Movie/TV Buzzzzzzzz

Talk about anything.

Moderator: Global Moderator

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

“‘Roma’ Is the Movie Event of the Year. Will It Matter That You Won’t See It on a Big Screen?”

Post by Webscout » Thu Nov 22, 2018 9:04 am

“‘Roma’ Is the Movie Event of the Year. Will It Matter That You Won’t See It on a Big Screen?” – The Ringer

Code: Select all

https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/movies/2018/11/21/18105348/roma-netflix-alfonso-cuaron-theaters-review

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

Why The Little Drummer Girl is a perfect, explosive spy drama

Post by Webscout » Fri Nov 23, 2018 9:23 am

Why The Little Drummer Girl is a perfect, explosive spy drama

JOHN DOYLE TELEVISION CRITIC
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 18, 2018
UPDATED NOVEMBER 18, 2018
FOR Utopia

The cynical spymaster. The moral ambiguity. The sexual allure of the handsome fanatic. The betrayals. The tension. The forging of documents and of identities. The melancholy that comes with all that deceit. Those are the crucial elements of a great, old-fashioned espionage tale.

They are all there in the excellent BBC/AMC adaptation of John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl (starts Monday AMC, 9 p.m. and runs through Wednesday with three two-hour episodes). It’s a gorgeous-looking, taut and slow-burning thriller, vastly entertaining and thoughtful in its approach to what it is about.

What it’s about in the gripping surface story is catching a terrorist killer. It opens in 1979 in West Germany and a bomb is delivered to an Israeli attaché. It doesn’t kill him but his young son is brutally blown apart. The bomb is delivered by a smiling young woman wearing a summer top, miniskirt and boots. The attaché looks at her and is off his guard. The last he sees of her is her smirk as she is driven away. The driver is a Palestinian named Khalil.

The Little Drummer Girl is a gorgeous-looking, taut and slow-burning thriller.
Florence Pugh plays Charlie, a young actress toiling to learn her trade on the fringes of London theatre.


Entering the aftermath is Martin Kurtz (played with great gusto by Michael Shannon), the head of a team of Israeli spies working to find Khalil (Charif Ghattas) and others like him, and stop them. Kurtz quickly figures out Khalil’s modus operandi – he recruits an attractive young woman to carry out the killing deed. He decides to do the same. It is a matter of finding a young woman to work for his side, infiltrate Khalil’s group and, hopefully, help destroy it.

Recruiting a spy, especially someone from the civilian world who might be capable of the task, is a complex act of seduction, persuasion and training. Kurtz and his team decide that the preferred agent to recruit is one Charlie (Florence Pugh), a young actress toiling to learn her trade on the fringes of London theatre. She’s strong-willed, self-assertive and has principles. All that needs to happen is a successful seduction.

That seduction is carried out with impeccable but doleful precision by Becker (Alexander Skarsgard, perfectly cast), when Charlie’s actor group takes a holiday in Greece. Becker presents himself as a handsome, mournful soul and Charlie is intrigued. From the get-go, mind you, it is clear that Charlie has a valid suspicion that Becker has been tracking her for a while and that whatever he says is probably a lie.

But Charlie is an actor, wants to be a good one and the idea of role-playing matters deeply to her. How innocent is she? That question is at the heart of what becomes the undertow to the series. There are no innocents here, really. There are only people who want something and they will do heinous acts to get what they want. When Becker delivers Charlie to Kurtz, the spy master beams. “I am the producer, writer and director of our little show,” he says. Charlie will be the star and it’s a meaty role and, well, it’s what she’s always wanted.



What follows is an elaborate construction of fiction. The Little Drummer Girl is as much about the preparation for the climactic final act as it is the climax. It is about cultivating and overcoming paranoia, as all the best works of espionage are. Kurtz, with his implausible plan, is sometimes a risible figure. And yet, as le Carré’s original novel asks, isn’t there something laughably implausible about the construct of fiction that inspires both patriotism and terrorist acts?

Like the BBC/AMC adaptation of The Night Manager from two years ago, this one is directed with lavish, intense style by the South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook. He manages to make the 1979 setting both deeply alluring and unsettling. In fact there is a great deal of unsettling mood being established. The action shifts constantly, at first, from London to Germany, then to Greece and Israel. There is a lavish look to it all and yet the viewer is meant to realize that in all these beautiful places there are truly appalling people carrying some malignancy. Kurtz may have a righteous cause but what he is constructing, with Charlie as the fulcrum, is monstrous.

