Linky Pudding

Buzzfeed It's official Will & Grace (& Karen & Jack) is returning to NBC for a ninth season. The series ended on May 18th, 2006 over 10 years ago but their recent one-off election special got everyone excited again. 
AV Club supposedly that long hinted at Eastern Promises sequel will start shooting in only two months and supposedly Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassell will return. We'll believe this when I see it but would be happy to do so
Criterion Ira Sachs on Rainer Werner Fassbinder's classic Fox and His Friends

Arnaud Trouvé offers up César nomination predictions. If you can read French you'll enjoy it more
THR It's Octavia Spencer for "Woman of the Year" and Ryan Reynolds for "Man of the Year" at Harvard's annual Hasty Puddings celebration. Someone cast them in a rom-com together!
Coming Soon Sony Pictures Animation slate to come from The Smurfs onward
About Last Night a long lost interview/profile of Mikhail Baryshnikov from 1998. Just because! 
Boy Culture Betty White interviewed for her 95th birthday this week
Paste Manuel on One Day at a Time's successful resuscitation of the theater/tv hybrid of the multi-cam sitcom
Decider in Joe Reid's new Oscar column he talks to me about three Oscar races: Actress, Director, and Supporting Actor. Here's an excerpt:

My fantasy is that Ralph Fiennes, easily the single most Oscar-worthy actor who can’t seem to ever catch Oscar’s eye, is nomination morning’s biggest shock for A Bigger Splash. The key word in that sentence being “fantasy”.

AMC Best Picture Marathon

Have you ever attended AMC's Best Picture Showcase? They've been doing this "see all the Best Picture nominees back to back" event since, I think, around 2008? I seem to remember a particularly hilarious writeup of The Reader at that event somewhere out there on the web back in the day. (2008 is now back in the day? Eep!). With the expansion of the Best Picture lineup, the event is now split into a two day event in dozens of cities and a marathon viewing in following seven: Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, DC . The screenings will be held on the two Saturdays preceding Hollywood's High Holy Night on Sunday February 26th. (I can't imagine that La La Land won't look even stronger in the middle of all that DDDRRRAAAMMMAAA just by virtue of being so different than the rest) 

Tickets go on sale on January 27th, three days after the Oscar nominations so at least you know what films you're signing up to see or see again if you choose to buy tickets.

The Final Predictions Begin!

I've updated the Picture, Director, Screenplays, Actor and Supporting Actress charts with final predictions. Though many questions remain we must make the hard calls with nominations only a week away!

Best Picture & Best Director
The Best Picture race will literally never be "locked up" again so long as Oscar sticks with its "5 to 10" balloting math. That shifting number of Best Pictures means that you just never know. I want to say 8 again this year but what if its 5,6,7,9, or gulp 10. The big question mark, at least for this pundit, is Nocturnal Animals. Given that it's the movie that won't go away in precursor season with great showings at the Globes and BAFTA and significant buzz in Los Angeles despite its polarizing nature and its relatively low box office take (lower than ALL the other still buzzing pictures with the exception of Loving). The thing is you can't vote AGAINST something. You can only vote for it, so we're predicting Tom Ford in Best Director. 

Leading Actor
Arguable the most settled of the Oscar acting races with Casey Affleck, Denzel Washington, Andrew Garfield, Viggo Mortensen, and Ryan Gosling all steady players for months. At this point it would be a minor surprise to see one of the ousted. Support for their rivals seems to be far too diffuse.

Supporting Actress
The other "settled" acting race though you can definitely make arguments about one of two women spoiling the party:  Greta Gerwig who is brilliant in 20th Century Women and who has definitely earned her place at Hollywood's most prestigious tables after years of fine work, or Janelle Monae, who proves herself a total natural in Hidden Figures with a bright film career ahead of her. Supporting Actress is a friendly category to double nominees which means if there's a major shake-up it could be both Octavia and Janelle in the mix.

With Captain Fantastic holding strong for Viggo and with its SAG nomination, we're betting the Screenplay shows up, too.

Original Screenplay & Adapted Screenplay
The big question in Adapted might be whether Fences has enough goodwill to earn August Wilson a posthumous nomination, or if naysayers who believe its too "stagey" have made it a Viola & Denzel only party. My guess is that if Tom Ford doesn't show up in Director he shows up here instead and steals that slot away from the late theatrical giant.

In Original Screenplay with three films looking unstoppable for nominations (Manchester, Hell or, La La), one looking like a very typical "of course it nabbed #1 votes!" critical darling style nominee (The Lobster), there's presumably only one spot left and SO many strong screenplays fighting for it: Captain Fantastic, 20th Century Women, Zootopia, Toni Erdmann, Jackie. 

Is Viola in "Fences" a lead? Or is her "Rose" a supporting player by choice?

Scarlett & Viola won the supporting & lead actress Tonys in 2010. Now Viola is headed for a supporting trophy (for the same role) by Lynn Lee

If it’s Oscar season, there must be category fraud lurking somewhere.  This year most of the debate has centered around Viola Davis, whose barn-burner of a performance opposite Denzel Washington in Fences is a virtual lock ...for supporting actress gold.  There’s little doubt the decision to go supporting was driven by the perception that lead actress would be a much tougher road in an especially competitive year.  Still, it’s such a powerhouse turn that many Viola fans are justifiably frustrated by what looks like a cynical lack of faith in both her and the Academy.

And yet, having previously read the play and seen it performed on stage – though not the production that starred Viola and Denzel – I can’t help wondering if this is as open-and-shut a case of category fraud as it appears.  In terms of the weight and magnetism of Viola’s performance, it feels like a lead role.  But the way the role is written, as August Wilson conceived it, I think is a closer call...

Click to read more ...

Podcast: "Silence" and "20th Century Women"

Nick and Nathaniel and special guest Chris Feil (who you read hear at TFE at least twice a week) talk new flicks in our post Golden Globe/DGA nominations world.

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Globe & DGA intro...
04:00 Martin Scorsese's Silence 
18:31 Extremely wandering conversation alert: Silence, 20th Century Women, Paterson, Rogue One, new movie trailers...
27:00 The brilliant 20th Century Women
39:50 Aquarius, Demon, Pervert Park

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? Are you planning to watch Aquarius on Netflix?

Silence & 20th Century Women