LA LA LAND Leads Oscar Nominations

The 2017 Oscar nominations were announced online this morning with a global event filmed in six different cities.

Moving the Academy away from the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, seven actors of color were nominated this year, with Denzel Washington in the race for Best Actor for Fences and Loving's Ruth Negga earning a nomination as Best Actress. In supporting categories, actresses Viola Davis (Fences), Naomie Harris (Moonlight) and Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures) were nominated along with actor Mahershala Ali (Moonlight). English-Indian actor Dev Patel is also in the Best Supporting Actor race for Lion, and Moonlight's director Barry Jenkins was nominated, only the third African-American in Oscar history in the Best Director category. Who are the others? John Singleton was nominated in 1991 for Boyz in the Hood, followed by Lee Daniels in 2009 for Precious. In 2014, England's Steve McQueen became the first black Brit to earn a Best Director Oscar nod. His film, 12 Years a Slave, won Best Picture that year, although Mexico's Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director for Gravity, making Cuarón the first Latin American man to win in that category.

La La Land and its whopping 14 nominations -- tying All About Eve and Titanic for the most ever -- shows that it doesn't hurt your Oscar chances to keep Hollywood and a reverence for old movies front and center in your film. That didn't help the Coen Brothers' Hail Caesar, however, which took only one nomination, for its production design.

If there were any surprises on the list, it was probably that the Hollywood Powers That Be have apparently forgiven Mel Gibson for his many public transgressions, nominating him for Best Director for Hacksaw Ridge, while overlooking Amy Adams, considered a likely prospect for a Best Actress nod, Finding Dory, not one of the choices for Best Animated Feature, and Martin Scorsese and his film Silence, greeted with a whole lot of silence instead of nominations. Silence did earn a cinematography nod for Rodrigo Prieto.

At the moment, given all its nominations and the buzz going in, La La Land is certainly the front-runner for Best Picture. But it has engendered some controversy for its lily-white take on jazz as an art form as well as some unapologetic mansplaining, so the stunner that is Moonlight might just sneak in there by the time the Oscar ceremony rolls around on February 26th. I hope so. Moonlight deserves it.

Here's a list of nominees in major categories:

BEST PICTURE
Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Hidden Figures
La La Land
Lion
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight

BEST ACTOR
Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington, Fences

BEST ACTRESS
Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Emma Stone, La La Land
Natalie Portman, Jackie
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea
Dev Patel, Lion
Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Viola Davis, Fences
Naomie Harris, Moonlight
Nicole Kidman, Lion
Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures
Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

BEST DIRECTOR
Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Denis Villeneuve, Arrival

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Luke Davies, Lion
Eric Heisserer, Arrival
Barry Jenkins, Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Moonlight
Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi, Hidden Figures
August Wilson, Fences

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, The Lobster
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Mike Mills, 20th Century Women
Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Greig Fraser, Lion
James Laxton, Moonlight
Rodrigo Prieto, Silence
Linus Sandgren, La La Land
Bradford Young, Arrival 

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Land of Mine (Denmark)
A Man Called Ove (Sweden)
The Salesman (Iran)
Tanna (Australia)
Toni Erdmann (Germany)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Kubo and the Two Strings
Moana
My Life as a Zucchini
The Red Turtle
Zootopia

For the complete list of nominations and more information about the February 26 Oscar ceremony, click here for the Academy Awards official site.

Screen Actors Guild: Film Nominations

If the Screen Actors Guild Awards for movies have an advantage over the splashier Golden Globes it's probably because they are a better Oscar prognosticating tool, at least as far as the acting categories go. That's because the voters -- members of the Screen Actors Guild -- are a much better match for voters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences than the elite little (emphasis on little) group known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

SAG gives far fewer awards, they are a much more serious affair, and they don't actually honor anything as a "best" or "outstanding" film, just the one whose cast they liked best. This year, Oscar frontrunner La La Land isn't nominated in that "Outstanding Cast" category. Instead, a little something called Captain Fantastic (about a father in the wilderness trying to raise six kids by himself) has taken its place. That may be because La La Land is more dependent on its two leads and its ensemble just didn't seem like something SAG voters wanted to single out. Or it may signify that La La Land isn't a frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar after all.

Stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were both nominated, however, so it's not like La La Land is being overlooked. Whether or not they win -- which isn't at all a sure thing given that Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea and Denzel Washington in Fences are expected to be the contenders for Best Actor, while Natalie Portman's Jackie is right in there with Stone at the head of the Best Actress pack -- La La Land will be celebrated plenty this awards season.

Aside from Captain Fantastic and Viggo Mortenssn in it, the biggest surprise to me is that Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant are nominated for Florence Foster Jenkins, which wasn't greeted all that enthusiastically by critics when it arrived. The power of La Streep?

Whichever direction the awards go when they are handed out January 29, the nominees are:

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A CAST IN A MOTION PICTURE
Captain Fantastic
Fences
Hidden Figures
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Amy Adams, Arrival
Emily Blunt, The Girl on the Train
Natalie Portman, Jackie
Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington, Fences

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Viola Davis, Fences
Naomie Harris, Moonlight
Nicole Kidman, Lion
Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures
Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
Hugh Grant, Florence Foster Jenkins
Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea
Dev Patel, Lion

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A STUNT ENSEMBLE

Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Hacksaw Ridge
Jason Bourne
Nocturnal Animals

Look for the Screen Actors Guild Awards on TBS and TNT on Sunday, January 29.

Golden Globes: The Movie Nominations

Nominations for the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards were announced last week, with the usual flurry of obvious, wacky and encouraging choices from the nominating members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The Golden Globes made their name by combining awards for film and television programs (instead of just movies or TV by themselves) and by getting their show on the air very early among awards shows. This time, you'll find the early bird Globes ceremony on NBC on January 8th, while Oscar voters are still in the first days of their nomination process.

The fact that the Golden Globes are handed out so quickly continues to fool people into thinking that they are a good indicator for the Academy Awards. But because of the small number of HFPA members and voters, they tend to go out on a lot more limbs than the Oscars, plus HFPA voters seem to like European (and especially British) actors and directors more than some of the other awards. Where Oscar voters gravitate toward dramas and "important" pictures, the Golden Globes offer a separate category for comedy and musical films as well as their lead performers, meaning those movies get a bit more of the spotlight than they would otherwise. And something like Florence Foster Jenkins may get some love from the HFPA but end up largely ignored by Oscar. No matter. Whether they're revelatory or just plain silly, the Golden Globes are fun to discuss.

Here's the list of nominations on the film side of the Golden Globes equation:

BEST MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Lion
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight

BEST MOTION PICTURE, MUSICAL OR COMEDY
20th Century Women
Deadpool
La La Land
Florence Foster Jenkins
Sing Street

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A DRAMA
Amy Adams, Arrival
Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane
Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A DRAMA
Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Joel Edgerton, Loving
Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington, Fences
 

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL OR COMEDY
Annette Bening, 20th Century Women
Lily Collins, Rules Don’t Apply
Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen
Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MUSICAL OR COMEDY
Colin Farrell, The Lobster
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Hugh Grant, Florence Foster Jenkins
Jonah Hill, War Dogs
Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Viola Davis, Fences
Naomie Harris, Moonlight
Nicole Kidman, Lion
Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures
Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea
 
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
Simon Helberg, Florence Foster Jenkins
Dev Patel, Lion
Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nocturnal Animals
 
BEST DIRECTOR
Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals
Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight 
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea

BEST SCREENPLAY
Damienl Chazelle, La La Land
Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water

BEST ANIMATED MOTION PICTURE
Kubo and the Two Strings
Moana
My Life as a Zucchini
Sing
Zootopia

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE MOTION PICTURE
Divines (France)
Elle (France)
Neruda (Chile)
The Salesman (Iran/France)
Toni Erdmann (Germany)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Nicholas Britell, Moonlight
Justin Hurwitz, La La Land
Jóhann Jóhannsson, Arrival
Dustin O’Halloran and Hauschka, Lion
Hans Zimmer, Pharrell Williams and Benjamin Wallfisch, Hidden Figures

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"Can’t Stop the Feeling," Trolls
"City of Stars," La La Land
"Faith," Sing
"Gold," Gold
"How Far I’ll Go," Moana

The Golden Globes ceremony will be broadcast live at 8 pm Eastern/7 Central on January 8th on NBC with Jimmy Fallon as host.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like December

Yes, I'm more than a day late and more than a dollar short with my December listings. I do apologize. But time's a-wasting so we'd better get on with the show. 

