First, though, June Squibb will have to invite you in, because the table is at the entrance to her kitchen, next to a formidable glassed-in bookcase that sports an impressive collection of carefully placed volumes dominated by mysteries and thrillers written by Scandinavian authors. It’s here, in this pleasantly kitschy midcentury complex, that Squibb first met with “Thelma” director Josh Margolin when he offered her the role of an elderly woman who is swindled by a phone scammer and sets out to get a little revenge.

It’s here where Margolin brought her costar Richard Roundtree over for lunch before the ’70s blaxploitation star (he was Shaft!) gave his final performance as a mild-mannered friend of Thelma’s. It’s here where she and Fred Hechinger, who plays her grandson, met for what was supposed to be a rehearsal but instead became a lively discussion that she said has never stopped.

And it’s where she first drove the scooter she uses in “Thelma,” with the stunt coordinator running alongside her, scared that she was going to kill herself.

“I could just sit here and they brought everybody to me,” said Squibb as she sat near a sliding glass door, on the other side of which an orange cat slept away the afternoon. (Her other cat, a gray and white one, was “probably hiding in the closet,” she said.) It was two days after her 95th birthday, but Squibb was sharp as a tack and in high spirits as her delightful performance in “Thelma”continued to stir up awards talk 10 months after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It’s her first leading role in a film career that didn’t begin until she was 61, a Broadway veteran but a film neophyte until Woody Allen cast her in “Alice” in 1990. 

In other words, June Squibb launched her film career at an age when most actresses were considered to have aged out of the business by an ageist and sexist industry. “I never felt that women of that age couldn’t get parts, because that was me — that’s who I was at the time,” she said with a shrug and a smile.

“People laugh and say, ‘Well, you broke the rule on that one.’ All I knew was that all at once in New York, we were having a big influx of filming. I knew theater people who were working on these films, and so I thought, I could be doing this.

“I went to my agent and said, ‘This is happening, and I think I should be doing some of it.’ A week later, I had an audition for ‘Alice,’ and I got it. And from then on, I did stage once in a while, but most of the time, I did film. I did ‘Alice’ and then ‘Scent of a Woman’ and ‘The Age of Innocence,’ one right after the other.”

Alexander Payne’s “About Schmidt,” in which she played Jack Nicholson’s wife, was key to raising her profile in Los Angeles, so in the early 2000s, she moved west, into the apartment complex where she still lives. (She did make a concession to her age three or four years ago when her son persuaded her to move from the second floor to the first.)

Most of the parts were small but the work was steady, and occasionally she landed a standout role in a high-profile project, most notably when Payne gave her another chance to play a star’s wife, this time Bruce Dern, in “Nebraska.”

“I’ve done leading roles on stage, and it’s fun,” she said. “If the role’s fun, it’s fun. But other than that, to me it’s the same. But I will say, you get more time on camera with a leading role. You get to say things three times where you say them once in a supporting role.’’

Her first leading role came haphazardly, courtesy of her friendship with Beanie Feldstein, with whom she appeared in the 2021 film “The Humans.” “Beanie is a friend of Josh Margolin and his family,” she said. “They were talking about Josh’s new script, and she said, ‘Who do you want for the lead?’ He said, “Well, I’d like June Squibb, but I don’t know how to get a script to her.’ She said, ‘I’ll get a script to her!’

“So she texted me and said, ‘I’m sending you a script,’ and I texted, ‘OK.’ It was ridiculous. It didn’t even go through my agent — it was just Beanie saying, ‘Here. You wanna read this?’”

The role of a feisty woman who needs help with the internet but is hell on wheels when you put her on a scooter was an ideal one for Squibb. “When I read the script, I thought, Oh, I can’t wait,” she said. “I thought, This scooter’s gonna be such fun.”

A pause. “Well, it was fun, but they first didn’t want me to drive it. They said, ‘We’ll shoot you sitting on it, and then you’ll get off, and the stunt lady will take over and drive it and do everything.’ And I thought, That’s silly. I should be able to drive it.” In the end, the filmmakers relented and let Squibb do her own scooter stunts — though neither Margolin, the stunt coordinator nor Roundtree were expecting her to ram her scooter into his as hard as she could in one scene.

“They told me drive up to him and stop, and then get off and they’d get a stunt lady to do it. And I thought, Hell, I can do this. That was my attitude toward the scooters, the bed rolls, the stairs, everything. I really ended up doing most of my own stunts.”

And now, with one of 2024’s most undeniably crowd-pleasing comedies under her belt,  she’s basking in the kind of glow she hasn’t felt before. “I’ve done good films and I’ve done bad films,” she said, “but I’ve never done something where the overall feeling from people who see the film was what it is for this one. It really is kind of amazing.”