Florence Pugh as Charlie is a marvel to behold. Her sheer verve is the gripping centre of this explosive thriller. (If you want to see more of her work she’s stunning as a ravenous and murderous Victorian wife in the movie Lady Macbeth, currently on-demand.) And it is equally a marvel to see old-school espionage technique dramatized with great impact. The series is set in a period before cellphones and digital technology. There is no razzle-dazzle. Just spies carrying out their dangerous, predatory work, and you’re beguiled, utterly.

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

The 10 most overlooked, underrated and unfairly dismissed movies of 2018

Post by Webscout » Sun Dec 16, 2018 9:56 am

The 10 most overlooked, underrated and unfairly dismissed movies of 2018
BARRY HERTZ
DECEMBER 14, 2018
FOR Utopia

It is the most wonderfully frustrating time of the year: that four- to six-week period when film writers get lost in the mad scramble of cobbling together, and then comparing, Top 10 lists to impress their colleagues and convince readers that they alone hold the key to the collective cinema knowledge of the past 12 months. Yet there’s a natural point at which every critic’s “top” films start to blend together in a unified chorus. Roma. Burning. First Reformed. The favourites get name-checked (often deservedly) again and again.

To offset the familiar shouts and murmurs, The Globe and Mail’s Barry Hertz presents his annual alternative Top 10: a compilation of the most overlooked, underrated and unfairly dismissed films of 2018.

1. Game Night

Rachel McAdams as Annie and Jason Bateman as Max in the movie comedy Game Night.

WARNER BROS.
The past year was filled with rich performances from the industry’s leading actresses – especially The Favourite’s triple threat of Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone – but can anyone fairly say they matched the comic timing of Rachel McAdams? As the star of the dark and spirited Game Night, McAdams delivered the line of the year (“Yes! Oh no … he died!”) as if her entire career had been leading to that one moment. I realize that reads like cheap hyperbole, but if you’ve already seen John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s film, go back and revisit the moment. If not, then you have yet to see the funniest six seconds of 2018. Bonus: McAdams’s co-stars nearly matched her energy, including Jason Bateman, Kyle Chandler, Sharon Horgan and this year’s stealth VIP, Jesse Plemons.

2. A Simple Favor

Anna Kendrick, left, stars as Stephanie and Blake Lively as Emily in A Simple Favor.

As is typical, comedies often get forgotten by critics come year-end list-makin' time (see Game Night above). Maybe the reason no one is currently talking about A Simple Favor is because of its contradictory marketing, which positioned it in September as a Gone Girl-esque thriller. While the film has elements of suspense and one huh-okay-sure twist, it’s still a Paul Feig project through and through, which means it’s equal parts broad comedy and ironic winks, complete with a killer female-led cast. Anna Kendrick, so often miscast or simply misused, deserves some sort of award for her work as a wannabe social-media influencer who finds herself wrapped in a missing-persons case, while Blake Lively dominates the screen through sheer force of will.

3. Leave No Trace

A teenage girl, Tom played by Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, and her veteran father Will (Ben Foster) in Leave No Trace.
The fact that Debra Granik’s name isn’t being bandied about as a best-director contender is a crime. But the filmmaker knows her work isn’t going to win any popularity contests. In an interview with The Globe this past summer, Granik copped to her extreme and potentially alienating narrative minimalism, which is on such powerful display in this father-daughter drama. “I’m not scared of that,” she said. “And I’m seeking audiences who can tolerate it, and enjoy it. A film doesn’t have to be wild flavours all the time.” For those with an adventurous palate, though, Leave No Trace is one of the most skillfully told stories of the year, following the relationship between a survivalist veteran (Ben Foster) and his daughter (Thomasin McKenzie) as they’re forced to reckon with a life on the grid.

4. Border

Eero Milonoff, left, as Vore and Eva Melander as Tina in Border.


Nearly a month after its theatrical release, I’m still hesitant to reveal much of what Border is exactly about. But the fact that Ali Abbasi’s Swedish film seems to have fallen through the foreign-language cracks means a secondary push is necessary. So: Border is the thriller-fantasy-romance-comedy-horror-Nordic-noir masterpiece you never knew you needed. If this sounds excessive or messy, rest assured that Abbasi, adapting a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, is deeply committed to maintaining a baseline level of sincerity. The result is a spectacular, unclassifiable work of art.

