Best Live Action Short Film Category Reviewed

by Eric Blume

The Live Action Short category offers a much more diverse slate for this category than last year, when almost every short film centered around young boys in danger.  There’s some fine filmmaking here, all witness to the talent of their directors who should all have bright futures ahead of them.

Brotherhood comes to us from production companies across four countries (Canada, Tunisia, Qatar, and Sweden…quite a combo!) and deals with a Tunisian family.  The son returns from fighting in Syria with a young new wife, much to the consternation of his father.  Director Meryam Joobeur delivers a nice twist on the “sins of the father” genre here, and she has an excellent sense of how to use the camera.  The actors are often taking up 80% of the frame, and she creates an ambiguous sense of location and wonderful sense of dislocation with this smart framing...

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Weekend Box Office

It was a quiet weekend at the box office with both new wide releases (horror film Gretel and Hansel and revenge thriller The Rhythm Section) opening softly, apart from a few noteworthy monetary marks for indie films...

Weekend Box Office January 31st through February 2nd (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended
WIDE RELEASE (800+ screens)	PLATFORM TITLES
"Gretel and Hansel"	Oscar Nominated Short Film "Hair Love"
1 BAD BOYS FOR LIFE  $17.6 (cum. $148)	1 🔺 OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS $1.0 on 460  screens *NEW* THE CHARTS ★
2 1917  $9.6 (cum. $119.2) THE ACTING,  CONTINUOUS SHOT ★	2 THE LAST FULL MEASURE $519k on 617 screens (cum. $2.0)
3 DOLITTLE $7.7 (cum. $55.2) THIS ODD FRANCHISE	3 WEATHERING WITH YOU $405k on 224 screens (cum. $7.2) REVIEW  ★

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Doc Corner: Ranking the Documentary Short Nominees from Least to Most Depressing

By Glenn Dunks

We have done this very particular ranking twice before now. Does that make it a tradition? We have only had to skip one year (2017) of Best Documentary (Short Subject) nominees because that year’s batch were a happy lot for a change.

This year’s nominees for what is often the most dour of categories could have certainly been darker – trust me, I’ve seen the other films that were shortlisted. They didn't nominate the one about murderous street gangs or the one about the humanitarian crisis following Hurricane Maria! Still, there are big themes among this year’s strong selection of titles (although it must be said, the feature category is far superior): we are taken from a warzone in Afghanistan to a man-made tragedy in South Korea, refugee stories from Vietnam to Sweden, and back to the streets of Missouri.

The nominees are:

In the Absence
Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl)
Life Overtakes Me
St. Louis Superman
Walk Run Cha-Cha

Let’s take a deeper look…

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Links

Gurus of Gold - current predictions
Cartoon Brew - talks to the directors of all the animated short nominees
Movie City News - David Poland thinks the Oscar season is not too short but not short enough. Eeep! We wildly disagree since the shortened season made voters even lazier than usual.

More after the jump including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Under the Skin, Lee Grant, and List-Mania...

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Final Oscar Nomination Predictions

The 92nd annual Academy Awards are almost upon us. They're just 29 days away at this writing. We'll have the official Oscar charts back up for you as soon as is humanly possible once the potentially exciting event has occurred on Monday (they're coming down now to prep for Monday's unfurling). But until then, it's time to make final predictions.

BEST PICTURE

The sure things: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Parasite, The Irishman, Joker, Jojo Rabbit, 1917. That's six titles that we can't imagine missing on Monday morning given their success to date in precursor awards and with critics and the public. The extremely probable: Marriage Story. The only reason we've begun to worry is that there's been virtually no traction for Noah Baumbach in Best Director which suggests that people have reduced the movie to "an actor's showcase"... but then where was the SAG Outstanding Cast nomination? It's likely in but if there's a shock omission Monday morning...

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