She’s already booked her next gig — and it’s her second lead role, in a film that marks the directorial debut of Scarlett Johansson. “It’s called ‘Eleanor the Great,’ and I play Eleanor,” Squibb said, laughing. “After ‘Thelma’ and ‘Eleanor the Great,’ I’m gonna tell my agent, ‘Only leads, and only if  the film has my name on it.’”’

This story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post June Squibb Gets Her First Lead Role at 95 — and She’s Ready for More appeared first on TheWrap.

RaMell Ross won the Best Director award for his narrative debut, “Nickel Boys.”

Marianne Jean-Baptiste won the Best Actress award for her scorching performance in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” while Adrien Brody won Best Actor for “The Brutalist.”

Kieran Culkin was named Best Supporting Actor for his role in Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain.” Carol Kane was honored as Best Supporting Actress for “Between the Temples.”

As the first major critics group to announce its awards, the NYFCC was able to give a little attention to its winners in a year in which few of the major categories have strong frontrunners. “The Brutalist,” a three-and-a-half hour drama starring Brody as an architect who comes to the United States after fleeing Europe during World War II, has been a critical favorite since its debut at the Venice Film Festival in August.

In the acting categories, Culkin and Brody are considered locks for Oscar nominations, while Jean-Baptiste is on the bubble and Kane is a real longshot.

Meanwhile, Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’ wordless “Flow” was chosen as the year’s best animated film over big-studio productions like “Inside Out 2,” “The Wild Robot” and “Moana 2.”

“No Other Land,” the documentary filmed over five years by Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers in Gaza, won the award for non-fiction film a little more than 12 hours after it won in the same category at the Gotham Awards. Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine As Light” did the same thing in the Best International Film category.

Sean Baker, on the other hand, won the screenplay award for “Anora” the day after his film came into the Gotham Awards as the most-nominated movie but failed to win anything.

Annie Baker’s “Janet Planet” was named the year’s best first film. Jomo Fray won the cinematography award for the way he implemented Ross’ point-of-view approach in “Nickel Boys.”

Since 1938, the winner of the NYFCC has gone on to win Best Picture more than two dozen times, but the two groups have agreed more infrequently in recent years. The last time the critics chose the eventual Oscar winner was 12 years ago, when “The Artist” won both awards. Since then, the NYFCC has gone for the likes of “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Boyhood,” “Carol,” “La La Land,” “Roma,” “First Cow,” “Drive My Car,” “Tar” and a pair of Martin Scorsese movies, “The Irishman” and last year’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Over the last 20 years, the NYFCC winner has been nominated for the top Oscar 17 times, with the only exceptions being “United 93” in 2007, “Carol” in 2016 and “First Cow” in 2020.

The New York Film Critics Circle consists of 45 critics based in New York City. The group was founded in 1935 and has been voting on the year’s best films since 1936. Next year marks the organization’s 90th anniversary, a milestone that will be celebrated when the NYFCC holds its awards ceremony on Jan. 8, 2025.

The winners:
Best Film: “The Brutalist”
Best Director: RaMell Ross, “Nickel Boys”
Best Actor: Adrien Brody, “The Brutalist”
Best Actress: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, “Hard Truths”
Best Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin, “A Real Pain”
Best Supporting Actress: Carol Kane, “Between the Temples”
Best Screenplay: Sean Baker, “Anora”
Best Animated Film: “Flow”
Best International Film: “All We Imagine As Light”
Best Non-Fiction Film: “No Other Land”
Best Cinematography: Jomo Fray, “Nickel Boys”
Best First Film: “Janet Planet”
Special Award: To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation
Student Awards: Alexander Swift (Undergraduate, Vassar) and Drew Smith (Graduate, NYU)

The post ‘The Brutalist’ Wins Top Award From New York Film Critics – Complete List of Winners appeared first on TheWrap.

Both of these films could easily be two- or three-part doc series. Did you always envision them as standalone films?
Absolutely. If ever there’s a life story that deserves the big-screen treatment, it’s Martha Stewart’s. And that’s also what I envisioned from the beginning with Elton. In the years prior to meeting (codirector) David (Furnish), if you had asked me what my wish list was, at the top of the list would have been a film about the first five years of Elton John’s career. He put out 13 albums. Seven of them went to number one. He answered the question, “What happens after the Beatles?” He redefined what pop music was and where popular music was going. And he struggled with enormous personal demons and began the long journey to overcoming them by coming out to Rolling Stone magazine. That in and of itself felt like an extraordinary narrative.

