Cinema and Popcorn

The Oscar night! So, it's time for the winners predictions! We have to keep in mind: I believe when a movie gets nominated across the board, it means the movie is appreciated and people will go for it, so I am not expecting The Power of the Dog to just win Best Director and I believe the enthusiasm around Dune might earn it a win in some unexpected category (I say it will be in Best Costume Design). Word of mouth pays off and campaigns are landed by studios, so there's a lot of things going on for the Oscars that don't happen for other awards - so I am expecting surprises.  All members are allowed to vote for the winner across all categories, and the nominee with the most votes wins. However, there are a few categories – such as Best International Feature Film – where members have to have seen all of the nominees in order to vote. For Best Picture, picking the winner is trickier because of the preferential ballot, but that would make for an entire post of its own! So, le...

Some people might say the guild awards don't always translate to excelence and that they are an awards vehicle for Americanized productions...! Well, that's kinda true, but they are useful precursor in what comes to Oscar predictions, specially Best Picture (and each's guild respective categories). The AMPAS is divided in multiple branches - each branch votes a certain (or more than one) specific category, but all branches' members vote for Best Picture! This means, overall guild awards support often translates to Best Picture love! Of course there are always a couple of critics' pushes that pops-up in the Oscars shortlist, but most spots in each category were previously "predicted" by the guilds. So, let's have a look at all the guilds nominations (I am not going to include SAG Awards here, since SAG was "explored" in the previous post): PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA (PGA) AWARDS Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Mot...

Last week was a busy week awards-wise. The Golden Globes took place and the SAG announced their nominees. With the boycott around the Golden Globes, SAG Award rise as the major Oscar precursor. In addition, a big couple of critics groups have announced their winners, but that's a matter for another post (since they are so many). But let's have a look. GOLDEN GLOBES The 79th Golden Globe Awards winners were announced on Sunday night via social media and not  in a nationally televised gala, like the years before - a "must" stop moment for movie stars and celebrities who get together to celebrate their movies and... well, get dr*nk! It marks the Hollywood FOREIGN Press Association 's fall from grace experienced over the past year since a piece of Los Angeles Times revealed that the organization included zero Black members and was involved in some suspect financial practices. Still, some studios celebrated the wins via social media (like 20th Century Studios, which b...

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS This year's Best Supporting Actress race features some of the very best performances of the year regardless of being lead or supporting, male or female: Ruth Negga ( Passing ), Kirsten Dunst ( The Power of the Dog ), Aunjanue Ellis ( King Richard ), Ann Dowd ( Mass ) and Jodie Comer ( The Last Duel ) are some of the year's best acting turns (from what I've already watched). West Side Story , Belfast , The Tragedy of Macbeth and Nightmare Alley remain unseen by me (unfortunately), but there's no way to deny the universal acclaim of the performance, with Blanchett being (oddly) the least praised of the bunch. So, for #1, there's Ariana DeBose , the Broadway actress who took on the iconic Anita role in Steven Spielberg's  West Side Story and she's collecting rave reviews from critics. She's not famous (yet), but the nature of the role plus the level of acclaim she has been getting make me believe she's the frontrunner right now...

BEST ACTRESS "The bloodbath". Best Actress 2022 race is simply a warzone for predictions folks. I believe there are 5 spots for 10 legit contenders plus Jennifer Hudson ( Respect ), who didn't make my shortlist. The safer player here is Kristen Stewart , who portrays Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín's Spencer - her performance was met with universal critical acclaim and she's having a killer early awards season, with tribute prizes, critics groups nominations and tons of Oscar buzz as the only "serious" candidate for a win (since Venice Film Festival, actually). But what about general audiences aren't embracing the movie as critics? Still, a nomination seems locked for her (and she's in the right moment of her career after raved turns in small indies post- Twilight career phase). Next, it comes Nicole Kidman who plays Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos ... and while the movie is not being received with rave reviews from crit...

Now that the 2021's editions of Venice Film Festival and TIFF have announced their winners and there are the first reviews of NY Film Festival's major award hopefuls releases, I believe it's safe to start predicting which titles will compete for some major Oscar gold. A note about The Power of the Dog and Belfast which got the audiences' recognition at TIFF (with the later taking the People's Choice and The Power of the Dog received the Silver Lion at Venice). King Richard also got a lot of love at Telluride Film Festival and The Tragedy of Macbeth is getting rave reviews at New York Film Festival the moment we talk. A note to Sundance hit Sian Heder's CODA - which took home the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic - and Asghar Farhadi's A Hero , which got lots of love during Cannes Film Festival and won the film festival's Grand Prix (but since it is a foreign language film, will it get stuck in Best International Film category? I believe and I hope not). D...

  Kenneth Branagh's cinematic charm Belfast has taken home TIFF's top honor - the People Choice's Award. It's great news for Belfast 's growing Oscar buzz. Since 2008 every TIFF People's Choice Award winner got nominated for Best Picture (with the only exception being Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now? , a foreign language film), with 5 of them taking home the Oscar for Best Picture. Runners up are Scarborough and Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog , with the late also being listed as a major awards player this season. Things are shaping up in the awards season, don't you think?