Film Bitch Awards finale: Best scenes & big results from small parts

by Nathaniel R

Christian Magby and Lance Reddick in "One Night in Miami"

You know where I am if you need me.

We're finally closing out our 2020 coverage. Five months into the calendar year. We'd say 'Oops' but in this one case we'll happily blame the Oscars pretending that the calendar wasn't the calendar rather than our own sometimes-lacking time management skills. Though we are excited to move on to 2021, in point of fact lists and awards are our happy place. That is not because they have inherent definitive value as arbiters of quality (as the naysayers like to remind). No, that's not it at all. Only time is the definitive tastemaker but even that is fallible since it never stops and collective opinion can shift dramatically from generation to generation just as it does from person to person. No we value and love lists and awards because they are superb documents of feelings about quality at a specific moment in time. What moved people en masse? The answer is all over awards season. What struck certain individuals in a seismic way? That can be found in personal top ten lists and personal awards for those who bother to make such things. 

So let's start with one of our favourite things to honor: smashing work in very limited screentime...

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March. It's a Wrap.

Usually March is our cool-down period after another exhausting but fun awards season. Here at (practically) the end of the first quarter of 2021, we're still three weeks away from Oscar night so we're reviewing each Oscar category still. Our internal calendars are a disaster. How about yours? Here's a quick recap in case you missed any of these... 

A Dozen Highlights of March at TFE
• Minari: A Tale of Two (or more) Grandmas Lynn gets personal for this movie
• The New Actress Hierarchy Frances & Glenn are still rising
• Gay Best Friend: Dolly in Silkwood All roads eventually lead to Cher
• Over & Overs: Amadeus This composer biopic never gets old
• Ten best onscreen pigs because we live for a random list
• Most Confusing Oscar Categories pre-Nominations It was supporting actor not actress that ended up shocking this year. Which other years had confusing results?
• This Had Oscar Buzz Nathaniel guest stars for White Oleander
• The Piano Lesson The August Wilson plays are all getting movies. This is next
• New Oscar Records an annual tradition of course
• The Worst Case of Category Fraud Claudio finds things got egregious this year
• Almost There Anthony Hopkins in The Lion in Winter
• What were the 5 best "Best Picture" vintages? That got you talking

COMING IN APRIL:
SAG, BAFTA, Spirit Awards, and Oscar night are all coming up in April. We'll also have a week-long John Waters retrospective (!) to celebrate his 75th birthday. 

And of course the Supporting Actress Smackdown returns on April 15th with a look at the current Oscar season so get your votes in now on the current list. After that we'll all revisit the year 2000 together. Here's how to vote. 

"What a character!"

by Nathaniel R

We're almost finished with the Film Bitch Awards in the Oscar parallel catgories but we took a wee break from that to continue the fun stuff, the "extra" prizes. We've already announced Breakthroughs, Juvenile Performances, Casting and Ensemble work so now we move on to best characters (and we'll end next week with "limited/cameo" performances plus incredible invidividual scenes). This is great fun for us each year so hopefully that cinematic joy is contagious...

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February. It's a Wrap

February kicked off with Sundance wrapping up and then went straight into mainstream awards nominations and predictions for Globes and SAG and well as decidedly non-mainstream Film Bitch Awards nominations (via myself). The Oscar nominations are yet to come but the Academy will be voting to determine them from March 5th-10th. So "freeze" the buzz in a few days time when considering your predictions. Nothing that happens after about the 7th will matter at all to the outcome. Are you excited for the Golden Globes (TONIGHT!) or is the need for a virtual ceremony killing your usual anticipation? 

highlights in case you missed 'em
• Gay Best Friend: Rebel Without a Cause the original teen angst classic
• On whiplash viewings When you're loving something (I Care A Lot) and then suddenly aren't!
• Nathaniel's Top 10 of 2020 I Carry You With Me, Minari, etc...
• Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine Baby Clyde has a fond memory
• Christopher Plummer (1929-2021) we'll always treasure him for Beginners
• Goofiest Globe Nods Christopher surveyed their often wacky choices
• FYC Never Rarely Sometimes Always Nick makes a passionate case
• Olivia Colman broke my heart Cláudio is moved to tears by The Father

most discussed articles
• When will you go back to movie theaters? Waiting for the vaccine or...?
• Surprise Noms or Snubs Coming? Christopher sees possible futures with stats
• Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander Cláudio looks at the painful snub
• February 24th in Showbiz History Judy, Tilda, Glenn, Madonna 
• Nathaniel's Globe predictions which you can use to laugh at me once we discover it's all wrong tonight!
• How many female directors will be Oscar nom'ed? Juan Carlos on the five "most-likely-to"

COMING IN MARCH
Including but not limited to: an interview with Colman Domingo (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom), Raya and the Last Dragon, SAG Awards, The Courier, Joan Crawford's Best Actress win, Gilda's 75th anniversary, the return of the Supporting Actress Smackdown, ... and of course the actual Oscar nominations.

Doc Corner: The Best Documentaries of 2020

By Glenn Dunks

Before this column takes a few weeks break, it’s that time of the year to make lists! I have spent the last few weeks churning through screeners trying to ensure I saw enough of 2020’s documentary output to justify a list of the year’s best, although I do not have the time nor the inclination to watch 238 of the damn things! Nevertheless, below are 30 non-fiction titles (or non-fiction adjacent, but we’ll get to that later) that I believe are among the year’s best movies. I stuck to the 2020 calendar as much as possible because, like Nathaniel, I want to keep some order to it all.

If you were to sit down and watch every film below, you would be taken from rural towns in the heart of the Florida peninsula to rural towns in the heart of the Ukraine via the protests of Hong Kong and a nursing home in Chile. There are serious themes, important subjects, powerful ideas... and hand sanitizer.

There’s also a stripper named Nomi. Something for everything, I reckon...

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