Outstanding Achievement in Belated Linkage

It's so tough to keep up with other movie stuffs during precursor week. So here are several news items, essays, montages to help up catch us all up. Ready. Set. Go...

NEWS
i09 One sorcerer supreme is not enough for Doctor Strange star Benedict Cumberbatch. He's also signed on to play Jasper Maskelyne, a Nazi-fighter War Magician
The Wrap Universal's Mummy reboot will swap the gender of the monster. Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: Secret Service) will star
Film Stage George Clooney's next directing job is the noir Suburbicon. He's lining up an all star cast and Julianne Moore just joined

Playbill Lee Daniels creating a girl band tv series for Queen Latifah (Empire was such a succcess that there are  lot of music industry series about to hit or in development)
/Film Ang Lee's Thrilla in Manila, a boxing drama is said to be eyeing Ray Fisher as Muhammad Ali and David Oyelowo as Joe Frazier
Guardian looks like it's Idris Elba vs Matthew McConaughey for the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King's  Dark Tower

OF INTEREST
Film School Rejects has a curious but interesting take on why people need to stop naming Mad Max Fury Road "Best" of the year
Film School Rejects on the Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation commentary track
Viv & Larry interview with illustrator Alejandro Mogollo Diez who specialize in movie icons
MNPP Rob Kazinsky's new tv show has been renamed... but will it help? People really aren't into the Frankenstein myth that much as evidenced at box office 
Pajiba's review of Joy is getting a lot of traction for its skewering of David O. Russell as a mansplainer of feminism. I suppose I should write about this movie. It's not great but I don't think it's getting a fair shake 
Comics Alliance Frank Miller is not into Netflix's Daredevil choices 

LIST MANIA / AWARDAGE
Washington DC Film Critics award Spotlight best pic but give multiple prizes to Room, Mad Max: Fury Road, and The Revenant
African American Film Critics Assn give Straight Outta Compton Pic, Ensemble, and Supporting Actor (Jason Mitchell - weirdly ignored by NAACP). Creed wins three prizes including Breakthrough for Michael B Jordan... um, he broke through years ago people!
Vulture & Slate both do best TV shows of 2015: Jessica Jones, Mad Men, Jane the Virgin etc
The New York Times best theater of 2015: Hamilton, The King and I, Lupita Nyong'o etc

TODAY'S VIEWS
If you haven't yet seen these give them a spin. It's David Ehrlich's Top 25 Films of the Year (his editing skills are absurd but so is having Tangerine way down at #24), Channing Tatum saying 8 Hateful things to a kitten "you know what sucks about you, dude. You don't have thumbs" You know what sucks about you, Chan. You're not in nearly enough of The Hateful Eight to make that 182 minu--- oops, embargo.

THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2015: A VIDEO COUNTDOWN from david Ehrlich on Vimeo.

Golden Globe Nominations

"Previously on The Precursors..."  Gotham, Spirit, OFCS, NBR, NYFCC, LAFCA, BSFC, SAG

The shiny round fun began at 8:00 AM for the Globes annual film and television party with the nominees split, sometimes ungracefully, into Comedy/Musical and Drama categories. Except those pesky supporting actors! They have to share everything because who needs character actors (see also rampant category fraud every year plus SAG's unfortunate Ensemble rules) . America Ferrerra, Angela Bassett, Chloe Moretz and Dennis Quaid were on hand to read the nominations aloud.

Ready? Clicking on any of the names or titles will take you to previous articles about them. We are happy to report that director Todd Haynes' latest masterpiece (dude is a genius if you haven't heard) Carol led the nominations with 5 in total.

Full nomination list with commentary after the jump...

COMEDY/MUSICAL FILMS

Click to read more ...

SAG Award Nominations

Early this morning while waiting for the Screen Actors Guild Nominations to come i wondered out loud "what will be the insane 'Naomi Watts in St Vincent' nomination today?". No one could have expected that the answer would be "all of them".

Ladies and gentlemen the weirdest bunch of nominations ever for the SAG AWARDS which will be broadcast on Saturday January 30th on TBS/TNT. Many people will be rethinking their Oscar predictions this morning but it's important to remember that there is extremely little overlap between nominating committee members of SAG (chosen at random each year from their huge membership) and Oscar's acting branch (a few thousand elite people). 

In fact, Melodipopvision is correct when she suggests "Isn't SAG basically now an annual list of "prestige actors I've liked in some other stuff"?"

Normally we love surprises during awards season but when they're as unfortunate as so many of these surprises this morning, the terror begins to set in. What kind of Oscars are we going to get this year?

Nominations with commentary & statistics after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Annie Awards Give Love to Pixar (and "Judy" in The Revenant!)

The Annie Awards, now in their 43rd year, seemed to have stabilized after their controversial laden years when people felt they were to beholden to Dreamworks Animation (am I remembering this correctly?) within their voting ranks. But their nominations often still feel quite random as in voice acting where Richard Kind was shut out for "bing bong" in Inside Out. Or Tom Noonan, who voices almost every character in Anomalisa, being ignored. Or their character design and visual effects nominations sometimes specifying individual scenes or categories and sometimes just labelled "all". And the varying number of nominations per category.

In short: their executive body really needs to sharpen up their rules so they feel more respectable / consistent.

But it was a good morning for Pixar since Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur dominated with 14 and 10 nods respectively. As for their competition for Oscar gold, good showings for Anomalisa, Shaun the Sheep and Peanuts with 5 nominations each. The low profile but reportedly excellent Brazilian feature Boy and the World received 3 nominations.

Even some live action films get honored by the Annies since most films get computer animated assists these days so... what's that? The Revenant was nominated? See more after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Manuel Gives Thanks

Manuel here. Has it really been a year since the last time I gave thanks (not coincidentally with another pic of Ms Blanchett)? I feel as though I should be giving thanks in front of some sort of food, so imagine I’ve come with a full dozen donuts from Donut Time.

I’m thankful…

- For unabashedly queer Christmas flicks featuring fab ladies.
- For having had the chance to see over twenty-four films at the New York Film Festival (and having been in the same room as Kate Winslet!!)
- For Wiig, in all and every incarnation. 
- For Joy and Joy (and consequently, Amy Poehler and Brie Larson).

- For all the delicious food on Please Like Me, a show you should all be watching!
- For Mad Men’s beautiful and perfect ending.
- For Twelve Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer, one of the greatest TV episodes this year.
- For Ben Whishaw, in all and every incarnation. (What a year he's had: Spectre, Suffragette, The Lobster, etcetera)
- For Sutton Foster, National Treasure, who was luminous in The Wild Party.
- For Adele’s laughter (and music).
- For Anna Kendrick, whose “Still Hurting” is still making me ache.

- For TV’s funny ladies. And really, that image doesn't do justice to the amazing talent on display this year (Gina! Constance! Tracee! Ellie! Amy! Ilana! Abbi! The entire Orange is the New Black cast!)

And lastly...

 - For all of you who comment and indulge me as I gab about gay things on HBO. Can you believe it's been a full six months since I started this cultural history? It definitely wouldn't be the same without the engaging and generous TFE community, so thank you all for following along!

Manuel Betancourt (News / HBO LGBT) 
An avid moviegoer, this academically minded Colombian wrote an entire dissertation on queer film fandom as, perhaps, a way of reconciling his inner critic and inner fan. Both thankfully, are given plenty of room to play here at TFE & at Manuel's own blog where he puts his queer theory training to work. His favorite film genre is "soul-crushingly depressing if beautifully lensed relationship dramas with juicy parts for actresses." Follow him on Twitter!