Yesterday, I began my very far-fetched (and in some cases, frankly impossible) wishlist for Tuesday’s Oscar nominations with my favorite achievements in the technical categories. Today, I offer up my picks in the top races, and I don’t mind telling you things got pretty agonizing in some categories. “Why can’t I have 15 nominees for […]

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They may have enjoyed a three-year run of nominations in the category, finally taking the gold with “Up” earlier this year, but Pixar’s hot streak in Best Original Score will not continue at the 2010 Oscars. Although Randy Newman’s “Toy Story 3” score wasn’t ruled ineligible by the Academy — unlike his work on last […]

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For the third episode in our new Oscar-season feature, we take a recess from the acting races and look instead to the screenplays that roped the actors in to begin with. If you’re new to the feature (or even if you aren’t), the game is simple: railing against awards voters’ usual bias towards late-year releases, […]

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What a shocker, right? In the nominations for France’s premier film awards, Jacques Audiard’s Oscar contender leads the field with a massive 13 bids. (Look out for my interview with Audiard, coming soon.) It’s nice to finally see some love for Niels Arestrup’s astonishing work in the film, but when a contemporary prison drama can […]

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All cinéastes know that the annual Top 10 issued by Cahiers du Cinéma is pretty much the ne plus ultra of critics’ lists. The legendary French film magazine has taste that veers from the rigorously auteurist (recent list-toppers include “Redacted,” “Tropical Malady” and “Paranoid Park”) to the frankly perverse (“Lady in the Water” made the […]

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While I was away in Paris earlier this week, I was reminded there of the nominations for the Louis Delluc Prize. Awarded to a single title, it is arguably the most prestigious award in French cinema, having been won by such titans as Truffaut, Renoir, Chabrol, Malle, Bresson, Cocteau, Tati … well, you get the […]

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I just stumbled across Glenn Kenny’s grandiose praise for Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass” and I’m champing at the bit for this film more than I already was: Okay, it’s “too soon,” and yeah, I’m a bit tired, but, still…here’s my Facebook page update as of now: “Resnais’ Wild Grass is a whacked-out masterpiece with an […]

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In the course of my daily rummaging, I happened upon this beautiful French one-sheet (pictured left) for Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass”  that instantly takes the lead in my personal “poster of the year” race. (The film, as we recently mentioned, has the honor of opening the New York Film Festival.)

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indieWIRE has the full lineup for this year’s New York Film Festival, which runs from 25 September to 11 October, and at a glance, it looks remarkably like a greatest-hits lineup from May’s Cannes festival. This year, both the NYFF’s opening and closing films have been plucked from the Croisette. Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass,” for […]

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It’s all over bar the voting. Tomorrow, Cannes jury president Isabelle Huppert will meet with her formidable, female-dominated team of eight – including the diverse likes of Robin Wright Penn, Asia Argento, James Gray and Hanif Kureishi – to pick over the 20 Competition titles they have seen over the last fortnight and select their […]

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Continuing yesterday’s survey of the runners and riders in the race for the Palme d’Or… “ANTICHRIST” (Lars Von Trier) The pitch: You’ve seen the trailer. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe star as bereaved parents who retreat to a remote woodland cottage to nurse their grief, only to be terrorised by unnamed forces of evil. (English […]

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