Best Visual Effects: The most exciting race in years!

by Cláudio Alves

Every year, while most awards obsessives wring their hands over the starrier categories, I focus on those below-the-line categories I've grown to love even more than Best Picture. Costume Design and International Feature are usually the focus of my attention, though every "craft" award tends to entice curiosity and honest emotional investment. All that said, the last category I expected to be excited about on nomination morning is Best Visual Effects. And yet, here we are. It seems this oddball awards season insists on surprising until the very end…

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The Astronaut Dramas of the 2010s

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Two-time Oscar winner Goerge Clooney directs and stars in Netflix’s final awards contender to drop to streaming during this calendar year, the science fiction drama The Midnight Sky. Based on a novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, the film follows a lone scientist (Clooney) in the Arctic who must contact a group of astronauts to stop them from returning to earth. This is Clooney’s first film as an actor since 2016’s Money Monster and his first as a director since 2017’s Suburbicon. The film will join a curiously large cinematic trend of 2010s Hollywood: the astronaut drama...

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Pt 1 - Sizing up Netflix's contenders in all 23 Oscar categories

by Juan Carlos Ojano

It is already November and the pandemic rages on.  With moviegoing risky or unavailable movielovers have turned to streamers for their film consumption. The Academy has even acknowledged this shift in how we consume films by allowing films to qualify for the Oscars even if they only went streaming.  While the past few years have seen the rise of streaming wars (Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV+, and Disney+, etcetera), nobody has been able to match the sheer quantity of content that Netflix has been producing or acquiring. Netflix could well dominate this awards season. But by how much?

Important Caveat: Do note that Netflix has not announced the entirety of its slate through February 28, 2021, the final day of eligibility for this Oscars; pieces are still moving and more films will probably show up. With that, here are Netflix’s contenders in all 23 Oscar categories...

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