Platino Nominees: La Llorona, New Order, etc...

Just when you think it's safe to leave 2020 cinema behind, another award pops up! This time it's the 8th annual PLATINO Awards which are for Ibero-American films and television. The Best Film nominees are...

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Best International Feature: France, Portugal, Spain

by Cláudio Alves

Europe is the most represented continent in the history of the Best International Feature Oscar. However, while some of its countries are regularly honored, others have been submitting for decades without luck. France, for instance, is the reigning champion of the category, having been nominated forty times. In contrast, Portugal - my country – holds the record for the most submissions without a single nod. For this chapter in our trip through world cinema, we arrive at these two nations' 2020 submissions as well as Spain's Netflix contender…

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Spain's Three Oscar Submission Finalists

by Nathaniel R

Spain has been chasing Oscars in the Best International Feature category since the very first year of the category's existence. They've been quite successful at it, too, with the third highest nomination count of any country (after France and Italy). The Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España reportedly considered 58 Spanish films this year and though we'd heard they weren't choosing their three finalists until October 10th, word is going around that they've made the decision a bit early and it's these three films as the finalist for the submission honor. In early November they'll choose which will be their submission to the Oscars...

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Horror Costuming: The Skin I Live In

In October, we'll be celebrating the excellence of costume design in horror cinema.

by Cláudio Alves

Pedro Almodóvar's 19th feature harkens back to a time two decades earlier when the Spanish director was one of European cinema's most shameless provocateurs, an enfant terrible willing to rub the face of polite society in utter tastelessness, jolly amorality, and lustful perversity. Adapted from a novel by Thierry Jonquet, The Skin I Live In is a sordid tale that mixes melodrama with horror, handsome mad scientists and beautiful Frankenstein monsters. More than anything, as its title suggests, this is a film about skin and the places people inhabit…

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Beauty Break: Maribel Verdú, Goya Darling and Birthday Girl

This post has been updated from its original form, years ago...

Those Goyas must be heavy!

Happy 50th birthday, today, to Spanish beauty Maribel Verdú of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Pan's Labyrinth fame. How many women can claim to have terrorized Snow White and been tag teamed by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, and knifed a dictator's officer right in the face? How many women have been nominated for a Goya eleven times and won twice*. Just Maribel, that's who... 

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