Which movies will squeeze into the last two slots of the Best Picture lineup?

by Nathaniel R

Time for Oscar chart updates. And, the way we see it there are two relatively "open" slots in Best Picture with five films either showing some form of strength at the moment or feeling like they might happen. But which will prevail?

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If we were still in a sliding scale Best Picture situation as we were at this time last year we'd only be predicting 8 films for the top honor, and in this order: All locked up -- The Power of the Dog, West Side Story, Belfast, King Richard, Dune, Don't Look Up; The Probablies - CODA and Licorice Pizza. But the Academy has ruled that we're back to a full top ten list like we had (briefly) in 2009 and 2010. So there are two spots open...

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50th Anniversary: "Harold and Maude" is as necessary as ever.

by Brent Calderwood

It might be time to stop calling Harold and Maude a cult film. Yes, it’s true that when it came out fifty years ago (December 20, 1971), many critics and audiences greeted it with a mix of bewilderment, indifference, and even hostility—Variety, for example, claimed it had “all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage.” And yes, it's also true that Harold and Maude has been a staple of midnight art-house screenings almost since its release and has topped “best cult films” lists for as long as “cult film” has been a recognizable term.  

But 50 years on, Harold and Maude is so widely beloved by critics and new generations of film lovers that what was faintly hailed as an exquisite but slightly rarefied document of post-’60s counterculture is now firmly a part of our culture...

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Best Picture, Directors, Screenplays. Where are we at?

by Nathaniel R

With virtually every late year release, save arguably House of Gucci, meeting an enthusiastic response even if they weren't quite expected to (hello showbiz drama Being the Ricardos and all star satire Don't Look Up) and two more potential behemoths about to start screening (West Side Story and Nightmare Alley) the Best Picture race is yet more crowded and confusing. Let's break it all down...

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Emmy FYC: The writing of "I May Destroy You"

by Cláudio Alves

If loving I May Destroy You was a party, I'd have arrived late, long after most people had left and only a few stragglers remained, sleepily fumbling their way through a dancefloor labyrinth of abandoned bottles and stale sweat. While most of the world was consuming Michaela Coel's staggering tour-de-force June and July last year, I focused my attention on movies and the Emmy-eligible TV for that particular season. Consequently, I only watched I May Destroy You when it came time to vote for the Independent Spirit Awards. I went into it with great expectations that I feared too massive to be met. In the end, I needn't have doubted the show's masterpiece-like quality, its searing power, or visceral confrontation. Even then, I don't think I was fully prepared for how awe-inspiring Coel's writing turned out to be…

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Interview: Pixar's Mike Jones on co-writing "Soul" and "Luca"

by Nathaniel R

Pixar's Soul centers around a music teacher Joe, who feels he missed his calling. He always wanted to be a famous jazz musician. Through the course of the spiritually minded adventure, which takes us from Earth to The Great Beyond and The Great Before and back again, Joe comes to understand that his calling was to teach. None us know ahead of time where our lives and career might take us. For instance, I was certain I was going to be an illustrator and ended up in Human Resources and now identify as a writer. This is also true of Pixar's Mike Jones. He was once on our side of the movie world as an entertainment journalist but always planned to shoot movies. "I went to NYU film school to be a cinematographer. You have to take a writing course as an undergrad and the teacher took me aside and said, 'You want to think about writing instead?'" Jones continued to pursue cinematography but, as it turns out, the teacher was right and the seed was planted "I did start to kind of write on my own. And after I got out of film school, I kept writing." This led him to a brief entertainment journalism career until he made the leap to filmmaking, if not in the way he originally intended. Years later he has a thriving career at Pixar as a screenwriter.

We recently spoke to him about the process of developing Soul and what it's like to be a co-writer since Pixar generally has several creatives on each film...

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