Welcome to the one-nomination club

by Cláudio Alves

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the injustice of Oscar snubs, the general lack of diversity and other matters that forever plague the Academy Awards. One must remember, however, that, in the middle of this week's justifiable discontent, there are silver linings to consider. While the 92nd round of Oscar nominations are exhaustively dominated by Best Picture contenders (the most films ever with double digit nomination tallies), a few films managed to squeeze into the mix with just one nomination. In the past, many a great film ended the season with just a sole Oscar nod for its trouble.

Looking back at the last few years, we have such gems as First Reformed, Border, 20th Century Women, The Lobster, Elle, Silence, 45 Years and Gone Girl among many other notable movies. These films' nominations are little morsels of hope that remind us that the Academy isn't completely wrong, not always. So, let's celebrate those films that might not have conquered handfuls of nominations, but are still in the Oscar conversation…

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Podcast: Everything you wanted to know about precursor awards week ... but were afraid to ask*

Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl welcome back NICK DAVIS! 

In this hour long conversation Nick, Murtada, and your TFE mastermind Nathaniel discuss the first gigantic week of precursor season. What hath the Globes and SAG wrought and who are we sad about (Alfre Woodard!) and who are we rooting for (Antonio Banderas) and the like. We're divided on Judy and Dark Waters and Robert DeNiro's The Irishman and we dunk a little on Richard Jewell and The Two Popes (sorry!). We also have words for NEON not finding a way to honor Clemency while pushing Parasite. Finally we try to suss out the impossible "Best Actor" race which is giving everyone predictive pause.  

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? 

Precursor Madness

Last "Regular" Weekend Box Office Report of the Year!

So, from here on out we'll be hitting our "Year in Review" lists which will include a few exciting box office deep dives on niche topics. So let's retire the regular box office charts of the weekend for 2019 with one last blowout of EVERYTHING still in wide release (there's just 13 films on that many screens at the moment and boy is the last of 'em unlucky). And, as per usual, their counterparts in limited release where the more interesting movies usually are. That said you'll notice the platform section of the chart is not yet complete. That's because those numbers rarely come in comprehensively or correctly before Monday evening so we'll update again then. 

What did you see this weekend? 

Weekend Box Office December 13th-15h (ESTIMATES)  🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended
WIDE RELEASE (800+ screens)	PLATFORM TITLES
1 🔺  JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL  $60 *new*	1 PARASITE $632k on 306 screens (cum. $20.3 PODCAST, CLASS, BONG, SAG CAST★

2 FROZEN II $19.1 (cum. $366.5) REVIEW	2 🔺 UNCUT GEMS $525k on 5 screens *new*  REVIEW ★

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The AFI Lists

The AFI are now in their 20th year so they're as old as our own Film Bitch Awards ;) Each year they choose 10 American movies to honor and 10 American television programs and then usually make one nod to non American things as they did this year with shoutouts to South Korea (Parasite) and the UK (Fleabag). Their nominating jury is made up of critics, movie people, and other luminaries and changes each year. But regardless of the individual voters you usually end up with something like the Oscar list. This year leans VERY December as if no other months held movies so the jury had extremely short attention spans. That said at least The Farewell and Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood are surviving those very very very short attention spans that always plague voters.

Here is the full list of this year’s honorees who will be honored at a luncheon in January...

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Kathy Bates going lead for Richard Jewell!

Shortly after updating the Best Supporting Actress chart and placing Kathy Bates in the mix for Richard Jewell, one of our SAG Nominating Committee friends sent us this image.  SURPRISE. Kathy Bates is campaigning as a lead at SAG.

Longtime awards obsessives will already know this but for newbies to the intricacies of awards season you should know that SAG voters do not have a choice where they place actors. They can only vote on them in the categories for which they've officially been submitted by the studios (same with Emmy voters). Occassionally SAG and Oscar campaign tactics are different, studios changed their mind, or errors are made by administrative types so people nominated in lead at SAG occassionally go on to win supporting acting Oscars (Benicio del Toro in Traffic / Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind) or go from being a supporting nominee at SAG to a leading player with Oscar (Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider / Kate Winslet in The Reader).

How will this all shake out?