12th Asia Pacific Screen Awards Winners

A few days back, on November 29 the 2018 APSA awards ceremony took place in Brisbane, Australia and for the first time top award went to a Japanese film as Shoplifters won Best Feature Film. The Jury Prize went to Burning; so, APSA is honoring the two films that are penetrating the 2018 American Awards season with nominations and wins in the best foreign language film category as well as in other tech categories.

Remarkable is the spread of awards as represent the geographical and cultural diversity of the Asia Pacific region, awards ent to films from Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, China, Korea, Russia, Singapore and Turkey.

The Cultural Diversity Award under the Patronage of UNESCO was awarded to Garin Nugroho and Ifa Isfansyah for Memories of My Body (Kucumbu Tubuh Indahku) (Indonesia) and accepted on the night by lead actor Muhummad Khan. The winner was determined by the APSA Cultural Diversity International Jury comprised of Jury Chair Khadija Al-Salami (Yemen), Anthony Krause (UNESCO) and Mattie Do (Lao People’s Democratic Republic).

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24th Annual Critics' Choice Awards Nominations

The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) announced yesterday the nominees for the 2019 edition with The Favourite leading the pack with 14 nominations followed by Black Panther with 12, First Man with 10, and Mary Poppins Returns, A Star is Born and Vice with 9 nominations each.  Roma earned 8 nods, while Green Book has seven.

A quick reminder, the BFCA is the largest film critics organization in the United States and Canada, representing more than 300 television, radio and online critics.  The awards show will air live on the CW Network on Sunday, January 13, 2019 from the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica.

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44th Annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards Winners

Last night the so-called "most powerful" group of American critics voted their 2018 awards and to the surprise of many as it doesn't happens often (only 13 times in 45 years), their top award matched their east coast counterpart.  Yes, LAFCA gave top award to Roma which was New York Film Critics Circle top award.  Then quite a few critics groups between the east and west coast have also given top award to Roma, which makes me think that critics at least when it comes to Best Film seems to have a consensus that wonder if will repeat when Academics vote.

Do not mind at all that critics are honoring Roma as really wish film could get a major Oscar as, according to many industry pundits, will give a huge push to still consider as films to those being consumed by audiences outside movie theaters.  No doubt that most industry players need to recognize that WE the audience nowadays have many options to consume films.  Not long ago situation was different as to watch movies you went to a movie theater or waited for DVD to be released with another awful "window" system implemented by ... yes, movie theaters chains!

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76th Annual Golden Globe Nominations

Yesterday's morning the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and once again this year there is controversy about what group calls comedy as films in the best comedy (or musical) category are no comedies even when could generate one or two laughs.

For starters it's almost impossible for me to imagine Yorgos Lanthimos doing a comedy and even do The Favourite has been called a "sex comedy" or "a different kind of comedy" believe that film is a serious female-driven extraordinary drama, perhaps showered with very-witty dialogues around search of power struggles.  But then, what do I know, sigh.   Similar reasoning -without the female orientation- applies to Green Book and Vice which obviously are dramas, period.  Then this year they had two music intensive pics that definitively could have been more in the Musical category than in drama; yes, talking about A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody, even when I know HFPA rules where changed to prevent music-based biopics entered as musicals, but what the heck, they're more musicals than what group called comedies. Sigh.

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2018 New York Film Critics Circle Award Winners

Yesterday the east coast group voted their annual winners for the 87th edition and seems that there is no visible trend from an independent film award and the two major film critics, as for example Best Film category in Gotham went to The Rider, in NBR to Green Book and the NYFCC to Roma.  Data up-to-this-moment suggests there are high probabilities current award season will again be interesting and perhaps even unpredictable which makes all exercises a lot more fun.

In previous years the call-by-many "harbingers of the Oscars nominations" score have been on the lower side but let's hope for the future of cinema that Roma gets an Oscar nomination and hopefully the top AMPAS award.  It's only then -according to several industry articles- that theaters will start to understand how much films distribution has changed thanks to how audiences -we- consume films nowadays.  I don't want theaters to disappear and well-understand they will not relinquish their power without a strong fight, but what wish would immediately disappear or be totally modify is the window release system.  Let's hope fight doesn't last too-long and industry concentrates more in production issues than in distribution.

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2018 National Board of Review Awards Winners

Yesterday afternoon the NBR announced its winners and its choices gives us a sight into the Awards Season that seems this year will be not surprising but a little bit unpredictable with perhaps honors wealth spreading all over the place.  We have to recall the NBR is made up of film enthusiasts, industry professionals, academics and filmmakers which makes the organization a quite interesting blend from all walks of life.

In past awards seasons group have honored films that went to have Oscar nominations and/or wins.  Last year their top winner was The Post but also honored The Florida Project, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, Call Me By Your Name, and Coco, all of which ended up receiving Oscar nominations.  So, the group heterogeneity gives them good predictable record for nominations.  Still, believe group has a spotty record for predicting winners.

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2018 Film Critics Awards

Today, November 27 the post becomes alive again for another year and activity will become intense until a week before Christmas when will quiet a bit; then January activity will gain full force to end quietly around the first weeks of February 2019.

By now all the fuzz and buzz about #Oscars2019 foreign-language submissions is over and it's time to start with all the fuzz and buzz from film critics that always gives you a better idea about the films that could win nominations and the one that will collect the award.  Yes, we know that not very often great films win AMPAS accolades, so IF wish to guess right on the Oscars office pool or any of the many online polls -some with good prices- then here will find info for better guessing.  Enjoy!

