Movie On 2022

Yesterday the east coast group voted their annual winners for the 87th edition and seems that there is no visible trend from an independent film award and the two major film critics, as for example Best Film category in Gotham went to The Rider, in NBR to Green Book and the NYFCC to Roma.  Data up-to-this-moment suggests there are high probabilities current award season will again be interesting and perhaps even unpredictable which makes all exercises a lot more fun. In previous years the call-by-many "harbingers of the Oscars nominations" score have been on the lower side but let's hope for the future of cinema that Roma gets an Oscar nomination and hopefully the top AMPAS award.  It's only then -according to several industry articles- that theaters will start to understand how much films distribution has changed thanks to how audiences -we- consume films nowadays.  I don't want theaters to disappear and well-understand they will not relinquish their power withou...

Yesterday afternoon the NBR announced its winners and its choices gives us a sight into the Awards Season that seems this year will be not surprising but a little bit unpredictable with perhaps honors wealth spreading all over the place.  We have to recall the NBR is made up of film enthusiasts, industry professionals, academics and filmmakers which makes the organization a quite interesting blend from all walks of life. In past awards seasons group have honored films that went to have Oscar nominations and/or wins.  Last year their top winner was The Post but also honored The Florida Project, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, Call Me By Your Name, and Coco, all of which ended up receiving Oscar nominations.  So, the group heterogeneity gives them good predictable record for nominations.  Still, believe group has a spotty record for predicting winners. This year's top award went to a film that " surprised " internet film pundits as not many were predicting or expecting Gree...

Today, Monday, February 4th, 2019 the post has become final with the inclusion of the last group winners. By now we know that film critics/journalists and those who make the movies are really in different mind sets when they evaluate films released in 2018. From the five categories with summaries here and with the exception of best actress, film critics have clear winners: Roma if best film, Alfonso Cuaron in best director, Ethan Hawke in best actor and, Mr. Rogers doc in best documentary. From those four categories Industry and film critics only coincide, up-to-today- with Alfonso Cuaron winning directing and Roma still has possibilities as has 11 Oscar nominations and one is for Best Picture.  But when it comes to best actor category they are far away as Ethan Hawke doesn't have an Oscar nomination; same happens with Won't You Be My Neighbor?, so, there are no chances to coincide at all. This award season has been strange, unusual and highly atypical; not clear for the reaso...

Last night, November 26th, the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) announced the winners of the current edition of the annual Gotham Awards at a ceremony held at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. The awards ceremony had a live stream and if you wish to check it today, Tuesday November 27th is still playable at IFP facebook site here . Most industry and entertainment news dispatches are manifesting their "surprise" with the top winner but then they probably forgot that film was in 2017 Cannes at the Quinzaine where won the International Confederation of Art Cinemas (C.I.C.A.E.) Art Cine Award, an award that undoubtedly assures film is artful and perhaps the CICAE jury decision speaks better about the winning film : "For the creative combination of documentary and fiction, sensitively involving the viewer into the movie, by building the strong empathy with the characters, also for showing American mythology in an unexpected way." The Rider by Chloé Zhao won best...

As promised and because it's easy to read in one single place all winners, here are the winners of the 2018 Biennale Cinema. Watched awards live but ceremony was not much entertaining and with so many American movies in the festival I was not that much interested in learning winners (sigh) nor watching clips. Nevertheless I'm glad that most awards went to interesting possibilities and well-known and much-admired-by-me directors like Jacques Audiard, Yorgos Lanthimos and Julian Schanbel.  Worth mentioning that Audiard's award relaxes me a bit as I'm still anxious about his first film in a language that is not his mother tongue as there are so-many disasters with so-few successes when extraordinary directors work on English-language productions. Sigh. Official Selection Golden Lion for Best Film : Roma , Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize : The Favourite , Yorgos Lanthimos, UK, Ireland and USA Special Jury Prize : The Nightingale , Jennifer Kent, Australi...

As was not easy to gather info about films countries submitted to Oscars 2019, decided to do the two missing posts about the 2018 Biennale as it's a lot easier to check info from only one source.  This is the lineup, the second will list the award winners. Let's start by sharing that the festival poster was made by Lorenzo Mattotti. Mattotti says the following about his design, " I believe that a poster must have something intriguing about it, that attracts the eye, that attracts thought, but without revealing too much. It needs to have a sort of enigma, a sort of mystery to solve. After various attempts, I developed this idea of a girl of this female character – with a very graphic, unrealistic face – who looks with a rather serious expression through a lens. And instead of this lens, there’s Earth, planet Earth, symbolizing a gaze directed at us. Then there is a white square, and I believe that this combination is a successful match, because people wonder: what is that...

Tuesday, October 9, 2018 Update Yesterday the Academy released the accepted foreign-language films that will compete to be included in the shortlist of 9, get one of the 5 nominations and the ultimate goal, win an Oscar. This year there are a total of eighty-seven (87) films, five short of last year ninety-two and there are quite a few countries that submit for the first time like Belarus and Malawi, for example. Until yesterday the list had 81 countries, but there are not 6 new as 2 are out (Cuba and Kyrgyzstan) and 8 (Armenia, Australia, China, Kazakhstan, Malawi, New Zealand, Niger, Yemen) are new.   There are few films that have a different English name in the official list and for post purposes the list below will have the names in the official list, even when at least one film, official English name is not the one in AMPAS list. Last year there were twenty-seven (27) films made by a female director, this year there are only seventeen (18) which is 9 less than last year a...