Oscar Volley: Best Director is an embarrassment of riches

The Oscar Volleys are back! Tonight, it's time for Cláudio Alves Eric Blume to discuss the Best Director race...

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, Paul Thomas Anderson | © Warner Bros.

CLÁUDIO: This early in the season, every race is somewhat volatile, prone to radical changes down the road to Oscar. However, I think that Best Director feels especially mercurial as far as nominations are concerned, though not for a lack of contenders - quite the opposite! Voters are spoiled for choice from a roster of strong candidates, all with mighty campaigns behind them, sterling reviews and eye-catching narratives. So much so that only PTA feels secure in his nomination bid, all but locked for the honor unless AMPAS pulls a 2012 on us.

Personally, I can't complain, even if he has been way more worthy of these plaudits in the past and should have already won a couple of Oscars - There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread come to mind. Of course, One Battle After Another is excellent, not some mediocrity destined to win apologies in the form of unwarranted trophies. The "River of Hills" chase sequence alone will surely be played in all tributes to PTA's career in a couple of decades. And yet, my mind can't help but wander to The Departed when pondering OBAA at the Oscars...

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The siren song of "Sinners" vampires

By Lynn Lee   

[Warning: SPOILERS]  Sinners has a secret hiding in plain sight, and it’s not the vampires. You'll have the chance to see this delightful surprise for yourself  (if you haven't already) when Sinners arrives on HBO/Max on July 5.  Sinners isn’t really – or at least isn't exclusively – a horror movie.  At its core it’s a musical, and a thumping good one at that.  Or, as one review headline put it: “Finally, A Transcendental Southern Gothic Vampire Musical Blockbuster.” 

I would never have predicted that combination of words could describe a Ryan Coogler movie, yet here we are.  Joking aside, it’s as apt a tribute as any to the impressive scope and ambition of his cinematic moonshot...

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Link vs Link

• The Guardian ranks the best "Vs" movies after the success of Godzilla vs Kong. Really fun list
• /Film You've probably heard by now that Rian Johnson scored a massive deal for his Knives Out sequels. They'll be going to Netflix for um... $400 million. Daniel Craig will be reprising his role for new mysteries.
• AV Club Edward James Olmos talks about his "random roles" in this always engaging series

More after the jump including Lil Nas X, Olivia Colman, Kung Fu, Thandiwe Newton, and new projects from Sam Mendes and Alex Garland...

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Posterized: Michael B Jordan

by Nathaniel R

Photographed by Kayla Reefer for The New York TimesAny list of the newest generation of exciting movie stars would have to include Michael Bakari Jordan (aka Michael B Jordan), and presumably way up top. The Jersey-raised actor, started young on television as a teen actor with acclaimed work on The Wire. With a name so reminiscent of a superstar in another field, it felt like a dare; How could he be that big for the movies? When he hit his mid 20s, though, the movies came calling to make good on the pop culture connotations of that name. It's been a match made in heaven thus far.

All that said he's been strangely absent from our movie screens since proving his film-carrying charisma so thoroughly with the one-two punch of Fruitvale Station and Creed. But then came 2018 to prove to us that he'd been hard at work all along but movies have their own temperamental calendars and sometimes they all get bunched up together. Four movies arrived in quick succession, one of them likely to be the biggest hit he'll ever have. He's already an Emmy nominee for producing the TV movie Fahrenheit 451 earlier this year, but the Oscar nomination has to date eluded him. Will that change with the Black Panther campaign? We don't yet know though we definitely hope so since it's his second, not his first, nomination worthy role; Oscar was sleeping on that whole Creed success back in 2015, a movie that was wildly better than it had any right to be given its provenance.

How many of his Michael B Jordan's key movies and TV shows have you seen? The posters are after the jump.

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Links: A Star is Born obsessions, Scarlett's big payday, Aladdin Teases

• Broadway World Anthony Ramos, of Hamilton fame and currently onscreen as Lady Gaga's bestie in A Star is Born, will headline the film version of Lin Manuel Miranda's In the Heights
• Variety Steven Yeun, Wong Kar Wai and Awkwafina are VIPs at the Hawaii Film Festival. Zhang Yimou's Shadow will open the fest.
• /Film John Carpenter is NOT happy that Dwayne Johnson is remaking Big Trouble In Little China
• /Film Guy Ritchie lines up stars for his next film Toff Guys including Henry Golding

More after the jump including Marvel superhero updates, Scarlett Johansson's payday, Willam and Shangela in A Star is Born, and the fresh teaser to Disney's next billion-dollar grosser Aladdin...

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