Nathaniel's Venice Wrap-Up: Jury of One Awards

by Nathaniel R

The Venice jury and I agree on a Screenplay prize for THE LOST DAUGHTER

Elisa's already shared the official winners of Venice (and her take on those choices since she saw the whole competition slate). I admire her completism at festivals but my habit is instead to sample a bit from each program. I saw twenty-one films which is a very low number to see over eight days at a major fest — blame Venice’s absurd ticketing system this year which encouraged people to be on their phones securing tickets WHILE watching movies -- i met several people who had set timers for themselves! -- since they sold out in seconds after becoming available every few hours. Since I refused to play on my phone during movies I missed two crucial movies (Spencer and Dune) but here are my favorite achievements from the films I did catch from all programs (Competition, Out of Competitions, Orizzonti, Biennale Collage Cinema, and Critics Week)

RULES: In true festival jury fashion (even though it’s just myself) I’m only allowing one prize per film. And rather than giving out a Best Actress and Best Actor prize (don't make me decide this early!) I’m listing my 15 favorite performances after the jump. What, too much? Acting is magic so I shan't apologize…. 

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Category Analysis: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

By Abe Friedtanzer

The Handmaid's Tale hogged the nomination in this category with three of the eight nominees.

This category is once again selected from the most-populated ballot, with 311 eligible men, one of only two acting races that had more than 200 eligible contenders. While there’s one show dominating the nominated field with three of the slots again, this year there are actually six shows represented, up from five. Michael K. Williams won the Critics Choice prize but none of these men were even nominated by the HFPA or SAG, so it’s possible that things are a bit more open and unpredictable this time in terms of a winner.

I’ll try to avoid major plot details in my analysis – but if you’d like more spoiler-filled descriptions, click on the episode titles. Let’s consider each nominee… 

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A Room With a View, Pt 3: A lot of lying on the way to Truth, Beauty, and Love

Previously in our deep dive retrospective, Nathaniel visited Lucy Honeychurch at her idyllic pastoral home in England and her new engagement to Cecil Vyse, whose sneering fastidiousness is only matched by his complete inability to relate normally to other people. Things got delightfully complicated when the Emersons turned up unexpectedly as neighbors.  They’re about to get a lot more complicated in part 3, with Charlotte Bartlett, of all people, emerging as the unsung savior of truth, beauty, and love.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW
(a three part miniseries)
part 3 by Lynn Lee

I’ll be honest: although A Room With a View is one of my all-time favorites, for a long time the third act was my least favorite.  Too much lying and denial by Lucy, too much drawing out of the inevitable, not enough humor to make it go faster.  But as I grew older, I came to see it differently.  If the first act is the most romantic and the second the most comedic, the third is – pardon my French – when shit gets real.  We see the emotional consequences of our heroine trying to bury what’s in her heart, and in so doing we get to see her finally grow up. 

1:18:26  First-time viewers may not know it yet, but the library book Lucy’s mother admonishes her to pick up is a narrative grenade...

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Oscar Prediction Charts: Three questions about Best Supporting Actor

by Nathaniel R

We're not predicting Richard E Grant Oscar buzz for the drag musical Everybody's Talking About Jamie but we're sharing his picture because we're in this kind of cheerful mood and because he was ROBBED in his Oscar year and we've been fans for as long as we can remember. Wasn't he fun on Loki this month? 

The supporting categories at the Oscars are always hard to read this early. Supporting roles are rarely the focus of pre-release buzz. What's more they can have a tough time finding awards love since leading movie stars have a super gross and predictable way of constantly crashing the party for those lower on the call sheet (last year's "supporting" race arguably had just one 100% no debate supporting player). So we threw one lead into the predictions (Jesse Plemons in Power of the Dog) but it's more than likely that some other lead will be pitched here, too. We don't care to guess about who that will be right now. For first attempt at predicting nominations in this category for 2021 we're saying...

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Emmy Watch: Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

Our team is breaking down the top contenders in all the major races and highlighting some of our favorites over the next few weeks. 

By Abe Friedtanzer

This category has, over the past few years, featured a wealth of contenders, including three nominees from a single show each of the past two years. Very few of those aired this past season, and in fact only two shows that have ever produced nominees in this category. Both The Handmaid’s Tale and This Is Us, which have fallen somewhat out of favor with Emmy voters compared to the warm welcome they both got at the beginnings of their runs, have a handful of contenders that could show up here, so let’s start with those and then examine the many new shows that could offer potential nominees…

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