An Annual Round of Oscar Trivia Following The Nominations...

by Nathaniel R

Amy Madigan breaking things onscreen and off!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS LIST IN THE COMMENTS. These stats will also probably show up on the Oscar charts too but why not collect them here first or simultaneously while still hopped up on Oscar fever...

RECORDS BROKEN OR SET

• Longest Gap Between Acting Nominations for a Woman
Weapons standout Amy Madigan's 40 year gap between Oscar nominations (her first nomination was in 1985's Twice in a Lifetime) is not an all time record but it is the record for a female actor...

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It’s Autumn Season for Best Cinematography

By Juan Carlos Ojano

Ryan Coogler and Autum Durald Arkapaw while filming SINNERS. (Courtesy: Eli Adé)

After 98 years, history might just be made in Best Cinematography. Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the cinematographer of SINNERS, is the current frontrunner for Best Cinematography, the last non-gendered Oscar category yet to have a female winner. Born of African-American and Filipino descent, Arkapaw has worked for more than a decade. Her resume includes Palo Alto, Teen Spirit, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and The Last Showgirl. In Sinners, Arkapaw already made history for being the first female cinematographer to have shot a film on large format IMAX film.

The history of women nominated for this category has unfortunately been short and recent. The list includes...

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Will "One Battle..." or "Sinners" Tie or Break Oscar Records?

by Nathaniel R

Can One Battle After Another defeat the Oscar Nomination Champs?

When France's Spanish-language trans musical Emilia Perez scored 13 nominations last January I felt an impending dread. The dread spoketh so... "If even this bizarre and divisive non-Hollywood film nearly broke the all time nomination record (14), then it's only a matter of time before it falls!" This is a terrifying development for those of us who cherish the spreading of wealth. If you love more than one or two movies a year it's downright heartbreaking. To date in Oscar's nearly century-long history, only three films have scored 14 nominations across available Oscar categories: All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016). This season honoring the films of 2025 One Battle After Another and Sinners will try to join or surpass them. The first new category in ages (Casting) could help them match or break that record. But will they pull it off?

Since we've just updated every single Oscar chart with late December predictions, it seems like the ideal time to investigate. Let's do that after the jump...

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Happy Birthday Glenn Close!

Photo via Glenn Close's Instagram (she's great at social media!)

The great and still Oscar-less Glenn Close is 78 today. If seven is a good luck number than we wish her two more years of good luck towards landing Oscar nomination #9. I bring Glenn up because I promised a longtime reader a retrospective on Fatal Attraction (1987) so long ago that he probably knows how she feels still waiting for that naked gold man for what has been an inexcusably long time. Given that it's Glenn's birthday and given the long-ass wait, I felt compelled to commit publicly to discussing this movie this upcoming weekend scene-by-scene style  like we haven't done since just before the pandemic (only I'll do this one solo). It's such a great thriller and it really holds up. 

Anyway, before we dive into Glenn's most zeitgeisty moment, let's have a chat about her Oscar history...

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VistaVision @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

With The Brutalist, Brady Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley revived VistaVision for a 21st century cinema. In the process, they also brought the format back to the Oscar stage, becoming the first film since Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief to win the Best Cinematography Oscar for a VistaVision lensing. If you've read my reviews over the years, you might have noticed I have a passion for film form. This fascination encompasses the innovations that took over the medium in the midcentury, with the introduction of new aspect ratios, processes, and techniques after decades under the 4:3 Academy ratio hegemony. 

I really love VistaVision, a happy medium between more extreme widescreen propositions and the classical square-ish proportions that dominated pre-1950s cinema. It's quite beautiful, harmonious and the technique itself lends itself to rich images, full of detail, crisp yet not in the sometimes bloodless way of digital filmmaking. But what is VistaVision exactly? And how have films shot in this widescreen variant performed at the Oscars? Let's find out…

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