven with our first wine soaked entry...

A lot of us were taken by surprise by the results of the election, and now we find ourselves living in a post “11/8” world. Since that day, how many of you have spent a quiet evening at home pondering the winding road ahead with a giant glass of red wine for company? I know I have. If you answered yes, you're not alone in this and you have fine actressy counterparts. Some of 2016’s best narrative moments have played out just this way. Our screens, large and small, have been filled with fierce femmes sipping some wine, reflecting on life, death, pain, joy…you know, existence.

Join us in tipping a glass to some of the best of those scenes (possible spoilers ahead)...

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