State of the Race: The Golden Globes

Let’s paint a picture. It’s 2010, and you’re the Hollywood Foreign Press – you represent less than one hundred total critics throughout the globe and you’re throwing a party for movies and television in January. You’ve hosted a series of schmooze-fests where actors, directors and producers are laughing at all your jokes and taking the 2010-version of selfies with you. You feel pretty cool. Who should come to your party? You’re looking at the Comedy or Musical category you have at your party, and you’re thinking… how cool would it be if both Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie came?

To do so, you nominate The Tourist (a horrible 20% on Rotten Tomatoes), a globe-trotting non-comedy for Best Comedy or Musical, Depp for Best Comedic Actor, and Jolie for Best Comedic Actress. This is something you do, because your party is the Golden Globes and nothing matters.

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Mudbound (2017)

Now Available on Netflix
Directed By: Dee Rees
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Jason Mitchell, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Mary J. Blige

These are the Netflix original movies so far: Beasts of No Nation, The Ridiculous 6, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, Special Correspondents, The Do-Over, The Fundamentals of Caring, Rebirth, Tallulah, XOXO, ARQ, The Siege of Jadotville, Mascots, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, 7 Años, True Memoirs of an International Assassin, Mercy, Spectral, Barry, Coin Heist, Clinical, Take the 10, iBoy, Imperial Dreams, Girlfriend’s Day, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, Burning Sands, Deidra & Laney Rob a Train, The Most Hated Woman in America, The Discovery, Win It All, Sandy Wexler, Sand Castle, Tramps, Small Crimes, Handsome, Blame!, War Machine, Shimmer Lake, You Get Me, Okja, To the Bone, The Incredible Jessica James, Naked, What Happened to Monday, Death Note, Little Evil, First They Killed My Father, Gerald’s Game, Our Souls at Night, The Meyerowitz Stories, The Babysitter, 1922, Wheelman, The Killer, A Christmas Prince, and now Mudbound. Some are better than others are (as some are Adam Sandler movies), but it does not seem like any would be a five star movie. Only with this latest movie does a Netflix movie seem like it is trying to be a classic.

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State of the Race: The Gotham Independent Film Nominations

http://filmmakermagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Gothams.jpg
(image: Filmmaker Magazine)

As we all know, Oscar season is a year-round affair. The first domino dropped on October 19th, with the first film award nominations coming – these were for the Gotham Independent Film Awards. These are given annually from the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) “the largest membership organization in the United States dedicated to independent film” and the awards were founded in 1991.

A group of people decide on the nominations and awards, limiting the scope to films that could be considered independent – so big budget movies and big studio ones are ineligible. So we wouldn’t expect to see Dunkirk or Wonder Woman here. But independent film has dominated the Oscars for the last 20 years anyway – the last four years have been indie winners for Best Picture, for 12 Years a Slave (2013), Birdman (2014), Spotlight (2015) and Moonlight (2016) – all of which were nominated for Best Feature in the Gothams.

Let’s show the actual nominees first and then see what it means:

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