Podcast: "Silence" and "20th Century Women"

Nick and Nathaniel and special guest Chris Feil (who you read hear at TFE at least twice a week) talk new flicks in our post Golden Globe/DGA nominations world.

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Globe & DGA intro...
04:00 Martin Scorsese's Silence 
18:31 Extremely wandering conversation alert: Silence, 20th Century Women, Paterson, Rogue One, new movie trailers...
27:00 The brilliant 20th Century Women
39:50 Aquarius, Demon, Pervert Park

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? Are you planning to watch Aquarius on Netflix?

Silence & 20th Century Women

"Having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world."

This is the mantra I will hold close if Bening misses the Best Actress list and Mike Mills misses the Original Screenplay list for the grand wise funny altogether fantastic 20th Century Women. Consider that the final FYC as Oscar ballots close. 

(Also it's how I'm going to survive 2017; I'm going to know so much about the world soon!)

FYC: Best Original Screenplay, Toni Erdmann

by Daniel Crooke

While you will find ancient cities, hairy beasts, and moments of jaw-dropping audacity steering the rudder of its staggering runtime, you won’t hear a film score in Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann – an epic of the heart and soul that depends on its screenplay to direct emotional payoffs the way many films depend on their orchestra. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly globalizing yet regionally fractured Europe, the central couple in Toni Erdmann is not a pair of battle-scarred lovers or unlikely allies in combat but an estranged father and daughter, torn apart by generational attitudes in the culture war.

This central reconciliation resonates thematically now more than ever, at a time when capitalist societies across the Western world forgo compassion and human consequence in pursuit of a more profitable bottom line. In her hysterical, observant comedy, Ade crafts a squirrely, screwy rebuke to anesthetized corporate cold-heartedness but – more importantly – champions a disappearing social fabric by weaving together the frayed ends of a family unit...

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FYC: Best Adapted Screenplay, Love & Friendship

By Tim

Over the course of 21 years and four features, Whit Stillman's dominant themes as a storyteller have remained steady: an affectionate contempt for the economically and intellectually well-off and their aspirations to become even better; and a love of using language as a dueling weapon, with characters using dialogue as a means of asserting superiority and dominance. In both of these respects, we might say that he's always been making Jane Austen movies. For what are Austen's books, if not loving but merciless dissections of the social codes of the upper-middle-class of her own world?

The marriage of Stillman and Austen was thus as inevitable as it proves to be welcome with Love & Friendship, which nobody could recklessly call "the best" Austen adaptation ever. But it might be the most Austen-esque...

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Thoughts on this season's BAFTA nominations

La La Land was the not unexpected leader for the BAFTA nominations. Slightly less known ahead of time was what film would threaten its leader status and that is arguably more surprising: divisive Nocturnal Animals tied for second place with the not very divisive Arrival with nine nominations each.

The film suffering the most this morning from lack of BAFTA love is surely Loving, which had the advantage of a popular new homegrown star Ruth Negga but missed in all categories but for "Rising Star" for Ruth Negga. The nominations in all categories after the jump...

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