It's a Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play opened December 2, but performances continue tonight, tomorrow and Friday night at Illinois State University's Center for the Performing Arts. Check out this ISU press release for all the details.

The Normal Theater has pretty much a whole month of holiday movie programming coming up, including The Santa Clause tomorrow, Elf on Friday and Sunday, and Remember the Night, White Chrismas, It's a Wonderful Life, Edward Scissorhands, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and the 1938 Christmas Carol, all before Christmas day. To check out what's when and all the other important details, you can visit the Normal Theater's December calendar.

Champaign's Parkland College will perform A Charlie Brown Christmas live and on stage through December 11. Remaining performances are Friday December 9 and Saturday December 10 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday and Sunday the 10th and 11th at 3 pm. This stage version of the classic TV program includes, "joyful music and a meet and greet with the Peanuts characters for the kids."

The Normal pop-up theater known as Sticky is back Friday night at Firehouse Pizza and Pub for their sweet and sticky holiday event. You are invited to "settle in under the twinkling lights to be entertained by six ten-minute plays that are nothing short of jolly." Sticky organizers would like you to keep in mind that this is considered an all-ages event, but some plays may contain adult themes and mature language. Remember: It's set at a bar, which by definition (or at least by law) includes adult activities. In fact, I have never seen a Sticky without adult themes and mature language. Admission is $7 at the door and Karen Bridges will be the opening musical act. The December Sticky cast will include founders Connie Blick and J. Michael Grey as well as Lori Cook Baird, John Bowen, Kyle Fitzgerald, Devon Lovell, Wes Melton, Nick McBurney, Michelle Woody and Kristi Zimmerman-Weiher.

Community Players will offer a free holiday movie -- Home Alone -- to the first 270 people in the door on Saturday, December 10th. Doors open at 5:30 pm, with the movie starting at 6. They are promising holiday cookies and other refreshments and even some prizes. You're encouraged to deck out in holiday gear, too. If you don't have any other use for that garish Christmas sweater with Santa and a load of reindeer, this may just be the place to go.

Fathom Events brings George Takei's Allegiance, the Broadway musical inspired by real events in the United States during World War II, to screens nationwide next week. After Pearl Harbor, Japanese-American families like Takei's were taken from their homes, their jobs and their schools and forced to live in "relocation camps" simply because their ancestry was Japanese. This blot on our national history needs to be remembered, especially since politicians are once again suggesting that immigrants or children of immigrants cannot be trusted because of where they came from or what religion they practice. You'll find details about the show here, and movie theaters where it's playing here. Willow Knolls 14 in Peoria, Savoy 16 south of Champaign, and Springfield 10 in Springfield are your closest options if you're in Bloomington-Normal. All three of those theaters are showing Allegiance at 7:30 pm on December 13. Click the links under the names of the theaters to get tickets.

Over in Urbana, the Station Theater's December show, Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe, runs through December 17. "A one-person interactive play about depression and the lengths we will go to for those we love," Every Brilliant Thing is directed by Katie Baldwin Prosise and features William Anthony Sebastian Rose II as the one man in the one-man show on even dates like the 8th and the 10th and Jason Dockins on odd dates like the 9th and the 11th. Click here for more information on Every Brilliant Thing at the Station or here to reserve tickets.

And if you want to keep ahead of awards season, highly touted movies like Moonlight, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, Loving and Arrival are already in theaters or will be soon. Moonlight and Arrival are in area theaters now, with Loving in Champaign at the Art Theater Co-op and Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight both listed under the "coming soon" tab at the Art. La La Land is scheduled to open everywhere on December 16. So far, the Independent Spirit and Critics Choice Awards have announced their nominations if you want to see which films emerge as the front-runners. The Critics Choice organization will give out its awards on December 11 with a ceremony televised on A&E at 7 pm Central time, the Golden Globes will announce their (frequently flaky) nominations on December 12 at 7 am our time, and the Screen Actors Guild will announce its (less flaky) nominations December 14.

