Quick Retro Spotlight - Last Year's Film Bitch Award Medalists

by Nathaniel R

CHALLENGERS took the Best Kiss gold medal for its threesome turned twosome. Who will win for 2025 cinema?

As we gear up for both the 98th Oscars and the 26th (!) annual Film Bitch Awards, it surprised me (though it shouldn't have given my track record) that I had never posted the final page of 2024 (the "Scene" categories) which I had definitely completed a year ago. Since those awards are about to be supplanted by a current  "Best of the Year" party (beginning tonight with a bit of silliness!), I invite you, if you're so inclined, to think back on last year's cinema for however many minutes you so desire to check out the gold, silver, and bronze medal honors in several categories as well as the heretofore unseen choices for  the final scene categories like "best opening scene", "best musical sequence" and many more... Among the 42 categories in our annual awards jamboree, 64 films were honored with at least one citation. As I've said many times, it's pretty rare that even the best films of the year are THE BEST AT LITERALLY EVERYTHING the way the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would have you believe.

A few notes about the awards follow...

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Nathaniel's Assorted Wonders (Top Ten Preamble)

by Nathaniel R

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR © Netflix

PART 1 - In real life I am exceedingly punctual. The same is not true of my online listing life. But one of my goals for 2024 is rethinking and clarifying my lifelong need to talk about the movies. So stayed tuned but please follow on Substackd and Letterboxd and Instagram while I sort that out. I am hoping to return to writing, twice weekly. That's the goal. I've accepted that I'll never be able to do the daily churn again that kept the site lively. Bless Cláudio and the rest of the team who have filled in some of my gaps. The world has moved on (social media has replaced incessant blogging and consumption of blogging). Plus I also burned out trying to produce that much. But enough navel-gazing for the moment!

The next week at the site is dedicated to wrapping up my own long-running awards (now in their *gulp* 24th year) and talking about Oscar night (which is about to happen), so here are brief thoughts on some favourite film things of the year which I hope you'll use along with awards themselves as a 'recommended' guide when you're looking for something to watch...

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One Week Later - Nomination Joys

by Nathaniel R

Mark Ruffalo in "Poor Things"

You've had time to thoroughly process the Oscar nominations and time to finish the quick grief cycle around "snubs". It's time to look on the bright side. We polled our team on which nominations, above and below the line, gave them the most joy. Here are their answers. We hope to hear yours, too, in the comments...

BIGGEST JOY (Above the Line)

Comedic performances rarely get any sort of recognition, and we had THREE in the same category! 

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11 Quick Observations about the Oscar Nominations

Did you toon into the Oscar nominations this morning. Jack Quaid and Zazie Beetz (in particular) did a fine enthusiastic job of announcing the nominations in Oscar's 23 categories. There were surprises and shut-outs and overperformers as per usual. You can see the complete list of nominations at the Oscar Charts Index Page (though the individual charts per category are not yet updated).

Herewith 11 quick obversations about the nominations before we dive in to individual categories.

1. BARBIE FATIGUE (SORT OF)
While America Ferrera nabbed the Oscar nod we predicted for her in Best Supporting Actress (we went 5/5 on that volatile category in our predictions) Barbie received just 8 nominations overall. That's a lot, of course, but it isn't a lot in terms of expectations and how well the film had been performing at precursors...

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