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Some of the omissions are less concerning. Satchen Littlefeather is only tangentially connected to the film industry and she's not even indigenous, so the significance of that slim connection is pretty moot.
Barbara Walters is a journalist in a far more broad (no pun) sense than mere entertainment. Sure, she interviewed movie stars, in between Kissinger and Sadat. She's on another level.
Lisa Marie Presley is not an actress. She was "consulted" for Elvis? OK.
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The 2023 Cannes Film Festival is opening tonight.
Among my interests....
Asteroid City - Wes Anderson's latest
Killers of the Flower Moon - Martin Scorsese's latest (out of competition)
The Zone of Interest - WWII drama from Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Under The Skin)
Perfect Days - Tokyo anthology from Wim Wenders
Monster - Japanese school drama from Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Shoplifters)
Cobweb - Kim Jee-woon (Tale of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life, I Saw the Devil)
May December - Todd Haynes drama starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore
The Old Oak - Ken Loach
Kidnapped - Marco Bellocchio
Last Summer - Catherine Breillat
La Chimera - Alice Rohrwacher (Happy As Lazzaro)
Youth (Spring) - Wang Bing
Kubi - Takeshi Kitano
Close Your Eyes - First film in 30 years from Victor Erice (Spirit of the Beehive, El Sur)
Strange Way of Life - new Pedro Almodovar "western drama"
Book of Solutions - Michel Gondry
Also a 20 minute "trailer for a film that will never exist", Phony Wars, looks to be Jean-Luc Godard's final contribution. Also a doc on the man, Godard on Godard, will premiere.
Also have some potentially amusing shitshows in The Idol, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the Robert Rodriguez/Ben Affleck cosplay of Christopher Nolan, Hypnotic.
Classics and restorations:
Caligula - The Ultimate Cut
Contempt
L'Amour Fou
Spellbound
Badlands
Underground
Carmen
Way of the Dragon
and two Ozus - Munekata Sisters and Record of a Tenement Gentleman
For some reason, the American press is choosing to badger juror Brie Larson over why they are allowing Johnny Depp to be there. "You're asking me that? Um, I'm sorry, I don't understand the correlation of why me specifically." Cuz yurr a gurrl.
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Kitano is still making movies?
Caligula is definitely going to be awful in any cut.
I don't know Wang Bing from nothing. But I feel I should know Wang Bing at least a bit.
I really need to see more Ken Loach movies (two just showed up on Mubi! Maybe I can fulfill this days long dream!)
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I should also start watching movies again. Because I barely do anymore.
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crumbsroom wrote:
I don't know Wang Bing from nothing. But I feel I should know Wang Bing at least a bit.
I haven't seen anything from him. Minio was talking him up recently. Apparently has a knack for super-long films. This new one is about 3 1/2 hours.
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crumbsroom wrote:
Caligula is definitely going to be awful in any cut.
Yeah, I was shocked at just how boring it is. The biggest crime of any movie, but especially this one.
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Cannes Winners:
Palme d’Or: “Anatomy of a Fall,” dir. Justine Triet
Grand Prix: “The Zone of Interest,” dir. Jonathan Glazer
Jury Prize: “Fallen Leaves,” dir. Aki Kaurismäki
Best Actress: Merve Dizdar, “About Dry Grasses”
Best Actor: Koji Yakusho, “Perfect Days”
Best Director: Tran Anh Hung, “The Pot au Feu”
Best Screenplay: Yûji Sakamoto, “Monster”
Camera d’Or: “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” dir. Thien An Pham
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Oh nice, apparently TIFF got rid of the flexible packages they used to have that let you buy a bunch of tickets are less than the individual cost (and before individual tickets went on sale to the general public). Love that they manage to make the experience worse every year.
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I gave up years ago trying to do anything with TIFF. It's almost a deliberately awful experience.
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When I did it last year, I noticed most of the showings I attended had some empty seats, and rush lines were pretty much empty. I suspect that was due to it being the first proper festival since the start of the pandemic so audience numbers were still not at full capacity. But naturally some management dipshit probably took that to mean they should squeeze more pennies out of the people who already want to attend. They’ve steadily raised prices over the years anyway, but this change seems especially obnoxious.
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Rock wrote:
They’ve steadily raised prices over the years anyway, but this change seems especially obnoxious.
It's also a little dubious timing considering how, with our two current talent strikes, there's almost certainly going to be a fewer films available tol show next year.