Post will be a work in progress until the last critics group announces their winner which will happen in early February 2019.

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28th Annual IFP Gotham Award Winners

Last night, November 26th, the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) announced the winners of the current edition of the annual Gotham Awards at a ceremony held at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

The awards ceremony had a live stream and if you wish to check it today, Tuesday November 27th is still playable at IFP facebook site here.

Most industry and entertainment news dispatches are manifesting their "surprise" with the top winner but then they probably forgot that film was in 2017 Cannes at the Quinzaine where won the International Confederation of Art Cinemas (C.I.C.A.E.) Art Cine Award, an award that undoubtedly assures film is artful and perhaps the CICAE jury decision speaks better about the winning film:

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2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominations

The 2019 Film Independent Spirit Award nominees were announced last Friday's morning at the W Hotel in Hollywood, presented by Gemma Chan and Molly Shannon and featuring yet another diverse group of talented creators with a shared belief in the power and promise of independent storytelling.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact in nominees list is that honors are well-spread among many films as pack leader is We the Animals by Jeremiah Zagar with five nominations followed by three feature films Eight Grade, First Reformed and You Were Never Really Here with four each.  Then we have the distributor breakdown where A24 scored 12 nominations followed by Amazon Studios, Netflix and the Orchard with six each plus Annapurna Pictures with five.

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2018 British Independent Film Awards Nominations

The Favourite leads with 13 nominations for the 2018 British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) announced this morning by British actors Ellie Bamber and Arinzé Kene at the Everyman Cinema, King’s Cross. Yorgos Lanthimos’s black comedy about the 18th century court of Queen Anne is recognized for Best British Independent Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Olivia Colman is nominated for Best Actress, with her co-stars in the female-led ensemble, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, competing in the Best Supporting Actress category, Weisz also receives a Best Actress nomination for Disobedience. The Favourite also sweeps the technical categories, newly introduced for the 2017 awards, with nominations for seven of the nine awards, including Best Production Design, Best Cinematography supported by Blackmagic Design, Best Make-up & Hair Design and Best Costume Design.

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75th Venice Film Festival Award Winners

As promised and because it's easy to read in one single place all winners, here are the winners of the 2018 Biennale Cinema.

Watched awards live but ceremony was not much entertaining and with so many American movies in the festival I was not that much interested in learning winners (sigh) nor watching clips.

Nevertheless I'm glad that most awards went to interesting possibilities and well-known and much-admired-by-me directors like Jacques Audiard, Yorgos Lanthimos and Julian Schanbel.  Worth mentioning that Audiard's award relaxes me a bit as I'm still anxious about his first film in a language that is not his mother tongue as there are so-many disasters with so-few successes when extraordinary directors work on English-language productions. Sigh.

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75th Venice International Film Festival Lineup

As was not easy to gather info about films countries submitted to Oscars 2019, decided to do the two missing posts about the 2018 Biennale as it's a lot easier to check info from only one source.  This is the lineup, the second will list the award winners.

Let's start by sharing that the festival poster was made by Lorenzo Mattotti. Mattotti says the following about his design, "I believe that a poster must have something intriguing about it, that attracts the eye, that attracts thought, but without revealing too much. It needs to have a sort of enigma, a sort of mystery to solve. After various attempts, I developed this idea of a girl of this female character – with a very graphic, unrealistic face – who looks with a rather serious expression through a lens. And instead of this lens, there’s Earth, planet Earth, symbolizing a gaze directed at us. Then there is a white square, and I believe that this combination is a successful match, because people wonder: what is that white square? I believe it is natural to think of it as a movie screen, the white screen. The gaze directed on the planet, directed on reality, must pass through this device, must be filtered through the screen".

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91st Academy Awards Foreign Language Film Submissions

Tuesday, October 9, 2018 Update

Yesterday the Academy released the accepted foreign-language films that will compete to be included in the shortlist of 9, get one of the 5 nominations and the ultimate goal, win an Oscar.

This year there are a total of eighty-seven (87) films, five short of last year ninety-two and there are quite a few countries that submit for the first time like Belarus and Malawi, for example.

Until yesterday the list had 81 countries, but there are not 6 new as 2 are out (Cuba and Kyrgyzstan) and 8 (Armenia, Australia, China, Kazakhstan, Malawi, New Zealand, Niger, Yemen) are new.   There are few films that have a different English name in the official list and for post purposes the list below will have the names in the official list, even when at least one film, official English name is not the one in AMPAS list.

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71th Festival de Cannes Award Winners

Watching red carpet, soon the top prizes of Cannes 2018.

Saturday May 19th Morning Update:  Un Certain Regard winners,  Queer Palm winners and more ...

Today AFP gives us the most interesting news as this year will be the first time in 71 years of the festival where those Cannes main awards that used to receive diplomas will receive a mini-palmes d'or!

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57th Semaine de la Critique Award Winners

Yesterday, the Cannes parallel section had their award ceremony with top award going to a Franco-Brazilian-Portuguese comedy drama.

Check winners below in GREEN and at official press release here.

Most interesting is the availability of 500 FREE tickets to watch the 2018 short films selection via Festival Scope.   Starting today, May 17th and until May 27th IF you hurry, will be able to watch the shorts; but act fast as there are only 500 tickets and yes, they're sold out quite quickly.  Festival Scope site is here.

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