Streaming Roulette, January: Being the Lost Daughter of the Manor

What's streaming in January? You know the drill by now. We pick a handful of titles and freeze them on the scroll bar at a random place (no cheating) and share what came up. Let's go.

[Crying in distance]

The Lost Daughter (2021) on Netflix
It's apt that our streaming roulette landed on this image of Leda (Jessie Buckley) ignoring her children. The discourse about this movie has been weirdly reductive and centered on freaking out that she's a "bad mother". I have no idea what ot make of this film's Oscar chances. Critics have been kind but it's an irritable confrontational movie i.e. not what Oscar usually goes for. And Netflix has soooo much on their plate in terms of Best Picture. 

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Tweetweek

Accurate, this!

seems like the pandemic is structured like buffy the vampire: each season has a lot of mini crises but is about one big bad. (new Variant, etc) by that logic does will the series finale will find us sinking into a hole in the earth as the hellmouth consumes us? plz, yes. hurry.

— Allison P Davis (@AllisonPDavis) December 16, 2021

After the jump many more curated tweets including reactions to Time's Person of the Year, Spider-Man No Way Home, various awards things, and relatable and/or amusing tweets...

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Spirit Award Nominations!

by Nathaniel R

Zola leads the nominations with The Novice and The Lost Daughter in runners up position

Zola, A24's raucuous stripper roadtrip comedy led the 37th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards with 7 nominations. A24 also scored with  C'mon C'mon (3 nods) Red Rocket (2 nods) and The Humans (1 nod) putting them in the lead for distributors. Netflix was in second place with 9 citations, 4 of those for The Lost Daughter. The big surprise, though, was arguably the very strong showing by IFC Film's horror entry The Novice which received 5 nominations.

It wasn't all good news. Passing was given the short end of the stick yet again (why can't people see its brilliance?) and due to the vagaries of juried nominations there are always a few odd omissions to consider. Full list of nominations with commentary after the jump... If there's a link it goes to our review of that picture.

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"The Lost Daughter" reigns at the Gotham Awards

by Nathaniel R

Peter Sarsgaard, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Dakota Johnson at the Gotham Awards

Last night, while many film journalists were at one of the several West Side Story premieres, the Gotham Awards were held celebrating much less expensive but also captivating cinema.  Maggie Gyllenhaal's feature directorial debut, The Lost Daughter  reigned winning four of its five categories. This was bad news for Passing, another Netflix film (which we like even more though they're both fine films) which received 5 nominations but lost in all of its categories. Other multiple nominees who took home no prizes included A24 films like Red Rocket, The Green Knight, and C'mon C'mon, 

Outside of  The Lost Daughter the biggest awards season boost was definitely for CODA. The family drama about a child of deaf adults who wants to be a professional singer won prizes for both its leading lady Emilia Jones and her onscreen father Troy Kotsur. Kotsur really should be more competitive in Best Supporting Actor discussions so perhaps this will help!

THE WINNERS and more commentary are after the jump...

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"Passing" and "The Lost Daughter" lead Gotham Awards nominations

by Nathaniel R

It was a good year for forthcoming Netflix content helmed by actresses turned directors with the juries of the Gotham Awards. Rebecca Hall's artful black and white drama Passing and Maggie Gyllenhaal's artful thorny adaptation of the novel The Lost Daughter led the nominations. They'll hit Netflix on November 10th and December 31st respectively. With both the Gotham Awards and the often slighlty more mainstream Spirit Awards it can be hard to know exactly what is eligible. Usually budgets make all the difference in film (for example Power of the Dog was ineligible) which creates a fuzzymath accounting line between mainstream and 'indie. But how do they decide with television? Did they not like Mare of Easttown (which scored zero nominations) or was it just not eligible though its chief Emmy rival The Queens Gambit obviously was since Anya Taylor Joy was nominated. 

Nominations and commentary are after the jump...

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