5. Mandy

Nicolas Cage is dead. Long live Nicolas Cage! Although the actor’s career has been stuck in video-on-demand purgatory for a decade, Mandy offers Cage one tremendous, freak-the-hell-out comeback opportunity. Director Panos Cosmatos’s cult-movie bonanza is a supremely strange and beguiling mix of Heavy Metal and Hellraiser, positioning a cult of hippies and demon bikers against a loner (Cage) with one big chainsaw, a taste for cocaine and nothing left to lose. If Cosmatos had made Mandy without Cage, it would still be something worth championing. But Cage’s presence ensures Mandy’s place in the midnight-movie hall of fame.

6. Den of Thieves

When this low-rent heist thriller opened in the dead of January, most wrote it off as another scuzzy entry in the meathead genre I’ve affectionately dubbed Cinema du Gerard Butler. Yet there is something undeniably, if raggedly, charming about Christian Gudegast’s directorial debut. An ambitious, epic-length (140 minutes!) and distinctly working-class love letter to the work of Michael Mann and Kathryn Bigelow, Den of Thieves is the best kind of hard-boiled ridiculousness, complete with a last-minute twist that will either make you throw your hands up in the air or laugh uproariously (guess which reaction I had). If you don’t believe me, at least take the word of no less an authority than acclaimed German filmmaker Christian Petzold (director of 2018′s also stellar Transit), who named Den of Thieves one of his top films of the year. Describing the movie as a much-needed antidote to work strictly made for the festival circuit, Petzold marvelled at Gudegast’s characters: “They don’t want to have a lemon tree in Gaza. They want to have money!” Sometimes that’s all you need.

7. Private Life


As Netflix mounts an all-out assault on awards season with Roma and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the streaming giant is neglecting the stealth contender lost at the bottom of your queue. Tamara Jenkins’s Private Life made a decent if brief impact at film festivals this fall, but the perils-of-fertility-treatments dramedy deserves to be watched and rewatched – which should be easy, given it’s available in 100 million homes across the world. If you manage to find it on your Netflix home page, take the time to savour Jenkins’s deeply biting script, and the career-best performances from Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti as two wannabe parents who can barely justify their own existence.

8. One Cut of the Dead

Things go badly for a hack director and film crew shooting a low budget zombie movie in an abandoned Second World War Japanese facility, when they are attacked by real zombies.

Including Shin’ichiro Ueda’s horror-comedy is a bit of a cheat, as it was more underseen than underrated. To my knowledge, there were only two Canadian screenings in 2018: one at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal this past July, and another during the Reel Asian International Film Festival in Toronto last month. But those who caught the low-budget One Cut of the Dead, which has gone on to become a box-office sensation in Japan, were treated to the most entertaining and inventive zombie film in decades. Director Ueda takes the medium’s favoured visual trick of the moment – the long, unbroken shot – and uses it to not only refresh the moribund genre but deliver a shockingly heart-warming tale of family and teamwork. Seek it out by whatever means necessary.

9. Unfriended: Dark Web


On the topic of horror movies, North America’s output was surprisingly strong in 2018. From the challenging (if messy) Suspiria remake to the messy (if challenging) Hereditary, there was enough ambition to match the genre’s required buckets of blood. But the most audacious and deeply, admirably sick entry came via the nascent Unfriended franchise. Like its 2014 predecessor, Unfriended: Dark Web’s action takes place entirely on the computer screen of its main character, with Skype chats, Facebook posts and YouTube clips propelling the narrative. Unlike the original’s limp ghost story, though, director Stephen Susco’s sequel swaps the supernatural for the real-life perversity of the internet itself. The result is a terrifying and uniquely disturbing creation that fulfills the genre’s best promises.

10. The Night Comes for Us and Manhunt (tie)

The Night Comes For Us follows Ito (played by Joe Taslim), a former triad enforcer, and his mission to protect a young girl while trying to escape his former gang after his mysterious disappearance setting off a violent battle on the streets of Jakarta.

As much fun as it is to criticize Netflix for killing the theatrical experience – it’s easy, too – the streaming giant has been delivering movies no one else will at this point. While it’s most proud of its Oscar contenders, there’s just as much to be said for the company’s dive into the less-prestige foreign-action market, with two spectacularly entertaining and bloody efforts, The Night Comes for Us and Manhunt, justifying any monthly subscription hike. The former, courtesy Indonesian madman Timo Tjahjanto, is the most ludicrously violent film to come along in some time, a spiritual sequel to Gareth Evans’s The Raid films that would bring down the house – were it to ever play in an actual cinema. Manhunt, meanwhile, is the long-awaited return to form for Hong Kong action legend John Woo, who flirts with both self-preservation and self-parody in this bonkers, dove-filled masterpiece.

