Everyone’s favorite organization, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, has announced their crop of nominees for the annual Golden Globe awards which means we are truly in the thick of awards season. And in traditional HFPA fashion, they threw us more than their fair share of curveballs.
Just days after the NYFCC came out in support for Lady Bird, the Los Angeles Film Critics came out hard for Call Me By Your Name, giving it Best Picture, Actor and Director.
The Shape of Water also showed strength, winning Director alongside Call Me By Your Name, Actress and Cinematography. This was crucial for the film’s Oscar hopes after blanking with groups like the Gotham awards and Indie Spirits.
Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf managed a win in Supporting Actress, with Greta Gerwig winning the coveted New Generation prize. Willam Dafoe continued his dominance in Supporting Actor.
See the full list of winners below.
The New York Film Critics Circle (un)officially kicked off awards season today with the announcement of their crop of winners. The group split the Picture and Directing categories, going with Lady Bird for the former and The Florida Project‘s Sean Baker for the latter. Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet continued their success at the Gotham awards earlier this week by picking up prizes for Actor and Actress here, while Willem Dafoe staked his case to potentially steamroll Best Supporting Actor J.K. Simmons’ style.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was Tiffany Haddish being named Best Supporting Actress for her incredible work in Girls Trip. Not even Bridesmaids‘ Melissa McCarthy, who went on to be Oscar nominated, could boast this feat (although she did get a win from the Boston Society of Film Critics). Haddish is a star on the rise and campaigning should come easy to her. This is a nice head start in a category that’s pretty fluid outside of Laurie Metcalf and Allison Janney, but Universal is going to have to step it up if she’s going to have a real shot. As of right now, they don’t even have any FYC’s for the film on their official website.
See the full list of winners below.
If there’s one thing Taylor Swift wants you to know, it’s that the Old Taylor is dead. You definitely knew her; the Taylor who sat in the bleachers with her t-shirt longing from a distance, who stood on the VMA stage, mouth agape, as Kanye West grabbed the mic from her and declared Beyoncé “Single Ladies” to be superior. The one who danced awkwardly at every award show as if she forgot the whole world was watching. New Taylor doesn’t give press interviews ahead of album releases. In fact, she’s almost fully retreated from the spotlight and has embraced being the villain because, yes she knows what you say about her on the internet.
“I just want you to be the best version of yourself.”
“What if this is the best version?”
Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, Lady Bird, is about a lot of things. It’s a coming of age story about a high school senior coming into her own, although she hasn’t quite figured out who she’d like to be yet. It’s an earnest and honest portrait of growing up with aspirations and dreams yearning to break through the restrictive boundaries of your small, familiar town. But first and foremost, it’s about a mother and a daughter, their complicated love for one another and how similar they are despite their insistence that they couldn’t be more different. Gerwig has taken one of film’s oldest tropes and made it feel brand new.
It’s actually kind of unbelievable that it’s taken this long for the story of Tonya Harding to make it to the big screen. As one of the characters in I, Tonya says at one point, the story has all the makings of a movie; it was the story that (pre-O.J. Simpson) captured everyone’s attention, and gave us one of history’s most infamous underdogs turned anti-heroes.
Working from a script written Steven Rogers (Hope Floats, Stepmom), director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) attempts to let Tonya’s hear side of the story, and if she has anything to say about it, she wants you to know that none of it was her fault. Much like the woman at the center of it all, I, Tonya is anything but conventional. It’s rigid, unapologetically sloppy but undeniably fascinating and entertaining; I dare you to try and look away. The humor is biting and dark in a way that may make you second guess your laughter. But don’t worry, Gillespie knows everyone is in on the joke and makes sure that you are too.
Awards season has officially begun; the first voting body to announce their slate of nominees is the annual Gotham Awards, which honor the best in independent film. Jordan Peele’s critically acclaimed, box office juggernaut Get Out has emerged as the early favorite.
Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) just can’t catch a break. After waking up in a strange boy’s (The Blind Ring’s Israel Broussard) dorm room after a night of heavy drinking, Tree is fighting a killer headache and must do the walk of shame, in which she tries to unsuccessfully attempts to dodge a pesky student protestor, a guy she’s been ghosting, and her sorority sisters. Later, she will be confronted with the wife of the professor she’s been having an affair with, but now she’s late for her surprise party because there’s a masked murderer trying to kill her. Oh, did I mention it’s also her birthday?
If this sounds like life is playing some cruel joke on her, then just wait till you hear the punchline. When the masked killer does in fact kill Tree (and they do), she wakes up again on the morning of her birthday, doomed to live out the same excruciating day again and again, and again until she can solve the mystery of her murder.
Darren Aronofsky’s first film since 2014’s Noah is, to put it simply, a lot. That’s certainly saying something; this is the director of Requiem for A Dream and Black Swan after all. But mother! makes those films feel like an warm up in a much larger exercise in psychological terror. The marketing campaign for mother! has revolved around keeping direct details about the film’s plot shrouded in secrecy. As the film has played at various film festivals, Aronofsky has moderated Q&A’s and screenings, hyping up the movie’s disturbing and polarizing nature.
“Sorry for what I’m about to do,” he said on the stage at the Toronto Film Festival, going on to describe the film as “an assault” and “a cruise missile shooting into a wall.” “At the film’s premiere, he told reporters that, “You’re all really going to hate me in about an hour and a half.”
There’s something to be said about a director wearing the negative press about his film like a badge of honor (Cinemascore revealed yesterday that audience members gave the film a rare F grade). In the case of mother! and Aronofsky, it only adds to my frustrations about the film. As I said, mother! is certainly a lot, and I did find my mouth hanging wide open during some moments, including the ludicrous climax, but not for the reasons the director/writer may have been hoping.
The 69th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards are next Sunday, and the category on everyone’s minds is undoubtedly the tightest race: Outstanding Lead Actress in Limited Series or Movie.
This is perhaps the most star studded category at the Emmy’s in recent memory. To give some context on just how stacked this category is, not even Oprah could get in for her acclaimed performance in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (even though the film itself was recognized with a nomination). Instead, Emmy voters decided to recognize both of the leads from Feud: Bette and Joan and Big Little Lies, along with Carrie Coon from Fargo (a sort of makeup for not finding room for her over in the Drama Actress category where she really belonged?) and mainstay Felicity Huffman from American Crime. But once you get past the star power, there is only one true winner here, and that is Kidman.
Jon On Film 