Oscar Volley: Sobbing and Fuming at the "Best Animated Feature" nominees

Team Experience will be covering the various Oscar categories in the lead up to Oscar night. Here's Tim Brayton, Cláudio Alves, and Nathaniel R...

TIM BRAYTON: Hello Nathaniel and Cláudio! I'm thrilled to have the chance to discuss this year's slate of nominees for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars with you - animation is, I think it's fair to say, the most important form of filmmaking to me, and it's always fun to share it. Whether these exact five films represent animation at its peak, well, we'll just have to get into that as we go.

A quick recap for all of us and those of you reading, here are the five nominees: Encanto, a CGI feature produced by Walt Disney Animation; Raya and the Last Dragon, a CGI feature produced by Walt Disney Animation; Luca, a CGI feature produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by their corporate owners, the Walt Disney Company; The Mitchells vs the Machines, a CGI feature produced by Sony Animation, who sold it off to Netflix. And then literally on the other side of the world, Flee, a Danish documentary about politics and identity, largely consisting of interviews that were animated in a cartoony 2D style by Sun Creature Studio. So my point, obviously, is that this isn't exactly the most stylistically or industrially diverse set of nominees this category has ever produced...

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Oscar Volley: Picture - Does it really come down to just two spots?

TFE’s Oscar volleys wrap up with Lynn Lee, Eurocheese, and Christopher James making predictions for the Big One (Best Picture). Nathaniel’s final Oscar chart predictions will be up tonight to usher in the weekend.

Lynn Lee: Oscar nomination voting closed Tuesday night but before it did do we agree we were approaching a consensus core group? Taking the precursors into account (minus BAFTA which hasn't yet announced as I type this), eight of the ten spots are close to locked up (in alpha order): Belfast, CODA, Don't Look Up, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, The Power of the Dog and West Side Story. That leaves two nomination spots for maybe a half dozen viable contenders. PGA went with Being the Ricardos and tick, tick...BOOM!, but as Nathaniel’s noted, the Oscar list is rarely an exact copy of the PGA. Could it happen this year? Entirely possible but I suspect at least one of those two is going to drop out and if I had to take a bet, it’s sadly more likely to be BOOM!...

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Oscar Volley: Those DGA Nominees (and more) in Best Director

Our Oscar Volleys series is down to our last two categories. Here are Tim Brayton and Eric Blume to talk Best Director. (This volley was recorded before the BAFTA announcement but since those nominations are juried they probably won't have much bearing on Oscar outcomes.)

Eric Blume:  Tim, I'm thrilled to talk shop about the Best Director category. Let's start with Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve, and Kenneth Branagh who all seem unlikely to miss.  I'm personally thrilled that Campion might ride her crest all the way to a win. Nobody else could have made The Power of the Dog work so layered and subtle, or told that story without it seeming heavy-handed, obvious, or silly. The film gives Campion the chance to do her specialty: embroiling us in a narrative and in character motivations so intensely strange yet fully human that we're transported by our own confusion and curiosity.  She has that special ability to deliver a rare grounded sense of whatthefuckery in her movies. There are moments where so much is happening psychologically, where so many meanings are transpiring simultaneously, that you can't even fully process it until it's passed you by.

I'm also a huge fan of Villeneuve, a natural-born filmmaker if there ever was one...

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Oscar Volley: Can Penelope Cruz or Kristen Stewart land in Best Actress?

Our Oscar Volley series is almost at an end. Here are Matt St Clair, Josh Bierman, and Baby Clyde to talk Best Actress

Matt St Clair: Even though Best Actress has a pretty clear frontrunner, the rest of the category seems mostly up for grabs. Do you guys agree and also, besides Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter, do you think there's hope for another non-biopic performance to make the cut?

Josh Bierman: Interesting. I don’t agree that there's a clear frontrunner! I assume you mean Nicole Kidman who is the most solid lock for a nomination. This is a category where I think I have to wait to see who’s nominated before I can declare a winner...

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Oscar Volley: Best International Film is a pundit's nightmare

With less than a week until nominations, Cláudio Alves and Elisa Giudici discuss Best International Feature…

Italy's THE HAND OF GOD

Cláudio Alves: Before we delve into the finalists for Oscar's Best International Feature Film competition, I must comment on the fact that we each come from a record-holding country in this category's history, albeit opposite ends of the success spectrum. As far as victories, Italy (your home) is the all-time champion, having won this prize 14 times. On the other hand, Portugal (mine) is still waiting for its first nomination, being the unnominated country with the most submissions. In fact, we've never even gotten as far as the shortlist stage (cries inconsolably)!

Anyway, since we're on the topic of our countries, I'm interested in knowing whether you think it's safe to predict Paolo Sorrentino's return to the Academy's favour with The Hand of God. I can't say I'm entirely convinced about the picture's merits...

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