Time to Head to the Theaters -- A Big Weekend for Oscar-Watching

Damn, Hollywood. Spread the wealth a little right? After two relatively quiet months for adult moviegoers all distributors have decided en masse that YOU are going to the movie theaters this weekend. As a result they've just released everything. All at once. If you've been all 'Netflix and chill' or dragging your feet with the movies for any reason, time to get up, stretch, text your friends and hit a movie. Or two. Or three. You don't want to get behind because it doesn't let up from here on out. (Next weekend is Suffragette and the following weekend Our Brand is Crisis) 

The images below will take you to our reviews (or the last major post on the film) if we've written one. If you're all like "this looks like the sidebar" it's our reminder to you that sidebars are there for a reason. Use them if you want to look up a particular film or topic.

Opening Wide This Weekend
		also: Goosebumps, Woodlawn
Opening or Expanding (Limited Release Only)
		Steve Jobs goes wide on Oct 23rd
Still in Theaters  See them soon if you've wanted to. They won't be around forever

What's your priority this weekend? 
 

Links: Jennifer's World, Screenplay Competition, Gena's Glory

Illustration by Jennifer WilliamsActresses Actresses Actresses
<-- If you haven't yet read Jennifer Lawrence's short essay "Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co-Stars" you should.

Salon on the many stars who are coming out in support of JLaw on Twitter
Teen Vogue Jennifer Lawrence and other stars before they were famous posing for Abercrombie & Fitch
THR Actress Joan Leslie (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Sergeant York) has died at 90 
Tracking Board Yorgos Lanthimos' (The Lobster) next project is about Queen Anne and it's called The Favorite. The female driven film will star Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Olivia Colman  
David Poland "20 Weeks To Oscar" he thinks only four movies are locked up in Best Picture: The Martian, Spotlight, Steve Jobs and Room but here's what I found most interesting. He argues that only Brie Larson & Kate Winslet can rest easy in their respective actress fields and I can see that The rest of the fields are fluid.
AV Club Because Ryan Murphy isn't spread thin enough he's pitching an anthology series called "One Hit Wonders" to star Goop herself, Gwyneth Paltrow  

Oscar Chatter
Awards Daily on the Screenplay races. Celebrity writers + Best Picture heat 
In Contention Kris Tapley on the makeup race. Can box office bombs factor in?

General Linkage
Interview talks to Emma Donaghue the novelist who adapted her own work for the screen in Room
Criterion has an amazing conversation with the French director Arnaud Desplechin (Kings & Queen, My Golden Days). They talk Oscars, Lars von Trier (?), male versus female actors, nudity, everything. I like this bit on his relationship to Mathieu Amalric who is in most of his films:

Mathieu is hard with me. He’s really hard. You don’t know all his French films, but I saw all his French films. He always plays the same part in all the films. They’re quite good, but I remember when I proposed Kings & Queen to him, he told me: “Arnaud, the script is great, but I don’t want to play the same character as in My Sex Life. You have to prove to me that this is another character.” I have to prove to you? Come on, you play the same character in five films, why am I obliged to prove that to you? He said, “Because it’s love, so you have to prove it.”

Birth. Movies. Death Thor: Ragnarok will be Marvel's darkest. But will it introduce Valkyrie? (People will be completely be over superheroes by the time the females arrive. sigh) 
Empire NOooo. Now they want to make a Die Hard "origin story". Boo
Playbill two underused fine actors Aaron Tveit & Mary Elizabeth Winstead headlining a new CBS comic thriller BrainDead with a truly bizarre premise
AV Club broke down 22 references in the Hail, Caesar! trailer
MNPP Jason has some thoughts on a possible tv version of Y: The Last Man

Finally...

"I had seen her when I was a teenager in Lonely Are the Brave with Kirk Douglas. I'd never seen anyone that beautiful with a certain gravitas. It was particularly unique in that time, when many women were trying to be girlish, affecting a superficial, 'I'm a pretty girl' attitude. It seemed to be the best way to succeed, but Gena did none of that. There was a directness—not that she wasn't fun and didn't smolder—but it came from a place that was both genuine and deep.

