Can a Good Speech Save An Oscar Campaign?

by Cláudio Alves

Remember when Meryl Streep received the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2017 Golden Globes? Her speech was one for the ages, full of good humor, pathos and a riveting call to arms. So titanic was this acceptance speech that, to this day, I believe that it's what secured a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Florence Foster Jenkins. The performance did get a lot of precursor love, but growing Streep fatigue and a stacked race seemed like indicators of an incoming snub. Then, the Golden Globes happened, right at the end of Oscar voting, and it all changed.

Her speech saved her campaign, even though that wasn't the intention of the gesture, and turned her into a lock many didn't see coming until nomination morning arrived. This year, Tom Hanks might follow in Streep's steps…

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Confessions of a Former Tom Hanks-Skeptic

by Cláudio Alves

Tom Hanks has been nominated five times before. Can he get his sixth nod for playing Fred Rogers?

There was a time when I considered Tom Hanks one of Hollywood's most overrated actors. For years, his consecutive Oscar wins were the nadir of the actor's undeserved success, a symbol of the Academy' unfairness. In Philadelphia, he was overshadowed by a more awards-worthy Denzel Washington and, in Forrest Gump, he managed the impossible feat of being even more annoying than the rest of that insufferable Best Picture-winner. Worst of all, Tom Hanks had become something of a personal synonym for boredom.

I'm not proud of my youth's distaste for the actor, even though I still hold a negative opinion regarding his Oscar victories. The rest of my dislike, however, has vanished into thin air. I can pinpoint the exact moment when such growth occurred. When the clouds of skepticism parted, they illuminated the path by which I'd become a passionate fan of Tom Hanks, one of contemporary Hollywood's best actors…

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Tom Hanks Made Me Cry

by Murtada Elfadl

When I woke up this morning I didn’t know that Tom Hanks was going to make me cry before I finished my morning coffee. I made the mistake of reading the NY Times profile of him from last week so early while my emotions were still in a daze. Or maybe that’s just the power of Hanks. Ostensibly an interview to promote A Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood, the profile ends up becoming a treatise on what a nice guy Hanks is. As if we had any doubts.

Just the other day on the podcast I was questioning whether any press interviews or media could add anything that we didn’t know already to the very unmysterious Hanks. The trick this profile pulls off is giving up that illusion early on. The writer knows Hanks is nice, the reader knows Hanks is nice so she proceeds to list the many nice things he has done over the years. However the part that really got to me is his simple advise about expectations between parents and children:

“Somewhere along the line, I figured out, the only thing really, I think, eventually a parent can do is say I love you, there’s nothing you can do wrong, you cannot hurt my feelings, I hope you will forgive me on occasion, and what do you need me to do? You offer up that to them. I will do anything I can possibly do in order to keep you safe. That’s it. Offer that up and then just love them.” 

The writer admits that he made her cry. So did I. I immediately wanted to call my mother.

Interestingly this writer, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, also profiled Bradley Cooper around this time last year. However that interview ended up being about how Cooper doesn't want to be interviewed and was the start of his cagey campaigning for Oscar that netted no major wins for A Star is Born (2018). These big media profiles still matter. The tone this time is very different, we will have to see how much that affects Oscar. One thing I’m sure of is that having niceness and geniality celebrated in such a big way is duly needed and appreciated. 

Have you seen Beautiful Day yet? Has a celebrity profile ever brought tears to your eyes?

Questions we're asking ourselves about Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor

All Oscar charts are being updated over the next four days but we started with Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor because there are so many questions haunting us. So go ahead and answer the following quandaries if you can...?

1. Can Tom Hanks finally break his strange Oscar curse?
Before anyone had seen A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood he was a lock "on paper" in Best Actor. But the movie turned out to not be a biopic at all but something far more creative and we'd argue more successful than a biopic would have been, in which Mr. Rogers is more of a symbol and catalyst for another man's journey. It's a gorgeous movie but the switcheroo from expectations to reality will likely throw some Oscar voters as well as general moviegoers. Hanks has been delivering better performances of late than the kind he used to win Oscars for but AMPAS hasn't nominated him in 19 years. Should we expect that they'll continue that "you already got yours" cold shoulder rather than be predicting him? 

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Best of the London Film Festival 2019

Please welcome guest contributor Scott Thomson, who just participated in the Critics Mentorship Programme at the London Film Festival. We've invited him to tell us about his favourites from the festival, which just concluded. -Editor

Monos, Colombia's Oscar submission, won the film festival's top honors

by Scott Thomson

The programming team at the London Film Festival delivered a magnificent slate of films this year, working within a series of expertly curated strands to shape the programme into something that caters to all tastes. This year there was a focus on developing a hub for the Festival, with a schedule of free events to generate a more connected and interactive vibe.  As London falls fairly late in the Festival calendar, it does not tend to get a great deal of World Premieres, but the buzz and atmosphere around both the larger and smaller offerings is undeniable and LFF deserves a lot of credit for being a festival that is very much for the audiences.

With 40% of all films on the programme this year were from female filmmakers this is another huge step in the right direction for festival curation; the content is most certainly available and other festivals should take note. With 28 films under my belt this year I have taken in a lot of what I was hoping to, but inevitably missed out on some wonderful stuff. Here are some of my ‘Bests’ from London this year: 

Adele Haenel and Celine SciammaBest Film: Monos (which also took the Best Film prize at the Festival). There is not an ounce of fat on Colombia's Oscar submission. It's thrilling, progressive cinema with an outstanding young cast. Everything is cinema magic including that machine energy Mica Levi score. 

Best Director: Celine Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. My my my, I’m still swooning. Sciamma’s gentle gaze on this beautiful love story is so open hearted and considerate...

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