Oscar Volley: Best Original Screenplay is the Battle of the Auteurs

In this Oscar Volley, Eric Blume and Cláudio Alves discuss the Best Original Screenplay race…

HARD TRUTHS, Mike Leigh

ERIC BLUME: Hi Cláudio, I put us together on this one because I love arguing with you.  Hope that's okay.  Plus, I am curious to get your takes on some of these films and scripts.

Best Original Screenplay has a lot of strong contenders this year.  What I find particularly interesting is that eight of these feature scripts written by their directors - Seed of the Sacred Fig, A Real Pain, The Substance, September 5, Anora, The Brutalist, All We Imagine as Light, and Hard Truths.  That has to be some kind of record? 

CLÁUDIO ALVES: With the growing connection between the big European film festivals and the awards season, auteur cinema is on the rise as an Oscar gold magnet. And many of those selections favor director-forward productions, often where the folks in the director's chair also penned the script. Indeed, from the octet you mention, only A Real Pain and Hard Truths premiered outside Cannes or Venice. And with Mike Leigh's latest, it wasn't for a lack of trying on his part…

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Golden Globe Nominations!

by Eric Blume

Let's take a look at the Golden Globe nominations announced yesterday, in the major categories.

BEST MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA

• THE BRUTALIST, A24
• A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, Searchlight Pictures
• CONCLAVE, Focus Features
• DUNE: PART TWO, Warner Bros. Pictures
• NICKEL BOYS, Orion Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios
• SEPTEMBER 5 Paramount Pictures

It's very "Globe-y" that both NICKEL BOYS and SEPTEMBER 5 received a nomination for the Big Award and for absolutely nothing else.  They're both solid films, tricky to single out actors in.  The Globes went in big for both THE BRUTALIST and CONCLAVE, so it seems like the race is between those two at this point...

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Category Confusion '24: LEAD or SUPPORTING – Part One

by Cláudio Alves

With the first batch of awards season honors coming in hot, questions of category fraud are bound to come up. And this year will be a doozy in that regard, with various leading actors campaigning as supporting for convenience's sake. It's a tried and true strategy that tends to block actual supporting and character actors from getting their flowers, forever living in the shadow of big stars in the wrong category. Well, if you're a regular at The Film Experience, you probably have read all this before, so let's not belabor the point. Instead, let's have some fun with polls like we did last year. This is just part one, of course, since many contenders still haven't been released beyond the festival circuit...

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AFI Fest: Emotional Outbursts in “A Real Pain” and “Nightbitch”

by Eurocheese

Festering emotions were front-and-center in these two strong films at the festival, though they were expressed in very different ways. Both screenplays played with tone, though Nightbitch’s swings didn’t always land as successfully as A Real Pain's. In each film, one charismatic performance will be the top takeaway for most viewers..

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April Foolish Predictions: Best Supporting Actor

by Nathaniel R

Samuel L Jackson was Tony-nominated for The Piano Lesson on Broadway. Will the transfer result in another Oscar nomination?

It's the last four days of April Foolish Predcitions and, thus, time for the acting categories. A year out nobody knows anything, particularly in regards to the supporting categories since they're less dependent on juicy obvious-from-a-distance leading roles and far more dependent on things you can't really know in advance like who will "steal" the movie, how large their supporting roles will be, and whether they'll film will have enough heat to ignite their campaigns. This is when it's most fun, especially in the supporting categories where you can imagine almost anything happen. By the time the televised awards roll around each year there is zero drama in Best Supporting Actor (though we infrequenely see some in Best Supporting Actress).

Last year's lopsided contest was the Robert vs Ryan showdown with two full blown movie stars competing for the supporting gold, one leaning into a career achievement narrative while the other was content to ride his film's pink zeitgeist wave rather than worry about the gold...

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