2016's Tentative Calendar

We'll begin awardable speculations all over again starting April 1st as we do. Don't hate us because we're OCD. So I'm prepping a cheat sheet list of releases that could factor in in ways very minor or major. Let me know if I've missed any juicy titles you're awaiting after the jump.

January through April
Which ones will people still care about in 10 months when top ten lists / awards season begins
10 Cloverfield Lane, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Boss, Demolition, Everybody Wants Some, Hail Caesar!, Hello My Name is Doris, A Hologram for the King, The Huntsman: Winter's War, Krisha, The Meddler, Midnight Special, Miles Ahead, Sing Street, Tale of Tales, The Witch, and Zootopia

Popcorn Season (May-August)
Some Oscar nominees always emerge in the summer. But the question is in which categories?
Alice Through the Looking Glass, Ben-Hur, The BFG, A Bigger Splash, Captain America: Civil War, Captain Fantastic, The Conjuring 2, Finding Dory, The Founder, Genius, Ghostbusters, Hands of Stone, High Rise, Independence Day: Resurgence, Jason Bourne, Kubo & The Two Strings, Last Days in the Desert, The Legend of Tarzan, Money Monster,  Pete's Dragon, The Secret Life of Pets, Star Trek Beyond, Suicide Squad, Warcraft, X-Men: Apocalypse

Festival Friendly (Sept-October)
October & November are now the best months for release (statistically) if you'd like to win Best Picture
The Accountant, The Birth of a Nation, Bridget Jones Baby, Deepwater Horizon, Girl on the Train, The Light Between Oceans, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, A Monster Calls, Storks, Sully, Snowden, 

Holidays (November-December).
December continues to be the most popular month to schedule Oscar hopefuls though no eventual winner has been released that late since 2004. Still, it's usually good for way too many Oscar nominations even if few wins come of them... 
Assassin's Creed, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Collateral Beauty, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Lion, La La Land, Moana, Passengers, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Sing, Trolls, Untitled Robert Zemeckis / Brad Pitt World War II Film

Liam Neeson in Martin Scorsese's Silence 

Have Yet to be Scheduled But Expected in 2016
20th Century Women (Mike Mills directs The Bening and other stars)
Charming (animated comedy about the Prince's multiple storybook romances)
A Tale of Love and Darkness (Natalie Portman)
Silence (Martin Scorsese directs Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, Etc...)
The Last Face (Charlize Theron & Javier Bardem)
The Book of Henry (Naomi Watts, Lee Pace, Jacob Tremblay)
The Zookeepers Wife (Jessica Chastain, WW II drama)
Gold (Matthew McConaughey)
Suite Francaise (Michelle Williams... this is still out there somewhere. It's been finished for how long?)
The Queen of Katwe (Mira Nair directs Lupita Nyong'o)
A United Kingdom (Rosamund Pike & David Oyelowo)
Untitled Howard Hughes Project (Warren Beatty, Alec Baldwin, Lily Collins, The Bening)
Loving (Jeff Nichols directs Joel Edgerton & Ruth Negga, true story)
LBJ (Rob Reiner directs Woody Harrelson in the biopic) 
Untitled Woody Allen (Blake Lively, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell) 
The Seagull (Saoirse Ronan, Corey Stoll, and The Bening in a Chekov adaptation) 
Beat-up Little Seagull (Michelle Pfeiffer) 
The Lost City of Z (James Gray directs Tom Holland and Charlie Hunnam in 1920s jungle exploration) 
HHhH (Rosamund Pike, Mia Wasikowska, Jason Clarke in WW II thriller)  
War Machine (David Michôd directs Brad Pitt in Afghan war satire)
Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford directs Amy Adams & Jake Gyllenhaal. Based on the book "Tony & Susan") 
The Secret Scripture (Jim Sheridan directs Rooney Mara & Vanessa Redgrave in mental hospital drama) 
Una (Rooney Mara & Ben Mendelsohn)
The Whole Truth (Courtney Hunt directs Keanu Reeves & Gugu Mbatha-Raw)
Our Kind of Traitor (Damian Lewis & Naomie Harris) 
Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan directs Casey Affleck & Michelle Williams)
Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt directs Kristen Stewart & Michelle Williams)
Tallulah (Ellen Page & Allison Janney)
Trespass Against Us (Michael Fassbender & Brendan Gleeson)
Alone in Berlin (Brendan Gleeson & Emma Thompson) 
The Promise (Terry George directs Christian Bale & Oscar Isaac & Charlotte Le Bon in Ottoman Empire love triangle) 
The Circle (James Ponsoldt directs Emma Watson & Tom Hanks) 

