It's all over but the voting! Share your final FYCs...

Oscar ballots are out today so we've reached the homestretch. Beginning today and continuing on through February 23rd, Academy members can decide if Carol takes costuming and Mad Max takes editing or whether they'd like something far inferior to win those particular statues?

I kid I kid. They should vote on what they believe is "best". And that includes the Acting categories. Obstinate voters who refuse to run with the crowds / accept the status quo can decide who they'd most like for an "upset" in the Acting categories if they're not feeling the frontrunning quartet of Brie, Leo, Alicia, and Sly. But what the hell will they vote for in Best Picture and Best Director? It's a real scrappy fight this year but since it's the 25th anniversary of Silence of the Lambs, which happens to be both an atypical winner and one of their best, we hope they treat Mad Max Fury Road well. If they can't go there in Best Picture (even though they should) can't they at least hand George Miller a well-earned statue? That's my final prayer!

What's your final wish as they begin voting? 

P.S. If you're curious to see how pundits are viewing the races, here's the new Gurus of Gold chart. And here's our index of Oscar charts

The Italian Poster for Carol

Too beautiful to go unshared. (Why does the US always get the dullest posters?)

Oscar Screenplays Quotability Index

Manuel here. In a lot of people’s minds, a great screenplay requires at least one quotable line. Look no further than the poster for the 2006 awards which celebrated great lines from Academy Award winning films. Lines like "Rosebud", "Show me the money!" and "I coulda been a contender" — or more recently, "You know what's cooler than a million dollars?" and "Argofuckyourself" — immediately remind you of the film's in question, functioning as helpful shorthand. A good line is sometimes all you need. And so, since we know TFE readers love themselves a list, we had to rank the 10 films nominated for screenplay categories in order of quotability:

10. Ex Machina
Is there such a thing as "visually" quotable? Because that's certainly the case here.

9. Bridge of Spies 
The one truly iconic catchphrase in these screenplays but otherwise, not much else, no?

8. Brooklyn
News of that TV spinoff means more vintage banter!

7. Spotlight and more after the jump...

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Interview: Carter Burwell on Composing "Carol" and "Hail, Caesar!"

Carter Burwell gives great soundtrack. The proof is all around us. His scores are everywhere right now, in movie theaters with Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa and the Coen brothers Hail, Caesar! and in the Oscar mix; his work on Carol brought him his long long overdue first nomination for Best Original Score.

The 60 year-old composer started his music career in the punk scene but after that fateful first collaboration with the the Coens on Blood Simple (1984) he quickly become a film regular. He's composed every Coen brothers score since then with the exception of Inside Llewyn Davis. They aren't the only filmmakers who steadily rely on his gift. He's worked frequently for Bill Condon, Michael Caton-Jones, Spike Jonze, John Lee Hancock, and Todd Haynes among others.

I asked him how he keeps his work fresh with so many projects and how he approached the recent challenges of the "ridiculous" comedy of Hail, Caesar! and the restrained drama of Carol.

Our interview follows after the jump...

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Best Acting, Female Division: Personal Ballots & Oscar Charts

We've reached the end of the Oscar Correlative portion of The Film Bitch Awards... and we're only running like 2 weeks late! Now you can compare nomination stats if you'd so desire. A short take: Mad Max Fury Road is loved in roughly the same dose but The Revenant has only 1 nomination to Carol's 10. You're welcome. That said I do not choose my nominees "in response" to Oscars. The choices are grouped into semi-finalists before the Oscar nominations come out and even when I'm behind schedule I'm still usually only a fifth-slot decision away from my final 5 in each category by that time. 

On to what you've been waiting for... ACTRESSING! 

the best BEST ACTRESS duo since Thelma & Louise? Oh what could have been Academy. What could have been.

BEST ACTRESS
Though we continue to despise The Academy's willingness to embrace Category Fraud and thus deny us the pleasure and spiritual rightness of seeing Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett side-by-side for Carol, the Academy's leading lineup is pretty damn great this year. Though Jennifer Lawrence's nomination was probably pre-ordained and thus lazy voting, she's actually quite good in Joy. Not as good as about ten other leading ladies this year mind you, let's not be crazy -- there were so many that I couldn't squeeze into my personal ballot that I wanted to. We should thank the cinematic gods for years in which we have to make such tough choices about who is "Best".

And yes I feel total guilt about abandoning Lily Tomlin in Grandma at the very end of the film year after championing her for so long but that was what 2015 was like with an abundance of valid and great choices. Some unfortunate soul falls into sixth place each year - damn you, list math. In truth my Best Actress ballot needed nine slots in the worst way this year. 

Cynthia Nixon earning her EGOT... only the people who provide the "O" in that equation weren't paying attentionBEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Here Oscar and I are forced to part ways decisively. Not just from their 'f*** character actresses!' habits with creative category placements but because we rarely see eye to eye when it comes to what StinkyLulu calls "actressing at the edges".

The Academy chose Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rachel McAdams, Kate Winslet, Alicia Vikander, and Rooney Mara and though all of those performances are noteworthy in one way or another my personal ballot only includes one of them: Kate Winslet, who returned to electric form in Steve Jobs (welcome back, baby). Vikander and Mara absolutely have no business here since they're the co-leads of their romantic dramas and as attentive as McAdams was to her sources in Spotlight and as forceful as Jennifer Jason Leigh is when diving straight into cackling evil in The Hateful Eight, they didn't even come close to making my top dozen women who amazed from just off to the side of the lead or further out in the periphery.

Despite our dissimilar tastes, Oscar's acting branch definitely would have loved Cynthia Nixon in James White, had they seen her. It's a traditionally juicy part (a dying, angry yet loving mother) but who among the Academy watches indies that make only $101,000 in theatrical release? Not too damn many of them, that's who. Check out my list and the Oscar chart (now with statistics and trivia!) and choose your own beloveds in the comments. And, as a reminder, ICYMI, Alicia Vikander was granted a special gold medal for "Body of Work" here a couple of weeks back.