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Here’s Ronald Reagan’s list of films screened at the White House

It seems we are only missing George HW Bush for a complete list from January, 1969 through January, 2001.

ianthemovie wrote: Thu Jan 03, 2019 4:48 pm 52 Directors Pick the Best Films and TV of 2018.

Listening to the Filmspotting Top 10 podcast for 2018 and Sean Baker narrowed his "in no particular order" list to a three-way tie for best of the year:

01 (tie). Border (Abbasi)
01 (tie). Let the Corpses Tan (Cattet/Forzani)
01 (tie). Vox Lux (Corbet)

Certainly an interesting enough (and personally agreeable enough) tippy top to make me see the two of the three that I haven't seen!

Worth mentioning that Baker is just an all-around delightful online film presence, with an agreeable and lowkey Twitter account that's a worthwhile look and a thorough and polite (no star ratings, often no barbs to throw even if something didn't work for him) Letterboxd account that's one of my very favorite follows on there. He is a really wonderful burgeoning cog in 'directors/public film geek personalities' universe still led with ruthless abandon by John Waters.

PGA nominations. And folks, they are... extremely bad

That's just awful. Hope only four or five make it to the Oscars nominees

The worst thing is that this prediction only missed Mary Poppins when Vice got in instead, i.e they were always going to be this bad.

dda1996a wrote: Fri Jan 04, 2019 7:29 pm That's just awful. Hope only four or five make it to the Oscars nominees

At least six will. The safer bet is seven.

Since 2010, when the line-up expanded, the PGA never missed more than three Oscar nominees.

I don’t see the problem? That looks like most of this years front runners minus eighth grade. Granted, I’ve only seen one of them :-p

The problem is that this minus the Favourite is what the Best Popular Film category would have looked like

Man that is pretty bad.

Roma and BlacKkKlansman were on my top ten, so I can't complain about those, but then it's a whole lot of middling films and flat out bad ones. (Have not seen The Favourite, but I'm in no rush to.)

Having heard the reactions from the audience following my second viewing a week or two ago, it appears I'm in the minority in loving The Favourite as much as I do, but let me quickly make the case that you should rush to see it:

A) If you don't like Lanthimos' style, it's easily his most accessible film yet and abandons the forced wooden acting of his previous English-language films, though...

B) ...If you do like Lanthimos' style, it's rooted in his recurring motifs of difficult people struggling for power and survival in a rigidly structured yet somehow still chaotic environment, as well as his mordant sense of humor

C) It's got four of the best performances of the year (three leads — Weisz, Stone, Colman — and one supporting in Hoult)

D) The script gives each of the women complex motivations and justifications for their bad behavior, such that none of them can be easily pegged as the villain or hero of the piece while also all being sympathetic and behaving quite monstrously at different times

E) The cinematography seems to irritate some people with the occasional wide-angle lenses, but it also has some of the best candle/fire-lit visuals I've ever seen; there's a key scene in the queen's chambers where Emma Stone looks like she's been dipped in gold

I think it's very much one of those films in which even if it doesn't fully connect with you, there's still enough to discuss, debate, and interrogate that it ends up a worthwhile experience regardless.

domino harvey wrote:The problem is that this minus the Favourite is what the Best Popular Film category would have looked like

I’d say that’s absolutely correct and that there’s one eye (if not both) on trying to up the TV ratings with the selections.

This Kevin Hart media blitz today — exclusive Variety interviews, Ellen endorsements, podcast appearances, all seemingly designed to push him back into the Oscar hosting job — would explain why the Academy has been dragging their feet on addressing the host issue. Remains to be seen if this propels him back into the job, of course, but this makes it appear like they (probably at Disney/ABC’s behest) weren’t looking anywhere else.

Cremildo wrote: Sun Jan 06, 2019 12:02 am National Society of Film Critics winners

Here are the results.

BEST PICTURE:
*1. The Rider – 44
Roma – 41
Burning – 27:

BEST DIRECTOR:
*1. Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) – 60
Lee Chang-dong (Burning) – 22 and Chloé Zhao (The Rider) – 22

BEST ACTRESS:
*1. Olivia Colman (The Favourite) – 36 points
Regina Hall (Support the Girls) – 33
Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) – 27

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
*1. Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) – 47
Elizabeth Debicki (Widows) – 37
Emma Stone (The Favourite) – 24

BEST ACTOR:
*1. Ethan Hawke (First Reformed) – 58
Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate) – 30
Ben Foster (Leave No Trace) – 25 and John C. Reilly (The Sisters Brothers, Stan & Ollie) – 25

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
*1. Steven Yeun (Burning) – 40
Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) – 35
Brian Tyree Henry (If Beale Street Could Talk, Widows, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) – 32

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
*1. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón) – 70
If Beale Street Could Talk (James Laxton) – 26
Cold War (Lukasz Zal) – 24

BEST SCREENPLAY:
*1. The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin) – 47
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty) – 27
The Favourite (Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara) – 24

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM:
*1. Roma – 44
Cold War – 34
Burning – 30 and Shoplifters – 30

BEST NON-FICTION FILM:
*1. Minding the Gap – 35
Shirkers – 31
Amazing Grace – 24

FILM HERITAGE AWARD:
To the team of producers, editors, restorers, technicians, and cineastes who labored for decades to bring Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind to completion for a new generation of movie lovers.

To the Museum of Modern Art for restoring Ernst Lubitsch’s 1923 film Rosita, starring Mary Pickford.
SPECIAL CITATION for a film awaiting U.S. distribution: A Family Tour (Ying Liang, Taiwan/Hong Kong/Singapore/Malaysia).

That Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book winning just shows how much of a dumpster fire the Globes are.

I know they're always a bit weird, but what in the hell is going on with these Golden Globes results?

It was a weird ceremony. Awkward and downright bizarre in places. Huge upsets from films that aren't all that well received. I did get a kick out of Christian Bale's speech though.

Sandra Oh won tonight. How many other times has a host for an awards show actually won a prize that night?

I think Samberg won last time he hosted.

So what were the speeches for Bohemian Rhapsody? Did anyone mention Singer?

Jesus wept, I can't believe I'm going to have to watch Bohemian Rhapsody now that it's guaranteed to be nominated for Best Picture

Don't forget Green Book, and Vice, and A Star Is Born. The ultimate winners of the Picture categories were, of course, among the worst of their category.

Golden Globes are hi-laaaarious.

(I don't mean the ceremony, didn't bother watching.)

Never Cursed wrote: Mon Jan 07, 2019 5:00 am Don't forget Green Book, and Vice, and A Star Is Born. The ultimate winners of the Picture categories were, of course, among the worst of their category.

Except animation

True, though it kept Wes Anderson from an award