Intended for 2017 but they're already filming so you never know...
Live by Night (Ben Affleck directs Prohibition Era crime story)
Miss Sloane (Jessica Chastain)
The Snowman (Tomas Alfredson directs Michael Fassbender)
Trainspotting 2 (the whole cast returns)
All Eyez on Me (Tupac Shakur bio) 
The Dinner (Oren Moverman directs Richard Gere & The Lovely Laura Linney)

Ghosts of Ceremonies of Years Past

Manuel here. Love them (guilty!) or hate them (okay, sometimes I do), you have to admit that the Academy Awards are an institution, one with a long storied history. And while we've come down from last weekend's highs and lows and will soon wearily brace ourselves for what next year’s season might look like (first predictions April 1st as TFE does), whenever you need to scratch that Oscar itch take some time to look back on Oscar history before you start looking forward again.

Thankfully, the Academy is here to help. Finally embracing the 21st century they have slowly been building quite the digital archive over at oscars.org.

They now have video and photo highlights for ALL of their ceremonies. I’m sure Nathaniel and many others will cringe at the fact that they refer to this most recent ceremony as the “2016 Oscars” which as you know can sometimes get tricky. (This despite the Academy previously citing the film years (you can still see this at the tourist friendly Dolby Theater where each year the new Best Picture plaque goes up with the correct year noted (Spotlight is probably already up where the placeholder "2015" once was.)

Shouldn’t clicking 1950 give me access to the ceremony that awarded George Sanders his Best Supporting Actor win? It’s become common -- it's possibly IMDB's fault (and Jeopardy! now does it too possibly sabotaging Oscar purist trivia experts) to list by the ceremony year rather than the film year. We understand it (the 88th Academy Awards took place in 2016) but that doesn’t mean we have to like it; tying Spotlight to 2016 seems odd. 

It’s a small quibble but trust that there’s a smorgasbord of images and videos to keep you entertained should you want to leave dissecting the 2015 2016 Oscars for another day. So take a look and help us find the best/most amazing/randomest photo from ceremonies past you can find.

YNMS: The Light Between Oceans

Lynn here, offering a little break from the frenzy of this year’s Oscars homestretch to ponder a possible future awards contender…

Fall, it seems so far away!  But it’s never too early to start thinking of the potential Oscars slate for next season, especially when you’ve got an adaptation of a popular book that features two mega-hot rising stars coming off fresh Oscar nominations and one Oscar winner who’s a bona fide screen goddess.  That would be The Light Between Oceans, which just dropped its first trailer yesterday.  Based on the bestselling novel by M.L. Stedman, it’s directed by Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines) and stars Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz.

Let’s break down the trailer, YNMS-style after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Hail, Caesar! is a secret musical.

If you didn't catch the Coen brothers Hail, Caesar! this weekend it might surprise you to hear that it could actually be categorized as a musical. No, not a full blown musical with a good portion of their narrative emerging from the songs but musically inclined. It's more like "a film with music" as Yentl once said to the ticketbuying public. There are three distinct musical numbers in the film, which is three more than 95% of films get. More...

Click to read more ...

Podcast: Sundance Buzz and SAG Awards Chatter

Nathaniel,  Nick, Katey, and Joe vape with Leonardo DiCaprio at the SAG Awards. Also we share the Sundance titles we're most curious about...

39 minutes 
00:01 Sundance Winners: Swiss Army Man, Netflix and Amazon
09:30 Birth of a Nation and other black films that could take the pressure off of it as the #OscarsSoWhite corrective
13:52 Most anticipated titles
16:30 SAG: Boosts for Spotlight, Alicia Vikander
22:20 Don's Plum vs. Flora Plum
25:15 Brie & Leonardo & final SAG thoughts

Related Reading For Context:
• Best Ensemble Choices -From Nathaniel
• Best Ensemble Choices -From Joe
• Nick's SAG Blogging - a first for him
• Leo's Vaping - via E!

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes soon. 

SAG Reactions