Best Director Fun. What a Category This Year!

How cute is this? Here's Adapted Screenplay nominee Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk) celebrating Spike Lee's Best Director nomination for BlacKkKlansman:

And the biggest congrats to the 🐐 — ran into this portrait last night in Paris, couldn’t help but grab a selfie; no words necessary. And by every measure, this man — so necessary 👌🏿🙌🏿🙏🏿 pic.twitter.com/YXuzAwNdk3

— Barry Jenkins (@BarryJenkins) January 22, 2019

In related news: the Best Director Chart is updated and ready for your votes (who should win? vote every day!) and commentary. We've added trivia, stats, as well as speculated on "How'd they get nominated?" as is our annual habit. Let's take Spike Lee as an example. This is how'd we'd wager Spike got his nomination...

35% Reputation and do-over. An iconic director who'd never been so honored. Sorry about Do The Right Thing!
30% His biggest hit and best film in several years. Critically adored and guild supported, too. 
16% Timely themes - plus the world has caught up to him.
12% Cannes gave him an early boost and his movie instant highbrow cred.
7% Had the summer all to itself to percolate as Best Picture worthy

Find out how the others got nominated on the chart. Agree? Disagree? Are we forgetting a key factor? Do tell in the comments.

DGA nominees match the Globe lineup *exactly*

by Nathaniel R

This awards season keeps throwing us unpleasant curveballs. First Bohemian Rhapsody took the top prize at the Globes and now, the Director's Guild of America has decided to up and agree with the Globes exactly on the Best Director list.

Their nominations and statistical hand-wringing after the jump...

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Four Random Thoughts on "Vice"

by Eric Blume

Adam McKay’s film Vice has been out in theaters for two weeks or so now, and as we head into Golden Globe weekend where it leads the nominations, we ought to discuss it a bit more. Here are some thoughts about the film, which do carry SPOILERS, not about story points (as unfortunately these things really happened), but about just how truly odd this film is in so many ways...

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Excelsior Links

• /Film Michelle Yeoh may be headlining a Star Trek spin-off series
• Towleroad Greg Berlanti (Love Simon) plans to direct a Rock Hudson biopic
• Variety This is so cool. The animation studio Aardman (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, etcetera) is transferring its ownership to its employees. Peter Lord will stay on as creative director

 

• MNPP Raúl Castillo joins the already amazing cast of Rian Johnson's Knives Out
• Awards Daily Adam McKay promoting Vice says something he might regret about the difference between Cheney and Trump
• Playbill Did you hear they're releasing another album for The Greatest Showman? This one is all covers. Kelly Clarkson is doing "Never Enough"
• Kinja great deal if you're a Potter person. All 8 Harry Potter films on bluray for just $40
• Cinema Eye Honors, which honors documentary films (we guess it's the week for that?), release their nominations for the year with Bing Liu's Minding the Gap leading with 7 nominations and Bisbee '17, Hale County This Morning This Evening and Shirkers each receiving 5. All are eligible for the Oscars this year, too.
• Boy Culture what Matt said about this odd quote from Michael C Hall on his sexuality
• The Guardian Controversy! German Playboy has published an interview with Ennio Morricone in which he trashes Quentin Tarantino. Now Morricone says he never gave that interview and will take legal action.

R.I.P.
• Variety Stan Lee, Marvel's figurehead and comic book legend, has died at 95. One assumes we have four final Stan Lee cameos coming up, though. He gets a bit in Into the Spider-Verse (yes, I've seen it but we're not allowed to talk about it yet). And surely he'll be in Captain Marvel, Infinity War Part 2, and Spider-Man: Far From Home , since they're all in post production already.
• The Guardian Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL in 2001 has died at 90.

Exit Video
Here's another cover from The Greatest Showman Reimagined from P!nk and her daughter Willow Sage Hart

P.S. Alarming!
Grammy winner Beck tweeted out that he was recording a score for Roma. Naturally this is upsetting because the movie has screened for months and actually has no score. The soundscape is so unique and immersive and tons of critics have praised the movie for this craftsmanship exactly. Why would they change it now after all the praise? I'm currently having nightmares of what happened to A Star is Born (1954) and The New World (2005) when the studio kept meddling after screenings with something that was already brilliant and perfect to the point where some people never could see the original version and in the case of A Star is Born it was lost for all time. 

Yes No Maybe So: Christian Bale is "Vice"

by Nathaniel R

click to embiggenThe major Oscar hopeful that's played things closest to the vest this season is Vice. The trailer and poster (to your left) have both finally dropped today and other Oscar campaigns are probably shivering a bit. The film, from writer/director Adam McKay of The Big Short fame, is a comedy telling the true story of how Dick Cheney came to rule the world (albeit behind the curtain as the Vice President) and set the US on a sorry new course.

It's an all-star affair with Oscar winners Christian Bale (Dick Cheney) and Sam Rockwell (George W Bush), Oscar darling Amy Adams (Lynne Cheney), and Oscar nominee Steve Carell (Donald Rumsfeld) in political drag as figures we know and love hate. Alison Pill and Tyler Perry are also in the film (though they aren't featured in the trailer) as Mary Cheney and Colin Powell respectively.

After the jump the trailer and our Yes No Maybe So breakdown...

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