Juneteenth is finally an official US holiday. Will we get more movies about it?

Following recent voting in Congress, Juneteenth is finally a federal holiday. It's been too long in coming. And speaking of since this is a film site ... Have you caught up with last year's Miss Juneteenth yet? It's so good and Nicole Beharie is just perfect in the leading role, as a former beauty queen who has to learn to let go of trying to strictly mold her daughter into a new version of herself. She won the Gotham Award and was a medalist here at TFE as well. For our money she was better than the bulk of Oscar's acting nominees last season...

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Westerns and the Best Cinematography Oscar

by Cláudio Alves

With News of the World nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar, I started thinking about the relationship between the western and this particular craft and awards category. My relationship with the intrinsically American genre hasn't always been one of admiration, and for years I counted it among my least liked genres. However, some historical research and the watching of many fascinating classics made me reappreciate the possibilities of the western. I gained a new respect for its importance. The wondrous feats of cinematography had a lot to do with it… 

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93rd Academy Awards: Best Production Design

by Daniel Walber

Is it a good year for the Best Production Design category at the Oscars? Is it a bad year? What does the word “good” even mean? Or, for that matter, the word “year”? Certainly not the same thing as “eligibility period,” given the way things have shaken out with the 93rd Academy Awards. Pour one out for First Cow.

But I digress. We have five films nominated for Best Production Design, and they’re a relatively modest batch. There’s the eternal joke about the Oscars nominating movies for “most” rather than “best” design, but by some miracle that hasn’t happened this year...

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4 days til Oscar. With 4 nominations let's talk "News of the World"

by Nathaniel R

News of the World is the only movie with exactly four Oscar nominations this year. That quartet of nods for Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Sound, and Best Original Score, places the movie squarely in the greatly admired but not-quite-loved camp we see each year. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom met a similar fate with five nominations; both movies stood a reasonable chance in a few other categories but missed suggesting solid support but perhaps not passion. We'd argue that Paul Greengrass' western is easily the least discussed of the dozen most nominated movies this year (that would be the 8 Best Picture nominees plus News, One Night in Miami, Ma Rainey and Soul). That's true even here despite the film landing in my personal top 20. Why was that exactly?

We'd guess there are probably three reasons...

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9 days until Oscar. This year's 9-time nominees

by Nathaniel R

9 time Academy Award nominee Ren Klyce at work

While the 93rd Annual Academy Awards are largely a very exciting 'fresh voices!' kind of competition, all Oscar years barring the very first couple (haha) have some regular nominees show up. In the absence of a Streep or a Williams this year the only people in the double digits are songwriter Diane Warren and a couple of sound guys (more on sound in a minute). But we wanted to highlight count three men with 9 nominations today. Only one of them, has previously won. They are...

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