Awards Watch Archive for November, 2019

20 Weeks To Oscar: Cinema, Trump, and Oscar

What smashed me hard across the face about 1917 was the simple earnestness about honor and, considering its time, manhood at a time when America is wallowing in a lack of honor and a dearth of what were once seen as the virtues of manhood.

1917 is just one of the 5 period movies that very specifically deal with the male engagement with power.

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Do You Want To Build A Straw Man?

I like Mark Harris. I respect Mark Harris. I care what Mark Harris thinks.

Unfortunately, Mark Harris has become one of the media’s most aggressive spokeshammers for the “everything is a nail” coalition.

I read his most recent Vanity Fair piece, “Conventional Oscar Wisdom Has an Almost All-White Best-Actress Lineup—For No Reason” with real curiosity.

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And The Spirit Nominations…

BEST FEATURE (Award given to the producer) A HIDDEN LIFE Producers: Elisabeth Bentley, Dario Bergesio, Grant Hill, Josh Jeter CLEMENCY Producers: Timur Bekbosunov, Julian Cautherley, Bronwyn Cornelius, Peter Wong THE FAREWELL Producers: Anita Gou, Daniele Melia, Andrew Miano, Peter Saraf, Marc Turtletaub, Lulu Wang, Chris Weitz, Jane Zheng MARRIAGE STORY Producers:  Noah Baumbach, David Heyman UNCUT GEMS Producers: Eli Bush,…

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Gurus o’ Gold: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor (Nov 19, 2019)

Now The Gurus take on the four acting categories. Netflix represents about a third of the nominations. Two people of color slot in the Top 5s. A surprise in the Supporting Actress Five.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Best Picture (Nov 18, 2019)

The season has started at least a dozen times by now. But today is the day that The Gurus are back. A first look at Best Picture today, with Best Actor & Best Actress coming tomorrow.

And guess what? The #1 slot on the chart belongs to… 2 movies.

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Lynette Howell Taylor And Stephanie Allain To Produce 92nd Oscars

LOS ANGELES, CA – Oscar®-nominated producer Lynette Howell Taylor and producer Stephanie Allain will produce the 92nd Oscars®, Academy President David Rubin announced today.  It will be their first involvement with the Oscars, which airs live on the ABC Television Network and broadcast outlets worldwide on Sunday, February 9, 2020. “The combined producing talents of…

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159 Documentary Features Submitted For Oscar 2019

[pr] One hundred fifty-nine features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 92nd Academy Awards®. Several of the films have not yet had their required Los Angeles and New York qualifying releases.  Submitted features must fulfill the theatrical release requirements and comply with all of the category’s other qualifying rules…

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Fourth Annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards Drop Five on Apollo 11

(Brooklyn, NY – November 10, 2019) – The Critics Choice Association (CCA) announced the winners of the fourth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards tonight at a gala event, hosted by Jonathan Scott at BRIC in Brooklyn. Apollo 11 took home the evening’s most prestigious award for Best Documentary Feature as well as Best Editing for…

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Oscar General Entry Submission Forms Due November 15

LOS ANGELES, CA — Friday, November 15 is the deadline to submit Oscars Submission Forms (OSF) in the general entry categories to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 92nd Academy Awards consideration. Films will not be accepted for consideration after the deadline. For a feature film to be considered for the 2019 Awards,…

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Review: Marriage Story (spoilers only in the broadest sense)

I feel like there is a giant hole in the middle of this work.

Why is this couple getting divorced?

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Awards Watch

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon