Year in review: Top 5 mothers and daughters of 2017

A few more year in review list pieces coming (since we know the film year doesn't really end until awards seasons wraps). Here's Lynn Lee

If 2017 was a banner year for fathers in film, it was just as much the year of Complicated Mothers—from Frances McDormand’s justice-seeking Mildred in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, MO to Holly Hunter’s tart-tongued but soft-hearted Beth in The Big Sick to Mary J. Blige’s stoic Florence in Mudbound.  Within this trend was another that spoke especially personally to me: the even more complicated relationship between mothers and daughters.  We saw all kinds of mother-daughter relationships in 2017—tender, fraught, hostile, sometimes all of the above—portrayed with a depth and complexity we don’t get nearly enough of in relationships between women in movies. 

It’s hard to choose favorites, but the following were the mother-daughter screen pairings this year that I found the most compelling...

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Biggest $$$ Hauls of 2017 In Multiple Categories

Each day a different year in review party. Here's Nathaniel...

It's time for a special box office report. Though the year was dire for most studios (at least until the final quarter) with moviegoing down, especially in the summer, there are always hits. The question is only how large and what motivates people to buy a ticket. For all the griping you hear about "everything is superheroes" or "another sequel?" the biggest hits are nearly always sequels or superhero films so the audiences only have themselves to blame in a way.

We've already looked at the top grossing foreign language titles of 2017 so now to the wider releases as well as other categories. We'll break it down into multiple top tens so that it's more interesting than sequels and superheroes. (All grosses are US domestic)...

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R2Link2

Episode something or other.... [cue link theme]

• Racked Titanic's necklace almost bankrupted a whole company!
• My New Plaid Pants geeking out over Ms. Laura Dern who spoke to NYC at the Film Society of Lincoln Center recently
• Deadline an interview with the great production designer Santo Loquasto on Wonder Wheel 
• Out Ryan Murphy's Boys in the Band Broadway Revival has cast a bunch of its players already and it's basically all the famous gays: Charlie Carver, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Zachary Quinto some of whom at least have stage experience.
• The Muse talks to Glenn Close who has some interesting things to say about gossip, Harvey Weinstein, and being an older actor in Hollywood

• Indie Wire on the multi-pronged creative casting efforts for The Florida Project
• Vanity Fair interviews Joe Wright of Darkest Hour, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice fame
• Variety the Roseanne reunion sitcom will start airing March 27th. Wheeee
• Mubi on the Berlinale lineup or February 2018
• / Film If you only think of Disney/Fox merger in terms of superheroes, you'll probably be overjoyed
• Vox remembering what might be 2017's signature movie scene "No Man's Land" in Wonder Woman
• Broadway World the cast of Cats posing with adoptable felines. Awww
• Variety that young JRR Tolkien biopic starring Nicholas Hoult has wrapped. Biopics aren't always Oscar favorites anymore but we shall see. 
• Film School Rejects looked at new releases of old movies on dvd: Election, China Moon and more
• Deadline TV/film producer Martin Ransohoff has died. Among his credits The Sandpiper, The Cincinatti Kid, The Beverly Hilbillies and Jagged Edge

Star Wars Time Again
• The Verge thinks Rogue One is about net neutrality
• /Film 10 the greatest female characters in the Star Wars universe (wait, there are ten?)
• Vanity Fair the plea for LGBT characters in the Star Wars movies and why they've been ignored

Exit Video
James Corden's Crosswalk the Musical welcomes The Greatest Showman's Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron

AFI Top Ten: No "Coco", Yes "Wonder Woman"

Consensus is a funny thing. And a boring one. But when mostly good art is honored you can't complain too much.  The American Film Insitute has announced its top ten of the year list which is identical to the Best Picture list offered up by the BFCA via the Critics Choice Awards. Well, as identical as it could be given one eligibility issue...

They are 

• The Big Sick
• Call Me By Your Name
• Dunkirk
• The Florida Project...

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"Shape of Water" way way out front at the Critics Choice Awards

by Nathaniel R

As always, full disclosure: I am a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association. So this award announcement is always filled with anxiety for me because I want to be heard. We all want to be heard. Nevertheless most of the longer shots I rallied for didn't make it, he said, pushing away a single tear. The Shape of Water led with 14 nominations... and it was so far out front it nearly doubled the nominations afforded to its nearest rivals (a clump of them jammed together with 8 nominations each:  Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, Dunkirk, and The Post).

As ever I'm disappointed that the nominations double so heavily as "general Oscar pundit predictiveness" but here they are in their fullness with very immediate and perhaps too impulsive commentary after the jump.

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