This Week's Oscar Precursors: NBR, Satellites and Gothams / Lady Bird Sets a Record / Focus on The Shape of Water

Hello to all on this Thursday...

THIS WEEK'S OSCAR PRECURSORS: NBR SATELLITES AND GOTHAMS

TFF #44 films fared moderately well with this week's release of film accolades from The National Board of Review but were largely ignored by the Gotham Awards.

The NBR named Steven Spielberg's The Post the best film of the year and also recognized Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep as Best Actor and Actress for that film.

The NBR, as it annually does also named a list of their ten best films of the year and that list included two Telluride films: Lady Bird and Downsizing.  Conspicuously absent were The Shape of Water, Battle of the Sexes and Darkest Hour.

Lady Bird also was named for Greta Gerwig's direction and for Laurie Metcalf's performance as Best Supporting Actress.

Foxtrot was named Best Foreign Language Film.

Angelina Jolie's First They Killed My Father was named co-winner of NBR's Freedom of Expression award.

Other TFF #44 films that were highlighted by the NBR  included Faces Places as one of the year's best documentaries and Loving Vincent was named to the list of ten best independent films.  A Fantastic Woman and Loveless were named to the list of five best foreign language films.

Two TFF #43 films also were lauded.  Frantz was listed in the foreign language film  category and Norman: The Rise and and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer made the independent film list.

The complete list of all winners is here from Indiewire.

The International Press Association announced the nominees for their Golden Satellite Awards yesterday and TFF #44 films were also well represented among the film nominees.  Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk led all films with 11 nominations and TFF #44 favorite The Shape of Water followed closely with 10.  

It was good news for The Shape of Water which (as you can see above) was left off of the NBR list.  Guillermo Del Toro's film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress for Sally Hawkins, Best Supporting Actor for Michael Shannon, Direction, Original Screenplay, Original Score, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Film Editing and Art Direction/Production Design.

Lady Bird and Darkest Hour were two other TFF #44 films landing multiple nominations.  Lady Bird had six with nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress for Saoirse Ronan, Best Supporting Actress for Laurie Metcalf, Direction, Original Screenplay and Cinematography.  Writer/director Greta Gerwig will also receive a special Auteur Award.

Darkest Hour was nominated in four categories: Best Actor for Gary Oldman, Cinematography, Film Editing and Sound Mixing and Editing.

Other TFF #44 films nominated by the IPA included:

Emma Stone for Best Actress in Battle of the Sexes

First They Killed My Father, Loveless and Foxtrot for Best International Film

Loving Vincent for Best Animated Film

Human Flow was nominated for Best Documentary.

A complete listing of all nominees for the Satellites is here from The Wrap.

Meanwhile, The Gotham Awards were handed out in New York earlier this week and TFF #44, which had a meager presence among the nominees to begin with, only scored one win and that was for Saoirse Ronan as Best actress in Lady Bird.  

The night was big for Call Me By Your Name which was named Best Feature and Get out which won the most awards.

The Gotham Awards list is here, also from Indiewire.

The New York Critics are set to weigh in with their list of superlative films and performances later today.

LADY BIRD SETS A RECORD

Awards Daily and others reported this week that Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird surpassed Toy Story 4 as the film that had received the most 100% ratings from Rotten Tomatoes making it "the best reviewed film of all time of that rating service.

Toy Story 4 had held the top spot with with 163 100% ratings of critic's reviews until this week when Lady Bird hit 164.

The story from Sasha Stone at Awards Daily is here.


FOCUS ON THE SHAPE OF WATER

As Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water moves closer to release a number of outlets are highlighting various participants in the film.  Included in that this week were interviews or profiles with:

Actor Michael Stuhlbarg at GQ.com

Actor Michael Shannon at RogerEbert.com

and composer Alexander Desplat with Awards Daily.com

The Shape of Water opens on Dec. 8th.

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That's all for today.  More on Monday.

And the Madness Has Begun: NBR, Gothams, Satellites / Jenkins Analyzes a Scene from Moonlight and More

Good first Thursday in December...It's December people...

AND THE MADNESS HAS BEGUN...

The Past few days saw the actual start of "awards season" with three groups announcing accolades or nominations for accolades for 2016.  The National Board of Review named a number of films to their various lists of quality for the year as did the The Gotham Awards and The Golden Satellites also got into the act.  All three organizations highly rewarded films that played at Telluride in September.

Start with The National Board of Review which went for Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea in a huge way.  NBR named the drama the Best Film of the year along with nods for Casey Affleck as Best Actor, Lonergan for Best Original Screenplay and Lucas Hedges for Outstanding Breakthrough performance.

Barry Jenkins was named Best Director for Moonlight which also was rewarded for Naomie Harris' performance as Best Supporting Actress.

Amy Adams was named Best Actress for Arrival.  That meant that TFF #43 films claimed three of the four acting prizes.

In addition to Manchester being named Best Film, the NBR named its Ten Best list which included: Moonlight, Arrival, La La Land and Sully.

Additionally, Pablo Larrain's Neruda was named one of the top five Foreign Language films and The Eagle Huntress was named among the top five Documentaries.

Complete coverage including full lists of all winners are here from:

Variety

The Hollywood Reporter

Entertainment Weekly

Indiewire

Awards Daily

Awards Circuit

The Film Experience

Meanwhile, where The NBR announcement was a Manchester by the Sea lovefest, The Gotham Awards were all about Jenkins' Moonlight.  The intimate indie film nabbed four awards when The Gothams were announced on Tuesday: Best Feature, Screenplay, the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for its ensemble.

Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea won for Casey Affleck's performance to round out awards received for films from TFF #43.

Complete Gotham's coverage is here from:

Variety

Indiewire

Entertainment Weekly

ShowBiz411

And finally, The Golden Satellite Award nominations were also announced this week and La La Land dominated that field with 13 nominations including Best Picture.  Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight also were named as nominees for Best Picture.  They each had seven nominations from the International Press Academy.

Complete Golden Satellite nominations are here from Awards Daily.

Almost without exception the Oscar experts that I read warn not to read very much into these early awards.  I tend to believe them but I also think that this kind of publicity does serve as a method to keep a film's title hot and at the front of the minds of Oscar voters as we make the run to the end of the year.


Also, all three of what are now clearly the biggest Oscar possibilities from TFF #43 had something to crow about from these announcements.




JENKINS ANALYZES A SCENE FROM MOONLIGHT AND MORE

The Film Stage's coverage of Gotham Award winners from earlier this week also includes three video features about that night's biggest winner, Barry Jenkins Moonlight.  Check out their coverage as well as the video using this link.



That's a wrap for this Thursday.  The Critic's Choice nominations are due today as well as announcements from the New York Film Critics so look to Twitter for that news (@Gort2).  More on Monday.


EMAIL:  mpgort@gmail.com OR michael_speech@hotmail.com

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