Music Supervisors & Casting Directors have no Oscar category. But they do get prizes.

Here's two awards curiousity for your afternoon. Both involve guilds that differentiate their prizes not by genre but by budget (i.e. big, small, micro): Casting and Music Supervision.

The Guild of Music Supervisors has been giving out awards for six years now. The music supervisor's job entails finding pre existing music, getting rights to all the songs, overseeing all music related aspects of a production. This year their big winners were all films which various people have labelled "snubbed" over the past week: Straight Outta Compton, Carol, and Diary of a Teenage Girl. And Furious 7's "See You Again," which did not make Oscar's Original Song nominated shortlist, takes Original Song. (more about their awards here.) 

The Casting Society's "Artios" awards do things a little differently. They divide their awards both by budget and by comedy/drama. Their big budget winners: The Big Short / Straight Outta Compton. Their indie winners: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Room. Their low budget winners: Dope and The Stanford Prison Experiment.

That last one is a really great call because the film hasn't been in the conversation at all which means they were clearly thinking about its actual merit as opposed to hearing its name constantly in the "awards" circus. I've said since I saw it that one day it might read as a who's who of male stars before they were big. (More about their awards here.)

CAS Nominees & Oscar Predictions. Do you like the sound of these movies?

The Cinema Audio Society, which awards the sound mixing in movies, is our only real clue beforehand of how the two sound categories (mixing and editing) at the Oscars might go. The MPSE, which honors their brethren, the sound editors, doesn't announce its nominees for "The Golden Reels" until two weeks after the Oscar nominations. So this morning's announcement is another last minute reminder that Nathaniel (c'est moi) needs to get both his final Oscar predictions on (TODAY AND TONIGHT) and publish those Film Bitch Award nominations -- at least the Oscar correlative categories (TODAY AND TOMORROW) -- which are his own long-running film honors and should not to be confused with the Team Experience Awards which come from the contributors here and are going up in one week's time. 

So basically ALL of that is happening... simultaneously. Maybe. Definitely. Hopefully. But how ???

Surveillance footage of TFE Headquarters, shows Nathaniel stockpiling snacks, Motrin, and water bottles. The latter he will both drink from and pee in, as he's not allowed to move until Friday morning once Oscar noms have sufficiently sunken in. But first he is downing pots of coffee, typing this very post you're reading and begging himself to quit typing in the third person.

CAS Nominees for the film year, as well as both Oscar Predictions and Film Bitch Awards. Yes we're doing it all (Yipee) after the jump

Click to read more ...

Sicario's Hell in Harmony

Chris here. Available this week on DVD/Blu-ray is Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, a controlled descent into the cartel battles being waged between the Mexican and American borders. Like the ongoing war on drugs, Villeneuve's film presents a complex landscape of violence wherein rulebooks have been forsaken - and on both sides. It's a masterful piece of filmmaking (recently nominated by the PGA, ADG, and WGA), and Villeneuve has assembled an intimidating group of craftspeople working harmoniously to create a living hell.

Front and center is Emily Blunt's idealistic and by-the-book agent Kate Macer, straining composure and grasping for opportunity while in over her head. Blunt is ferociously present and flummoxed, giving as much subtlety and nuance as she has in her broader roles like The Devil Wears Prada. She's so believably rattled that you're reaching for fistfuls of cigarettes along with her. It's a performance that deserves to be right in the thick of the Best Actress conversation, even in such a deep field as this. While many have claimed her to be far too passive, her lack of control is just another element of Villeneuve's all-pervasive synthesis.

more after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Star Wars & Oscar. How Will "The Force Awakens" Fare?

The second that people started realizing that everyone was actually loving the new Star Wars episode, you could feel the Oscar buzz wave building and building and broke with lots of "Best Picture nomination! demands online. The BFCA even announced a ridiculously embarrassing extra ballot measure to ask the members if they'd like to add the movie into their Best Picture lineup after the fact. In short: no one will ever take this group seriously again. (Sigh) 'The Force Awakens will be swimming in Oscars!' the internet seems to have proclaimed en masse.

But not so fast young padewans.

Oscar nominations can prove elusive, especially for franchises, family films, and genre films three groups to which Star Wars belongs. People will cite "Oscar voters grew up with the franchise -- they'll be nostalgic!" but, consider: I grew up with the franchise. I loved episode 7. And I wouldn't vote for it. 

This is not to say that I would make a typical Oscar voter. I would not. But typical Oscar voters tastes lie somewhere in the space between critics and general audiences. Put more plainly: there's a difference between totally enjoying a spectacle and wanting it honored as the very "Best" of its year.

Let's look back at Star Wars Oscar history to get some clues as to how The Force Awakens will fare after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Podcast: Room, Brooklyn, Spotlight

Nathaniel and Nick are back, after an unexpected podcast hiatus, to catch up before the Thanksgiving holiday. 

43 minutes 
00:01 Intros, Carol's opening, Hateful 8 gossip
04:30 Split feeling on Room
11:19 Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn
20:06 Complicated platform releases, audience confusion, and dismissed "flops" of October including Truth
32:25 Delayed reaction to Black Mass
34:40 Spotlight's conflicts, arc, quality

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments won't you?

Brooklyn, Spotlight, Room