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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Producer's Guild Nominations: Wonder Woman is this year's Deadpool

by Nathaniel R

The Producer's Guild, by "virtue" of the fact that they have more nominees than Oscar each year, often get fairly close to "predicting" the Best Picture list. This year they've chosen 11 titles. Recency bias surely helped give Molly's Game a winning hand and the PGA's love of the blockbuster delivered for Wonder Woman which is a good call here since it did help define the year and superhero movies are very much producer events. Last year Deadpool was nominated at the PGA and was the only film to drop off on Oscar nominaiton morning. The other 9 pictures selected are all then looking strong as Best Picture possibilities for the Oscar nominations on January 23rd. Nominations and more commentary after the jump...

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35 days til Oscar nominations. 35 years of Make-up

by Nathaniel R

Since there are 35 days left until Oscar nominations --well perhaps 34 by the time this is published. Damn you, ever ticking clock! -- let's look back back at the 35 films that have won the regular Achievements in Makeup Oscar. We should admit straightaway that that's fudging the number a bit for the sake of a trivia countdown. In truth 37 films have won this prize but two were before the category was an official competitive one. The first two films to be Oscared for their Makeup effects were The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao  (1964)  and the original Planet of the Apes  (1968). Nevertheless it took quite some time for a category to emerge and title changes and such until it became the character we know today (which is also sure to change again!)...

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Are Three Multiple-Win Actors Competing for the 5th Spot in "Best Actor"?

by Nathaniel R

They were 35, 37, and 32 when they won their first Osars

This Best Actor race has not been shaping up as we suspected two months ago when few imagined that fresher faces like 21 year old Timothée Chalamet, 28 year old first time leading man Daniel Kaluuya and 39 yr old but reads younger fringe dweller James Franco would be looking more secure for Best Actor spots than three of Oscar's all time favorite legendary leading men: Denzel Washington (2 wins), Tom Hanks (2 wins), and Daniel Day Lewis (3 wins). But that's what it feels like today after the SAG nominations have capped off a busy busy couple of weeks worth of pre-Oscar honors. 

But can it really be true that there's only one spot to claim between these three titans of Oscar hearts? Or are we reading the tea leaves wrong? Are voters ready to move on to fresher blood (two twentysomething in one Best Actor category would be quite something since that category far prefers mileage on a man) or will two or even three of the legends make it, tossing out one of the rising stars? What's your take on the situation? Though people have been calling Best Actor "weak" for months (perhaps for the lack of frontrunners... with Gary Oldman less of an inevitable winner than he at first seemed) it seems awfully competitive at the last minute.

UPDATED BEST ACTOR CHART