YNMS: "Steve Jobs" & "Creed"

Films celebrating their over achieving male protagonist are par for the course come fall movie season each year as Oscar competition heats up. But Steve Jobs and Adonis Creed both got trailers in the same 24 hours or so and I couldn't resist conjoining them since they both also star actors named "Michael". They make both an odd couple and perfect pair: Mind and Body. Michael Fassbender plays real life computer genius Steve Jobs for Oscar winner Danny Boyle; And Michael B Jordan, reuniting with his Fruitvale director Ryan Coogler, plays fictional Adonis Creed, the son of dead boxer Adonis, in an attempt to reboot the stalled Rocky series.

Yes No Maybe So on both trailers after the jump...

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Yes No Maybe So: Secret In Their Eyes

It might be time to revisit the last Argentinian winner of the Oscae which triumphed over an absurdly strong Foreign Language Film shortlist in 2009. For those still smarting from the losses of Un Prophete and The White Ribbon, bad news: The Argentinian film could be coming back for more Oscars.

Not really.

Sort of.

It's been remade for English language marketplaces as Secret In Their Eyes. And though extremely mainstream genres like murder thrillers generally don't pique Oscar's interest (unless there's the patina of class via subtitles or world class filmmakers behind the camera) you never know. Though we generally disdain remakes of foreign films -- we can read so who needs 'em? -- they've cast three very watchable actors as the central trio: Chiwetel Ejiofor in the Ricardo Darin role, and Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman as the women in his life / workplace. 

Let's break down the trailer after the jump...

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Welcome to the Academy - The Lucky 322

As is their annual tradition now AMPAS has released the list of the names they've offered memberships too. If you're new to the tradition, you'll note in the following list that most of the time a first nomination will results in an invite (but not always) and that generally a few people who weren't nominated but got a lot of buzz the previous season will be invited (hi, David Oyelowo & Gugu Mbatha Raw). Lately the lists have gotten longer and much more surprising too as the Academy attempts to broaden its demographic after years of being dinged for skewing too  'old white and male'

The complete list of 322 potential inductees is below. There's a welcome to the Academy reception in September for those that accept and then the process starts again. The Academy works on a referral basis of sorts so current members can nominated new prospective members and that process (a longer list of names than this - never publicized that I'm aware of) concludes in March each year. Unless they're all "You can't sit with us!" then they end up on this list which comes out in the summer.

So let's look at who was invited.

Multiple Branches
Damien Chazelle (Writer/Director) Whiplash
Malcolm D. Lee (Writer/Director) The Best Man Holiday
Paweł Pawlikowski (Writer/Director) Ida
Abderrahmane Sissako (Writer/Director) Timbuktu
Damian Szifron (Writer/Director) Wild Tales
Andrey Zvyagintsev (Writer/Director) Leviathan
Mathilde Bonnefoy (Documentary/Editing) Citizen Four

Damian Szifron, WILD TALES writer/director

These eight people must decide which of the two branches that invited them they will join. While members can be on more than one branch -- I imagine Warren Beatty, for example, is on a few since he's been nominated in four different categories -- they can't join two in one year. You'll notice that four of the Foreign Language Film nominees are accounted for though weirdly not the director of the Estonian film Tangerines. 

Actors and Actresses are in the same branch but I've separated them just for fun as befits the Oscar categories and also to point out that they invited way more men than women, more than twice as many! Hey, I thought they were working on the diversity thing! They also invited both men who got crying closeups at the ceremony earlier this year.

315 more people after the jump...

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Rose's Turn

Remember Rose McGowan?

We haven't seen much of her on the big screen in the past few years (her most recent feature was the Jason Momoa led reboot of Conan the Barbarian in 2011, which is unfortunate since we would have much rather seen her proposed reboot of Red Sonja). But the Charmed actress, who broke out in the mid 90s with memorable turns in The Doom Generation and Scream, is in the news again.

A recent twitter comment about her former agent and Hollywood sexism has pushed several buttons but more importantly she's been out promoting her new role behind the camera. She is developing a feature and she's also made a short film.

Here's her short Dawn that's hitting Oscar-qualifying festivals and is available in full on YouTube. 

Yes No Maybe So: Sicario

Manuel here to talk about Sicario, the latest Denis Villeneuve film starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin. It already earned strong reviews at Cannes but last week’s trailer was our first extended look at this drug cartel film where Blunt plays an FBI agent enlisted to help in the war against drugs in the US/Mexican border.

I wanted to make a full YES/NO/MAYBE SO for this trailer but realized as soon as we got to this shot...

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