FYC: Young Performer Award 2017

by Nathaniel R

Remember when the Beguiled girls did that charity lipsynch to "Schuyler Sisters" from HAMILTON?

Each year one of our awards traditions here at The Film Experience is to help fellow BFCA members choose more wisely when it comes to the "Young Performer" category at the Critics Choice Movie Awards by sharing an eligibility list. Ballots don't come with lists of eligible choices so it's up to each member to think up a list and since the category is "under 21" it takes a bit of research for the teen/young adult performances; as is Hollywood tradition almost everyone playing high schoolers in Lady Bird or Spider-Man Homecoming are in their early-to-mid 20s. It's just a guess but I'm betting some members even leave that category blank on their ballots. If true that's a pity because there are always enough strong options to fill out a ballot. This year, in fact, has several high profile movies with options to choose from like the blockbuster horror film It, the controversial remake of The Beguiled, the Todd Haynes puzzle Wonderstruck, and Wonder is a star vehicle for Jacob Tremblay, a previous winner in this very category for Room (2015). 

Ballots go out to the BFCA today so here's a cheat sheet to help them vote after the jump. The actors are listed alphabetically (asterisks by their name indicate a previous nomination in this category). So which of these performances would make your ballot? Let us know in the comments...

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Box Office: Animation of 2017

by Nathaniel R

This long holiday weekend saw the releases of three major Oscar contenders. Call Me By Your Name had a sensational per screen average (101,000 per screen). Darkest Hour also showed its prosthetic Churchill face for a good opening ($44,000 per screen). And then there was Pixar's Coco, which easily trounced Justice League to take the #1 spot. Critics are raving and, more importantly, Latino critics are raving, too, as you can see at Remezcla and here at The Film Experience.

So let's do the box office report differently this weekend and look at this year's Animated Features...

ANIMATED FEATURES AT THE BOX OFFICE IN 2017 GROSSES AS OF NOV 26th
1. Despicable Me 3  $264.3	6. Captain Underpants $73.9
2. Lego Batman Movie $175.7	7.🔺 Coco $71.1 REVIEW
3. The Boss Baby $175 REVIEW	8. Lego NinjaGo Movie $59
4. Cars 3  $152.9	9. Smurfs: Lost Village $45 REVIEW
5. The Emoji Movie $86 REVIEW	10. Nutjob 2 Nutty by Nature $28.3

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What on earth will be nominated for Adapted Screenplay?

Past Oscar years have often had an imbalance in the screenplay categories, with original being the designated place for edgy (for Oscar at least) critical darlings and adapted screenplay being the place where all the prestige Best Pictures gather to receive their admirer. But old rules are going away, "prestige" has lost meaning, and this year nearly all the critical darlings AND consensus Best Picture likelies have been deemed "original" -it's seriously stacked, just look at the updated chart. 

So what gets nominated for Adapted in this vacuum? Here's an alphabetical list of 15 possibilities but beyond Call Me By Your Name none of them seem like safe bets, exactly. So which way does this go? After scratching my head I've made a guess on the chart but I'm eager to hear what you're thinking on that matter.

• Beguiled
• Blade Runner 2049
• Call Me By Your Name 
• The Disaster Artist
• Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
• Last Flag Flying
• Logan
• The Lost City of Z
• Molly's Game
• Mudbound
• Stronger
• Victoria and Abdul
• Wonder
• Wonder Woman
• Wonderstruck

Will this year's Best Director Oscar race be the most diverse ever?

by Nathaniel R

from left to right: del Toro, Guadagnino, Wright, Peele, Jenkins, Rees, Nolan, McDonagh, Aronofsky, Baker, Spielberg, Gerwig, Scott, Bigelow, Coppola, Villeneuve

While I was updating the Oscar charts for Picture and Director it occurred to me that the Academy's directing branch could well come up with their most diverse shortlist ever. Generally speaking when the Best Director lineup has had some variations from its usual five middle aged white American directors it's been with older white European auteurs. But in the past twelve years things have been shifting for that category quite a lot despite frequent complaints that they aren't changing at all. Or at least that they're not changing fast enough.

Consider that the following things have all happened in the past twelve Oscar races:

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The 2017 Animated Contenders: "The Girl Without Hands"

by Tim Brayton

Last week, we took a look at Loving Vincent, a stunningly gorgeous animated feature taking its aesthetic cues from traditional fine arts; and this week, we're doing the same thing. Though the style in the French The Girl Without Hands is quite a long way from the rich oil portraits of Loving Vincent. Now, the inspiration is (or anyway, appears to be) Chinese ink wash painting, the art of sketching out characters and settings in a few swift, bold brush strokes with strongly-colored ink. The results deserve the same praise: this is, visually, one of the most distinctive, special, and unusual piece of cinema released this year.

This time around, the film has a narrative that can stand up to its style. The Girl Without Hands is a fairly straightforward adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale, about a young woman (voiced by Anaïs Demoustier) whose miller father (Olivier Broche) unwittingly promises her to the Devil (Philippe Laudenbach) in exchange for a river of endless gold...

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