Mark Your Calendars!

With the Gotham Awards coming tonight, it's time to look at the awards season calendar. Here's a handy prep list. Dates in italics are not official just right around when it happened last year. Dates in bold are nomination dates or televised ceremonies.

Are you ready? Can you ever be?

DECEMBER 2015
 

1st (ish) Oscar's Documentary Finalist List announced
1st National Board of Review Awards
2nd New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) Awards
6th Boston Society of Film Critics (BSFC) Awards
7th Golden Globe nomination ballots due
9th SAG NOMINATIONS
10th GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS
13th Toronto Film Critics Awards
14th BFCA "CRITICS CHOICE" NOMINATIONS
18th (ish) Oscar's Foreign Language Finalist List announced
20th FiLM BiTCH AWARDS begin. That's ours... (I know I know. we'll try to trim the running time this year.)
30th Oscar nomination ballots go out to AMPAS

JANUARY 2016

5th PGA & ADG Nominations
5th NBR Gala
6th ASC Cinematography Nominations
7th SAG nomination ballots due
8th Oscar nomination ballots due
8th BAFTA Nominations
10th GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS (73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards on NBC)
10th Visual Effects Society "Bake-Off" presentation for the Oscar finalists
12th DGA Nominations
13th FiLM BiTCH AWARDS Nominations Wrap-Up
14th OSCAR NOMINATIONS - Rejoice!
17th CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS (Annual BFCA Awards on A&E)
21st  Sundance Film Festival Begins
23rd PGA Gala
29th SAG ballots due
30th SAG AWARDS (22nd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on TNT/TBS)
31st Art Directors Guild Gala

FEBRUARY 2016

6th DGA Gala
12th Oscar ballots out to AMPAS
14th BAFTA AWARDS and American Society of Cinematographer's Gala
17th (ish) 18th Annual Costume Designers Guild Gala
23rd Oscar Ballots due
27th Film Independent Spirit Awards
28th OSCAR NIGHT! (aka Hollywood's High Holy Night aka The 88th Annual Academy Awards)

MARCH & APRIL 2016

It all starts again for a new film year!

And Your Golden Globe Host Is... Ricky Gervais

Hi everyone. Coco here, wondering how you guys feel about this year's Golden Globe host announcement.  

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association made the announcement yesterday on Twitter: Ricky Gervais will return to host the Golden Globes for a fourth time.

Gervais is back after a three year hiatus. Those three years, of course, are what we common folk refer to as the "Tina and Amy Era". And with good reason. Sure, their third time hosting was a relative letdown compared to the first two glorious times, but ask anyone on the street and they'll agree Tina and Amy are still among the best Award Show hosts of the past ten years or so. But let's go back to Ricky. 

Gervais has an interesting history with the Globes. He was the first person to host the ceremony since 1995 (when John Larroquette and Janine Turner shared the honors), and he made headlines thanks to his unsavory jokes. Every entertainment outlet seemd to be talking about how Gervais poked fun at Robert Downey Jr. and Mel Gibson's histories of substance abuse, and for a while there, people tuned in to the Globes to see what inaproppriate thing Gervais was going to say next, instead of tuning in for the right reasons (which, by the way, are the fashion and the opportunity to see drunk celebrities interact with each other). 

But just like anything that coasts on shock value, Gervais's popularity could only last for so long. By the time Gervais hosted for the third time, his schtick was old news. 

But what do you think? Is Gervais's comeback a boring choice? Or are you actually excited about his return? 

Golden Globe Musical or Comedy: a thin field or just a mysterious one?

Last week was a good one for Gold Derby. Not only did Ryan Murphy elevate their brand status by ____ them to death with an Oscar on American Horror Story but their story that David O. Russell's Joy would go Drama at the Golden Globes got a lot of "whoa, really?" press. I'm sure it's true-ish now but people are so exciteable about any "news" that I'm always finding myself in the position of splash of cold water realism. Truth: there are few certainties this early as it's only October and there's lots of wiggle room still for campaigns and precursor ponderings and such. Films are still entering (The Big Short) and exiting (I Saw The Light) the 2015 calendar and some switcheroos of fate/precursors/campaigning happen at all junctures on the way to Oscar: remember when My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Gangs of New York were suddenly Original Screenplays (oy); remember when Oscar decided abruptly that all the precursors were wrong and Kate Winslet was a leading lady in The Reader (they were right of course but it was super gross how all the precursors and media were all "Yay, category fraud!!!"); or when Whiplash was determined to be Adapted too late for its FYCs to urge voters to vote that way.

So let's assume that Joy is out of the Golden Globe Musical or Comedy and let's assume The Martian is in (though obviously things could change on either front). And after shedding whatever tears must be shed that the Coen Bros Hail, Caesar! is not opening in time to own this category, we move on.

Is the field thin or just mysterious to our eyes in October? Let's take a look after the jump...

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TV @ The Movies: "Difficult People" and the Golden Globes of Hate

NEW SERIES! Since our eyes always flash and a smile spreads when a movie is referenced on a tv show we're watching, we've decided to make it a habit to share these cross-platform romances with you. Whenever we see one worth discussing, we'll share it.

Have you been watching Hulu's Difficult People? You should be watching Difficult People! Admittedly, it could be a very hard show to fall in love with if you’re not a fan of watching terrible New Yorkers act like exclusionary, entitled gits while spouting cruel insults about celebrities – but hey, that’s one of my favourite genres! What it does mean is references galore, like an audition for a remake of the 1988 body swap comedy Vice Versa in episode two, or a PBS roast in episode three that finds time for jokes about Shining Time Station (“If there’s one thing children love, it’s having Ringo Starr yell at them about trains”) and Maggie Smith’s genitals being named after Mr. Bean.

Julie Klausner and Billy Eichner star as Julie and Billy. They are less successful, but very pseudo-autobiographical versions of themselves - a mildly successful recapper of reality television and a waiter trying to be an actor respectively. They are trying to build a career in comedy while he works for Gabby Sidibe and she deals with her psychiatrist mother (Andrea Martin). Their love of pop culture knows no meta-bounds and they show has already landed in hot water over a joke in episode one about Beyonce that was the target of people who apparently know nothing of irony, criticising the show, the network, Klausner, and executive producer Amy Poehler as “disgusting”.

Sigh, right? [More...]

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1995 Look Back: The Breakout Year of Nicole Kidman

TFE will be taking several trips back to 1995 for the next two weeks, our "year of the month". Here's abstew on the one and only... - Editor

Although she had been acting in Australia since she was 16 years old, most American audiences at the start of 1995 only knew Nicole Kidman for one thing: being Mrs. Tom Cruise. Despite earning strong notices earlier for 1989's Dead Calm (and catching the attention of superstar Cruise), the Hollywood productions that followed did little to showcase the promising talent that had been hinted at. Appearing alongside Cruise in glossy modest hits (Days of Thunder and Far and Away) or playing thankless wife roles that hardly challenged her as an actress (Malice, My Life), Kidman was in danger of becoming arm candy for her famous husband. But thanks to a new pair of roles, 1995 would become the year that she finally emerged from the shadow of Cruise to start the march to her own inevitable super-stardom.

One of the ways Hollywood measures the worth of a star is by their box office. Warner Bros had been disappointed with the profits of Tim Burton's Batman Returns and decided to go in a different direction for the next franchise installment. Because of the changes, former star Michael Keaton decided not to return as the cape crusader and when Val Kilmer came onboard, it was deemed that Rene Russo (who had already been cast as the romantic lead) was too old to appear opposite the new Bruce Wayne. More...

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