It's a clean sweep for "Drive My Car" at the Japan Academy Awards

by Nathaniel R

Hidetoshi Nishijima accepting BEST ACTOR for "Drive My Car" 

The 45th annual Japan Academy Awards were held last night (aka hours ago -- time differences are confusing!) in Tokyo. 濱口 竜介's Oscar-nominated Drive My Car was honored in all of its categories. The winners are after the jump... 

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I'll Link to That: Dune, Teen Wolf, and The Gilded Age

• Interview Kirsten Dunst interviews her Melancholia costar Alexander Skarsgárd about the demands of making his Viking period epic The Northman. Fun banter!
• Gr8ter Days takes a 40th anniversary look back at the first mainstream gay movie, Making Love
• Cartoon Brew struggles over abusively low salaries for artists in Japanese anime

Dune Part Two, The Gilded Age, Teen Wolf, Anders Danielsen Lie, Teen Wolf, and a new Luca Guadagnino project after the jump...

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Japanese Academy Awards: 'Drive My Car' up for 9 prizes

by Nathaniel R

March is promising to be a big month for Japanese Best Picture nominee Drive My Car. It just became the second release from Janus Films to make more than one million at the US box office (their biggest hit remains Italy's Oscar winning  The Great Beauty) and despite its steady box office performance, it's moving to streaming on March 2nd on HBOMax. Then, two weeks before the Oscars on March 11th, it is competing at the 45th annual Japan Academy Awards. The nominees for that ceremony are after the jump including a description of the five films up for the big prizes...

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Japan and the Oscars - a History

by Timothy Lyons

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and actress Reika Kirishima at Cannes this past summer with "Drive My Car"

One of the more pleasant surprises of this year’s Academy Award nominations announcement was the shortlisting of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s subtly masterful Drive My Car in Best Picture. In addition to this mention, Hamaguchi himself was nominated for Director and Adapted Screenplay (along with co-writer Takamasa Oe) and the film received an easily predicted nod in International Feature. While there seemed to be enough of a groundswell of support for the film to break into the general field, its inclusion in the top race remains a largely unexpected and refreshingly left-of-center occurrence. Despite now being the very first Japanese film nominated for Best Picture, Drive My Car is not the first to be recognised overall. It is also not the first to find favor beyond the usually ghettoized International Feature category.

Japan’s history with Oscar began in earnest during the 1950s...

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Sundance: Falling asleep (and in love) with 'Blood'

by Cláudio Alves

Bradley Rust Gray's Blood nearly put me to sleep. I mean it in a positive way, despite the negative readings such statements usually entail. At times, it felt like watching a 111-minute ASMR video crossed with a stubbornly understated character study. Even the casting appears designed to induce visceral relaxation, from Carla Juri's whispery intonations to Issey Ogata's unmistakable voice. Gray has devised a film of hypnotic qualities, extrapolating its protagonist's search for inner serenity to the audience's experience of movie-watching. At times, like when a gentle song unfurls with lyrics about dozing off, it almost seems as if Blood is winking at the semi-conscious spectator, sharing a joke, giving permission to dream… 

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