Links: An Amy Adams Double, Nolan Rankings, and Homosexual Erasure

Must Reads
• Vulture Rachel Handler hilariously ranks Christopher Nolan's movies by how willing she would be to die for the privilege of seeing them in movie theaters.
• The Hollywood Report looks back at the making of X-Men (2000) and how it created a monster with young director Bryan Singer

More after the jump including Amy Adams-centric news, "Do You Have the Antibodies?" a hit waiting to happen, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof's failures, a new Brad Pitt project and more...

Click to read more ...

Live Blog : Independent Spirit Awards

Welcome to the Independent Spirit Awards Live Blog!  Your usual host Nathaniel is otherwise occupied. I’m Murtada hoping to take you through the next couple of hours in good spirits and minimal puns.

Refresh periodically for updates!

The show hosts today are Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon and  Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani. They gave a fun interview to Vanity Fair where they both admitted to being obsessed with awards shows growing up. Do you think they read The Film Experience?

McKinnon:

 "I have this notebook. I’m about 12 and I’ve got a notebook, and I watch all these shows and write down the winners in all of the categories. In every category at all the Oscars, the Globes, the Emmys. . . . Because I was really so interested in the entertainment industry.”

 Nanijani:

"I loved the Oscars and I had V.H.S. tapes for the Oscars, and I used to watch them over and over. There was probably one year where I watched it like 20 times or something.”

Read it when the commercials are on; it’s fun.

The nominations were led by Carol (6) and Beasts of No Nation (5). But if the last few years are any indication then Spolight, which scored 4 nominations, is the favorite since it's the only Oscar best picture nominee in the running. They really love the Oscars at Indie Spirits. 

However this year there are several categories that have 0 correlation with Oscar. So we are in for an unpredictable show. Hopefully.

Live commentary after the jump:

Click to read more ...

Personal Ballot: Casting, Ensemble, Breakthrough

Ready to start pouring over Nathaniel's annual Film Bitch Awards? The time is now. As longtime readers probably have gleaned, in my secret alternate fantasy life I became a casting director. It's one of the three jobs in movies I always thought I'd be terrific at (the others being editing and screenwriting). This is not bragging. It's fan-fic journaling. All cinephiles are allowed, indeed encouraged (at least here), to harbor such 'in another life' fantasies! The natural pull of casting is probably what keys up the interesting in SAG's Ensemble category so much even though they don't ever seem to absorb the meaning of the word but just pick five pictures they liked. 

Now that SAG has had their say, here are the Film Bitch Nominees in the casting friendly categories:  Casting, Ensemble, and Breakthrough Performers. You'll see major shout outs to Sicario and Brooklyn in particular, both the casts and their casting directors (Francine Maisler and Fiona Weir, respectively). It's still mortifying that they were looked over in terms of communal acting whenever ensemble prizes were handed out anywhere. Diary of a Teenage Girl, which we probably haven't talked about enough, is also honored twice over. 

And a note to remember as you read them: If a performer is nominated in one of our regular Oscar-adjacent acting categories they are not eligible for Breakthrough (so no double dipping) which is why you don't see Jacob Tremblay from Room for example since he was already nominated in Leading Actor. 

"Tangerine" and the Case for Mya Taylor

Kieran, here taking a moment to talk about Mya Taylor’s Independent Spirit Award-nominated performance in Sean Baker’s Tangerine.

Being the calm in a storm is not as easy a dynamic to render on-screen as it looks. That’s what Mya Taylor is tasked with in Tangerine—playing the careful, contemplative counterpoint to Sin-Dee’s (Kitana “Kiki” Rodriguez) turbulent rampage through the streets of East Hollywood. When considering the two performances, both accomplished but in very different keys, I immediately thought of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Sadie and Mare Winningham’s title character in 1995’s Georgia (previously discussed here). Though both Alexandra and Sin-Dee’s lives aren’t exactly as diametrically opposed as Georgia and Sadie’s, there’s a similar thread of calm vs. irrational running beautifully through both films. Like Winningham, Taylor gifts her film with an unfussy balance of quiet observation and brimming, longstanding frustration. [More...]

Click to read more ...