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News just broke that performances of Original Song nominees Youth's "Simple Song No. 3" (read our interview) and Facing Extinction's "Manta Ray" have been nixed from the Oscar broadcast, the producers citing "time constraints" for the always lengthy show. Performances of the other three nominated songs by Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Sam Smith are still in play.
TFE must express rage at yet another stupid Academy blunder. This sends an incredibly bad faith message to nominees -- if you're not famous pop stars, your nominations are "lesser than". And in a year where the Academy has been the subject of immense criticism for their lack of diversity they've essentially excluded the sole trans nominee (Antony Hegarty of Antony & the Johnsons fame who co-wrote and sings "Manta Ray") from valuable air time.
As a longtime fan of Antony and as a member of the LGBT community this enrages me. Diversity is about more than just skin color. Here's J Ralph & Antony's nominated song. And do yourself a favor and get acquainted with Antony Hegarty's music because it's brilliant.
Last week we enjoyed the eloquent musings of one Stephen Sondheim and quibbled over whether Todd Haynes’s intentionally queasy and dizzying take on “I’m Still Here” was worth including in James Lapine’s documentary on the Broadway composer. This week we’re taking a break from our regular programming and going back in time to celebrate one of HBO’s earliest Oscar victories.
As you may or may not know, films produced by HBO have won over 20 Oscars. Last year alone, HBO dominated both documentary categories with Citizenfour and Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 emerging victorious in their respective categories. And so, let us travel back to March 1990 when Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (discussed here) won the Best Documentary Oscar. [More...]
/Film the first footage from Disney's Moana Playbill Rapper Daveed Diggs on getting his shot on Broadway's smash hit Hamilton expanding the world. (I hope to one day see this show. C'mon lottery gods!) Gizmodo an exo suit from Edge of Tomorrow constructed from junk! MNPP pic of the day Matthias Schoenaerts in A Bigger Splash
Comics Alliance apparently director James Gunn says Captain America: Civil War is awesome and this has excited the internet for some reason. Next time someone OUTSIDE of Marvel's employ enthuses about one of their movies early, get back to us? The Envelope thinks that Mad Max Fury Road and Carol will lead Oscar nominations (with 9 each). I dare not hope that this is true because that's just so much fabulousness in one Oscar year. /Film claims that the breakout character of Star Wars is TR-8R -- this shows how well we've been following Star Wars stanning because who knew? Cinema Blend Joss Whedon talks about why he's done with Marvel Reverse Shot a deeply insightful look at Star Wars: The Force Awakens - it's possible that f I've linked to this before but even so, it's a must read. Towleroad Matt Bomer covers Men's Fitness credits Channing Tatum for his current peak physique
Hateful Tangents Interview talks to Demian Bichir about his first gig with Tarantino. Bichir gave the second best performance in it if you ask me because he realized in the absence of being given a real character to play, play a Real Character. Slate the Movie Club is in session and it's hilarious and thoughtful as always. They argue over whether The Hateful Right is "ineffably evil", share the joys of Spy and Carol, and observe tricky critical duties as with Tangerine and The Danish Girl. Bonus points for the "f*** this thing" cat gif. Cinematic Corner on her issues with the heroism of rapists and murderers in The Hateful Eight.
I'm trying to let hate for Hateful Eight go, I really am. But it's like an exorcism. It takes time and I guess I've still got some pea soup to vomit up. I've made no secret that I personally despise this movie -- but I have been reading reviews with kind of a morbid fascination because of how much people try to say it's still somehow a good movie after lining up their lengthy issues with it. I'm not the only one who has noticed this.
It is not a good movie. In fact it's kind of a betrayal of Tarantino by Tarantino because it's him fucking up things he used to do better than anyone. There is zero depth to the characterizations beyond the most simplistic "What a character!" outline, the gore (such as exploding heads) adds nothing other than wank-bank material for sadists, the dialogue is severely lacking in his usual cleverness, and worst of all Tarantino displays none of his usual skill at that constant electric hum of "shit is about to go down!" that powers all of his best films. The only tension in this particular movie is wondering when the shit will finally go down so that it will end. If you think of all of his best films the tension is alive in every scene. The scenes repeatedly feel dangerous as if anything might happen. And something nearly always does. Here we basically have any of those individual scenes only they're now 3 hours long and the tension just goes out of it completely because who cares?
In short, stop justifying this work people; It's okay to think a movie is terrible when it is! Most great auteurs have a dud (or five) somewhere in their filmography. If we try to convince ourselves that every thing a single person makes is masterful, we are denying our own critical faculties and it also makes our love for their true masterpieces highly suspect. For instance here are a five filmmakers I regularly cite when people ask me for "all time favorites": Haynes, Almodovar, Cameron, Minnelli, Hitchcock. All of them have made a film or films that were not that great or that I could not personally connect to. That does not lessen their genius for me. That just means they're human and it helps me to appreciate their masterworks more because I know the love is true and not me trying to argue myself into fandom.
