Oscar Trivia, Weekly: The Academy's Tarantino blindspots

by Nathaniel R

Tarantino winning his first Oscar in the mid 90sWednesday mornings will now be devoted to Oscar trivia (the crowd cheers... we hope). This morning let's look at some factoids you might have missed in Oscar's on & off again romance with Quentin Tarantino. Like many A-list writer/directors before and presumably after him, Oscar has honored him with a Screenplay Oscar (two, in point of fact) but not a directing Oscar. That's how they often do with the more polarizing and unique talents. Do enough people realize this to make Tarantino and actual threat for the Best Director win for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as his career threatens to wind down? We aren't sure (yet) but for today's particular trivia pursuit, instead we'd like to talk about the categories that Tarantino films compete in versus the ones they don't.

If you smoosh all of Tarantino's 9 films pre-Hollywood together for a rough average, the movie would be nominated for 3 Oscars (Supporting, Screenplay, and Cinematography) and have a 50% chance of winning a single one of those races...

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Oscar Predictions for August Complete!

It only took three days to revamp all the charts. Woohoo. Have a looksie.

In this mass overhaul we have major gains for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Farewell, naturally, since both have proven themselves with critics and at the box office already. Experiencing small gains are The Irishman and Just Mercy (now that they're officially going to be premiering this year), The Lighthouse and 1917 (after their stunning teases), and Judy (sigh). Small losses were incurred by Harriet (after a somewhat generic trailer) and The Report (given Amazon's sudden cold feet about regular theatrical exposure for their films). Films tumbling downward since our April Foolish wild guesswork include The Good Liar, Ford v Ferrari, and The Goldfinch (though we're definitely looking forward to two of those).

We've also added documentary predictions for the first time this year though this is still blindfolded guesswork since we won't know what's actually eligible and long-listed for quite some time still. 

 All Pages
INDEX | PICTURE   | DIRECTOR |
ACTRESS | ACTOR | SUPP ACTRESS |
SUPP ACTOR | SCREENPLAY  |
FOREIGN FILM | ANIMATION, DOCS |
VISUALS | SOUND

Link Club

• Variety RIP Piero Tosi one of the great costume designers. His film credits include Death in Venice, La Traviata, La Cage Aux Folles and The Night Porter so he's the one responsible for Charlotte Rampling at her most sexually provocative
• BuzzFeed good piece on Brad Pitt's talent and why he shines in weirder sideline roles as opposed to leads... though we object to any notion that he isn't a leading man in Once Upon a Time... but this battle is already lost since critics keep calling him supporting even before the Oscar campaign does. (sigh)

more after the jump including The Hunt, a fun conversation on Hobbs & Shaw, Tarantino and Almodóvar...

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Oscar Chart Updates: Two-Lead Men's Movies

Robert Pattinson & Willem Dafoe in "The Lighthouse"

We're in for it with category fraud this year, y'all. Yes, we're in for it every year of course until something finally breaks within the Academy (disgruntled character actors stage a revolution, "do you hear the people sing singing the song of angry men..." c'mon SAG!) but 2019 in particular appears to be a film year with an unusual amount of two-leading-men films. We've got (arguably) The Lighthouse, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Ford v Ferrari, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, The Two Popes, and maybe more. So we've opted to just kind of ignore the problem and assume we know who is going where in the BEST ACTOR and BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR chart updates though as always we wish the leading men would just stay in lead like they're supposed to. If it was good enough for Amadeus, it's good enough for you, people!

Having said all that we just realized we left Matt Damon (Ford v Ferrari) and Robert Pattinson (The Lighthouse) off of either chart which is silly but not intentional. We'll squeeze them in somewhere as soon as we have a moment.  What do you think of the new rankings? Any strong hunches this August? 

Great Moments in Horror Actressing

by Jason Adams

It's hard not to walk out of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood without Sharon Tate on your mind. Whether it's because you thought the film needed more of what Margot Robbie was serving or if like me it's because you thought what Robbie did serve was A+ First Class stuff, the specter of that real woman, rightfully, lords over the entire experience. Sharon Tate only got to make six films before she was murdered, and two of them were horror films -- not an unlikely statistic for any young beautiful actress, but one that's linked itself arm in arm with Tate's fate nonetheless. 

I've never seen her 1967 British occult flick Eye of the Devil, which had her playing a witch opposite David Niven and Deborah Kerr. But I've seen her other horror flick of that same year, Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, more times than I can count, and it's Tate's under-valued performance that I always think of when I think of the film. She's barely in it but she walks away with it -- a pale fire piled in soap bubbles and snow...

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