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The Independent Spirit Awards roll out their nominees a bit early this year. And I have to admit that not only I have I had little opportuity to see most of these films at all, but still am not very familiar with many of them. Almost by default, I can only speak for May December at this point, which is certainly worthy of its acting nods, but I wouldn't consider it for a hands-down sweep.
Like Gotham Independent Awards, the Spirits have eschewed gender distinctions, lumping everyone together, which, to me, only means that only half as many actors will be receiving awards this year. I'm glad to see Glenn Howerrton nominated for BlackBerry. Wouldn't it be nice to see him ride this to the Oscars?
The Unknown Country is technically a 2022 picture, but it's getting a more recent push due to Lily Gladstone's ascent. Like at Gotham, it's become a way to award the actress without having to acknowledge Killers of the Flower Moon.
After reading Takoma's less-than-enthralled review for Anatomy of a Fall, I have to wonder if this has a chance to be the year's most overrated film. (If only such an award exists.)
I don't remember how long the Spirits have also covered TV series in their awards, and a couple of these shows - Last of Us, The Curse, Shrinking - seem like they could hardly qualify as "independent" considering their profile on corporate streamers, although I don't know what their individual budgets look like. (Harrison Ford can't be cheap, I imagine.) But Rampop will be happy to note that two of his favorite shows - Beef and I'm a Virgo are in the running for multiple awards.
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The deluge of award season has officially begun, with a number of announcements recently.
The LA Critics named Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest as Best Picture and Director, as well as Peformance by Sandra Huller and Score. (LA Critics have also abandoned gender distinctions, although they include a "runner-up" slot to kind of make up the difference.)
Anatomy of a Fall, also starring Sandra Huller, is raking up most of the foreign language awards, taking the prize at the European Film Awards, much as it did at Cannes.
AFI and the National Board of Review also announced their winners.and Top 10 lists. The most notable aspect here, to me, is the complete omission of Asteroid City, which, so far, has netted exactly zero noms from any award ceremony. (On the plus side, it landed at #3 on IndieWire's list.)
Finally, today saw the release of the Golden Globes, which, unlike the AFI or NBR, is generally considered the more glib and populist of the award ceremonies. Almost to punctuate that point, I notice how they've placed their TV nominations over the film nominations this year - a sign of the times. The immediate headache is how they decided May December is a "comedy/musical". Although it has plenty of ironic distance, it's pretty clearly a psychological drama. I saw one review that addressed the issue of critics applying a "camp" tag to the film, questioning whether or not this was the critics' response of being unable to take the uncomfortable subject matter at face value. The IndieWire review exemplifies the confusion by calling it a "heartbreakingly sincere piece of high camp", which is nonsensical considering how "camp" is defined as being the opposite of sincere. But whatever, I suspect that part of this designation may be due to not forcing the film to compete with the already stacked drama category. (Not that it matters - Barbie is clearly going to sweep the comedy/musical slots.) Meanwhile, for further inanity, Jennifer Lawrence is nominated for No Hard Feelings presumably as an excuse to have her sit close to the stage and boost ratings, and some new category, "Cinematic and Box Office Achievement in Motion Pictures", was added as an excuse for Tom Cruise to do the same. More intriguingly, the Supporting Actor category (Willem DaFoe, Robert De Niro, Ryan Gosling, Robert Downey Jr.) promises to be perhaps the truly most competive category going forth. (Which is bad luck for supporting actor Glenn Howerton's Oscar chances, I'm afraid.)
Bulding a safe watchlist from these awards for what I have left to see, I can place the following:
The Holdovers
Boy and the Heron
American Fiction
Poor Things
Zone of Interest
Maestro
Past Lives
Saltburn
Pricilla
Beau is Afraid
Oh, and Barbie of course.
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Jared Leto, trying to make strangle gloves the new fashion thing.
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Congrats to Da'Vine Joy Randolph
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I should see Beef eventually, but I know that Rampop would be proud.
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I noticed that they never cut to the Flower Moon table because they clearly are not laughing at any of this.
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Jinnistan wrote:
Congrats to Da'Vine Joy Randolph
I should be clear. Not racist or fattist in any way. I'm just saying. When you use a hydrolic brassiere, like you're serving a sushi buffet, I can't say anything even then?
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I think we all know that they awarded Ricky Gervais for best stand-up solely in the hope that they could lure him back to host again.
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How awesome, though, would it have been if Jim Gaffigan had said, "And the winner is....John Mulaney? Oh! Oh, I'm sorry. I was looking at my own list. Sorry about that. The Golden Globe winner is Ricky Gervais."