Best Director Fun. What a Category This Year!

How cute is this? Here's Adapted Screenplay nominee Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk) celebrating Spike Lee's Best Director nomination for BlacKkKlansman:

And the biggest congrats to the 🐐 — ran into this portrait last night in Paris, couldn’t help but grab a selfie; no words necessary. And by every measure, this man — so necessary 👌🏿🙌🏿🙏🏿 pic.twitter.com/YXuzAwNdk3

— Barry Jenkins (@BarryJenkins) January 22, 2019

In related news: the Best Director Chart is updated and ready for your votes (who should win? vote every day!) and commentary. We've added trivia, stats, as well as speculated on "How'd they get nominated?" as is our annual habit. Let's take Spike Lee as an example. This is how'd we'd wager Spike got his nomination...

35% Reputation and do-over. An iconic director who'd never been so honored. Sorry about Do The Right Thing!
30% His biggest hit and best film in several years. Critically adored and guild supported, too. 
16% Timely themes - plus the world has caught up to him.
12% Cannes gave him an early boost and his movie instant highbrow cred.
7% Had the summer all to itself to percolate as Best Picture worthy

Find out how the others got nominated on the chart. Agree? Disagree? Are we forgetting a key factor? Do tell in the comments.

One Last Hurrah for the Unloved! (Our Post-Nomination Eulogies)

by staff

We asked Team Experience to share eulogies & tributes to their most beloved cinematic achievement that was left out on Oscar nom morning. Not everything can be nominated. Since we must now turn our attention to the actual nominations, please shed one last tear of appreciation for these great artists and films.

BEN MILLER: Leave No Trace - you were too beautiful and non-assuming to be truly embraced by an awards body like the Academy.  Yes, Winter's Bone got a Best Picture nomination for Debra Granik's 2010 film, but you were rated PG and there was not a cliche, line of exposition, or bit of over-acting to be found.  You are too perfect a creation to be lumped in with the Oscars.  We will remember you when Ben Foster, Thomasin McKenzie and Granik eventually accept their future statues.

NATHANIEL R: Eighth Grade, you were too lovely and far far too young. Too humiliatingly real, too emotionally fragile and too comically pure for the heightened spectacle of Hollywood's back-patting event. You gave us hope for the future (Elsie Fisher and Bo Burnham have bright ones) while also transporting us back to our own childhood. You were a time machine even H.G. Wells would have marvelled at and cringed through... provided, of course, that he attended the British equivalent of junior high in the 19th century...

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Call Julianne Moore By Her Name

by Jason Adams

A couple of weeks ago I told y'all about Luca Guadagnino's next film project, a feature based off of Bob Dylan's 1975 album Blood on the Tracks that he plans to make with Chloe Grace Moretz. Well Luca, never one to rest on them laurels of his, has sneaked in a totally seperate project while we weren't looking (or rather while we were gaping at the exploding heads of his Suspiria coven), much to my thrill. He's gone and directed a 35-minute short film slash "memory piece" for the fashion house Valentino that will star Kyle MacLachlan and Julianne Moore, along with Marthe Keller, KiKi Layne, Mia Goth (aka the secret MVP of Suspiria), and Alba Rohrwacher. Here's how it's described in Variety:

"Moore plays Francesca, an Italian-American writer who lives in New York and must return to Rome – and, by extension, her childhood – to retrieve her aging mother, a painter played at different ages by Keller and Goth. Layne plays “the spark that triggers the stream of consciousness in Francesca,” said Guadagnino, while Rohrwacher plays “a grande dame at a party. ”All the male characters – “fathers, lovers, servants,” Guadagnino noted – are played by MacLachlan."

Making a short-film for a fashion house probably isn't the best way for Luca to combat last week's criticism from the original Suspiria's director Dario Argento that he "makes beautiful tables, beautiful curtains, beautiful dishes, all beautiful…" but Luca gonna Luca (and bless him for it, quite honestly). The short was shot by Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and the soundtrack is from Oscar-winner Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the plan is for it to hit legitimate film fests so stay tuned, fabulousness ahead.

Soundtracking: 2018's Original Song nominees

by Chris Feil

Best Original Song always gets its fair share of side-eye among Oscar snobs and agnostics alike. Granted, some recent nominees have made a decent enough case for their argument - Alone Yet Not Alone, you are lost but not forgotten (or... alone in terms of being a bad nomination). But does this year's crop of tracks continue the category's uptrending in quality? I would argue it does and then some.

While our most expected nominee ("Shallow" obviously) provides the lineup a genuine hit song, we also have idiosyncratic picks as well as musicals and major artists nominated. This leaves the telecast with no rational choice but to allow all numbers to perform on the show, as they have been hesitant to do with lesser known nominees. So in addition to ranking the nominees, I have some suggestions on how to present all of them...

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The Best Picture race and the Bechdel Test. Thoughts?

What do these two talk about when they're not talking about T'Challa?We still have so much Oscar work ahead of us but this is a notice that the Best Picture Chart is now updated. You can vote (DAILY!) on which Best Picture you think should win the race and also check out various rankings of the movies by thing liks global success, running time, degree of horniness, how violent they are or aren't, and so on.

We can also discuss whether or not the movies pass the Bechdel Test. If you've been living under a rock all that test is (which should be easy to pass) is that a movie has to 1) have two female named characters who 2) talk to each other about something other than a man. That's it! Should be easy to pass but many many many films fail. Sadly only two of the Best Picture nominees are easy passes (The Favourite and Roma). But perhaps two more do as well. In Black Panther do the women discuss anything together besides T'Challa together? I think they do discuss the glories of Wakanda and possibly strategies for battle but I haven't seen the movie since February so perhaps I'm equating their fierceness with robust conversations? And in Vice do the Cheney women talk to each other about anything other than Dick? Perhaps they do discuss Mary's sexuality and Liz's political campaign? Or is that only a mom & dad conversation? My memory is a bit fuzzy on these details but perhaps yours isn't?

Anyway, enjoy the chart and the various lists. We love to list and we're just trying to keep ourselves, and you, entertained. Check it out and return to discuss.

Related Articles: 
• 12 things we learned from the noms • Adams vs Weisz, Round Two • Deep Cut Oscar Trivia • Mourning the Snubs • How to Stage the Original Songs • Nomination Index