How many of the spring/summer hits will Oscar recognize?

by Nathaniel R

How many of the year's critically embraced / audience approved movies from the first half of the year will Oscar recognize? Savvy awards fans know that if you open very late you dont necessarily need audiences (or even the critics to a lesser extent) because the voters haven't had time to process the various responses. The only "influence" then becomes the publicity and the awards campaigns themselves, which is what the distributors prefer. That way they control the messaging.

If you open earlier than the second half of December, it's a completely different story. Critical and audience response completely matter as your film takes on various consensus markers like  "surprise hit" or "flop" or "respected but didn't connect". All sorts of things happen that unconsciously or consciously affect voting. In short, both critical and audience approval have to be there in order to generate enthusiasm that will justify a campaign later in the year. In that sense we have only four movies that have opened at this writing in 2022 that we must take seriously for prizes at year's end. They are...

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Pleasure To Meet You

by Jason Adams

I hope you'll forgive me since I'm the member of Team TFE that pays the scantest attention possible to Awards Season, but when I watched half of the Independent Spirits this past weekend I was extremely confused to see that Ninja Thyberg's porn industry drama Pleasure had been nominated for a few awards, and it threw me down a rabbit hole of confusion with regards to that movie's release. I saw it at Sundance last year (that is in 2021) and I was blown away by it, and I had been waiting, waiting, waiting, for news of a release...

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Podcast: The Team chats Oscar nods

Nathaniel gathered the team members who were available on Tuesday night for a quickie discussion of the Oscar nominations.  

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify or download the attachment below. And while you're thinking of the Oscars, check out the charts and vote on the polls!

Post Nomination Discussion

"Dune Part Two" will open October 20th, 2023

by Nathaniel R

Dune Part One landed big at the box office this past weekend with a $41 million bow, a solid gross even in pre-pandemic times for a non-sequel (with the caveat that it's still a very familiar IP). That plus the overseas gross was apparently strong enough to get a greenlight on Dune Part Two quickly though it still feels insane that they poured money into the first half without a deal on the second. Good luck coordinating everyone's schedules; The cast is hardly B list and now they'll be even more in demand though we're betting they all had Part Two firmly in their contracts even without a start date so perhaps they'll be locked into whatever dates the production decides and other movies or tv shows will have to make do without them or wait until they're free of the desert again. Beginning in 2022 Warner Brothers films will no longer be immediately streaming on HBOMax as they have been all this year so, barring another pandemic, expect Dune Part Two to have a significantly bigger opening weekend in October of 2023.

Let the speculation begin: Will the Academy stump for Dune this season or wait until 2023 and, if it sticks the landing, shower it with statues a la Return of the King twenty years earlier. 

"Parallel Mothers" - Teaser and Release Date

This is both agonizing timing and perfect timing. Sony Pictures Classics have just released this teaser for Parallel Mothers and have announced that the movie hits theaters on December 24th in the US. We fear that's way too late to build up the steam for a major Oscar play. International features often require a larger lead time to get conversation going. Factually speaking, all five of Pedro's Oscar-nominated films  (Women on the Verge, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Volver, Pain and Glory) have begun their stateside rollouts in November.  On the other hand it's perfect timing for our about to launch "All About Pedro" series which begins this Thursday with his first feature Pepi Luci Bom (1980). This is entirely accidental but that means the new movie arrives the day after our series wraps up!