THE OSCARS
Sunday night is the 92nd Academy Awards. I’ll be cheering mostly for Parasite, which is head and shoulders better than most of the movies with which it’s in competition—though, granted, I still have a few of the Best International Film nominees to see.
I can’t deny a real concern that the times are changing and the Oscars aren’t—the awards aren’t doing enough to improve their record on race or gender, despite plenty of candidates worthy of awards attention.
Despite Moonlight having won Best Picture three years ago, there’s a more conservative tone to the awards season since then, exemplified by the victory lap the deeply average, white saviour narrative Green Book took in 2019, and the one 1917—an impressive technical achievement but also the kind of safe movie that earns awards—is likely to take on Sunday.
In the acting categories, there are plenty of worthy nominees this year, though it’s a bit of a shame the awards all look to be a lock, if only because it denies viewers the excitement of the unexpected. Laura Dern will win Best Supporting Actress for Marriage Story, Brad Pitt will win Best Supporting Actor for Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, Renee Zellweger will win Best Actress for Judy, and Joaquin Phoenix will win Best Actor for Joker. I’m more or less OK with a couple of those, and a lot less OK with the others. If you want to hear more of my take on these nominations…
CTV FILM GURU UPDATE
This week I talked about my predictions for the big six awards at the Oscars on Halifax’s CTV Morning Live with Katie Kelly, which if you’d like to watch, you can go here.
I can tell you the the other couple of categories where I have a dog in the fight: I’d be happy if Parasite or Knives Out won Best Original Screenplay, and either Little Women or Jojo Rabbit for Best Adapted Screenplay. Beyond that, I doubt I can be much help to your pools, and the choice of my heart rarely lines up with Academy voters’ preference.
It looks like I’m going to be showing up on CTV regularly on Friday mornings to preview the weekend’s upcoming movies, as I did last week.
CARBON ARC CINEMA
The winter season of Carbon Arc gets started on Friday, February 7th, with a showing of the Best Commercials of 2019.
As per usual you can expect a wealth of quality independent and international cinema to screen on Fridays (and the occasional Saturdays) from now through April—titles include Oscar nominees Honeyland and Corpus Christi, as well as festival gems Beanpole, A White White Day, and Clemency, with the newest edition of Michael Apted’s long-running documentary series coming next week, 63Up. Go to the Carbon Arc Event Page to see the schedule, which isn’t quite complete for the season but soon will be. Purchasing tickets on the site in advance is recommended as screenings frequently sell out.
