You talkin' about De Niro? You talkin' about De Niro?

It's a performance episode of "Contrarian Corner". Here's Ben Miller...

The narrative has been pushed.  Robert De Niro is back! Al Pacino is back! Scorsese and Netflix are a match made in heaven! The Irishman is the Best Picture frontrunner.  I'm not here to disagre with the critical acclaim.  But, we need to have a talk about what is going on with Robert De Niro.  

There are three main problems...

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"The Irishman" isn't "The Irishman"

by Cláudio Alves

Martin Scorsese's latest magnum opus is an epic in most senses of the word. It's one of the master's most dense exercises, using biography as a vehicle to explore the great social transformations of post-war American Society. The Irishman is a portrait of Death as an ever-encroaching certainty, a treatise on the painful passage of time and a theatre of memory where the spiritedness of youth is curdled by the self-image of the old men who revisit it. 

That's heavy stuff but here's something lighter: As the film's very credits show, this gargantuan feat of cinema isn't called The Irishman at all…

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All Oscar Charts Updated

by Nathaniel R

Peggy (Anna Paquin) silently judging "The Irishman" as it moves up the charts

Every Oscar chart has been at least slightly revised with Joker, The Irishman, and The Two Popes on the rise while JoJo Rabbit and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood take a few hits. For now we're only predicting two nominations for Richard Jewell though we do fear that it could grow larger still since critics and the Academy regularly lose their minds when confronted with the uneven acting and flat visuals of Clint Eastwood dramas. We'll never understand this annual glitch in the matrix.

Some risks we're taking at the moment: trying snubs for Frozen 2, Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe, and Tom Hanks on for size to see how those particular charts feel without them as predicted nominees. 

Will they or won't they? It feels like Little Women and The Farewell are both on the bubble of a Best Picture nod. It would be fun to predict both but could they really overcome audience hit Ford V Ferrari and Eastwood bait Richard Jewell, simultaneously since both fit more neatly into the kind of stories (aka true and about men... sigh) that Oscar prefers?

UPDATED CHARTS 
INDEX | PICTURE | DIRECTOR
ACTRESS | ACTOR | SUPP' ACTRESS | SUPP' ACTOR | 
SCREENPLAYS | VISUAL | SOUND | 
ANIMATED & DOCUMENTARY | INTERNATIONAL FEATURE 

Tweetweek: Physical Media, Cute Dogs, and "Forin Langages"

Forin Langage waited for the old Wizard while smoking his second pipe of the day- which, incidentally, had followed his second breakfast... https://t.co/Zr6VFIPTgi

— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) November 9, 2019

You have to stan Guillermo Del Toro for that hilarious read of a very dumb consumer. After the jump several other curated tweets because they were either amusing or thought-provoking...

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Musings from SAG screenings (Pt 1): The Farewell, The Irishman, Marriage Story

Special Secret Guest Post!

This New-York-based performer (and Emmy-nominated writer) has been a SAG member for 19 years, though this is his first time on the SAG Awards Nominating Committee.  He works primarily in television -- most famously, playing a role on a series that has been seen in over 100 countries. We've invited him to share impressions from SAG Nominating Committee screenings which are happening left and right of late. Here we go...

THE FAREWELL:  For what it’s worth, this is the only screening I’ve been to where the movie itself—not the panelist, but the movie itself—got a standing ovation.  I, frankly, wasn’t bowled over by it (I thought, for such a dramatic subject, the emotions were curiously muted—I didn’t feel much during the movie, but maybe that’s me)…But anyway, the crowd loved it.  When Awkwafina came out for the Q&A, the comments were positively effusive. One guy called it a “perfect” movie.  Everything was perfect, he said: the acting, the writing, the directing, the editing. (The editing?) With a celebrity in the room, it’s hard to know when people are really being honest with themselves.  But Awkwafina seemed super cool.

Side note: SAG members ask the dumbest questions.  One person asked Awkwafina how she got her start in the business—which is fine, but I’m thinking, really?  You’re in a room full of peers, you’ve just spent two hours watching something that’s ripe for discussion, and this is what you ask?  Look it up online. At least it gave her an entree to talk about her youtube video “My Vag,” which, amusingly, caught a few people off-guard. 

The Irishman and Marriage Story after the jump...

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