Best International Film: Switzerland's "Thunder" and Austria's "Vera"

by Cláudio Alves

After a litany of TIFF titles, Sweden's Opponent, and a pair of Latin American gems, let's take our Best International Film odyssey to Central Europe. There, we find a most curious couple from neighboring nations – a Swiss period piece about sexual repression and an Austrian docu-drama hybrid on an Italian celebrity. Both countries succeeded with the Academy in the past, having won twice each. Switzerland had its heyday in the last decades of the 20th century, taking the trophy for 1984's Dangerous Moves and 1990's Journey of Hope. For Austria, the triumph's more recent, with 2007's The Counterfeiters and 2012's Amour.

Thunder and Vera aren't likely victors like those past titles, but they're worth your time, nevertheless…

Click to read more ...

Best Supporting Actor: Is double-dipping the new trend?

by Cláudio Alves

For decades, it wasn't unusual to see two thespians from the same film nominated for Best Supporting Actress, but the same couldn't be said about its brother category. That was until recently when double-dipping in Supporting Actor became fashionable. 

It started in 2017, with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri's Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson. In 2019, it was Joe Pesci and Al Pacino for The Irishman, and then Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeit Stanfield for Judas and the Black Messiah in 2020. The following year, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee did the honors for The Power of the Dog, while, in 2022, The Banshees of Inisherin got in with Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan. For comparison, in the same period, Supporting Actress only had two such cases, with The Favourite and last year's Everything Everywhere All At Once. Now, the question is whether the trend will continue at the 96th Academy Awards…

Click to read more ...

Actor-Actress Joint Wins and Nominations: An Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

Since it premiered in Venice, Maestro has had critics and awards pundits abuzz. After its screenings at NYFF, BFI London, and the AFI Fest, the movie's status as one of the season's major contenders only grew. Right now, some are even speculating that with their double act as Leonard and Felicia Bernstein, Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan may be about to accomplish an Oscar feat unrepeated since 1997, when Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt took home the two lead acting prizes for As Good As It Gets. Before that, the only other instances occurred in 1934, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1981, and 1991. Let's dig deeper into this history…

Click to read more ...

Oscars: The Five Club

by Eric Blume

It’s always fun when “the conversation” starts to brew for Oscar nominations every year, seeing which actors are gaining traction for a potential nomination. What’s interesting this year is that there are an unusually high number of actors (six, in fact!) who currently have four acting nominations under their belt who all stand good-to-great chances of joining The Five Club with nods this year. Five Oscar nominations is a big deal. Only 22 actors currently have five, and the names are among some of our best from older Hollywood (Olivia de Havilland, James Stewart), to the modern age (Albert Finney, Anne Bancroft, Susan Sarandon) to contemporary (Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams). It’s very nice company to be in. 

Let’s take a look at the actors who stand a very real shot of being a part of The Five Club this year…

Click to read more ...

Colman Domingo could make Oscar history

by Cláudio Alves

Rustin is now in theaters, enjoying a limited qualifying release before it hits Netflix on November 17th. With this biopic on civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, Colman Domingo may earn his first Oscar nomination, in the Best Actor category. His hopes seem amply justified when you look over the production's premise and early reviews. It looks like a project calibrated to appeal to the Academy's taste, finely tuned for the campaign trail. After all, it's telling a real-life story full of inspirational details and a sense of great social importance, directed by George C. Wolfe from a screenplay coauthored by Dustin Lance Black.

That last name is especially interesting for it recalls Milk's triumph in 2008 and contextualizes Domingo's Oscar as a chance to make history…

Click to read more ...