Soundtracking: "I, Tonya"

Chris's weekly look at movie music takes on Tonya Harding's arena rock...

I, Tonya has proven to be one of Oscar season’s most love it or hate it films - and naturally for yours truly, defending the film is a lot like defending its somewhat maligned soundtrack. And I fall on the slightly positive side for both. Like many of the film’s other broad strokes, it doesn’t nearly all work and some play for a quick grab at audience allegiance. Yet by my ear, its greatest musical sin is underserving Hot Chocolate’s “Every 1’s A Winner” (but we can leave that to Greta and Noah).

While the film becomes too contradictory to support its acceptance of the slippery boundaries of fact, personal truth, and conflicting perspectives, the way it uses music to examine this relationship is a bit more elegant...

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13 days until Oscar nominations... Can Roger Deakins win with a 14th nod?

by Nathaniel R

the great Roger Deakins on set

Is 13 an unlucky number? Not particular with Oscar, no, but Roger Deakins is surely anxious to move beyond it. The 68 year old cinematographer is still hugely in demand and a regular Oscar competitor but he's currently sitting at 13 nominations and STILL has no statues to show for it. Will #14 prove lucky should he be nominated for Blade Runner 2049 this year (as is widely expected)? His nominated film list is just one beautiful astonishment after another: The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Kundun, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country For Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Reader, True Grit, Skyfall, Prisoners, Unbroken, Sicario. His filmography also includes films like Thunderheart, The Secret Garden, Barton Fink, and Sid & Nancy. Will he win on March 4th or will someone else steal his thunder yet again at the last moment...

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FYC: Five Best Documentary Tech Achievements of 2017

A special edition of the Doc Corner column by Glenn Dunks this week...

Documentaries are unsurprisingly scantly recognised outside of their own category. Steve James’ Hoop Dreams scored a still one-of-a-kind nomination for Best Editing in 1994, and the Best Original Song category has become a place for aging rock stars (and J. Ralph!) to get recognition for their work in documentaries. Yet outside of these rare occurrences, documentaries are almost never considered to be in genuine contention.

Considering the volume of documentaries being produced (170 eligible titles in 2017 alone!), it shouldn’t be unreasonably to expect that many are pushing the documentary medium to places that would have been unfathomable two decades prior. Those changes can be through form thanks to technological advancements giving filmmakers an ability to make docs as technically proficient as anything else no matter the budget. Or they can come through structure and narrative, allowing contemporary audiences that are hip to new ways of telling stories to experience something through the wonders of streaming that would have once struggled in experimental arthouses of downtown Manhattan.

So in lieu of a personal Oscar doc ballot (mine would include only one from the 15-wide shortlist), here are five For Your Considerations for achievements outside of the Documentary Feature category itself...

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Greta Gerwig's "Roots and Wings" Tribute

by Murtada

Before she was rushed off the stage by the ticking clock, Greta Gerwig still managed to be profound and touching when accepting the award for Best Film Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes. That she managed to do that with just a few words is even more impressive.

I want to say thank you to my mom and dad and the people of Sacramento who gave me roots and wings and helped me get where I am today.

Early on in Lady Bird there’s a scene where Marion (Laurie Metcalf) drives around Sacramento with a peaceful smile on her face. Later on in the film Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) talks about driving for the first time herself, and the connection between the mother and daughter and their love for each other and for the place they live in is revealed to us. I was reminded of that moment and how much it moved me while listening to Gerwig’s speech.

The places we come from give us our stories. Those are more poignant if while young we longed to leave those places, only later to discover how much they meant to us. Sometimes out of nowhere, we remember with a jolt of heartache. For me, it’s sleeping outside under a blanket of stars, in the warm clear nights of my hometown Khartoum. For Marion and Lady Bird it’s driving along the familiar streets of their hometown. We are where we come from, and where we come from is what gives us our unique stories. Gerwig lovingly captured that feeling in her film, and paid tribute to it with her speech. As Sister Sarah (Lois Smith) tells Lady Bird sometimes love is paying attention to the details that make up a story.

Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?

FYC: Best Editing, Baby Driver

by Tim Brayton

If you know one thing about Baby Driver, surely it's that the film was conceived from the ground up to move in perfect time to music. Every aspect of the film that could be tied to the rhythm of the soundtrack was: the movement of the camera, the blocking of the actors, and the cutting between shots.

Perhaps that sounds like an impressive trick. But "impressive" hardly starts to cover it: love the film or not (I was a little cool on it, overall), Baby Driver is indisputably one of 2017's most audacious piece of film craftsmanship, a high-wire act of choreographing every element of the film production process into one steady flow. And by no means the least of this craft came in the form of the editing done by Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos.

The editors' work on this film began unnaturally early...

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