Dude
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 13182
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2006 3:38 am

Re: Movie/TV Buzzzzzzzz

Post by Dude » Sun Dec 16, 2018 10:54 am

I have seen quite a few movies this year, but I have not heard of any of those movies.

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

Re: Movie/TV Buzzzzzzzz

Post by Webscout » Sun Dec 16, 2018 11:22 am

I have a number of these but I have not seen them yet. So many so little time. There are some good TV series out there as well.

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

The Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2019

Post by Webscout » Tue Jan 08, 2019 7:32 am

The Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2019

Code: Select all

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/01/2019-tv-preview/579196/

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

Movies We Can’t Wait for in 2019

Post by Webscout » Wed Jan 09, 2019 7:08 am

Movies We Can’t Wait for in 2019

Code: Select all

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/1/9/18174459/new-releases-tarantino-hollywood-jordan-peele-us-irishman-scorsese-captain-marvel-high-flying-bird

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

Free Internet TV - A Complete Guide For Canadians

Post by Webscout » Thu Jan 17, 2019 4:18 pm

Free Internet TV - A Complete Guide For Canadians

Code: Select all

https://www.howtosavemoney.ca/free-internet-tv

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

2019 Oscar nominations: Complete list of nominees

Post by Webscout » Tue Jan 22, 2019 9:11 am

2019 Oscar nominations: Complete list of nominees

Code: Select all

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/01/22/oscar-nominations-complete-coverage/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4fa2e504ee82

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

OBIT:Legendary Actress Julie Adams Passes Away at 92

Post by Webscout » Thu Feb 07, 2019 2:08 pm

OBIT:Legendary Actress Julie Adams Passes Away at 92

Code: Select all

https://www.gettyimages.ca/photos/julie-adams?sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=julie%20adams

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

OBIT:Albert Finney, five-time Oscar nominee, dead at 82

Post by Webscout » Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:06 am

OBIT:Albert Finney, five-time Oscar nominee, dead at 82

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

How to Watch Free TV Shows Online in Canada (or at Least Pay a Lot Less)

Post by Webscout » Sat Feb 16, 2019 4:38 pm

How to Watch Free TV Shows Online in Canada (or at Least Pay a Lot Less)

Code: Select all

https://maplemoney.com/watch-free-tv/

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

Oscars 2019

Post by Webscout » Tue Feb 19, 2019 8:10 am

Oscars 2019: One month inside this year’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Academy Awards race
BARRY HERTZ
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 19, 2019

FOR Utopia

The Oscars race is an unpredictable, endurance-testing marathon of excess – a multimillion-dollar exercise in vanity, ego, mud-slinging and, very infrequently, art. From the moment nominations are announced to the glitzy ceremony itself, the fortunes of nominees can swing up, down and sideways depending on everything from box-office numbers to shifting cultural and political winds, especially in 2019, in which #MeToo, #TimesUp and #OscarsSoWhite show no signs of gently fading into the landscape. (However desperately certain industry elements may wish otherwise.)

Here, The Globe and Mail’s Barry Hertz tracks the Academy Awards conversation from just before nominations were announced Jan. 22 through the close of voting for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences earlier this week, to offer his best prediction of which film will come out on top Sunday night. Remember, everyone (mostly Bradley Cooper): It’s an honour just to be nominated.

Jan. 19: Although the Producers Guild of America Awards air three days before Oscar nominations are announced, the guild is the first industry organization to make its voice heard after Academy voters’ nomination forms were due Jan. 14. Thus, the PGA’s decision to give Green Book its top prize represents a significant window in Oscar voters’ thinking, given that the guild and the Academy share members, and that the winner of the PGA Award has matched the eventual best-picture Oscar-winner in 20 of the former’s 29 years of existence (including last year, when the PGAs honoured The Shape of Water). Bonus: the PGA Awards use the same kind of preferential ballot that the Academy deploys for best picture voting – meaning that even if Green Book isn’t the consensus No. 1 choice, it could still ultimately come out on top.

