Through Her Lens: 2019 (The 92nd Oscars)

A new series by Juan Carlos Ojano moving backwards through time looking at female-helmed films. Here's the full introduction if you missed it.

The biggest story of the 2019 awards season was Parasite breaking the language barrier and becoming the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Another story also gained prominence during that season: despite the considerable number of films directed by women that had awards buzz, none of them were nominated in the Best Director category yet again.

This was disappointing since the eligible films coming from all continents displayed the diversity of the work that women directors produced that year. Out of the 344 films included in the Reminder List of Eligible Films in 2019 (92nd Academy Awards), 78 of them (or 22.7%) were directed/co-directed by women...

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Almost There: Taron Egerton in "Rocketman"

by Cláudio Alves

Because it's Pride Month and Rocketman is new to streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime, this week's Almost There subject is Taron Egerton in Dexter Fletcher's Elton John biopic. In the most recent awards season, this Welsh actor probably came quite close to an Oscar nomination, both thanks to his performance as well as his aggressive campaigning. The nature of his role helped too, of course. Biopic roles are, literally, the Academy's favorite flavor of Oscar bait. Still, in the year after Bohemian Rhapsody's controversial victories, Rocketman had to content itself with a Best Original Song win. As for Egerton, he got Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG nods, but failed to secure the Oscar nomination, ending up just outside the Best Actor lineup…

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Curio: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Curio is our fan art appreciation column. Curated by Nathaniel R

by manga artist Inko Ai Takita.

Up until about last month we had an incredibly sound theory that had NEON released Celine Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) as originally expected in the fall of last year OR pushed it back fully to its rescheduled February release without that pesky "one week qualifier" that the film would have been a solid Oscar success. In either scenario we believe it could have scored Best Director and Best Cinematography and maybe even Best Actress nominations. 

As it was, positioned haphazardly between film years whilst NEON was (justifiably) distracted with making the miracle of Parasite's Oscar success possible, Portrait had to settled for halfsies...

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Review: Don't miss "And Then We Danced"

by Cláudio Alves

A man is a monument of strength, hard and unbending. A woman is a vision of purity, soft and willowy. For those who teach Georgian traditional dance, this binary is tantamount to a universal truth whose cosmic certainty must be supported by the choreographed bodies. But binaries are conventions fated to be broken by the messiness of being human. Merab, the protagonist of Levan Akin's And Then We Danced, is the element of humanity that breaks the convention and exposes its brittle frailty.

Merab's too soft to be a monument. He's too willowy to be the man of folkloric tradition. He's still a man, though, and a dancer too, one that trains to be part of the National Georgian Ensemble...

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That's a Wrap on the 92nd Oscars

The swiftest Oscar season we've personally ever experienced has come and gone. When we first started watching the Oscars in Ye Olden Times of the 1980s as a kid they were in mid April on Monday nights. Yes, mid-April (!!!) on Monday nights (!!!). Herewith everything we wrote about Hollywood's most recent High Holy Night to close the party down. 

Overview
Winners and Immediate Takeways
Podcast: Oscar Night in Review
New Oscar Trivia
Oscar Charts
The Times are Changing - Oscar Inclusivity

Specifics
The Tuxes and Gowns
Ranking the Musical Numbers
Ranking the Acceptance Speeches
Ranking the Acting Clips 
Little Women's Costume Win
Embroidered Fashion Statements
Top Five Presenters
Backstage Oscar Photos
Colin Jost or Brad Pitt?
Chanting for Parasite 

Related to the Big Night...
If you want to honor Judy 
Foreign movies after Parasite
Actors playing Actors (and winning gold) 
Justice for Horror Movie costumes
The decade in Best Actress fashion
What's next for the Oscar winners?
Directing actors to nominations
Honorary Oscar Speeches: Geena, Wes, David, Lina

Nominee Interviews
For Sama directors
Joker costume designer
The Irishman cinematographer
Frozen 2 songwriters 
Avengers, Lion King, and Rise of Skywalker visual effects

COMING NEXT TO THE FILM EXPERIENCE?
We'll wrap up the 2019 film year over the next few days by completing the Film Bitch Awards and then, after a short break, return fresh-faced and ready for the 2020 film year (already in progress) with the return of all your favourite series including the Supporting Actress Smackdown. And we'll probably have some "best of decade" fun too now that the 2010s have wrapped.