A New Trailer for "Krisha"

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We hope you're having a safe and festive holiday. Hopefully, you're at least having an easier go of it than Krisha.

Set over the Thanksgiving holiday, Krisha follows its titular prodigal mother as she drops into her family after a years long (and substance induced) absence. Things naturally don't go so well. Just in time for the pumpkin pie, a24's next stunner dropped a new trailer!

Awarded both Grand Jury Winner and Audience Award at SXSW this year, this is no straightforward melodrama, but a consuming dive into both Krisha's fractured psyche and the absurd chaos of a bustling family gathering. I was lucky enough to catch it on the festival circuit earlier this month and was over the moon for Trey Edward Shults's debut. The overall package is far less conventional than the trailer here suggests, with nerve-wrattling sound design and editing giving the film a fiercer bite. Though it was recently nominated for the John Cassavettes Award (for features with a budget below $500,000), I was surprised it didn't show up elsewhere - especially considering what an audacious first feature this is.

And just you wait until you get a look at what star Krisha Fairchild can do. Rarely is a female leading role as taxing and broadly demanding as this (let alone for an unknown), yet she remains unflinching, raw, and fully realized.

Krisha will be released in March 2016, and it belongs at the top of your Most Anticipated lists.

Carol Leads Spirit Award Nominations

The Film Independent Spirit Award Nominations are out with Carol leading the way with six nominations. Cary Joji Fukunaga, who the Spirits have always loved, is also on fire with five nominations for his Netflix streaming Beasts of No Nation. 

Yes, darling, six nominations!

BEST FEATURE

• Anomalisa
• Beasts of No Nation
• Carol
• Spotlight
• Tangerine

Two Oscar threats (Carol & Spotlight) two singular critical darlings (Anomalisa & Tangerine) and one whatsit straddling the line between TV & Movie & New Distribution Models (Beasts of No Nation). A shortlist with strong range of comedy, drama, procedural, romance, and queer content.

Sean Baker and his movie camera, the iPhoneBEST DIRECTOR

• Sean Baker, Tangerine
• Cary Joji Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation
• Todd Haynes, Carol
• Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa
• Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
• David Robert Mitchell, It Follows

The critical darling horror flick It Follows (reviewed) just missed the Feature list but was probably close given that it forced a six-wide category for direction. Fun Fact: This is Todd Hayne's sixth (!) nomination at the Spirits for Best Director, which means that, yes, he has been nominated in this category for every single one of his theatrically released features. He's only won it once though (2002's Far From Heaven). More after the jump...

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Special Report: Spirit Awards Preview/Predictions

?????The Spirit Award nominations are announced a week from today. Here's special guest and our podcast cohort Joe Reid to preview/predict the nominations.

The 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards will announce their nominations next Tuesday, the earliest full slate of nominations (the Gothams can call me when they get supporting categories) and for many the clearest opening bell for awards season. After them, the critics awards start rolling in, then the Golden Globe nominations, and by then we're off to the races. I have always found the Spirits to be the most difficult to predict and the most fun. Partly because they happen so early in the season but also partly because the qualifications are always just a bit mysterious.

A reminder, per the Spirits' rules and regs: to qualify, a film must be an American film made for under $20 million, and have either been released in theaters in 2015 or played one of six major U.S. festivals (Sundance, Los Angeles, New Directors/New Films, New York, Telluride, Toronto). Of course, even with those rules, there are splittable hairs. 

predictions after the jump

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Women's Pictures - Jane Campion's An Angel at my Table

With her 1990 film An Angel at my Table, Jane Campion solidified a pattern for herself. Her films would be about extraordinary women in stifling circumstances. Whether it is mental institutions, marital institutions, family, or society, Campion’s heroines have to overcome great difficulties in order to live truly as themselves. An Angel at my Table, based on the autobiographies of New Zealand author Janet Frame, stands out as the only film of Campion’s early body of work that could be comfortably called a biopic. But to dismiss An Angel at my Table as just another biopic would be to ignore the unusual film Campion has made about an unusual woman.