Jan. 23: No sooner does Green Book’s Oscar-night victory seem increasingly likely than Wesley Morris pens an essay in The New York Times unfavourably comparing the film to Driving Miss Daisy (which won best picture in 1990, the same year that Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing failed to get even a nomination for best picture). Titled, “Why do the Oscars keep falling for racial reconciliation fantasies?”, the column asks pointed questions about why so many Oscar-bait films ostensibly explore racism, but are more concerned with a white character’s journey toward tolerance. If you don’t think a New York Times feature can derail an Oscar campaign, look at last year, when Morris published an essay eviscerating the ostensibly progressive themes of then-favourite Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.

Jan. 23: Four months after rumours popped up that Esquire was ready to publish an investigation into sexual-assault allegations against director Bryan Singer, The Atlantic runs a lengthy exposé. The feature, by Alex French and Maximillian Potter (who worked for a year on the piece with Esquire before they say Hearst Magazine executives “killed” it), chronicles two decades’ worth of sexual-misconduct allegations against the filmmaker, whose Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody is up for five Oscars, including best picture, though not best director. Singer, who was fired close to the end of Rhapsody’s production by studio 20th Century Fox for reportedly being absent on-set (but retains a director credit), calls The Atlantic story a “homophobic smear piece ... conveniently timed to take advantage of [Bohemian Rhapsody’s] success.”

Jan. 24: The GLAAD Media Awards, which previously championed Bohemian Rhapsody for its depiction of Freddie Mercury’s sexuality, removes the film as a contender for its best original film category following The Atlantic’s investigation. The media watchdog says the story “brought to light a reality that cannot be ignored or even tacitly rewarded,” adding that Singer’s response “wrongfully used ‘homophobia’ to deflect from sexual-assault allegations.”

Jan. 26: On Twitter, journalist Pramit Chatterjee posts a clip from Bohemian Rhapsody highlighting its “objectively bad” editing and lack of basic film grammar – with another user pointing out a bewildering 52 cuts in a single 82-second scene. The tweet quickly goes viral, with the clip garnering more than 1.44 million views.

Jan. 27: Black Panther, which seems to be an awards-race after-thought – the attitude being that it’s real victory was to be nominated – has a strong showing at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, winning best motion picture ensemble, the evening’s top prize. Meanwhile, Bohemian Rhapsody’s Rami Malek wins the first SAG Award of his career for playing Mercury.

Feb. 1: Perhaps realizing that his Oscar success will now rely on distancing himself from Singer rather than ignoring the issue altogether, Malek washes his hands of his director while being honoured at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. “I’ve sat here and talked about how everyone deserves a voice and anyone who wants to talk about what happened with Bryan deserves to have their voice heard,” said Malek, who did not acknowledge the director while accepting his Golden Globe for best actor in January. “In my situation with Bryan, it was not pleasant, not at all."

Feb. 2: The Directors Guild of America Awards gives its top honour to Roma’s Alfonso Cuaron, setting the Mexican filmmaker up for a similar success at the Oscars, given that the two institutions have only disagreed seven times in 70 years. Cuaron’s win, his second DGA Award after winning five years ago for Gravity, also sees the the filmmaker triumphing over the same four directors (A Star Is Born’s Bradley Cooper, Green Book’s Peter Farrelly, BlacKkKlansman’s Spike Lee, and Vice’s Adam McKay) he competed with at the Golden Globes in January. McKay doesn’t walk away from the DGAs empty-handed, though, as he wins the drama series award for HBO’s Succession. Cooper, meanwhile, practically limps away, not only losing to Cuaron, but failing to win the DGA Award for best first-time director, which goes to underdog Bo Burnham (Eighth Grade). Lest anyone doubt it: We’re far from the shallow now.

Feb. 2: Despite being mocked online for this very thing, Bohemian Rhapsody wins the best edited feature film (dramatic) award at the American Cinema Editors’ Eddie Awards. Nine of the past 14 Eddie winners for this category have gone on to win best picture at the Oscars.

Feb. 6: The British Academy of Film and Television Arts removes Singer’s name from Bohemian Rhapsody’s BAFTA nomination, calling the director’s alleged behaviour “completely unacceptable and incompatible” with the institution’s values. Bohemian Rhapsody remains nominated for outstanding British film.

Feb. 8: Actor, novelist, and part-time El Chapo sleuth Sean Penn writes a, um, passionate op-ed on industry website Deadline imploring voters to award A Star Is Born. “To spare myself potential disappointment, I’m raising a glass in advance to Bradley Cooper and A Star Is Born,” Penn writes. “Surely a raised glass is as legitimate as a globe of gilded gold or a male statuette minus a penis (also gold gilded). God forbid it have balls this year!”

