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"Normally, I can't stand sitting through a film because I'm terrified of screenings. I'm terrified of audiences," Damien Chazelle tells me as we sat down in Beverly Hills recently to talk about his latest film, La La Land. LA traffic, a…

The press release explains it a lot better than I could, but the key thrust of Loving is what it says about oppression, the kind we're about to get a healthy dose of in the next four years. New York and Los Angeles (January 6th, 2017) –…

Lion is one of the best films to watch right now. Even though it isn't rising to the top of the pile with awards, it is surely a moving cinematic experience and one of the few emotionally rewarding feelgood movies of the year. How many…

Although the focus has been mostly on Damien Chazelle's La La Land for its investment in reviving the musical - not exactly the Hollywood musical but, perhaps, the French musical of the Jacques Demy variety. Demy was influenced by the…

Blu Murray started his career as a visual effects editor and worked his way up to being a first editor on films such as Catwoman, Changeling, Gran Torino, and American Sniper. The opportunity to cut his first film came up and he jumped at…

The Writers Guild will announce tomorrow and will add a few more pieces to the puzzle. We expect all of the usual suspects but there might be SOME surprises, I figure. As we wrote earlier, the films that have been bumped to adapted at…

We correctly predicted drama but blew it in the comedy category. Honestly, I had a feeling The Lobster was getting in but ditched it at the last minute. I would not have been able to see Junglebook coming. Nice to see Hail, Caesar getting a…

Tomorrow morning the American Cinema Editors (ACE) announce their 2016 Eddie nominations for Drama and for Musical/Comedy films. I do not know how it will go but I will take a guess. Please let me know what you think might get picked.…

My daughter and I have a frame of reference for a certain type of movie -- it's the "one special boy" movie, since almost every movie is about that. One special boy comes of age. One special boy is rescued by his hidden magic or hidden…

Before any nominations come down, hope springs eternal. We can still hope there is a possibility for impossible things. Once the nominations start coming out, we'll be surprised by some, horrified by others, and everyone will have something…

August Wilson wanted to expand perceptions in America, to tell the stories that don't get told. Even though he began his career in theater over thirty years ago, not a lot changed in Hollywood to reflect his efforts. To a great extent,…

The two biggest mistakes a person can make when measuring the Oscar race is to think what critics do matters more than what the industry does. In fact, even the Oscar voters can differ dramatically from both. For the most part, their…

The Editors Guild will announce their nominations as the first of many of the big guild announcements on January 3. Followed by  the  WGA (Jan 4), PGA (Jan 10), DGA (Jan 12). The Editors have traditionally aligned tightly with Best…

Hidden Figures is the kind of uplifting film we need right now. It highlights the work of mathematicians at NASA in the 1960s who played a key role in the race to launch mankind into space. We've seen part of this story before, but what…

Although it seems like we keep writing this same article over and over again, the point still needs to be made about why predicting a Best Picture winner with the preferential ballot can be so tricky. It's the reason Gravity could not win,…

Sound Mixer and Sound Editor are just two of the hats Jacob Ribicoff wears in Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester By The Sea. Whether he's capturing the sounds of clashing skate-blades at a hockey rink, or the ocean wind coming in off the…

As we head into Christmas Eve, here is a look at the latest Gurus of Gold. In it, David Poland asks his readers to name what they want for Christmas translated to Oscar nominations. My three choices were: Amy Adams for Best Actress…

I don't know what it is about Anne Thompson, but she really has emerged as a tried and true Oscar whisperer. It isn't that she wins every predictions contest - Joyce Eng over at Gold Derby is kind of putting us all to shame - but she knows…

Robert Eggers spent years bringing The Witch to screen. Eggers was determined to stay authentic to his research and the time period, even if it meant waiting a long time to finally get the film made. The Witch, as it turns out is a great…

Clint Eastwood has made Hollywood an astonishing amount of money over his long and successful career, both as an actor and as a director. Boxofficemojo, in fact, has his lifetime gross as an actor at $1,710,885,495, and as a director at …