Try this at home. Realize that The Hateful Eight is a shit movie and go back to loving any of his much better films. And cry with me when The Hateful Eight takes Oscar nominations from far more deserving players in ten days time.
She did this in order to kill off a paparazzi's shot at making a ton of money off of creeping on her at the beach. Smart girl. We don't follow celebrity pregnancies so have no idea when she's due but it looks like soon... CONGRATS TO ANNIE & HUSBAND.
List-Mania Top Tens: Variety (Guy Lodge), The Telegraph (Robbie Collins); Slate (Dana Stevens); Pop Culture Crazy (Kacey Bange) Lists Lists Lists: Gothamist (Best Celebrity Subway Sightings); Pajiba (Seriously F*** That Guy - a retrospective of rage); Pajiba (5 Most Intriguing new Netflix Series. They don't mention Daredevil because it's about new series but season 2 kicks off in March, fwiw); Forbes releases their "30 Under 30" List which includes both of The Force Awakens new stars, natch, as well as all three Straight Outta Compton leads.
First Oscar Commercial of the New Year Chris Rock kinda sorta prophesies those annual nasty post-show reviews you read every year.
2016 is upon us. So far it's been a wash since a cold has attacked me without warning but while I sleep and stay hydrated (not simultaneously) and procrastinate here are some favorite tweets of the week. But the year started beautifully with two of our favorite film thinkers and Oscar historians Nick Davis and Mark Harris announcing new projects. Nick will be expanding his "Best Actress" section and Mark Harris will be celebrating 1966 movies all year as he preps for the 50th anniversary of those Best Picture nominees he celebrated in his first book "Pictures at a Revolution" which was on the Best Pictures of 1967.
Our first tweet is a perfect message for the "survey the greats" season we're in via filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. Our friend Nick has an interesting solution to this favorites versus perfection equation. He has two top 100s, greatest and favorites. He just wrote a huge batch of new essays which you should really read. Recent pieces include two movies that are accidentallly perfect for New Year's week including Strange Days and When Harry Met Sally (on the "greatest" list) movies like Movies become "favorites" for so many reasons, whether that's great experiences at the theater where we saw them or, the ease at rewatching them, or just the slow dawning realization that this one you just love whatever its shortcomings (this is me with Burlesque which showed on cable in a loop in 2015 and I couldn't look away.)
Favorite movies don't have to be perfect movies. Like in any relationship, Love is what makes them stick around.
Kieran, here. It was officially confirmed earlier this morning that Chris Rock will host the 88th Academy Awards. This will be Rock's second stint as Oscar emcee after his gig at the 2004 Oscars (held in 2005...get it right). I want to first say that I am a Chris Rock fan. His social commentary, particularly about race in America, is incredibly incisive. That being said, I can't say I'm super eager to see Rock as host again. If you hold Chris Rock up against the people who have hosted since he first did, he'd rank him somewhere in the lower middle; he didn't reach the gold standard that was Hugh Jackman in 2008 nor was he the abysmal basement that was Seth MacFarlane in 2012.
With many eyes on the annual announcement of the Oscar host, we wonder why more attention isn't paid to who's actually producing the show. They're the ones determining the architecture of an Oscar telecast much more so than the host. Jackman was a terrific host but Bill Condon really deserves a lot of credit for hiring great writers and coming up with that simple yet cohesive structure of the show. On the lower end of the spectrum, Anne Hathaway has a better Oscar hosting gig in her than what we saw -- blame the writing and the production (and James Franco) for that show.
The Chris Rock announcement is unsurprising (save for their earlier buzz that we'd have two hosts... perhaps a duo turned them down?). AMPAS often retreats to someone familiar after they experiment with a frisky choice and it (arguably) doesn't go well. Think Billy Crystal in reaction to Franco and Hathaway and Ellen DeGeneres in reaction to Seth MacFarlane. After Neil Patrick Harris' hosting gig received mixed response at best, I suspected that a familiar face, most likely a stand-up comedian would get the job. Fingers crossed that Rock has learned his lesson and doesn't make an ill-timed "Who is Michael Fassbender?" joke.
Friday, February 19, 2016 at 5:23PM 
News just broke that performances of Original Song nominees Youth's "Simple Song No. 3" (read our interview) and Facing Extinction's "Manta Ray" have been nixed from the Oscar broadcast, the producers citing "time constraints" for the always lengthy show. Performances of the other three nominated songs by Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Sam Smith are still in play.
Antony Hegarty
