Belated César Winners List

Eeek! During Oscar madness we totally forgot about the Gallic Oscars cross the Ocean. How rude of us! For completism's sake here is the list of winners in case you also missed the news.

BEST PICTURE

• Memoir of War, dir: Emmanuel Finkiel
• The Trouble With You, dir: Pierre Salvadori
• The Sisters Brothers, dir: Jacques Audiard
• Sink or Swim, dir: Gilles Lellouche 
• Guy, dir: Alex  Lutz
• ★ Custody, dir: Xavier Legrand
• In Safe Hands, dir: Jeanne Henry

Custody's four wins reminds us that it's still so weird that France didn't push it as their Oscar prospect last season. The other big winner was Shéhérazade about young lovers on the mean streets of Marseille which was not nominated for best picture but won each of its three nominations. Sink or Swim, the nomination leader and dadbod comedy, which opened too late to be France's Oscar submission last year, only took home one prize. Supporting Actor...

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Watch: Can You Ever Forgive the Rhapsody of High Flying Birds at Studio 54?

Time for a quickied DVD/Blu-Ray/Streaming round up. Here's what's new in the past week or so for home viewing:

OSCAR NOMINEES NEW TO DVD / BLU-RAY

• At Eternity's Gate - Willem Dafoe as Van Gogh. (This was the lowest grossing movie outside of Roma to score a big six Oscar nod this year, earning just $2.2 million. Even nearly half the foreign and doc nominees outgrossed it!)
• Bohemian Rhapsody -In case you wanna lipsynch along at home. Maybe you'll win an Oscar, too?
• Can You Ever Forgive Me? - Hope you enjoyed our Richard E Grant interview this week. We're still rooting for him to pull off a deserving shock upset at the Oscars. We'd totally believe he could if "upsets" happened more often on Oscar night. But mostly they don't...

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"Custody" and "Sink or Swim" Lead the César Nods

by Nathaniel R

"Sink or Swim" leads the César nominations

Apologies that we're late in sharing the news of the César nominations! They arrive so hotly on the heels of the Oscar nominations that it's easy to miss them in the golden rush. This year, Custody (the critically beloved movie that France passed over for Oscar submission this year) and Sink or Swim lead the nominations with ten each but the English language western The Sisters Brothers, from reknowned French auteur Jacques Audiard is close behind with 9. It flopped hard in US theaters but it's reception in France is apparently much rosier. Famous people nominated include Isabelle Adjani, Adele Haenel, Audrey Tatou, and Johnny Depp offspring Lily Rose-Depp but fans of French cinema will recognize a lot more of the names than just those.

Nominations and commentary follow...

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What did you see this weekend?

by Nathaniel R

While there were solid debuts in wide and limited release friday (The House with the Clock In Its Walls, Fahrenheit 11/9, Colette, The Sisters Brothers) it was a rough weekend for wide release newbies Assassination Nation and Life Itself, neither of which managed a top ten showing. But the best news was surely the solid hold from Paul Feig's wildly entertaining comic thriller A Simple Favor. You have to see those nutsy bold performances from both Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively for yourself. I had a blast and I'm going again with another friend soon.

Weekend Box Office Estimates (September 21st-23rd)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺 THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN ITS WALLS $26.8 *NEW*	1. THE WIFE $975K on 468 screens (cum. $4.9) Review, Poster Blurb, Glenn's Oscar

2. A SIMPLE FAVOR $10.4 (cum. $32.5)	2. 🔺 LIZZIE $256k on 240 screens (cum. $325k) Review

3. THE NUN $10.2 (cum. $100) Nun Movies	3. 🔺 COLETTE $156k on 4 screens *NEW*

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And the Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day

by Jason Adams

At several key moments in Jacques Audiard's hymnal The Sisters Brothers time stands still and we watch a curtain gently shift to and fro in the breeze, mid-day sunlight coloring in its folds, making shade where none just was. Take a moment to smell the roses, the film whispers, because hey you never know if and or when you might get shot right in your face... 

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