More to come as more nominations and awards come in and I get a handle on who's showing what on TV in terms of my favorite holiday films.

Diversity and Innovation: Nominees for 2017 Film Independent Spirit Awards

The Film Independent Spirit Awards nominees were announced last week, with Matt Warren's official announcement at the Film Independent site echoing a lot of what a lot of us are feeling as awards season begins. Warren notes that he understands that the usual anticipation of awards and the hoopla that accompanies them may "seem like an indulgence of attention that most Americans can no longer afford." He continues, "But beyond the glamor of the celebrity carpet, bright lights and pewter awards statuettes, the Film Independent Spirit Awards stand for something much deeper: championing creative independence in visual storytelling and supporting a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision – a mission that is more relevant now than ever before."

Although the Spirit Awards have in recent years tended to look a lot like the Oscars' list, this year their choices demonstrate that touted creative independence and uniqueness of vision, going for smaller, more interesting movies that may or may not find favor with the big Academy boys. By spotlighting and supporting films like American Honey and Moonlight, which each earned six nominations, the Spirit Awards have shown exactly why they exist and why they're important.

American Honey was written and directed by Andrea Arnold, a British filmmaker with an eye for female protagonists. This time, her story involves a reckless and restless teenage girl, played by Sasha Lane, who takes off with a group of rootless kids who travel in a van around the dire vistas of Nebraska and Oklahoma selling magazine subscriptions door to door. A. O. Scott of the New York Times called American Honey "an episodic travelogue, a coming-of-age chronicle and an indictment of grim social conditions, with roughly equal measures of Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger and Charles Dickens in its DNA."

Although Moonlight is also a coming-of-age drama, its look and focus are quite different from American Honey, reflecting the fact that their settings – the Walmart-littered landscape of the Great Plains versus the "bold, blue, beautiful darkness" of Miami – look worlds apart. Based on a play called In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Moonlight is centered around the pain, struggle and hope that surrounds a young African-American boy named Chiron at three different times in his life, as he tries to figure out who he is and how he fits in. In the Washington Post, Ann Hornaday says that Moonlight is "a perfect film, one that exemplifies not only the formal and aesthetic capabilities of a medium at its most visually rich, but a capacity for empathy and compassion that reminds audiences of one of the chief reasons why we go to movies: to be moved, opened up and maybe permanently changed." This year's Robert Altman Award, given to one film and its director (Barry Jenkins), casting director and ensemble cast, will be awarded to Moonlight.

Here are some of the nominees in major categories:

BEST FEATURE
American Honey
Chronic 
Jackie 
Manchester by the Sea 
Moonlight 

BEST DIRECTOR
Andrea Arnold, American Honey
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight
Pablo Larraín, Jackie
Jeff Nichols, Loving
Kelly Reichardt, Certain Women

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Annette Bening, 20th Century Women
Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Sasha Lane, American Honey
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie

BEST MALE LEAD
Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
David Harewood, Free In Deed
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Jesse Plemons, Other People
Tim Roth, Chronic

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Edwina Findley, Free In Deed
Paulina Garcia, Little Men
Lily Gladstone, Certain Women
Riley Keough, American Honey
Molly Shannon, Other People

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Ralph Fiennes, A Bigger Splash
Ben Foster, Hell or High Water
Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea
Shia LaBeouf, American Honey
Craig Robinson, Morris From America

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Ava Berkofsky, Free In Deed
Lol Crawley, The Childhood of a Leader
Zach Kuperstein, The Eyes of My Mother
James Laxton, Moonlight
Robbie Ryan, American Honey

BEST SCREENPLAY
Barry Jenkins (screenplay), Tarell Alvin McCraney (story), Moonlight
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Mike Mills, 20th Century Women
Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias, Little Men
Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water

You'll find the entire list of Spirit Award nominees here. The Awards will be presented February 25, 2017 in a tent on the beach next to the Santa Monica pier. They will also be broadcast on the Independent Film Channel.