Cannes: "Fjord" brings Cristian Mungiu back to the moral gray zone

by Elisa Giudici

FJORD from Cristian Mungiu

Cristian Mungiu has built an entire career around moral instability, yet Fjord feels particularly thorny. The Romanian filmmaker’s latest Cannes Competition entry begins as a family drama rooted in a real-life custody case before gradually revealing itself as something much larger and far more uncomfortable: a film about the impossibility of reconciling competing moral systems inside supposedly enlightened societies. The Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker has turned  a real-life custody case into a sprawling and deeply unsettling drama about multiculturalism, religion, and the limits of liberal tolerance.

Fjord reunites A Different Man stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a  Romanian father and his Norwegian wife (a deeply religious Catholic missionary)...

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Oscar Volley: Is "Best Actress" tied up with a bow for Jessie Buckley?

The Oscar Volleys continue. Today, LYNN LEE and NICK TAYLOR discuss the surprisingly stable Oscar race for Best Actress.

Jessie Buckley in HAMNET | © Focus Features

LYNN: At the risk of stating the obvious, Nick, Best Actress has been the most predictable stable of the four acting races by far. Is there a world in which Jessie Buckley doesn’t take this? And are we basically fine with that?

NICK: I mean, where else is there to start? Buckley’s the surest winner of the acting categories, and among a handful of artists (PTA, Ludwig Göransson) who have to know they’re winning the Oscar. I’m not complaining. Buckley’s been delivering ambitious, awards-worthy turns since she debuted with Beast in 2017, and her turn as Agnes is such an ideal use of her screen persona. The practical intelligence, the precise-yet-walloping emotions, the way her characters are so irreducibly themselves that their odd edges and peculiar beliefs doom them to black sheep status even when things are looking their way. She’s incredible, and just because the grieving mother is an easy type for awards groups to notice shouldn’t diminish how powerful her work is in Hamnet...

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The Best Actress Race: Nomination Tracks & Frankenstein Fusion

by Nathaniel R

I should probably switch this up as I've been doing it annually, but I can't resist. I love imagining a Frankenstein-fusion of the parts of all the  BEST ACTRESS nominees.  If you smoosh or stitch Renate, Kate, Emma, Jessie, and Rose together our Best Actress Category Avatar is a mid-career still-ascending brunette star on her second nomination. She's also dabbled in musicals, played Sally Bowles in "Cabaret", and BAFTA recognized her genius before Oscar voters did!  Maybe she has false memories of winning an Oscar but this is only her second nomination. Her director has a proven track record with guiding actresses -- she may have even worked with them before -- to stellar performances. She's a fire sign with earth rising, a wife, a mother of two, and she just turned 40.

The movie she's nominated for is a drama about a young grieving mother struggling to balance her artistic career ambitions, with her obnoxious needy child--- wait, is she Alice from Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore?. No uh, never mind, the movie is weirder than that. There's a darkly comic subplot about incels and mysterious holes in her ceiling but the main thrust of the narrative is that the most important man in her life (was it her dad or husband? I forget) is perpetually absent, consummed by his own artistic career ambitions, and has no time for her needs! 

See the updated Best Actress chart 
The chart includes a daily poll, "How'd They Get Nominated?" speculation (not meant as judgment -- nobody is nominated on performance alone!), stats, anecdotes, and trivia. 

An Annual Round of Oscar Trivia Following The Nominations...

by Nathaniel R

Amy Madigan breaking things onscreen and off!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS LIST IN THE COMMENTS. These stats will also probably show up on the Oscar charts too but why not collect them here first or simultaneously while still hopped up on Oscar fever...

RECORDS BROKEN OR SET

• Longest Gap Between Acting Nominations for a Woman
Weapons standout Amy Madigan's 40 year gap between Oscar nominations (her first nomination was in 1985's Twice in a Lifetime) is not an all time record but it is the record for a female actor...

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Pt 3. International Feature Race: A Dozen Movie Stars!

by Nathaniel R

Internationally famous South Korean superstar Lee Byung-hun in "No Other Choice"

As a final part of our general trivia overview (pt 1 stats & genres / pt 2 directors) of the Best International Feature Film race -- before things narrow down -- we thought we'd look at famous actors gracing the international Oscar race this year. Here are a dozen of the most familiar faces that Academy voters (and you) will recognize from their own history of awardage not to mention previous classics and contenders from this very category. If their new film is nominated, you might see them in their full tux/gown glory on Oscar night.

We'll take these dozen megawatt talents alphabetically...

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