It truly boggles my mind how the Music Branch operates, at least as it relates to the Original Song category. I'm not just talking about the annual chicanery that is the customary Diane Warren nomination, though that's a rant I could go on for days. I'm talking about the category as a whole. It seems … Continue reading Oscar Blitz 2025 – Original Song
In Netflix's never-ending quest to destroy the theatrical film model once and for all, they put forward a lot of movies in hopes of garnering some Academy hardware. In addition to the two International Feature submissions they put their marketing heft behind (Chile's In Her Place and the massively overblown exercise in missing the point … Continue reading DownStream – TUDUM! Part Three – Narrative Features
I think we can safely call it at this point, 2024 has not been a great year for film. Sure, there have been a few genuinely superlative entries here and there, but for the most part, even the best movies have been largely unmemorable. Pretty much all the major contenders for Awards Season were crammed … Continue reading This Film is Not Yet Watchable – December 2024
Hello everyone, and welcome to the first entry in this year's Oscar Blitz! Assuming all goes well, I'll be covering all 23 categories, either in print or video form, over the next several weeks until the big night. Who knows how the winds will change and how momentum might shift along the way? But what's … Continue reading Oscar Blitz 2024 – Original Song
We're just over a week away from nominations for the 96th Academy Awards, and as usual, I've been going into overdrive to clear as many potential candidates as possible. As such, I have a huge backlog of reviews to get through between now and then, including the final two theatrical releases I saw in calendar … Continue reading DownStream – Early Blitz Hopefuls
We're less than 72 hours away from this year's Academy Awards, and as happens every year, I didn't get to see everything before nominations were revealed. I did better than I've ever done before, coming up just five shy of pre-announcement totality, and in three of the five cases, the films weren't readily available, with … Continue reading Back Row Thoughts – The Blitz Campaign
If you know me, you know I'm sort of a stickler when it comes to rules and organization. Hell, on some of the shows I work on in real life, I literally write them. I'm not completely anal about things, but I do believe that when regulations are made in good faith, they should be … Continue reading Oscar Blitz 2023 – Original Song
Well folks, the last major hurdle of this year's Oscar Blitz is complete. With the viewing of Great Freedom last week, all films to view in and around the ceremony have been seen. I can officially close the book on the 2021 cinematic canon. We've still got two more weeks left of Oscar coverage, of … Continue reading Back Row Thoughts – And the Rest… of the Blitz
Now that a full third of the categories for this year's Oscars have been relegated to a pre-show ceremony that will be easily leaked before they can be edited into the broadcast, we must take stock of the relative value that exists for the five artistic and technical categories that ABC has deigned to allow … Continue reading Oscar Gold 2022 – Original Song
This is often a tricky category year-to-year for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it's one of the few that can still have fewer than five nominees. In 2011, only two songs were nominated, and two years later one was disqualified, giving us four. The current rules state that the category will have either … Continue reading Oscar Gold 2021 – Original Song
I Actually Paid To See This 