You Can Count On Me: Fraternal Cinema

In preparation for Thursday's Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.

by Cláudio Alves

Mainstream cinema, such as it is, has an understandable fondness for the portrayal of interpersonal relationships. That's what happens when narrative cinema dominates and character-based drama is the rule. Nevertheless, it's interesting to note how some bonds are more privileged than others in storytelling. Romantic love is common. Friendship has its own subgenres. Parents and children are at the center of many tales. Enemies, rivals, hateful adversaries have their place too. But sibling relationships, though very common in life, are very rarely at the forefront of any given motion picture. Consequentially, when such a film appears, there's an added value to its existence. At least, that's how I feel.

Kenneth Lonergan's debut feature, You Can Count On Me, is probably one of the best examples of this rare fraternal cinema…

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Final Oscar Nom Predix Pt 1: Picture, Director, Screenplay, Visuals, Sound

As many have remarked, the 2020... excuse us 2020 plus the first two months of 2021 film year has been unpredictable and chaotic in film awards. The pandemic affected the race in virtually every way (a different eligibility period, a different set of films with many delaying their arrival a full year, all virtual campaigning and no red carpets, etcetera). We could have done without the pandemic of course but we love a messy Oscar race. It makes punditry very difficult but also way more fun. And it's also more generous to artists because messiness spreads the wealth around and the wealth should always be spread. There is so little point in 35+ awards bodies if they're all in lockstep agreement. 

Just about the only thing that's been "consensus" from the first few moments of the season to the very last (to date) via the BAFTA nominations is that (generally speaking) everyone is moved by Minari, laughs along with Maria Bakalova in Borat, and is deeply impressed with Nomadland  but especially its trailblazing writer/director/editor/producer Chloe Zhao. New consensuses (concensi?) began to emerge late in precursor season around one additional thing: Daniel Kaluuya for Best Supporting Actor in Judas and the Black Messiah in which he has the leading role of the titular Black Messiah...

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Interview: Pixar's Mike Jones on co-writing "Soul" and "Luca"

by Nathaniel R

Pixar's Soul centers around a music teacher Joe, who feels he missed his calling. He always wanted to be a famous jazz musician. Through the course of the spiritually minded adventure, which takes us from Earth to The Great Beyond and The Great Before and back again, Joe comes to understand that his calling was to teach. None us know ahead of time where our lives and career might take us. For instance, I was certain I was going to be an illustrator and ended up in Human Resources and now identify as a writer. This is also true of Pixar's Mike Jones. He was once on our side of the movie world as an entertainment journalist but always planned to shoot movies. "I went to NYU film school to be a cinematographer. You have to take a writing course as an undergrad and the teacher took me aside and said, 'You want to think about writing instead?'" Jones continued to pursue cinematography but, as it turns out, the teacher was right and the seed was planted "I did start to kind of write on my own. And after I got out of film school, I kept writing." This led him to a brief entertainment journalism career until he made the leap to filmmaking, if not in the way he originally intended. Years later he has a thriving career at Pixar as a screenwriter.

We recently spoke to him about the process of developing Soul and what it's like to be a co-writer since Pixar generally has several creatives on each film...

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WGA Nominations -- Good news for late breaking streaming titles

by Nathaniel R

The White Tiger is a surprise nominee at the WGA

The Writers Guild of America will have their awards ceremony on March 21st, 2021 but today they announced their nominations.  It's always a bit tricky to look at this in the context of the Oscars since the eligibility rules are different. Though the WGA also extended their eligibilty period to match with Oscar (as you'll see given a couple of their nominees), several key films each year are not eligible. You can't be nominated for a WGA unleses you're already a member of their guild; in other words at the WGA you'd never get a situation like, say, you had with Parasite winning the SAG Award. Furthermore animated films are not eligible for this prize but are obviously eligible at the Oscars; Shrek was nominated and Pixar has had 7 nominees: Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL•E, Up, and Toy Story 3)

The nominees and Oscar related commentary is after the jump...

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Let's talk about Oscar's screenplay races

by Nathaniel R

"Mank" is about the writing of a legendary screenplay. That should do the trick.

Are there locks in the Screenplay categories? At the moment both races feel almost settled (aside from hugely competitive fifth slots) though the WGA nominations arrive on February 16th which could theoretically disrupt the consensus punditry.

ORIGINAL
In the original race Mank, Minari, Promising Young Woman, and Trial of the Chicago 7 all feel like certainties but are they? That's too many locks prior to the WGA nominations and leaves only one spot open. That hypothetical fifth spot battle has a lot of strong fighters...

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