Interview: Gael García Bernal on Neruda, Zorro, and Other Characters

This weekend at the Golden Globes, an unexpected but not all that surprising reunion of the best friends / stars of the Oscar nominated road trip classic Y Tu Mama Tambíen (2001) occured. Both Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna came to international fame together in the early Aughts and they're both still riding high in movies from Hollywood and outside of it.

I had the opportunity to speak with Bernal a month ago about his sturdy career, its auteurist origins, and his current busy playfulness. He's now juggling streaming television stardom (Mozart in the Jungle), occasional directing gigs, frequent producing duties, upcoming starring roles (Zorro?) and still doing what he was doing in his very first years of fame: headlining artistically ambitious Spanish language Oscar submissions. Though neither of his current films (Mexico's Desierto and Chile's Neruda) made Oscar's finalist list, Neruda did receive a well deserved Golden Globe nomination.

Gael full plate is just rewards for his sturdy talent and impressive range but it's also a very happy reminder that some mesmerizing debuts like his own in the Oscar nominated Amores Perros (2000) don't result in flash in the pan quick fades but long and beautiful careers.

NATHANIEL R: Your first movie Amores Perros was an international success and you've been busy ever since. How much of this career did you imagine for yourself back then?

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The Furniture: A Last-Minute FYC for the Home Décor of "Paterson" and "Jackie"

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Oscar balloting has begun! As Nathaniel explained last week, AMPAS branches have received their nomination ballots. They’re due on the 13th. The Academy’s production designers occasionally make offbeat choices, though they don’t do it as often as the costume designers or the makeup artists. So here’s a final nudge on behalf of the best work of the year.

I’ve already written about three of the five movies I’d nominate, were I in charge. The crazed fandom of the apartment in Florence Foster Jenkins is a work of precision and inspiration. So is the heavily curtained metaphor that is the mansion in The Childhood of a Leader. The hotel in The Lobster, meanwhile, is as perfectly sterile as the above settings are feverish. All three would be a thrilling surprise on nomination morning.

My other two have become less present in the awards conversation than I’d guessed...

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PGA Nominations: The usual suspects plus "Deadpool"

Did Deadpool just shoot some Oscar dreams in the head?It's fitting that a year such as 2016, which gave us all the middle finger in such a crass broad strokes kind of way with T**** would also prove to be the year of Deadpool and his tiny baby hand gave the middle finger to superhero blockbusters (albeit a middle finger of love since it's gleefully being everything it's snarky about). I can't imagine Deadpool transferring from the Producers Guild Nomination to Oscar's Best Picture roster especially since they have yet to nominate 10 movies in their new rules of "5 to 10 nominees" in the years since that ruling but congratulations on making it this far!

While you're perusing the Producers Guild noms keep in mind that this is not necessarily the end of Best Picture dreams for a movie that missed and here's why...

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Cinema Audio Society Nominees

The Cinema Audio Society have announced their nominations for their 53rd annual awards. Though they can help us see what's on the mind an in the ears of sound professionals, they don't necessarily tell us what's coming down the Oscar pike in Oscar's two Sound categories...

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Thoughts on this season's BAFTA nominations

La La Land was the not unexpected leader for the BAFTA nominations. Slightly less known ahead of time was what film would threaten its leader status and that is arguably more surprising: divisive Nocturnal Animals tied for second place with the not very divisive Arrival with nine nominations each.

The film suffering the most this morning from lack of BAFTA love is surely Loving, which had the advantage of a popular new homegrown star Ruth Negga but missed in all categories but for "Rising Star" for Ruth Negga. The nominations in all categories after the jump...

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