Jesse Plemons is an Oscar lucky charm

by Cláudio Alves

Mr. Kirsten Dunst is a lucky guy, wouldn't you say? The past decade has seen him rise in prominence, acting in movies by some of today's greatest directors – Spielberg! Scorsese! Campion! – while also delivering a slew of memorable performances in supporting roles. After earning TV awards glory, he finally transferred that same acclaim to big screen prizes, winning his first Academy Award nomination in the same movie that got his wife an overdue recognition. For awards aficionados, his turn as George Burbank in The Power of the Dog holds even more Oscar trivia goodness. You see, when Jane Campion's latest scored a Best Picture nomination, it marked the fifth consecutive year of Plemons starring in a movie up for the Academy's greatest trophy…

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Great Acting or Great Makeup?

by Cláudio Alves

As soon as the first Bombshell teaser dropped, many were ready to claim Charlize Theron's performance as a great feat of transformative acting. She had become Megyn Kelly, apparently. That people were saying this after having only seen a couple of pointed glances and a tense smile left me perplexed. Were people reacting to the acting or the makeup? Still thinking about Theron, one remembers how she sailed to an Oscar in 2003 but Monster didn't get a much deserving Best Makeup nomination. Sure, that performance is incredible, but part of the transformation is the cosmetic wizardry of the makeup brush rather than the virtuosity of the actress.

When it comes to "transformative performances", a lot of people conflate great acting with great makeup...

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Watch at Home: Tales from Captain Marvel's City, Mother

Nathaniel R giving you the heads up on what's available to you now to screen at home.

New on DVD/Blu-Ray
Captain Marvel - The year's second biggest hit, and less of a prequel of Avengers Endgame than we were expecting given Carol Danvers itty-bitty part in that ensemble behemoth, is now available in a physical copy if you're into those. Also out today: the hit indie The Mustang starring Belgium's golden perfection Matthias Schoenaerts, the sci-fi drama Captive State, and the romantic drama Five Feet Apart.

Notable iTunes 99¢ Deals
It's a weak week this time for those special deals with not much in the way of exciting pictures. But if you've never seen David Cronenberg's masterful Dead Ringers (1988) or the lesbian indie classic The Watermelon Woman (1996) now is as good a time as any.

New to Streaming

[LAUGHING] Oh this is surreal!

Tales of the City (2019) on Netflix
The Lovely Laura Linney is back in one of her signature roles as Mary Ann Singleton in this continuation of the classic Armistead Maupin series about life in gay ol' San Francisco...

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Ranking the Oscar Clips

by Ben Miller

Of all the decisions the Academy Awards producers/directors must make, the Oscar clip decisions are surely the most covetous -- who among us wouldn't want to chose? They're fairly crucial, too.  I ranked all the clips last year, and Nathaniel was nice enough to let me do it again.  The clips preceding each of the categories ranged from brilliant to “what the hell was that?”  Let’s rank them 20-1…

Cringe-worthy

I sometimes wish I'd never been born at aaaaaaallllllll 🎵

20. Viggo Mortensen, Green Book
19. Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Woo boy.  I would personally defend the work of both of these performances, but the snippets shown on Sunday did not lend any firepower to those arguments.  Viggo gets to wax on like an idiot about not knowing the difference between Russian and German before laying on some casual racism. Malek has plenty of good moments in the Queen biopic, but a simple shot of him lipsyncing reads like an Oscar producer’s opinion on the performance itself seeping through.

Not Doing Anyone Any Favors...

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Make Up For Ever

by Seán McGovern

About ten months from now, there will be a press release from the Academy informing us that some of the 24 categories will be handed out during the commerical breaks. Initially there will be uproar all over again. How dare they?! Didn't we go through all this last year? What an outrage! But then I'll turn to you and say 'yeah but remember those make-up people who won for Vice?' at which point we shall all accept this harsh but necessary decision...

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