How do you merge that approach with what Furnish was looking to do, a film about the final months of Elton’s last tour?
The metaphor I proposed to David when I first met him was that the final months of the tour would be the spine of the film and the first five years would be the nervous system wrapped around that spine. In that first meeting it was clear to us that we could envision the same film.

Was he able to set aside the fact that he’s also Elton’s husband?
He was. He recognized that I have a lot of experience as a filmmaker and let me take the lead. But he had incredible wisdom and perspective and an emotional barometer for truth. David very early on said to me that the central tone of this is a desperate yearning, and that is a truth about Elton’s entire life story. David was able to distance himself but also to access the kind of keen insights and wisdom that you could only get from knowing the subject as intimately as he does.

For Martha, what was what your relationship like? She’s a fascinating interview and she’s very open about some things, but she also clearly has lines she won’t cross. You’re not going to make her cry.
Well, I don’t know about making her cry. That’s not how I work. Here’s the thing about Martha: This is a life story filled with lots of triumph and a lot of trials and tribulations, a lot of highs and a lot of lows, a lot of success and a lot of falling from a very high perch. It’s a difficult story to tell, and that is what you feel in the film. There are places she doesn’t want to go, because as she says in the film, she’s not an introspective person.

She told me once that the only time she had ever gone to therapy was for one session. She spent 10 minutes in a session, got up and declared that the session was over. And on her way out the door, she said to the doctor, “Don’t bill me.” This is not a person who who’s prone to introspection or comfortable in it.

On the other hand, she was incredibly forthcoming with her archive, and as a result you get these revealing and intimate letters to her husband when it was clear their marriage was failing. (She gave us) her prison diaries and so much more. You get startling revelations of infidelity and rawness, and you experience how raw it is. And equally important is the fact that in literary terms, she’s an unreliable narrator. You look at the film and you’re like, “Whoa! Our unreliable narrator is telling her own story. Boom, we’re on to something.”

These days, that’s really one of the virtues of nonfiction filmmaking — to call out the unreliable narrators who surround us.
Yes, I agree. I’ve been saying this for 35 years: These are real movies. These are narratives with characters and themes and cinema. “Maestro” is a movie about a fascinating man that looks at certain aspects of his life and explores certain themes and relationships and different other characters in his orbit. It tells the story and is a piece of cinema. We feel the same way about a movie like “Martha” or a movie like “Never Too Late.”

This story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more of the issue here.

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But there were more traditional musicals, too: the smash hit “Wicked,” which reserved its new songs for Part 2 in 2025, along with “Moana 2,” “Mufasa: The Lion King,” and others.

And the year found lots of notable musicians writing songs for films, including Pharrell Williams and Elton John (with Brandi Carlile) writing new tunes for their own documentaries. Then there were Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran, Miley Cyrus, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Sky Ferreira, Andrea Bocelli, Andra Day … and, oh yeah, Diane Warren, because they’d have to cancel Oscar season if Diane Warren didn’t have a song in the running.

This year’s field contains 89 qualifying songs, five fewer than last year. Here’s a roundup of some of this year’s notable contenders in the Best Original Song race, along with a “bonus tracks” sidebar of additional songs. Shortlist voting in the category will take place between Dec. 9 and 13, with a shortlist announced on Dec. 17.

“El Mal” and “Mi Camino” from “Emilia Pérez”
Songwriters: Clément Ducol and Camille

MOVIE  “Emilia Pérez,” French director Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical about a Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón) who enlists a high-powered lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to help her undergo sex-reassignment surgery.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…  The song “El Mal” is set at a lavish black-tie dinner party, with Saldaña’s character, lawyer Rita Mora Castro, walking among all the motionless guests while she spits out a rap-style condemnation, accompanied by occasional operatic flights from the title character (Gascón). “From the start, Jacques had the idea of a dinner party with the jerks frozen and Rita pointing at them,” Camille said. “The difficult part was to find the right musical climate. We started with a blues protest song in the Bob Dylan style, but that was too literal. Then we tried a Talking Heads kind of song, but that was too ironic. Then we tried a groovy ’90s hip-hop style, but it was too relaxed and not tough enough. We needed something precise and straight to the point.

“We ended up with a version that was originally more electronic, but we made it raw after meeting Zoe. She allowed us to record with a live band and big, big energy, because she gives so much.”

