Halfway Mark Pt 1: Fav Films & Cinematic Achievements

by Nathaniel R 

Film years always start slow because distributors don't do their work evenly. The second half is more robust of course and we've just entered it. Though I always hope to have screened 50 films from the new year by approximately the halfway mark, this year I'm managed 41 to date. Neverthless, let's take stock of January 1st through July 11th (since we're posting just after Superman's opening). Yes, it's slightly more than six months of cinema but close enough. It's not that all of these "bests" from a shallow pool will linger as "favourites", but neither should they be automatically sacrificed to recency bias in December! 

The unofficial honors (with several write-ups) come after the jump...

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First Oscar Predictions of the Year - Complete!

Whew. That took longer than expected but you can now see all of the "April Foolish" first-round predictions for this Oscar year, albeit compiled in May & June and delivered to you in early July. Since the first wave of 20 categories takes so long to compile (updates are easier) we should note up front that James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg, another film centered on the Nuremberg Trials, was scheduled for a November 2025 release after the weeks of research for these charts so it is not yet included.  That said we can hardly claim it a certainty as a competitor. World War II is no longer automatic "Bait" for voters, Vanderbilt is not (yet) an Oscar player and though the cast has four previously nominated actors none are the sort that Oscar voters ALWAYS watch regardless. Anyway, we'll save it for the next up date.

What follows are a dozen key questions were asking ourselves in July about the upcoming competition before things really heat up during the fall film festivals. We've love to hear your thoughts on these 12 questions...

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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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Eye Candy Predix Pt 2: Will "Wicked" be crowned again in Costume Design?

by Nathaniel R

WICKED FOR GOOD

I cheered when Paul Tazewell won Best Costume Design and Nathan Crowley won Production Design for Wicked and yet I also felt a sense of dread. One of my great popculture fears in this franchise era is that the Oscars will one day lose their identity and become something akin to the Emmys with the same achievements winning again and again. Naturally then I'm excited to see new variations on the pinks and greens and golds and blacks of Wicked's color palette in Wicked For Good but also don't want to see it win back to back Oscars in the eye-candy categories, since it's essentially one long film, split into two. (It's the same reason I rolled my eyes that the Academy felt the need to nominate Stuart Craig and Stepheni McMillan for a full half of the Harry Potter franchise films even though their work was strong).

So what might oppose total Wicked dominance in the eye-candy categories come Oscar time?  Specifically costume design...

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