2015: First Quarter Calendar. What U Waiting For?

January
13th DGA Nominations ~ Today
15th Merry Christmas ~ It's Oscar Nomination Morning!
15th BFCA "Critics Choice Awards"

btw 16th-28th Oscar qualifiers that have been in hiding start their platform journeys including Still Alice, Cake, Mommy. Other Oscar contenders expand considerably... especially if they win nominations.

16th Paddington, Blackhat, Appropriate Behavior (it's hilarious. Go see it)
19th Martin Luther King Day. Everyone go see SELMA again!
23rd Song One (reviewed), and Black Sea
24th PGA Awards
25th SAG Awards 
30th ACE Awards
31st ADG Awards, ANNIE Awards 

February
2nd Groundhog Day
4th VES Awards
5th Berlin International Film Festival opens with Nobody Wants the Night
6th Jupiter Ascending, Seventh Son which is hopefully not Julianne's Norbit since final Oscar voting starts this very day.
7th DGA Awards
8th BAFTA Awards
13th The Last Five Years (reviewed), Kingsman: The Secret Service, Fifty Shades of Grey
14th Valentine's Day
15th ASC Awards, MPSE Awards
16th President's Day
17th CDG Awards
20th Future Foreign Film Oscar Nominee Argentina's Wild Tales (it's a super good time at the movies. Go see it with a group of friends) 
21st Spirit Awards
22nd Hollywood's High Holy Night. Happy Oscar Night!
27th Maps to the Stars (reviewed, I'll believe that opening when I see it!), '71 (reviewed)

March
3rd "Best Shot" Season 6 premieres with The Sound of Music. Pick a shot and join the 50th anniversary party! 
6th Chappie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and the 32nd Annual Miami Film Festival kicks off
8th Daylight Savings Time
10th Madonna's 13th studio album "REBEL HEART" drops after expertly monetized leaking response 
13th Cinderella, In the Heart of the Sea 
17th St. Patrick's Day
20th Divergent: Insurgent 
27th Serena (I'll believe that opening when I see it!), A Little Chaos (reviewed)
31st The Smackdown Returns. Guests TBA (Tentative Date) 

Okay technically that's the first quarter but a little April for ya, too...

April
03th Effie Gray (I'll believe this opening when I see it), Furious 7
05th Happy Easter Sunday. Mad Men Season 7B premiere.the final seven episodes. Begin weeping copiously
10th Daredevil Season 1. Binge-watching commences
15th Tribeca Film Festival kicks off 

J.K. ("Just Keep-On") Simmons Still Leading. Final Predictions!

Last night's Golden Globes did nothing to change the long since frozen Best Supporting Actor race. It's so frozen that I think everyone even agrees on the order or support for each player (which is fairly unheard of). So get your place in line for the coronation parade for everyone's favorite shouty music professor. Especially after a strong acceptance speech. Barring a total shock on Thursday morning our line up will look exactly like it's been looking for some time now in the year's least contested acting category (seriously. People are still trying to make Best Actress that but it is SO not)

Best Supporting Actor Final Predictions
Robert Duvall, The Judge (5th place)
Ethan Hawke, Boyhood (4th place)
Edward Norton, Birdman (2nd place)
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher (3rd place)
J.K. Simmons, Whiplash (1st place)

So what happened to Josh Brolin (Inherent Vice)?
Paul Thomas Anderson's film came out too late. Though Brolin is by far the best thing in it, the material is "far out" enough to keep people talking about a ton of other elements for far too long for the hazy discussion and fog to clear and leave the buzz to coalesce around him. When it hits DVD and cable people will surely say "How did Brolin NOT get nominated for this?" and they'll probably say it for years to come. 

So what happened to Tom Wilkinson (Selma)? Heated objections to Selma, which came quite quickly and suspiciously given the lack of scrutiny of the other "true stories" in the race, ALL centered around its portrayal of LBJ.

So what happened to Chris Pine (Into the Woods)? It would have taken Into the Woods being a Best Picture sure thing rather than a 'bubble' film to pull the cartoon Prince in. People do love him in it but you need Picture buzz or a different kind of career than he has at the moment, to win a nomination for such a broadly comic part. Not that this particular category objects to comedy.

See the Oscar chart here.

