Directing Actors to Oscar Nominations ~ Updated Stats!

by Ben Miller

Power couple Noah and Greta moving up the "Directed Actors to Oscar Nominations" charts

The Oscars are so stat heavy, it’s difficult to keep up with the information. Especially since each season there's yet more of it. One of the stats that gets perpetually lost in the noise is the complex area  of 'acting nominations by director'. If you’ve read my previous piece last year, I am somewhat of an expert in this field, and this year’s set of nominees and winners provides some interesting stats.

First Timers

With nominations for Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Laura Dern, Noah Baumbach does what Guillermo Del Toro did with Shape of Water and Martin McDonagh did with Three Billboards, going from zero to three acting nominations from his filmography in one year.  A few directors have gone from zero to four, including but not limited to...

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1999 with Nick: When "All About My Mother" triumphed over ???

In advance of the Oscars, Nick Davis has been looking back at the Academy races of 20 years ago, spotlighting movies he’d never seen and what they teach us about those categories, then and now.

After that trip back to the Documentary race, we're ending the week by spotlighting the other category that's taken the hugest strides to adjust its nominating process and champion better work. It’s also no accident that I’m ending with a category that Nathaniel has tracked with unusual care and detail since Oscar-focused websites have existed—indeed, long before many of his peers paid more than cursory attention. The 72nd Academy Awards took place eight years before the transformative addition of an Executive Committee to the vetting process that produces the annual roster for "Best Foreign Language Film," which of course this year got rebranded as "Best International Film". This category used to be heavy with inoffensive mediocrities, or sometimes offensive ones. Tracking down the contenders, which was often difficult to do, rarely felt like making contact with the best of world cinema in any given year, and with very few exceptions the winners across the 1990s were an undistinguished lot. (Or maybe you’re a major devotée of Mediterraneo or Kolya?)

By that standard, 1999 was a pretty good year, since I imagine that Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother would be most people's choice as the best film to cop this prize during the whole decade. This critical and popular favorite needed no help from any Executive Committee to stay alive during the balloting. In fact, the only mystery is why the movie couldn't make more inroads into admittedly competitive races like Actress, Supporting Actress, Director, Screenplay, Production Design, Costume Design, Editing, or Picture...

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Almodóvar reigns at the Goyas again

by Nathaniel R

You'll read a lot of headlines saying that Pain and Glory swept the Goyas but it's not technically true. Though it won big it lost the bulk of its craft competitions and won only two of its five acting nominations. Still there's plenty of reason to celebrate if you're an Almodóvar junkie like we are here at TFE. The master's self-reflection took home seven Goyas including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor for Antonio Banderas, who is of course also nominated at the Oscars. But Pain and Glory didn't have the night to itself. Each of the five Best Film nominees took home at least one prize with While at War, the latest from Alejandro Amenábar (The Others) clearly in runner up position as it won five categories including a win in Supporting Actor where it beat out both of the nominees from Pain & Glory.  And ,yes, the rumors are true: Pedro accidentally let it slip on the red carpet that Penelope Cruz would be presenting Best International Film at the Oscars in February. 

Full list of Goya winners and a few notes after the jump...

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Photos and fun from the Los Angeles Film Critics Dinner

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FYC: "Pain and Glory" for Best Cinematography

by Cláudio Alves

Pedro Almodóvar might be known for his brilliant reds, but his latest and most autobiographical film starts in blue. Submerged in blue, as it happens. In the bottom of a swimming pool tiled in shades of cyan, we find our blue-clad protagonist, underwater, pensive as he is enveloped by diluted chlorine and the memories of a distant past. They are remembrances of maternal warmth and white linens drying in the sun, shots so beautiful they seem more real than the present life for which they are prologue. Color theory has its limitations, of course, and Almodóvar's brush is guided more by emotion than by dogmatic rules. José Luis Alcaine's photography follows the same logic…

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