Oscar Volley: Best Director could be 2012 all over again

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category before the nominations come out. Here's Eric Blume and Glenn Dunks to talk Best Director...

ERIC:  Hi Glenn, excited to dive into this year's crop of Best Directors with you.  To me, the big question is whether all three of the "big gun pictures" will carry their directors to nominations.  That's Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon; Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer; and Greta Gerwig for Barbie.  I personally can't get too excited about Nolan or Scorsese, even though they both do expert work but nothing that rattled my cage.  I think one of Gerwig's biggest achievements directing that film...and this is no easy feat...was dealing with what must have been BINDERS of notes from Mattell and Warner Bros and still delivering the film she set out to make...

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Venice 2023: Three terrific films that could be formidable Oscar players

by Elisa Giudici

Venice's 80th edition feels weaker (in terms of competition films) than the previous editions I've covered for The Film Experience. That said there are some strong contenders for the Golden Lion, and a few exceptional pieces of filmmaking. Here are three movies that stand out from the crowd. What's more they each have the potential to be strong Oscar contenders after Venice. 

I'll present them in order of their excellence, from the very good to the simply superb...

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Yes No Maybe So: "Poor Things"

by Cláudio Alves

Vasilis Marmatakis has done it again. Yorgos Lanthimos' preferred poster designer always knocks them out of the park, and his latest creation's no different, hitting that sweet spot between beauty and unease. Poor Things looks impossibly enticing, mixing the lushness of period stylings with bodily discombobulations that hint at the mysteries of Emma Stone's character. She'll be Bella in this adaptation of Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel, a resurrected young woman who pursues personal freedom beyond the will of Dr. Baxter, the scientist who brought her corpse back to life. The original text has been described as funny, cerebral, and dirty, making it sound like the perfect playground for Lanthimos and his particular brand of off-kilter cinema.

Along with this new poster, Searchlight Pictures also released the theatrical trailer for the movie, whose American release is scheduled for September 8th. Considering that date, one wonders if the work might be headed to the Venice Film Festival. While waiting for confirmation, let's delve into the trailer and give it the customary 'Yes No Maybe So' treatment…

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Another Round of Links

• Scandinavia and the World makes a little joke about Denmark's Oscar winner Another Round
• Welp Magazine lists the 20 best Film podcasts of 2021. So sweet (and a surprise) that they included us.
• Variety Timothée Chalamet to play the young Willy Wonka in yet another origin movie/prequel to a popular film. (Sigh. we're so tired of fan-fiction as mainstream fiction. Mystery and using your own imagination is what makes so many classic characters great!)

More after the jump including new projects for Debra Messing, Lindsay Lohan, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sara Ramirez, and a win for Michelle Pfeiffer...

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Stilted Humanity: Acting Lanthimos

by Cláudio Alves

Since his third feature opened at the 2009 Cannes Film festival, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has been something of an international sensation. Dogtooth, that masterpiece of perverted domesticity, even conquered a surprising Academy-Award nomination along with its sterling reviews. From relative obscurity, Lanthimos thus became a household name for cinephiles all over the world and his next projects were followed with breathless anticipation. The formalistic precision, violent nature of his scenarios and the unsettling horror of the stories enchanted many and disgusted even more.

All of these choices are transgressive as it's fitting of the cinema of the Greek Weird Wave. However, such elements aren't as uncommon as many suppose. If you look hard enough through the wilderness of festival offerings, it's easy to find many similar aesthetic and narrative propositions. Yorgos Lanthimos does them with rare perfection, but that doesn't mean they are radically rare. Much more off-beat and idiosyncratic is the way this provocative filmmaker works with actors…

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