March. It's a Wrap

March was busy busy busy once we wrapped up Oscar. Three series returned: Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Ask Nathaniel, and Posterized. Anne Marie spent a month w/ Ida Lupino, Manuel and Nathaniel said goodbye to Looking, the TCM festival and Mad Men premiere, and the finale of the Film Bitch Awards 2014. Whew.

Most Popular
Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella met plenty of silly outrage criticism for its actually thoughtful gender politics, but the handsome and well-reviewed production made a lot of money, continuing both Disney's fairy tale hot streak and Downton Abbey's star-making power. And FWIW, Kenneth Branagh probably needed this. The Sound of Music was also on the world's mind as it hit its 50th, prompting events, handprint ceremonies, and our own favorite things... by which we mean "shots".

Oscar Watching
Cinderella started the race for Costume & Production Design competitions but the talk this month was whether the Academy would go back to 5 Best Pictures.

Monthly Playlist
The phenomenon that is "Empire" concluded its first season and got everyone talking Emmy for Best Actress. Madonna made her best record in 10 years with "Rebel Heart" inspiring us to imagine a video album crafted by favorite auteurs. Three final hot tracks for the March play list: The "Firefly Theme Song" as interpreted by the cast of "The Flash," an all male version of Chicago's "Cell Block Tango," and Carly Rae Jepsen's "I Really Like You" feat. Tom Hanks.

7 Other Key Posts
We Can't Wait - Our 15 Most Anticipated Movies of 2015 
The Rise and The Fall - of Dreamworks Animation, a retrospective investigation
Pretty Woman at 25 - an ode to Julia Roberts' infectious laughter 
Run All Night - away from Liam Neeson's increasingly tired ass-kickery? 
Richard Glatzer RIP - the co-director of Still Alice passes away 
Posterized: Judi Dench - a true late bloomer, becoming a star in her 60s 

Hot Piece(s) o' the Month
Sophia Loren in Yesterday Today and Tomorrow (1963) and Jake Gyllenhaal in the Southpaw (2015) trailer 

Coming in April
Ex-Machina and artificial intelligence, The Woman in Gold, Tony Awards talk, the films of Jane Campion, Daredevil on Netflix, the return of 'Mad Men @ the Movies', Clouds of Sils Maria, and a celebration of Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca.

We Can't Wait 2015. The Complete Series

In the We Can't Wait series, just wrapped, we looked at our team's most anxiously awaited movies for the 2015 film year that's just begun. ("It's March!" you cry. It's okay. You're new. Our calendar goes Oscar to Oscar.) For the curious, the team decided and yours truly (Nathaniel) looked at the list -- essentially a top 20 at that point -- and voted only on the finalists... which amounted to a couple of "executive saves" I suppose you could say. Here's to hoping that all 15+ of these movies provoking Pavlovian drooling in our corner of the cinephile blogosphere satisfy.

Now that the list is fully up, I wonder how much of the next Oscar battles for Best Actress & Supporting Actress we've inadvertently prophesied what with Blanchett, Streep, Moore, Page, Cotillard, Winslet, Swinton, Rampling in juicy leading roles and Mara, Paulson, Chastain, Wasikowska, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judy Davis and Dakota Johnson all featured (we assume) prominently in these 15 features, too. (yes, first our Oscar predictions arrive in April)

What movies DIDN'T we cover for the summer and following prestige season that you're most excited about? And which movies on our list did we properly whet your appetite for? 

Lady MacBeth (Marion Cotillard) and her would be king (Michael Fassbender)

We Can't Wait
#1 Carol in which Blanchett ♥ Mara and her husband does not ♥ that
#2 Ricki & The Flash in which Streep rocks out / returns home
#3 Macbeth in which Fassbender seeks the crown whilst Cotillard tries to remove that damn spot and though we've had enough Shakespeare they're both too irresistible to deny
#4 Mad Max: Fury Road in which all post-apocalyptic hell breaks loose
#5 The Lobster ...who knows but electic cast and Dogtooth director intrigue
#6 Crimson Peak in which del Toro goes Gothic with scrumptious cast
#7 45 Years in which Andrew Haigh (Weekend) directs Rampling ♥ Courtenay
#8 Bridge of Spies Spielberg + Hanks  ÷ The Coen Bros
#9 Taxi in which Jafar Panahi continues to make movies despite the ban
#10 Freeheld in which Moore ♥ Page and they reenact a true LGBT rights story
#11 A Bigger Splash gets the I Am Love team back together for erotic drama
#12 The Dressmaker in which Kate Winslet seeks revenge... with fashion!
#13 The Hateful Eight  in which it's Tarantino so... our best guess (we don't read bootleg scripts) is sausage party mayhem + elaborately poetic shit-talking. One thing that's an absolute certainty: not enough actresses. Contrary to Hollywood's entire western genre, women made up half of the population back then, too.
#14 Knight of Cups in which we view Hollywood sellouts through a Malick prism?
#15 Arabian Nights  in which Miguel Gomes (Tabu) makes a 6½ hour political fable

Related Sidebars & Prologues

You didn't see that coming?"

