August. It's a Wrap

Fall Film Season is here, guys and gals! It's finally here. So we'll start saying goodbye to summer, since Telluride, Venice, and TIFF are kicking off to make those newly updated Oscar charts potentially irrelevant. Here's a quick review of highlights from the dog days of summer. 

Ten Highlights
• BlacKkKlansman - Review
• West Side Story - a tag team retrospective
• Suspiria - are you excited for the remake?
• Blueprints: The Marvelous Mrs Maisel - were you hooked with the pilot?
• Crazy Rich Asians Podcast plus Glenn Close 
• The Wife - Nathaniel's poster blurb
• We the Animals - director interview
• Sharp Objects - the shocking series finale
• Cabaret - a tag team retrospective
• Beauty Break: John Cho - will Searching convince Hollywood?

Six Most Discussed Articles
• New Academy Category = Catastrophe - ARGH
• Oscar's Ten All Time Fav Supporting Actresses - from Amy to Thelma
• Oscar's Ten All Time Fav Supporting Actors - from Tommy Lee to Jack
• Oscar Myth-Busting - The Academy Doesn't... no they DO like popular films
• The Devil Wears Prada -Months of Meryl hits a reinvention peak
• 60 Reasons to Love Madonna - for Cinephiles

COMING IN SEPTEMBER
Joaquin and John are gunning for Jake and Riz in The Sisters Brothers, Emma Thompson returns in The Children Act, Blake Lively asks for A Simple Favor. On DVD and Blu-Ray we'll have a chance to check (back) in with Oceans 8, Hereditary, Hot Summer Nights, and Won't You Be My Neighbor? Nathaniel and Chris will be hitting Toronto for daily reports on that wonderful jam-packed film festival of foreign pleasures and Oscar hopefuls. And the month will end with the 1972 Supporting Actress Smackdown (sorry for the delay but now you have more time to watch all five movies).

July. It's a Wrap

July was the month of Emmy nominations, Ingmar Bergman's Centennial, Mamma Mia! melodies, old and new. It was also the month I failed to convince you to watch Harlots (your loss!). Here are 16 highlights from the month as we say goodbye to July.

Miscellania
• Almodóvar and Penelope - filming collaboration #6, Pain and Glory 
• Yes No Maybe So: Aquaman - another DC tragedy or wet fun?  
• The Dark Knight - a rewatch for its 10th anniversary 
• Rear Window -it's still perfect; We checked. 
• Best of 2018 - thus far at the halfway mark in all categories 
• Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood - Good dish or unethical or both? 

Most Discussed
• Amy Adam's 3 Best - Everyone has an opinion!
• Cats to become a movie - How on earth will that work? 
• Months of Meryl: The Hours - Streep unravels exquisitely
• Yes No Maybe So: Boy Erased - will it be one of the year's best?

Oh and 1943 was our Year of the Month
• Casablanca Quotes -Fun to hear all the different choices for "best," wasn't it?
• Mattes, Moons, and Mountains -on For Whom the Bell Tolls' production design
• Supporting Actress Smackdown -Katina vs Lucille vs Gladys vs Paulette vs. Anne 
• Vintage '43 - Magazine covers, happenings, and box office hits
• Soundtracking: Girl Crazy - Judy & Mickey & the American songbook
• The Seventh Victim - a 'polite' horror movie 

COMING IN AUGUST
New Films: Christopher Robin, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, BlackKklansman, Crazy Rich Asians, and The Happytime Murders. The podcast will return to a weekly schedule and we'll have a three part West Side Story retrospective for Leonard Bernstein's Centennial. Otherwise 1972 will be our Year of the Month and since Nathaniel has more time than usual (loss of a financially stabilizing side gig *sniffle* please donate to the site -- see sidebar!) expect a deeper dive into that particular film year. We'll start with Cabaret tomorrow! 

July Oscar Predictions - All Charts Updated

by Nathaniel R

We've been needing to update all the Oscar charts and now we have! The charts are revamped for how we're feeling in early July about what may come to pass in seven months time or so. Big gains this month for A Star is Born, Widows, and Welcome to Marwen with setbacks for If Beale Street Could Talk, Boy Erased, Everybody Knows, and Peterloo.  Meanwhile the two arguably most talked about performances of the year thus far -- Toni Collette in Hereditary and Ethan Hawke in First Reformed make gains on their charts. 

