90th Oscar Nominations: Shape of Water Leads. Darkest Hour and Phantom Thread Surprise.

by Nathaniel R

Guillermo del Toro's beauty & the beast style macabre fantasy romance cold war mystery monstery movie whatsit The Shape of Water led the nominations with 13. (The record for most nominations remains 14 held jointly by Titanic, All About Eve and La La Land). Darkest Hour and Phantom Thread were the overperformers this morning with 6 nominations each even though many pundits (including myself) didn't think they'd quite manage Best Picture nods even though we were predicting them in other categories. For the record I myself had Phantom Thread in 10th place and Darkest Hour in 12th place (oops). As expected Blade Runner 2049 was the most nominated film without a Best Picture nomination (5 nominations. The record in the new era of the expanded Best Picture field remains with Carol which had 6 nominations). And finally The Post ends its whiplashing inducing what-is-happening-with-this-movie precursor adventure by scoring just 2 nods but they're biggies: Picture and Actress. 

TRIVIA AND COMMENTARY FOLLOWS...

Click to read more ...

Beauty vs Beast: All Sewn Up

Jason from MNPP here for our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" party - I'd been holding off on fêteing Paul Thomas Anderson's latest and most recently greatest Phantom Thread until it got its proper wide release, and now that it has, hitting over 800 theaters across the US this weekend, let us intrude ourselves upon the very strange (and strangely satisfying) union of Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), master designer, and his flung-from-space muse Alma (Vicky Krieps). Anderson muddies the waters great deal on what we think we know about this kind of power dynamic going in - Alma's nobody's pawn or pushover. And in Reynolds' sparkle-eyed acquiescence we see what she sees as worth all the fuss, too...

polls

PREVIOUSLY I kept hearing how last week's Hitchcock contest was tough for everybody and the numbers bear it out because this might've been the closest race we've yet had - Cary Grant topped Jimmy Stewart by just 3 votes out of over 300 cast! I'd say we're fairly torn on which man got the most from the Hitch treatment. Commenter Claran was decisively Team Cary though:

"Take that, Jimmy! Lest we forgot who stole the Oscar that should've gone to Grant, who wasn't even nom for The Philadelphia Story!! Tsk tsk....Shame on you, Oscars!!"

The 6th Annual Team Experience Awards!

Chris here, on behalf of my fellow Team Experience writers! Before Nathaniel shares his Top Ten and Film Bitch honors (not to mention the Oscar nominations on Tuesday - eek!), we've polled all of the other writers here at The Film Experience for their favorites of the past year without our kind and benevolent leader. It's our 6th Annual Team Experience Awards!

You'll remember last year we awarded eventual Oscar Best Picture winner Moonlight with seven prizes, and this year the wealth is slightly more shared. We had a lot of readers asking to see what our full ballot of nominations would be, so this year we have opened it up to reveal our winner and four runner-ups in each of our categories. Our nomination leader is Call Me By Your Name with 9 mentions, and craft-heavy Phantom Thread and The Shape of Water are right behind with 8.

Our most awarded however was granted to one of our most discussed, Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird. Because as Lois Smith's nun ponders: aren't love and attention the same thing? Check out our winners...

Click to read more ...

Harriet Sansom Harris in Phantom Thread

Embed from Getty Images

I let out a whoop when I first glimpsed Harriet Sansom Harris in Phantom Thread. I didn’t know she was part of the cast, but there she was drunkenly climbing stairs to meet Daniel Day Lewis’ couturier Reynolds Woodcock, as his wealthy client Barbara Rose.

It’s a comic gem in miniature...

Click to read more ...

Box Office: Jumanji, Tonya, and the Oscar waiting game

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (Jan 5th-7th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
1. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle  $36 (cum. $244.3)	1.🔺 I Tonya $2.4 on 242 screens (cum. $5.2)  REVIEW | GLOBE SURPRISE?
2. 🔺  Insidious The Last Key $29.2 (cum. $212.1)	2.🔺 The Post $1.7 on 36 screens (cum. $3.8) REVIEW | OSCAR KICK-OFF PODCAST
3. The Last Jedi $23.5 (cum. $572.5) LYNN'S REVIEW | NATHANIEL'S TAKE	3. Call Me By... $758k on 117 screens (cum. $6) REVIEWISH | SCREENPLAY | SEX
4. The Greatest Showman $13.8 (cum. $75.9) REVIEW | ZAC ATTACK | ZENDAYA	4.🔺 Hostiles $310k on 46 screens (cum. $435k)
5. Pitch Perfect 3 $10.2 (cum. $85.9) REVIEW	5.🔺 Along with the Gods $280k on 35 screens ($1.1)

One thing that we're always forcefully reminded of each holiday season -- since we tend to forget -- is that the whole world is not, in point of fact, thinking about Oscar buzz. Each year countless films casually ring up rather large box office returns without generating any "heat" in award season and some not even being part of that game. Insidious for example had the weekend to itself in terms of new wide releases and was rewarded for it. The Greatest Showman, is another one that isn't really banking on Oscar love. The musical's global gross has already doubled its budget (though given the P&A expenditures it's probably got some ways to go before a profit still)...

Click to read more ...