Tennessee Williams @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

Vivien Leigh accepts her second Oscar in 1952.

The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1951 is coming at the end of the month, bringing with it a revisit to the first Tennessee Williams adaptation to catch the Academy's eye. Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire marked the start of a period when Hollywood couldn't get enough of the American playwright, bringing most of his celebrated texts to the screen in big studio productions that attracted the cream of the talent crop of filmmakers and actors. These projects were incredibly captivating for the latter, with their guarantee of juicy roles prone to critical acclaim. Over just fourteen years, 19 performances were Oscar-nominated, and five won. 

Let's explore the list of AMPAS-approved Williams adaptations, find out where one can watch them, and share some Oscar trivia along the way... 

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When will we start getting "official" submissions for the International Feature Film Oscar race?

The International Feature Film Oscar race has (mostly) reverted to its pre-COVID calendar for 2022. The past couple of years have been chaos with releases and deadline shifts but we're (almost) back to the usual which doesn't follow the  calendar year overseas. "WHAT ON EARTH," you ask? "Oscar is always by calendar year!" Nope, not quite within this category...

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Welcome to the Academy!

In the now annual tradition the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the names of the filmmakers, actors, artisans, executives, and more that they've invited to join the Academy. These 397 new members (should they accept the invites) will be able to vote on the Oscar nominations for their branch as well as Best Picture. To determine the winners later on each season, all members vote on everything (except some cases with specialty categories where the rules have been known to change from year to year)

In keeping with their drive for diversification they've released the following stats:

The 2022 class is 44% women, 37% belong to underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and 50% are from 53 countries and territories outside the United States.  

We've included the full list of invitees after the jump with a few comments...

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Ranking the International Feature Film Winners

by Juan Carlos Ojano

From De Sica to Hamaguchi, the past two years of hosting the podcast The One-Inch Barrier has allowed me to watch all that films that were selected by the Academy for its International Feature Film category - 74 winners and 337 nominees (all but one title). While this category has had its issues over the years, it has also put an international spotlight on non-English language cinema on Hollywood’s biggest night. While the category has  always been far from a perfect encapsulation of world cinema, it's a great jumping off point as noted in the series finale.  (Cláudio Alves did a beautiful summary of our discussion - video included!). 

Here is my personal not-that-definitive ranking of the winners of the category. Things are very fluid especially in the midsection... 

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Anthony Hopkins to play Sigmund Freud (and a little Oscar history)

by Nathaniel R

Hopkins image via The Guardian

Sir Anthony Hopkins, who is now 84, is in the middle of a late career golden period winning a much-deserved second Oscar for The Father and now getting mostly glowing reviews for a grandfather role in Armageddon Time.  He'll also appear in The Father 's thematic sequel The Son late this year, though this time he doesn't have the leading titular role. Yesterday we learned that Hopkins is set to play Sigmund Freud in a new film called Freud's Last Session. Announcements about famous actors doing biographical roles is not particularly noteworthy as it seems to happen about 24 times each year. But this news is amusing and interesting given Hopkins film history...

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