We ve Got Hollywood Covered
A Journal of the Weirdest Awards Season Ever, From Streams to Vaccines and Everything in Between
TheWrap magazine: The COVID-19 pandemic and the recognition of systemic racism transformed this awards season into a marathon like no other By Steve Pond | April 14, 2021 @ 10:32 AM Last Updated: April 14, 2021 @ 12:54 PM
Illustrated by Chris Morris
A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
The Oscars have been delayed and disrupted before, but there has never been an awards season like the one that will end on April 25 at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. Starting soon after last year’s Oscars on Feb. 9, 2020, the world changed, first with a global pandemic and then with a long-delayed reckoning with institutional racism.
Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020)
Quo Vadis, Aida? has a hair-raising way of stopping the flow of events and then resuming. In between scenes as terrifying as a horror movie, writer-director Jasmila Zbanic pauses to capture the infinitesimal moments that represent life, beauty and normalcy – a look exchanged between a young man and a woman, shared cigarettes, a couple making out, clothes being washed.
The setting makes these fleeting moments of grace all the more precious. The movie explores the Srebrenica massacre that took place during the Bosnian War in 1995. Serbian forces overran the town, supposedly a safe zone under the protection of the United Nations, and slaughtered thousands of men and boys. In the movie, a few thousand of the Srebrenica’s Bosnian Muslims manage to find shelter in a UN base, while a vastly bigger crowd waits outside, hoping against hope.
Nigerian filmmaker, Desmond Ovbiagele has reacted to The Milkmaid not making the Oscars Best International Feature Film category shortlist.
The investment banker turned filmmaker revealed that though the movie did not make the shortlist, it made an unimaginable impact which will not be forgotten in a hurry.
“We are proud of what our Oscar run has meant for our cast and crew, for the Nigerian film industry, and for Nigerians everywhere,”
Ovbiagele said in a recent press release.
“We wanted to tell a story that truly reflected the impact and complexities of religious insurgency in Nigeria on those who experience it by force or by choice. Achieving that and being recognized as belonging among the best of the best in international storytelling through film is an incredible honor and we are thrilled that we’ve opened the door for a greater diversity of stories to be told.”
Golden Globes 2021 Film Predictions: Why ‘Borat’ Could Score IndieWire 1/31/2021
During this elongated, home-bound award season, it’s tougher to check in with voters. The 90 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who vote for the Golden Globes, have had to cope, along with everyone else, with the challenges of the pandemic. Several couldn’t return to the U.S., some fell ill, or lost family. They also had to deal with the loss of longtime member Lorenzo Soria to lung cancer, as well as a lawsuit accusing the HFPA of using their clout to monopolize overseas entertainment coverage, which was eventually thrown out by a federal judge.
Oscars Best Picture Screening Room for Voters Hits 200 Movies – But Not ‘Tenet’
Christopher Nolan’s mindbending drama is the most notable absence from a viewing platform that has now earned the Academy $2.5 millionSteve Pond | January 27, 2021 @ 6:00 PM
AWARDS BEAT
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The number of films available to Oscar voters in a screening room devoted to the Best Picture category hit the 200 mark on Wednesday, which means that $2.5 million has entered the Academy coffers from films paying $12,500 each to be represented in the screening room.
The members-only Academy Screening Room hit the milestone with the addition of more than a dozen movies this week, including Fisher Stevens’ “Palmer,” Lee Daniels’ “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” John Lee Hancock’s “The Little Things,” the Russo brothers’ “Cherry,” Josh Trank’s “Capone,” the documentary “Coup 53,” the Studio Ghibli animated film “Earwig and the Witch,” the internationa