Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 11:14AM 
As per usual we've fallen a bit behind in the awardage department so we're doing a massive post right now to catch up. Here are the latest critics groups to announce their awards as well as nominations from two civil rights organizations, GLAAD and the NAACP...
Monday, December 30, 2019 at 10:24PM Our Year in Review continues...
It’s hard to summarize the past year in Black American film as smoothly as I could if I was doing so at the end of 2018. It wasn’t just that this year’s most notable critical darlings failed to strike an emotional chord with Black audiences in comparison to recent years. There was also a lot of intense, misguided discourse online about the year’s most highly anticipated studio films like Harriet and Queen & Slim. The best of this year's crop - Fast Color, Luce and Little Woods - flew under the radar due to limited distribution and marketing. Even Jordan Peele’s ambitious Get Out follow-up Us, which was a huge hit, left a lot of people confused about its meaning. Needless to say, it was an interesting way to cap off a decade that slowly gave a new class of Black artists the freedom to make the movies they wanted without catering to a white lens.
**This is not a comprehensive selection of films**
The Internet’s disdain for last year’s Green Book spurred many conversations about white filmmakers’ ability to accurately portray Black people in their art. So it was interesting that, once again, this year’s most highly acclaimed and talked about Black movies out of prestige festivals were written and directed by white men: Trey Edward Shults’ Waves, Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Craig Brewer’s Dolemite is My Name...
Tuesday, December 3, 2019 at 10:00AM with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R
Index (61 minutes)
• 00:01 Happy belated Thanksgiving
• 02:01 Marielle Heller and Tom Hanks offer catharsis with A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• 14:30 Knives Out and that yummy cast: Chris Evans, Toni Collette, etc...
• 21:30 Film Bitch Awards / Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers tangent
• 23:00 Exciting new voice: Senegal's Mati Diop and Atlantics
• 29:20 Waves divides people, including Nathaniel and Murtada, and we also discuss the rush to judgment on first screenings among pundits
• 38:00 Spirit Nominations - What did we make of them?
• 48:20 Best Cinematography - Roger Deakins for 1917... but who else?
• 59:00 Can you believe it's December already?
Related Reading
Murtada's interview with Mati Diop
Monica Castillo's Knives Out essay
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?
Thursday, October 24, 2019 at 12:00PM by Nathaniel R
There’s no true frontrunner at the Gotham Awards this year with Marriage Story, Uncut Gems, and The Farewell each receiving 3 nominations overall within the 6 (narrative film) categories of the Gotham Awards. Let’s take a look at the nominations shall we? It’s a big year for A24 who always has a few wonderful films up their sleeves each year. They’ve dominated the feature and screenplay and breakthrough actor categories with 60% of the nominees in each. No other company was as dominant though there are lots of honors for Netflix, too.
Best Feature
The Farewell (A24)
Hustlers (STXfilms)
Marriage Story (Netflix)
Uncut Gems (A24)
Waves (A24)
The surprise here is surely Hustlers though we’re not complaining. Still one has to feel a bit sorry for The Last Black Man in San Francisco or Diane which were earlier acclaimed indie releases that had to step down for newer ones...
Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 11:03AM by Nathaniel R
The Middleburg Film Festival is halfway over and we've yet to report! We were off to a troubed start with a very late flight (8 hours in the airport for a 45 minute flight. ARGH!). Given the gusty NYC weather, we missed the Virginia premiere of Marriage Story, the opening night film. We'd already seen it at TIFF and loved and are pleased to report that the movie was met with great enthusiasm yet again. A Los Angeles friend came directly towards us at the Q&A (which we arrived just in time to see ending) apologizing for her wet face. Never apologize for crying at beautiful movies...
