Tag: the disaster artist

State of the Race: National Board of Review

What is the National Board of Review? Wikipedia tells us that this is an organization, starting in 1908, made up of critics, film enthusiasts, academics, and filmmakers in the New York Metropolitan area. Despite having “National” in name, the Board is rather regional and has only about 100 members cast ballots for nominees and winners in various categories. So… in terms of overlap to what the Academy does, it’s limited, and shows more correlation than causation. The main point, in terms of the Oscar race, is that the NBR is the first critical body to announce its annual awards. And it’s always fun to have news.

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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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