January. It's a Wrap.

Busy month. As Januarys always are. Between the Oscar nominations, the Golden Globes, the SAG awards, the campaigns raging, and the world collapsing, it's been quite a month. In case your visits were spotty here are 15 highlights you might have missed...

What if Miranda Priestley styled the Vanity Fair covers?

8 Must Reads
Miss Orange County we pfinally started a Pfeiffer retrospective series. Have you been reading?
Interview: Denis Villeneuve the Oscar nominee talks about the shape of Arrival
Three Fittings: La La Land simplicity rules but the costume design isnt simplistic
Doc Corner Glenn on the Oscar nominated feature list
We Can't Wait our 17 most anticipated films of 2017
The Furniture tackled the tackiness of legendary bad movie The Oscar (1966)
Lunchtime Poll What cartoon should come with a trigger warning?
Film Bitch Awards I trust you've been following along?
Kissing Andrew Garfield would it make you feel better? 

7 Most Discussed
Devil Wears Prada musical? They're taking it to the stage
Vanity Fair Hollywood Cover -Annie Liebovitz attacks
Isabelle Huppert & Other French Icons - César vs. Oscar in the stats
Oscar Snubs This Season Annette Bening, Sing Street, Cameraperson, etc
8 Big Takeaway of Oscar Nominations - untrustworthy buzz, Michael Shannon, etc
Team Experience Awards - Moonlight, Zootopia, Jackie and more win prizes
Nathaniel's Top Ten List -20th Century Women, The Witch, Arrival and more...

Coming in February
The Supporting Actress Smackdown for 2016, a Laura Dern celebration for her 50th birthday, lots of Oscar madness, a look back at Grease 2, favorite kisses for Valentines Day, 50 Shades Darker, and more.

Farhadi Isn't Coming to the Oscars. Go See "The Salesman" in Solidarity

As we've previously noted briefly, the leading actress of The Salesman was not coming to the Oscars in protest of  T****'s unconstitutional and immoral ban on Muslims entering the US. Now the great Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) will not be attending the Oscars either. The ban has created chaos around the world and the awards show plans of filmmakers is, of course, low on the totem pole of injustices. But still, this sucks. When I spoke with Farhadi about The Salesman in December, he spoke fondly of the Oscar experience and how international it felt, sharing the experience with the other nominees.

Farhadi released a beautifully articulate damning statement which reads in part:

Hardliners, despite their nationalities, political arguments and wars, regard and understand the world in very much the same way. In order to understand the world, they have no choice but to regard it via an “us and them” mentality, which they use to create a fearful image of “them” and inflict fear in the people of their own countries.

This is not just limited to the United States; in my country hardliners are the same. For years on both sides of the ocean, groups of hardliners have tried to present to their people unrealistic and fearful images of various nations and cultures in order to turn their differences into disagreements, their disagreements into enmities and their enmities into fears. Instilling fear in the people is an important tool used to justify extremist and fanatic behavior by narrow-minded individuals.

Speaking truth to power. Every word of that is exactly right. 

10 Takeaways from the SAG Awards

Two handfuls of moments from last night's SAG Awards have stuck with me. How about you?

All Politics Are Personal
Julia Louis-Dreyfus early win and a speech that got political, her father being an immigrant, set the tone and politics never went away. It was there in every speech, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes poignantly. People who scream "no more politics" are always forgetting that all politics are personal. The laws that are made, the character of the country we live in, the rights we enjoy or can't, the laws that goven our workplaces, the type of healthcare we get, the size of the paycheck. All of these things affect every single person personally whether they see that it connects to D.C. or not. If there was any doubt that Mahershala Ali was going to win the Oscar next month for his terrific work in Moonlight (and also, yes, as a symbolic win for the film itself which often happens in the supporting categories) it surely vanished last night. Ali was deeply touched at the prize, humble, but also upset given T***'s unconstitutional Muslim ban. He brought up his own conversion to Islam and the initial conflict it raised with his mother. Touchingly he revealed that they're both long since over the conflict since. A bonus of Ali winning is we got to see shots of the Moonlight table and they unfortunately didn't get another chance to shine. 

Lily Tomlin, Denzel Washington, Winona Ryder and more after the jump...

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Box Office Boom for Best Pictures...

Hidden Figures and La La Land both crossed the $100 million mark this weekend.

This weekend saw three Best Picture nominees re-expanding (Moonlight, Fences, Arrival) to capitalize on their Oscar nominations each adding a million plus to their already successful grosses. Arrival is so close to $100 million now ($97.3) but it will be still be a stretch to hit that milestone with its Blu-Ray release just two weeks away. In fact every Best Picture nominee that's still in theaters experienced a boost at the box office this weekend except Hidden Figures (which was already roaring) but that drama's neglible 11% drop continues to suggest a very long run to come.

The shadow side of this equation? That's what's happening to the prestige pictures that weren't nominated...

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Who will win or could win the SAG Awards?

Last year, the Screen Actors Guild Awards had a ready-made anti-Oscar narrative with a slate of winners that features colorful casts (Orange is the New Black) and Idris Elba as the supporting actor winner during the #OscarsSoWhite backlash. This year, there's no clear media narrative and SAG even has to make do without a Best Picture frontrunner since La La Land is understandably not up for their top prize (Outstanding Performance by a Cast... also referred to as "Best Ensemble" by many). So what will they choose this year? Who knows!

Viola has won four SAG awards, two for How to Get Away With Murder, two for The Help

We'll find out tomorrow night but what we're most looking forward to the lifetime achievement tribute to Lily Tomlin which will happily be presented by her 9 to 5 co-stars Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton. But back to predictions. Will Viola Davis win her fifth SAG in five years?  Let's make the tough calls after the jump...

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