50 days til Oscar. 50 movies with no Oscar love

by Nathaniel R

Oooh we're getting so close! It's just 50 days until Hollywood's High Holy Night and just 10 until we know which films will be competing for which prizes. As this season winnows down to its "winners" it's good to remember that "losers" is a temporary notion. As we've said often and will continue to say: Greatness is its own reward. Oscar has been around for 90 years now and if the past 89 are any indication some movies that are completely ignored come January 23rd when the nominations are announced will be more celebrated by the people of, say, 2049 (if the world survives that long) than by the people of now. Don't believe me? Here are FIFTY randomly chosen movies of large critical or popular or historical reputation and/or devout still vocal fanbases that received ZERO -- that's right zero -- Oscar nominations in their day... 

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Directors Guild Nominations - Greta & Jordan, Yay!

by Nathaniel R

This year's 70th annual DGA Awards will be held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 3rd a month before the Oscars. The winner for Directing in Theatrical Features usually goes on to win the Oscar though historically there's about one exception a decade (Ben Affleck for Argo, Rob Marshall for Chicago, Ron Howard for Apollo 13,  etcetera-- basically don't have the "oh" sound in your movie title!-- did not repeat their wins at the Oscars and some of them weren't even nominated for the Academy Award). 

This year's lucky five nominees -- statistically you can expect four of them to pop up again with Oscar -- are:

THEATRICAL FEATURE

• Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
• Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
• Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards...
• Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
• Jordan Peele, Get Out

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Costume Design and Cinematography Guild Honors

by Nathaniel R

Sometimes all it takes is one killer lewk. You might not have thought of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri as a "costume" movie but the Costumer Designer Guild gave it one of their contemporary nominations all the same. Must've been that already famous janitor jumpsuit with bandana on Frances McDormand. It's so very "Mildred". Either that or, you know, the Guilds are just voting on their favorite movies (as they are also prone to do) without thinking too much on their own fields within those movies. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of awards voters? No one truly as they're non monolithic.

More on their nominations (and the Cinematography guild also) with commentary after the jump...

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13 days until Oscar nominations... Can Roger Deakins win with a 14th nod?

by Nathaniel R

the great Roger Deakins on set

Is 13 an unlucky number? Not particular with Oscar, no, but Roger Deakins is surely anxious to move beyond it. The 68 year old cinematographer is still hugely in demand and a regular Oscar competitor but he's currently sitting at 13 nominations and STILL has no statues to show for it. Will #14 prove lucky should he be nominated for Blade Runner 2049 this year (as is widely expected)? His nominated film list is just one beautiful astonishment after another: The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Kundun, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country For Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Reader, True Grit, Skyfall, Prisoners, Unbroken, Sicario. His filmography also includes films like Thunderheart, The Secret Garden, Barton Fink, and Sid & Nancy. Will he win on March 4th or will someone else steal his thunder yet again at the last moment...

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FYC: Five Best Documentary Tech Achievements of 2017

A special edition of the Doc Corner column by Glenn Dunks this week...

Documentaries are unsurprisingly scantly recognised outside of their own category. Steve James’ Hoop Dreams scored a still one-of-a-kind nomination for Best Editing in 1994, and the Best Original Song category has become a place for aging rock stars (and J. Ralph!) to get recognition for their work in documentaries. Yet outside of these rare occurrences, documentaries are almost never considered to be in genuine contention.

Considering the volume of documentaries being produced (170 eligible titles in 2017 alone!), it shouldn’t be unreasonably to expect that many are pushing the documentary medium to places that would have been unfathomable two decades prior. Those changes can be through form thanks to technological advancements giving filmmakers an ability to make docs as technically proficient as anything else no matter the budget. Or they can come through structure and narrative, allowing contemporary audiences that are hip to new ways of telling stories to experience something through the wonders of streaming that would have once struggled in experimental arthouses of downtown Manhattan.

So in lieu of a personal Oscar doc ballot (mine would include only one from the 15-wide shortlist), here are five For Your Considerations for achievements outside of the Documentary Feature category itself...

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