Animated Films 
Tomorrowland
Jake Gyllenhaal & Franchise Returns
Avengers: Age of Ultron 
Magic Mike XXL

Best Limited or Cameo Role. The Men

It's time for the final two categories in this year's Film Bitch Awards, the Limited or Cameo roles. Which is to say the actors who have only two scenes or less or who are continually backgrounded but for like one spotlight scene. It's an inexact science for sure and the line becomes blurry sometimes with supporting. [Breaking news: a former nominee in these limited/cameo categories whose star is rising will be guest blogging next month for a special day! More on that soon.]

This may sound silly to more casual readers but I agonize over these categories nearly as much as their Oscar correlatives. In fact the entire reason that I still haven't posted the women -- I had planned to post both at once naturally -- is that I haven't narrowed it down to 5 yet. I'm stuck at 8 and don't want to lose any of them.

So first up, the men...

Though Wild and Selma (nominee Henry G. Sanders as "Cager Lee" pictured above), offered plentiful options, and Two Days One Night was undeniable (kudos Timur Magomedgadzhie, left) the possibilities actually weren't obviously abundant. Perhaps this is because men dominate movies so thoroughly that the very small parts tend to be played by women and maybe there's a slight possibility that this actressexual doesn't notice the men quite as much who fill out the frame in group scenes. But let's not distract ourselves from the business at hand:  Here's the nominee and finalist lists.

Film Bitch Awards... Openings, Endings, and Titles

Three of the final five Film Bitch Award categories announced. Click over for the nominations!

When I think of my wife I always think of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains, trying to get answers.

BEST OPENING SCENE
Did you find any opening scene as perfectly bold as Gone Girl's recently? It's instantly classic as kick-offs go. Still horrified two months later that Gillian Flynn didn't get an Adapted Screenplay nomination. WTF. Her work was stronger than any of the nominees in her category (the good stuff was in Original this past year obviously). But that wasn't the only entrancing first minute of a film. Under the Skin's "creation" (?) anyone?

BEST ENDING 
Spoiler alert! Movies have endings. Some more satisfying than others. Which were your favorites this year? Were you a bawling but optimistic and newly invigorated civil rights champion at the end of Selma, Pride, or Love is Strange? Was that desert gaze into an open future the perfect ending for Boyhood? Were you chanting USA ironically with the bloodthirsty crowd at the end of Foxcatcher or gazing up with Emma Stone in Birdman or Reese Witherspoon in Wild?

CREDIT SEQUENCES 
I didn't nominated The Grand Budapest Hotel here but I do love that tiny dancing Russian at the tail end of the credits and his exuberant dancing (i wish I had a gif of the confetti throwing part). That's basically a documentary of what happens in my apartment every time I finish an article. As for this category, it shouldn't surprise you to see Captain America: Winter Soldier's bold black white and red pop art as a nominee but do you remember those hilarious cast photos from Neighbors in the closing credits? I almost forgot them which would have been a tragedy. 

I mean...

 

Two categories left (acting in limited or cameo roles) so stay tuned for that and the gold silver and bronze medals this week as grand finale to 2014's film year. Hooray!

(And now I'm off to do that little dance backstage. Byeeeee.)

Sing-Alongs & Fight Clubs, Divas & Heroes

Awards growing like mushrooms as we race like mad to finish out the film year that just was since we've already started the 2015 celebration.

Musical Sequences
With actual musicals like Muppets Most Wanted, Into the Woods and "performance" musicals like Begin Again, Beyond the Lights, and Get On Up it's a decent time to be a fan of musicals. And since some of the most memorable sequences in non-musicals are musically inclined (think The Lego Movie's boisterous kick-off) and so many non-musical films have the musical spirit via awesome soundtracks (think A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), we have a category for that, too. Musicals for everyone! Sing-along with these ten nominees. 

Action Sequences 
Guardians, Katniss, and a sniper may have reigned supreme at the box office but Captain America: The Winter Soldier housed the year's best action sequences albeit not quite the most beautiful. The most ravishing was, incongruously, the ones starring two nuclear-slurping insect like abominations and that lizard king of monsters, Godzilla.

Divas 
Two of them stop their films cold for self-important monologues. Three more regularly bring the house down. (Okay, sticklers, The Witch technically only brings the bakery door down but it's a figure of speech. Indulge me. And them; divas demand your full attention)

Heroes
2014 had not one, not two, but three moving odes to solidarity and everyman heroism in Pride, Selma, and Two Days One Night. But since this is the cinema there are heroes all over for us to live vicariously through, some of them "super," others historical. And we can't forget the year's most badass warrior, the "Full Metal Bitch" herself (Emily Blunt) in Edge of Tomorrow. 

"I just thought there would be more," you say? Well there is. Also added: Best Line Reading and Breakthrough of the Year nominees and Best Movie Poster. Which mean only 5 categories are left to announce and then the medals! 

Can you believe I'm actually going to finish the awards this year????? "TO VICTORY!"