Janet Frame’s life was as strange as any of the twenty works she wrote. She spent her childhood poor but happy in rural New Zealand, grew into an awkward woman whose anxiety was mistaken for mental illness, spent eight years in a mental institution, was freed when her writing was published, and went on to become a New Zealand icon. Campion cast three actresses to play Frame as she matured: Karen Fergusson, Alexia Keogh, and finally the incredible Kerry Fox. The three actresses are unified by a shock of red, unruly hair, and an awkward physicality that show someone more comfortable in her imagination than in the world.

An Angel at my Table is shot in a straightforward style far removed from the canted camera angles and wide angle lenses of Sweetie. The practical reason for this was the film's humble beginnings as a TV miniseries. However, beyond practicality, this less showy camera blocking lends itself to grounding Janet Frame’s story in reality. Frame’s impoverished but happy upbringing, her nightmarish eight year detention in a mental institution, and her subsequent successful writing career are shown in mostly medium or long shots, with Janet at the visually at the center. Typically subjects are set off-center in a shot, because symmetrical framing looks odd to the audience’s eye. Placing Janet at the center of the frame visually sets Janet apart - reacting to, but separate from, the world around her.

Janet Frame's colorful inner life after the jump.

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Links. And Not *Just* Oscar Post-Mortems

The Playlist Jessica Chastain joins the increasingly star-studded cast of The Huntsman - pretty soon no one will remember this started as a Snow White franchise (which is probably why they keep adding big stars).
Vanity Fair Katey wonders if Netflix can stay in the original programming business when its obsessed with nostalgia 
Empire Calista Flockhart and Laura Benanti join TV's Supergirl for the fall as boss and mom respectively (sigh). Benanti is so mega-talented and freaking hilarious. Doesn't anyone want to build a series around her?
US Weekly AHS's "Meep" actor Ben Woolf has died after being hit by a car 
My New Plaid Pants you're probably giving Bryan Singer some side eye for casting yet another super twink beauty in X-Men: Apocalypse. Meet Ben Hardy.
i09 looks at the troubled comics history of Aquaman and the challenges Warner Bros faces in resurrecting him
i09 Something hilarious you've never thought of. The designers on Guardians of the Galaxy spent a lot of time worrying about Groot's crotch. 

Oscar Oscar
Slate on Graham Moore's problematic but well intentioned acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay
IndieWire why the Spirit Awards need to stop mimicking the Oscars 
LA Times was Boyhood, an unusually quiet unfolding drama, undone by the usual outsize Oscar campaigning? 
The Carpetbagger bids the season "adieu" 
Awards Daily I'm with Sasha on this one. Patricia Arquette has been treated horribly after her speech with people willfully misunderstanding. Our outrage culture is doing no one, least of all the progressives (who are so easily outraged and willing to turn on their own) any good. A real pity since Patty has been a wonderful activist over the years. The people leading the hate brigade would do well to step back for a little perspective: guarantee you she was fighting for trans awareness and other social causes before they were.  
In Contention sings the praises of Fox Searchlight and New Regency. They've got two back to back Best Picture winners now. And that aint easy to do.  
The Dissolve just two days after the Oscars, the American Sniper trial ended with a guilty verdict for the man who killed Chris Kyle  
Vulture Michael Keaton stashing his acceptance speech when his name isn't called *sniffle*  
Variety Iñárritu on his own Oscar wins 

And this just in...
The stunt-casting veers away from Oscar winning/nominated beauties of a certain age to...

Make your reservation now. #GagaAHSHotel https://t.co/o9ixi5TaFy

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) February 25, 2015

Apparently they are promising a major renovation to the American Horror Story brand this October. I hope said renovation is giving up that infinitely tired and kinda misogynistic in its relentlessness storyline about the faded vain beauty who wishes she was still in her prime. Is this Gaga peak, Is that enough for you to make reservations after this season's expected downward spiral?