The freshly revamped charts...

PREDICTION INDEX |  PICTURE | DIRECTOR | ACTOR  | ACTRESS | SUPPORTING ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTRESS | SCREENPLAYS | FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM | VISUALS | SOUNDS | ANIMATED FEATURES

and in case you missed it: best of Jan-to-Jun (These are NOT related to predictions!)
18 Fav Male Performances
18 Fav Female Performances (this may be the first time in TFE history when an actress post delivered less comments than its male counterpart post!)
18 Biggest Hits of Many Kinds (blockbusters, arthouse, female directed, etc)
Favorites (So Far) in Multiple Categories

C O N S I D E R - Best of the First Half of the Film Year

by Nathaniel R

For our halfway mark party we've covered biggest hits of multiple kinds, favorite actresses, and favorite actors. To be eligible for these "best ofs / favorites" whatever you'd like to call them lists, a film must have been released from January 1st through June 30th in 2018. Oscar holdovers like Loveless (Russia's nominee) don't count because the Oscar nomination permanently marks them as a 2017 film even though they weren't released until 2018. To conclude our halfway mark year in review party, here are seven favs from each category we hope Oscar will at least think about once the onslaught of fall prestige films happen. So, ready? Here we go...

Click to read more ...

C O N S I D E R - Actresses of 2018, First Half of Year

With the year half over, it's time to look back on the first six months and what treasures they brought us. Here are the 18 performances by actresses we treasured most at the movies thus far this year. We've previously shared the biggest hits in multiple categories at the box office and 18 fav performances by male actors. We hope you'll sound off on these and share a few of your own in the comments... and we hope this list serves as a reminder to Oscar and Globe and SAG voters that amazing performances can happy at any time of the year. Why wait til December to start considering your "Best of" ballot? 

Disclaimer: before we begin I should note that there were a few key bits of actressing I have not yet seen that might have factored in like performances from Game Night, The Seagull, or Hearts Beat Loud.

Okay here we go...

7 LEADING ACTRESSES
(Jan 1st - June 30th releases) 

Toni Collette as "Annie" in Hereditary
What can we add to the already robust conversation around her brilliance? The nuanced construction is a marvel: she's giving you a portrait of an artist's idiosyncractic point of view and convictions, an adult child's contemptuous grief and anger about her parents, and, best of all, her own not always pleasant relationship to mothering. She does all of that while peppering in alarming details that prepare you for the climax. And the crescendo of this star turn! Movies are shot out of sequence which makes this performance even more of a wow.

Rachel McAdams as "Esti Kuperman"
and Rachel Weisz as "Ronit Krushka" in Disobedience
McAdams is in fine form as a woman who's repressed her sexuality for years and surprises with sharp glimpses into the woman that could have been or once was in younger form. But Weisz is holding the whole picture together with a complex take on a more self-actualized woman who nevertheless struggles with intimacy and with reconciling the first half of her life (religious) with the second (secular). It's right up there with her work in Constant Gardener and Deep Blue Sea as the holy trinity of her career.

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C O N S I D E R - Actors of 2018, First Half of Year

With the year half over, it's time to look back on the first six months of the year and what treasures they brought us. Here are the 18 performances by male actors that we liked the most thus far this year. It should probably suffice to say that this list was much easier to come up with then the forthcoming female list since the competition wasn't as fierce. (Four key films I missed that might have played into these categories were The Rider, Lean on Pete, You Were Never Really Here, and Paddington 2)

5 LEADING ACTORS
(Jan 1st through June 30th releases)

Daniel Giménez Cacho as "Don Diego de Zama" in Zama
Though I didn't much care for this film, Giménez Cacho, the talented Mexican/Spanish star (of Blancanieves and Cronos fame... and the unseen narrator of all time Mexican classic Y Tu Mama Tambien) delivers as the frustrated sickly officer of the Spanish crown longing for a transfer that may never come.

Alden Ehrenreich as "Han Solo" in Solo
Mimicry is overrated. It's better to get the spirit of a thing than to duplicate the tics. He manages the former though the script fights against it, refashioning Han as a hero at the beginning. 

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