The DGA to Iñárritu... Again

Wide open race, people. Following The Big Short's win at PGA, Spotlight's ensemble prize at SAG, comes the Director's Guild Award for... The Revenant.

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Bonafide three-way race for Best Picture which is not common. Whoever wins we'll know that it was close -- unless a sweep reveals otherwise. Hell, Oscar's Best Director competition is also fierce though the advantage goes to Iñárritu at this point.

TRIVIA!
Incidentally, this prize for Alejandro González Iñárritu is his second consecutive from his guild. Though several directors have won twice, a consecutive win has never happened before at the DGA. It has happened at the Oscars, though, and twice at that: John Ford won two in a row for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941). And not quite a decade later Joseph L Mankiewicz pulled off the same trick with A Letter To Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). Here's their interesting commonality. In both cases those consecutive wins did not come with consecutive Best Pictures. No director has ever helmed two consecutive Best Picture winners. If The Revenant comes out on top on Oscar night, Iñárritu will be the first to accomplish it in the Academy's 88 years. 

Do you think history will be made? (Final Picture/Director predictions are going to be tough this year.)

The complete list of DGA winners and some photos from the event are after the jump...

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Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

This review originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad...

Lily James, from Cinderella to Zombie Slayer

“Pride and Prejudice,” Jane Austen’s classic novel about the Bennet sisters and their suitors, has one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an adaptation Jane never could have seen coming despite her gifts, twists the opening line so that we’re no longer talking courtship but hunger; zombies in want of brains. So let’s twist the line again. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that pop culture, possessed by the love of fanfic, must be in want of works in the Public Domain!’

more...

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Film Bitch Awards: Diva and Sexpot Nominations

I'm working on the character page portion of the awards. Today write-ups for the Diva and Sexpot of the year with nominees from Magic Mike XXL, Saint Laurent, Spy and more. Hero & Villain categories coming shortly.

Bear in mind that I don't let characters cross over into more than one category lest they dominate too many categories so, for instance, you won't see Lysistrata from Chi-Raq under Best Diva, though she is one because she fits the Sexpot category to a T (and A). She owns it. And she's not giving it away. "No Peace. No Pussy." 

The film doesn't work at all if you don't see how badly Chi-Raq (Nick Cannon), her gang leader boyfriend, wants that "nappy pouch". Teyonah Parris is on in this movie and it's so hard to believe it's the same actress that played quiet confident Dawn in Mad Men, just trying to earn her paycheck in that office with all that crazy white folks drama. (Remember that awkward episode when Peggy tried to confide in her. -so uncomfortable)

Chi-Raq is now streaming on Amazon Prime and on DVD and you should watch it. 

THE AWARDS CHARTS

Posterized: The Coen Brothers

Hail, Caesar!, opening in theaters nationwide today, marks the 17th feature film from the highly decorated and much cinephile-obsessed over sibling auteurs Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.  Joel is the elder by 3 years and after he worked as an assistant on Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, the brothers made their first feature, Blood Simple (1984) which caused a mini sensation at festivals and the arthouse. From there on out they slowly became more mainstream directors in the best way possible: they brought the mainstream to them rather than changing their genre-hopping singular ways. Thirty-two years later they're now a showbiz institution with four Oscars and actual big hits on their resume. 

Their seventeenth feature is only their second movie about movies. The first was the rather discomfiting Barton Fink (1991) which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Will Hail, Caesar! age as well? How many of their films have you seen? 

all the posters after after the jump...

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Michael B Jordan is the Big Winner at the Image Awards

Michael B Jordan was top dog at the Annual NAACP Image Awards taking both Outstanding Actor and Entertainer of the Year prizes for his work in Creed, which obviously should have netted him an Oscar nominations (we honored him here). Creed was a big player, too, taking Writing and Directing and Supporting Actress (Phylicia Rashad) prizes only to lose the Outstanding Motion Picture prize to Straight Outta Compton. 

In other curious developments Idris Elba, fresh off a SAG win, lost the Supporting Actor prize to O'Shea Jackson Jr for Compton. As a reminder of the strange nominee list, of the central trio in Compton only Jason Mitchell (who played Easy E) was snubbed, despite being the actor who received the strongest reviews within the film. 

The image awards, now in their 47th year, are kind of an all purpose awards show for black artists so they also honor literature, music, and television. black-ish and Empire were the big television winners and Anthony Anderson hosted the awards show. 

After the cuteness of Gabrielle Union & Keegan-Michael Key, the full list of winners.

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