What's next for this season's Oscar-celebrated directors?

Tis the post-season to wonder about next season... and the seasons after that. While Will Packer, ABC, and the Academy continue to try to dull our love for Oscars, they could never dull our love for the movies themselves. So let's look at what this year's most celebrated filmmakers are up to next. We'll take them in alpha order...

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
PTA, who turns 52 this June, has 11 nominations to his name but no Oscar yet since he just lost his Licorice Pizza directing and writing bids. Generally he takes quite a long time between films though he tends to stay busy inbetwen directing music videos (the latest is Haim's "Lost Track"), fatherhood  since he and Maya Rudolph have four children between the ages of 10 and 17 (one assumes that keeps them busy) and, we hope, tinkering on script ideas. So who knows!?

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Best Director - "How'd They Get Nominated?"

The Best Director Oscar chart is fully revamped with a poll, lots of stats, trivia, and information. If we fused all five directors into one Mecha-Director we'd have a 59 year-old 5'9" Sagittarian living in California who has New Zealand, Irish, and Japanese roots. This fictional Mecha-Director has made 15 movies and been nominated in this category 3 times.

The chart also contains our annual thought experiment: "How'd they get nominated?"...

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NYFF: "Drive My Car"

by Jason Adams

I've never owned a car or enjoyed driving one, and the supposed romantic allure of that particular activity has always eluded me. I know some people find it a meditative state, a vacuum-sealed trance of sorts where you're both static and in motion at once, simply floating down the road, but it's an experience that's always sent me personally hurtling into a panic. Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), the leading man of writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film Drive My Car screening at NYFF this weekend, would find my aversion nutty, and it's his love of long drives that ultimately forms the heart and deepest bond of this turns-out-to-be lovely and moving (in a multitude of ways) movie. It almost convinced me there's something to that whole driving thing! Almost.

Adapted from a short story from famed author Haruki Murakami Drive My Car is by no means a small road trip -- one minute shy of three hours Hamaguchi takes his time getting where he's taking us. And thankfully  the destination's worth the time...

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Cannes at Home: Day 6

by Cláudio Alves

We hit our halfway mark with was a hectic day at the Cannes Film Festival. Mia Hansen-Løve, Nanni Moretti, and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi all premiered films vying for the Palme d'Or. That last one is an especially curious case since, earlier in 2021, Hamaguchi already won big at the Berlinale, taking home a Silver Berlin Bear for his other 2021 movie, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. Beyond those three, attendees were spoiled for choice. In other programs Clio Barnard, Radu Muntean, and Sergei Loznitsa presented their latest. Even in the realm of retrospective screenings, the offer was rich, with JFK, Mulholland Drive, and the Palme d'Or victor Black Orpheus getting another day in the sun.

For simplicity's sake, this home-viewing program shall focus only on past work from the three competition directors…

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