Feb. 10: Roma picks up more momentum as the drama wins four BAFTAs, including best director and best film. (The British organization shares about 500 members with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, offering a glimpse into roughly 5.4 per cent of the latter org’s thinking.) Meanwhile, Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite gets a much-needed boost, taking home seven BAFTAs, including best actress for Olivia Colman and outstanding British film. And Malek continues his roll, picking up the award for best actor.

Feb. 10: Despite lingering controversy over both Green Book’s subject matter and its filmmaking team’s past behaviour (before nominations were announced, Farelly admitted to a history of flashing his penis, while co-writer Nick Vallelonga apologized for posting an anti-Muslim tweet), the film is the one breakout financial success among this year’s Oscar dramas (not counting superhero blockbuster Black Panther and musicals Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star Is Born). Cracking US$60-million at the North American box office, Green Book looks healthier than fellow contenders The Favourite ($30.2-million), Vice ($45.2-million), BlacKkKlansman ($48.6-million), and Roma (whose distributor, Netflix, has yet to make box-office figures available).

Feb. 11: Singer’s name continues to dominate headlines, with The Hollywood Reporter confirming that the director’s follow-up to Bohemian Rhapsody, the comic-book adaptation Red Sonja, has been placed on hold by production company Millennium Films.

Feb. 12: Cooper finally wins an award ... from PETA. The Star Is Born director, who only a few months ago was pegged as the surest of sure-things, picks up the animal-rights organization’s Best Director Oscat (that’s not a typo), for casting his own pet dog in the drama instead of hiring a pup through an agency. Good boy, Bradley Cooper. Good boy.

Feb. 13: Although it’s unlikely to move the needle on his award chances, Lee is one of 40 high-profile filmmakers to sign an open letter excoriating the Academy for its decision to not live-broadcast four of this year’s award-winners (including best cinematography, editing, hair and makeup, and live-action short). Days earlier, fellow 2019 nominee Cuaron subtweeted the Academy, writing “In the history of CINEMA, masterpieces have existed without color, without a story, without actors and without music. No one single film has ever existed without CINEMAtography and without editing.”

Feb. 13: As Roma inches closer to becoming the odds-on favourite to win best picture, journalist Richard Rushfield’s industry-insider newsletter The Ankler speculates that Netflix has spent an unprecedented US$40- to $50-million on the drama’s Oscar campaign, including multiple premieres on multiple continents, media gift packages (including fancy coffee-table books and pillows, only one of which this journalist has received), and a TV- and billboard-advertising spree (thanks in part to Netflix’s acquisition this past fall of more than a dozen outdoor advertising surfaces on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, among the most valuable advertising real estate in the United States). The question remains whether those working in the film industry will want to give its top prize to a company that explicitly undermines the very movie-theatre model it runs on.

Feb. 15: In a it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-so-sad comedy of errors, the Academy reverses its decision to present four categories during commercial breaks.

Feb. 16: When in doubt, look toward the experts: Online betting site Easy Odds gives Roma 1:3 odds to win best picture, with Green Book right behind at 4:1. Spare a thought (a quick one, though) for Vice, as it sits at the bottom with 100:1 odds. Bonus news for gamblers in the U.S.: This year is the first time that licensed U.S. sports books will have a legal green light to offer betting on the Oscars ... but only in New Jersey. Tony Soprano weeps (if he’s still alive, that is).

Week of Feb. 18: As voting closes Feb. 19, it appears the best-picture race is Roma’s to lose, with Cuaron a lock for best director, Malek destined to win best actor despite all of Bohemian Rhapsody’s behind-the-scenes scandals, and Glenn Close to receive a career-topping honour for her performance in The Wife. And Bradley Cooper will remain very, very sad.

The 91st Academy Awards air live Feb. 24 at 8:30 p.m. (ET) on CTV and ABC

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

OBIT:Peter Tork - Monkees bassist dies of cancer at 77

Post by Webscout » Fri Feb 22, 2019 9:42 am

OBIT:Peter Tork - Monkees bassist dies of cancer at 77

User avatar
Webscout
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 32981
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:43 am

Foreign Language Film Submissions -91st Academy Awards

Post by Webscout » Sat Feb 23, 2019 8:34 am

Foreign Language Film Submissions -91st Academy Awards
Look to the far right for those nominated.

Code: Select all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submissions_to_the_91st_Academy_Awards_for_Best_Foreign_Language_Film

Post Reply