-Mia Farrow on Gena Rowlands"

Elle Magazine's "Women in Hollywood" issue is available digitally now and comes out next week featuring Gena Rowlands, Alicia Vikander, Salma Hayek, Kate Winslet, Carey Mulligan, Ava DuVernay, Amy Schumer, and Dakota Johnson.

Ranking Kate Winslet's Oscar-Nominated Performances

Kieran, here. With this week's wide release of the already heralded Steve Jobs and yesterday's Elizabeth "Lee" Miller biopic casting announcement, it could well be a entering a second era of peak Kate Winslet. Winslet was on a career high with six Oscar nominations, four before her thirtieth birthday. Then things slowed down considerably. Yes, she had that awards run for Mildred Pierce and she was Globe nominated for her turns in Carnage and Labor Day. However, the consensus these past few years is that Winslet has been in a bit of a slump. If her Steve Jobs work does indeed land Winslet a seventh nomination, it'll be thrilling to see her return to the ceremony.

It's been seven years since Winslet last nomination for The Reader (which she won). In honor of one of our favorite actresses/shampoo-bottle-Oscar-speech-rehearsers let's look through her list of nominated performances, and rank them. Heavenly Creatures and Holy Smoke!, two of her best, are missing, but that's another story.

6. Little Children 
(Best Actress, 2006--Lost to Helen Mirren in The Queen)

Her turn in Little Children is an excellent example of how Winslet is rarely uninteresting to watch on-screen, even when she happens to be miscast. Todd Field makes good use of her highly-charged eroticism and her gift for conveying inner turmoil. Unfortunately, the screenplay forces her to tell more than show.

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Oscar's Foreign Race Pt 5: We do love our trivia!

"everything u ever wanted to know about the foreign film category
*...but were afraid to ask"
Pt 1 81 Trailers | Pt 2 Women Directors & Debuts | Pt 3 Zoology | Pt 4 I know that face! 

who will follow Pawel Pawlikowski (Poland's IDA) to an Oscar win for Foreign Language Film?OKAY OKAY. We promise to calm down now.

We hope you've enjoyed our week long attempt to get you really pumped up for an Oscar category that's sometimes hard to get invested: Best Foreign Language Film. The films can be hard to track down making this competition less accessible, so we try our statistics and anecdotes and lists to pique your curiosity!  

But from here on out we'll try to track down as many as we can and actually see them. Imagine it: seeing movies! Please do share this series on twitter and facebook and whatnot. It's so much work and so many websites just depressingly print text only lists of titles and call it a day! We've already reviewed or done interviews from 11 of the pictures: Argentina's The Clan, Austria's Goodnight Mommy (now in theaters), Colombia's Embrace of the Serpent, Dominican Republic's Sand Dollars, France's Mustang, Germany's Labyrinth of Lies (now in theaters!), Hungary's Son of Saul, Norway's The Wave, Portugal's Arabian Nights Volume 2, Sweden's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch, and Taiwan's The Assassin (opens Friday!). Off blog we've lined up screenings of 8 more in the next two weeks so we'll be sure to report. We'll never get to 81 but we can try.

ONE FINAL ROUND OF TRIVIA AFTER THE JUMP
Let's talk running times, previous Oscar nominees, and returning directors who've been submitted before.

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8 Best Things About "Steve Jobs" (First Impressions)

True confession: When I read Jason's breathless rave for Steve Jobs from my sick bed last week I was like "calm down, man,  it can't be that good" Cut to one week later me sitting in the theater, as the end credits rolled: "I gotta read that rave again and nod my head vigorously this time!" While I suspect I don't love it quite as much as Jason, it is inarguably one of 2015's must-see picture and we shan't be annoyed at all when it racks up Oscar nominations in January.

The film goes wide on Friday and trust that you'll want to be there. Here are my 8 favorite things about it at first glance... 

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