If you're a Norton or Ruffalo voter in this category make sure to vote in the "Would You Rather?" poll. Hey, it was Tina & Amy's idea, not ours.

Big Eyes Surprise? Final Best Actress Predictions

One of last night's most unnerving moments may well have been hearing Big Eyes mentioned multiple times. It's easy to forget that the movie is out in theaters now, since it didn't make big Christmas waves in the media or the box office (it's likely to end its run as Burton's second least successful film of all time after Ed Wood which is 100 times better), didn't earn rave reviews (it's sitting at 70% on Rotten Tomatoes which is, shall we say, generous) so Amy Adams surprise upon winning is entirely understandable.

To say that I am ill prepared for this moment is a huge understatement. Huge."

The surprise win reminds us that she's been generously adored by nearly all the awards communities for years now, an embryonic-Meryl perhaps. This season provides the biggest test yet of how much of a default nominee she truly is with AMPAS. If she manages an Oscar nod this year against much stronger competition in much better films (Reese, Julianne, Felicity, Marion, Rosamund, Hilary, and Emily) and a much more willful campaign for another performance that's better than its movie (Hi, Jennifer Aniston!) you should expect her to be nominated for every film going forward, as you would Meryl herself.  

Nevertheless I don't think it's going to happen and the dye is set on this category. Our nominees will be

Best Actress Oscar Predictions
Jennifer Aniston, Cake
Felicity Jones, Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

A few critics groups made a valiant stand for Marion Cotillard but in the end Two Days One Night killed that dream itself by arriving in theaters way too late to build any presence of its own as an impressive movie, which would have bolstered support for the shockingly real performance at its center from an actress that keeps topping her Oscar-winning role without the Academy paying her any mind. 

In conclusion, may Big Eyes greatest pop culture legacy be the opening monologue joke from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. They announced that there was a live Margaret Keane painting at the ceremony. Cut to: Emma Stone. Well, they are gigantic. They take up her whole face like an anime character. What really sold the punchline was its coda; Tina & Amy are great at those little joke extenders when you're already laughing.

Emma reactions to a BIG EYES joke aimed at her gif via Vulture

It's cute. But it's creepy."

We might say the same of Amy Adams Awards Haul!

Golden Globe Foreign Film Panel

It's Golden Globes night. We'll start covering the red carpet arrivals in a half hour or so. If you missed our predictions those were here on the podcast.

A neat new tradition for the Golden Globes is this focus on their foreign film nominees -- they are the "Hollywood Foreign Press Association" after all. In this streamed event you can hear from FORCE MAJEURE's (Sweden) Ruben Ostlund, GETT: THE TRIAL OF VIVIANE AMSALEM's (Israel) Ronit Elkabetz &  Shlomi Elkabetz, IDA's (Poland/Denmark), Pawel Pawlikowski, LEVIATHAN's (Russia) Andrey Zvyagintsev, and TANGERINES (Estonia) Zaza Urushadze. Interestingly enough -- it's not common -- four of the five Globe nominees this year (all but Gett) are still in the running for an Oscar nomination in the correlative category. 

Meet the Contenders: David Oyelowo "Selma"

Abstew continues his weekly look at acting contenders as their films open...

David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma
Best Actor

Born: David Oyetokunbo Oyelowo was born 1 April, 1976 in Oxford, England

The Role: Filmmakers have been having a dream of bring a film about civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. to the big screen for years now. And this particular story, not a traditional cradle to tomb biopic of the man, but focusing on the Voting Rights marches in Selma, Alabama in 1965, has been in development since 2007 when British screenwriter Paul Webb completed his script. Various directors had been attached at one point and it was almost made in 2010 by Lee Daniels, who dropped the project due to lack of funding and to make The Butler instead. It finally comes to us from writer/director Ava DuVernay, who could make history by becoming the first African-American female director nominated for a Best Director Oscar.

British actor David Oyelowo had been attached to play Dr. King when Daniels was on board to direct (the two had previously worked together on The Paperboy and again in The Butler). And it was Oyelowo who suggested DuVernay to the producers after they worked together on her 2012 film, Middle of Nowhere. Oyelowo has stated that when he read the script back in 2007, that God told him he would play the part. [more...]

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