Oscar Volley: Can the world's biggest movie star win the Best Actor race? Surely not!

The Oscar Volleys are back! Tonight, it's time for Eric Blume and Nathaniel Rogers to discuss the Best Actor race...

Leonardo DiCaprio in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER | © Warner Bros.

ERIC: Nathaniel, I feel so lucky getting you all to myself to discuss this year's Best Actor race. There are probably several candidates we have yet to see this season, but let's dive in.  

It seems to me that the one actor most guaranteed a nomination also has zero chance of actually winning: Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another. The film will have a big nomination haul, and because his performance seems to be universally beloved (as opposed to his work in Killers of the Flower Moon, where he was may be objectively bad?), I think he's in. But there's no way he's winning. Too many other candidates with overdue narratives or even flashier parts…

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"Elvis" maxes out on nominations from the AACTA

by Travis Cragg

Baz Luhrmann’s musical biopic Elvis has thoroughly dominated the film categories of the Australian Academy Cinema Television Arts (AACTA) scoring a nod in every category for which it was eligible. The grand total is 15 nominations! Not too far behind, with 13 nods each, are George Miller’s fairytale 3000 Years Of Longing and Leah Purcell’s revisionist Western The Drover’s Wife: The Legend Of Molly Johnson. In recent times, the big movie of the nominations tends to sweep the wins as well (see Nitram, Babyteeth, Lion, and Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby for evidence), so if you’re wanting to make predictions, the Presley biopic is the best bet for all. 

After the jump a list of nominations, where you can stream them in the US, and a few comments. In case Elvis leaves the building, we offer a few alternatives as to what might win...

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Review: Dev Patel captivates in the legend of "The Green Knight"

by Matt St Clair

the severed head of "The Green Knight"

Normally, Arthurian legends are sword-and-sorcery fables. The latest Arthurian tale The Green Knight, which is primarily about Arthur’s nephew Gawain (Dev Patel) keeps the sorcery, yet there’s little swordplay. Unless you count a terrifying axe that keeps waiting to be swung. The Green Knight may be less action-oriented than other such tales but it's a visually stunning, cerebral dissection of the Messiah complex and its ties to monarchy. 

Despite Gawain not being religiously devout, he’s still eager to become a knight at his uncle’s Round Table...

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Jennifer Kent makes history at the AACTAs with "The Nightingale"

by Travis Cragg

Magnolia Maymuru from The Nightingale wins Best Supporting Actress

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) gave out their awards at two functions this week: one was an industry luncheon where they did the technical and supporting awards, the other was a glitzy evening televised on delay with many of the gongs awarded in the ad breaks (mostly, it seemed, to people who weren’t present and therefore wouldn’t give the viewers the requisite spontaneity that ratings prefer). The two biggest Australian box office hits of the year, Top End Wedding and Ride Like A Girl, went home empty-handed, but the wealth was spread out amongst the other (limited bunch of) nominees with The Nightingale leading the pack...

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Could The King Be a Contender

by Jason Adams

It's a big day for Netflix's 2019 Oscar slate, with Martin Scorsese's The Irishman opening in eight theaters in New York (one of them being the famed Broadway theater the Belasco) and Los Angeles -- you can read my thoughts on the movie when it screened at NYFF right here. It's a great film, worthy of all the praise it's gotten and will continue to get. That Marty guy can direct a movie!

But if you're not near those eight theaters (or if you are, even) there's another choice from the streaming giant that I recommend you get your eyeballs on -- David Michôd's The King starring Timothee Chalamet has now hit their online service after its own brief theatrical window, and I suggest you find the biggest screen you can find for it...

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