Nicole Kidman as "Lucille Ball" and "Masha"

My fellow Kidmaniacs, we have so much to look forward to! By now you've probably seen this photo of Nicole Kidman on the set of Aaron Sorkin's next project, Being the Ricardos a week in the life of the stars of seminal sitcom "I Love Lucy". An earlier image of a much more orange wig is also floating around. People seemed to take offense at the very orange wig as if they had never actually looked at old photos of Lucille Ball. That hair was a COLOR... and a mood. No, a way of life. (This wig above is more subdued.) 

This week we also got the trailer to Nicole's next miniseries Nine Perfect Strangers  while playing some kind of shady self-help figure / cult leader? Neither have release dates yet but the miniseries is "soon". We suspect the other is a likely December release in theaters (or 2022 if Amazon is feeling confident about their next Oscar slate as is.)

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Showbiz History - an Oscar night only edition!

5 random things that happened on this day, February 27th, in OSCAR history...

Shirley Temple presenting Best Actress to Claudette Colbert for IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)

Yup, it's just Oscar history today, because today is a special date. February 27th is currently tied for second place with "most Oscar ceremonies held on this date" a distinction it shares with March 24th. Both dates have seen four Oscar ceremonies (to date). But that will soon change. More on that after the jump...

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Sundance: "Flee" beautifully animates a family's struggle

by Eurocheese

As the first acquisition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Flee made headlines as an early success story. To anyone who attended the premiere screening, it was no surprise that the film was snapped up so quickly. Between its lovely animation and personal message, it speaks to a refugee’s journey in a heartfelt way. I shed tears at several points during the film, and based on the reactions I heard during the Q&A afterwards, we’ll be hearing much more about its emotional impact in the future.

The story begins as a conversation between two friends, one of whom (Amin) seems to be hesitating when considering marriage to his longtime boyfriend...

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Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana

That's the first shot of Kristen Stewart as Diana in Pablo Larraín's next film Spencer, one of our presumed Oscar hopefuls for 2021 though the release plans aren't at all firm yet. Let's hope it goes better for Kristen than it did for Naomi Watts! (Not that it won't by default, but still). So we might be looking at our first Best Actress nominee of the new film ye -- No, we can't get into that yet; we're still in this season.

There's no word yet on who is playing Prince Charles but the film takes place over a single weekend (the best kind of biopic!) and we trust Larraín to make this totally interesting since his films (Jackie, No, Neruda) always are, even the ones that are totally filled with hard-to-watch hatefulness (Tony Manero, Ema, The Club). Larraín's films are always exquisitely put together and this one will be no exception with the cinematographer of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Claire Mathon), two time Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina, Little Women) on costumes, and Oscar nominee Jonny Greenwood (Phantom Thread) on score duties. 

Trust BAFTA to make this bizarre awards season even crazier!

BAFTA has made a strange decision. Despite more than enough movies to justify an awards season (as you can see from the numerous critics awards we've already witnessed... many of which weren't considering January/February releases like Oscar and the Globes are), BAFTA now just opened to the window for even more films to play. They're saying that as long as you already had a release date planned before April 9th in the UK, you can be eligible for their current award season and just delay your actual release until any point in 2021. 

This is an administrative nightmare. Or, at least it's a nightmare for those of us who enjoy things like calendars, time, seasons, and Things That Make Sense.

It also begs the question of what groups like the Globes, SAG, BAFTA, and the Academy are going to do for next year's awards (do all of these awards bodies think the world is going to end in 2021)...

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