Middleburg: "Ruben Brandt" Collects and "Widows" Thrills

Day two of the Middleburg Film Festival

Friday kicked off with a special "sneak" of Stan & Ollie (which, more on tomorrow) and then two more movies which went like so...

Ruben Brandt, Collector
From the opening shot of this animated film from Hungary you know you're in for an idiosyncratic lark. We're humorously crosscutting between an ultra fast moving train and the molasses crawl of a snail on the tracks. Then we're inside the train with Ruben Brandt, a famous psychotherapist who is promptly attacked by a little girl with a very sharp bite who is dressed suspiciously like Diego Velázquez's  "Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress". I say 'dressed like' because it's hard to make the connection at first...

Click to read more ...

Gotham Nominations: "The Favourite" and "First Reformed" Lead

by Nathaniel R

It's the first official awards announcement of the season! The Gotham Awards, the East Coast's answer to the Independent Spirit Awards, have announced their nominations with the palace intrigue tragicomedy The Favourite and the existential heavy drama of First Reformed sharing the lead with 3 matching honors each: Best Feature, Best Screenplay, and one acting citation (a special ensemble prize for the former and Ethan Hawke for the latter). One assumes that they'd have both been nominated for director, too, but one of the quirks of Gotham is that they don't have a Director category, only a category for brand new directors and we love the nominees there, especially Bo Burnham for Eighth Grade and Ari Aster for Hereditary. 

Other films receiving much needed good news since they were released before the fall glut and needed awards bodies to be reminded of them over the next few months: Leave No Trace, The Wife, Sorry to Bother You, and The Rider. The complete nominations and a few more comments after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Podcast: First Man, Colette, and A Star is Born

Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl talk three new films in theaters.

Index (54 minutes)
00:01 Intro & Festival fatigue
02:00 First Man Nathaniel is pro and Murtada mixed
14:30 We both love A Star is Born (but aren't rooting 4 Gaga to win)
35:00 Backlashes at the Oscars and what happens.. or doesn't
38:00 Best Picture randomness and Roma
42:35 Keira Knightley as Colette
48:20 Please look out for Border and Shoplifters which are opening soon

Referenced in this discussion
• Roma review
• NYFF Reviews
• Best Actress Chart 
• Best Actor Chart

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? 

Colette, First Man, A Star is Born

Everyone needs to calm down about "A Star is Born" winning all the Oscars

You guys. Everywhere I look there are articles or tweets positing that A Star is Born is going to sweep the Oscars, or win 3/4th of the acting categories or whatnot.  This is unlikely. It's only because it's the biggest contender currently playing that people are losing their minds. Well, that and because the movie is a terrific piece of big studio entertainment aimed at adults that's also a hit at the box office. You know, the exact kind of movie that people pretend doesn't exist (it does almost annually) and also pretend that Oscar doesn't like (they do almost annually) whenever they write those dumb articles proclaiming "the Oscars are irrelevant!" 

A Star is Born is just about at $100 million domestic at this writing but people are acting as if its earned one billion; I definitely wasn't expecting to hear it compared to Titanic today. So, let's all relax for a bit and talk about what is probable/possible since we've just barely finished UPDATING ALL THE OSCAR CHARTS. 

BEST PICTURE
I think it's too soon to call A Star is Born the frontrunner. It's just the first big Best Picture possibility to open since February (!) so that's a lot of time since Black Panther to bottle up armchair punditry feeling... bring on awards season! I dont currently believe Star will win (the remake stigma will catch up to it eventually) but let's say for the sake of argument that it does. That's one Oscar. Let's look at the other categories...

Click to read more ...

All Four Oscar Acting Charts Updated

Heads up. We've begun the mid October overhaul of the charts. All four acting charts are updated with the biggest shakeups coming to Best Actor with Christian Bale and Clint Eastwood suddenly both roaring buzz-wise. Please take a look and comment. BEST ACTOR (Christian Bale & Clint Eastwood on the rise) | BEST ACTRESS (Davis and Aparicio on the rise) | SUPPORTING ACTOR (Robert Forster and Sam Elliott on the rise) | SUPPORTING ACTRESS (with Colman gone it's anyone's game)

Thoughts? Do share. 

AND THIS JUST IN 10/15: Olivia Colman will be campaigning as lead for The Favourite with Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz officially "supporting" for the tragicomic triangular relationship. The charts have been updated to reflect the switch in presumed campaigns. Mostly this means Supporting Actress has no frontrunner... which is exciting.