Oscar Chart Updates: Supporting Categories

by Nathaniel R

While both Best Actress and Best Actor (recently discussed here and here) appear to have furious volatile competitions for the anxiety-provoking fifth slots, is the same true in the Supporting categories? 

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Team Experience SAG Reactions: Happy Thoughts, Outrageous Snubs, and Table-Lust

by Nathaniel R

After the SAG nominations I polled the team on six questions about the SAG nominations. One of them gets its own post (being a big topic we'll be discussing for some time still). But here are the general reactions to the other five questions from love to loathing to which OUTSTANDING CAST table we'd like to sit at...

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“King Richard” Serves Up A Real Crowdpleaser

by Christopher James

Everyone has to start somewhere - even Venus and Serena Williams.Early on in King Richard, Will Smith’s Richard Williams drills his daughters - Venus and Serena - on serving. Their goal, to hit a precise spot on the court where a stack of balls lie. Even as pre-teens, they are able to achieve remarkable precision with their shots. This drill is an apt metaphor for Reinaldo Marcus Green’s latest film, King Richard. It always hits the spot on the court, just as you expected it to.

King Richard never subverts the tropes of the inspirational sports movie, it just tries to do them better. This doesn’t make it a daring or interesting film, but the formula does work incredibly well...

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Who's got the lead in Best Supporting Actress?

by Nathaniel R

Kiki in Los Angeles and Aunjanue in Savannah recently

“The internet,” by which I mean that diffuse vibe one gets by scrolling through twitter, and clicking on award and film sites, always likes to jump the gun. People have figuratively been handing out Oscars for months, well before the campaigns revved up. But the long season of direct FYCs has now truly begun with Q&As and screenings suddenly abundant on both coasts. So where are we at with Best Supporting Actress? Don’t believe anyone who thinks this race is already settled. The supporting categories are often the last to clear up as they’re quite dependent on the film that houses them, the strength of the campaign, and once nominations are announced, the narratives for the win. But we do have some nomination probabilities.

ALMOST SURE THINGS?
I’ve moved Kristen Dunst and Aunjanue Ellis to the top of the charts in this category partially because they have no internal competition from their own films for that golden ticket to the Dolby. More importantly their films, Power of the Dog and King Richard respectively, have major Best Picture buzz and that always helps...

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Middleburg: Crowd-pleasing with "King Richard" and "Belfast"

by Nathaniel R

The family watching "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" in BELFAST

The 9th annual Middleburg Film Festival wrapped up Sunday night but they programmed well so the joy lingers. The two events that always have after parties, Opening Night and Saturday Centerpiece, were King Richard and Belfast respectively. In both cases you could feel the love in the room even before the booze began to flow. Since the Middleburg audience is a reasonably good proxy for the bulk of Oscar voters (mature, well to do, cultured, and with movie tastes that fall somewhere between critics and the general public) it's easy to imagine both films greeted just as warmly on Oscar nomination morning...

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