Saturday, May 25, 2024 at 9:00AM by Elisa Giudici
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT © Cannes Film Festival
Cannes is coming to an end. In fact the closing awards ceremony begins less than four hours after this article's pubication. While we wait to finish reviewing all the films in competition and find out who will win the much-coveted Palme d'Or, it's time for A Jury of One...
Thursday, August 17, 2023 at 1:00PM by Nathaniel R
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in "Maestro" (Netflix)
As noted in Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor, we're pretending as if the strike will be resolved and movies will actually arrive later this year (because if we don't predictions will be nightmarishly impossible). So let's look at Best Picture and Best Director. What might the future hold for us in these two categories?
EARLY BIRD DIRECTORS
It's possible that we've already seen 60% of the Best Director list (Greta Gerwig, Chris Nolan, Celine Song) but that would be highly unusual. This isn't 1972 where the two biggest contenders (Cabaret & The Godfather) had already been popular for literally over a year when they dominated Oscar night. The Oscar formulas and awards season release patterns have calcified in the half century since then. The earth still orbits the sun at the same speed as it did decades earlier, but time (at least in pop culture) has sped up considerably; you're an "old" movie much quicker now...
Best Director, Best Picture, Celine Song, Chris Nolan, Directors, Greta Gerwig Friday, May 19, 2023 at 9:00PM by Nathaniel R
Image credit: Frazer Harrison at Getty ImagesThose of you who have read The Film Experience for a long time know that we're huge fans of 94 year old living legend director James Ivory. I've personally interviewed him (a total dream) and we've done a deep retrospective dive on his 1986 classic A Room With a View. and talked about many of his other films too like Howards End, Call Me By Your Name, and Remains of the Day. Now comes word that this master is getting the biographical documentary feature treatment from Christopher Manning, who previously directed award-winning shorts in the UK.
The film, currently in production, will be called James Ivory: In Search of Love and Beauty. It follows Ivory's life from his youth to his rise to international acclaim.
A bit more from the press release...
Christopher Manning, Directors, James Ivory, biopics, documentaries Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 2:34PM With the 95th Academy Awards wrapped, it's time to look to the future. Herewith a quick little series about what's in store for the recently nominated. Let's start with the writer/directors.
EDWARD BERGER
The 52 year old director behind Germany's latest Oscar winner, All Quiet on the Western Front, was surely thisclose to snagging an Oscar nomination for his directing (given how well the film did across the board) but he had to make due with sharing a writing nomination. His credits to date have largely been on German television but he'd already made inroads into Hollywood prior to the World War I Oscar magnet, directing episodes of two Showtime series, Your Honor and Patrick Melrose.
Let's just say he's very busy. He's already shot a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (as a miniseries) starring Benedict Cumbatch. Around the time of the Oscar nomination he was also shooting a religious thriller Conclave...
Friday, February 10, 2023 at 12:00PM by Nathaniel R
The Oscar charts are complete for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplays with "who should win" polls on each page. So vote for your favs daily! Each page also has trivia and factoids and listicles for your entertainment. For the first time in Oscar's 95 year history Director and Original Screenplay are an exact match and each of the directors also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays. We still can't get over that. Not just in 'how did it happen' but also in 'how did it never happen before?'. Do we just have more multi-hyphenates than we used to in Hollywood? (Probably) Or was it just a matter of the unique field of contenders this year? (Also possible)
Speaking of writer/directors. Today, February 10th, is Dan Kwan's 35th birthday and he has a lot to celebrate this year with 3 Oscar nominations for his 3rd feature Everything Everywhere All At Once. Remember his dance moves in "Turn Down For What?" Speaking of "Daniels"... what did you think of their Criterion Closet visit?