MADE TO MEASURE  “Mi Camino,” a statement of purpose for Selena Gomez’s character, was another example of the music shifting with the actress who would deliver it. “We had written a sort of waltz turning into a techno punk song for the bedroom scene, and then another, even punkier song,” Ducol said. “But Jacques met Selena and said, ‘Unfortunately, we have to throw away this song. It isn’t right for her. We need a song that tells the story of her as a woman looking for freedom.’ So we watched her documentary ‘My Mind & Me’ and felt immediately inspired.”

Camille added, “We wanted it to reconcile femininity and spirituality. She’s not looking for redemption, she’s looking for self-esteem.”

JACQUES SHOOTS, CLÉMENT SCORES “Mi Camino” was the last song to be written, but Clément still had to compose the film’s score, which made extensive use of wordless vocals sung by Camille. “There are three kinds of dimensions or layers to the vocal landscape of the film,” Ducol said. “There is the spoken dialogue and the songs embodied by the characters. And the third layer is voices that distance themselves from all of that and echo or resonate with the souls and emotions.”

“Piece by Piece” from “Piece by Piece”
Songwriter: Pharrell Williams

MOVIE Director Morgan Neville has made music documentaries before — “20 Feet From Stardom” and “The Music of Strangers,” among them — but he’s never made one like “Piece by Piece,” which charts Pharrell Williams’ career not through archival footage and modern interviews, but through reenactments and interviews done entirely with Lego characters.

COLOR FULL Williams said he wrote the title song to “Piece by Piece” in less than an hour, starting with the idea that it had to feel energetic, but also contain contrasts. “I wanted the verse to be dark and determined, and I wanted the chorus to be light and very rewarding in the way it paid off,” he said. Then he stopped and took another shot at describing what he was after. “I wanted it to be dark and stealth and black and navy blue, with a little bit of brown in there,” he said. “Like a black background with the vocals feeling very brown with accents of navy blue. That was the vibe for me.”

And does he always think of music that way, in colors? “That’s the only way that I know how to get around,” he said. “Some people identify it as music notes. I see it as colors.”

BLOCK PARTY Becoming the subject of a film meant that the songs he wrote for that film necessarily had to be introspective. But the form of that movie changed everything, in a way. “I know when people hear the word objectified, they usually think of the terrible experiences that our female siblings have had to endure,” he said. “But we actually used that word and flipped it on his head and used it in a positive way to objectify my story and my life — to Lego-fy everything.

“And when you do that, it makes it universal. Heavy things become easily digestible, and you see other things that are emotional, but it just hits differently when you see everything in Lego.”

MUSIC, MAESTRO Throughout his career, Williams has learned how valuable the synergy can be between song and film—most notably, perhaps, with the smash hit “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2.” “Music is the companion of a film, the companion of the integral moments of our lives,” he said. “Music is the soundtrack of your life, literally. You think about your first dance, your first kiss or the times you wanted a kiss and never got one—there’s always a song connected to it, whether it was good or bad or indifferent. As long as you have a memory and you have hearing, music is always going to be there.”

“Forbidden Road” from “Better Man”
Songwriters: Robbie Williams, Freddy Wexler and Sacha Skarbek

MOVIE  Another film about a star named Williams that uses an unusual form to tell the story, “Better Man” is a fantasy-laced, music-driven biopic of the former Take That singer, a huge star in England. Oh, and it depicts Williams as a chimpanzee, a conceit director Michael Gracey hit upon when Williams described himself as a “performing monkey” onstage.

NOT OSCARY ENOUGH Almost 35 years after having his first hit with the boy band Take That, and 27 years after launching a solo career that would find him selling more than 20 million albums in the U.K. alone, Robbie Williams got his biopic. And though the movie is unconventional, there was never much question that “Better Man” would include a new Robbie Williams song. “Ooh, it would be a dreadful wasted opportunity for there not to be,” he said. “I’m writing all of the time and there’s seldom places for everything to go, so there’s good opportunity considering it’s a musical, which I’ve called actually an abuse-ical.”

But that doesn’t mean there weren’t rocky moments on the “Forbidden Road.” “I remember sending a song that I thought was suitable for the film a long time ago, and Michael Gracey going, ‘No, this isn’t an Oscar nominee vibe of a song.’ And I was thinking, ‘Well, f— you. It is.’ And then I heard about Eminem sending ‘Lose Yourself’ to the musical director or the director of ‘Eight Mile,’ and them saying, ‘This song isn’t good enough.’ And I was thinking, See? I’m right, he’s wrong.” 

When he saw a full version of “Better Man,” though, he had a change of heart. “I saw the film and was like, ‘Oh, this makes sense. I went away with Freddy Wexler and we wrote ‘Forbidden Road.’”

TRANQUILITY BASE So how did he figure out that the movie needed a gentle, acoustic, introspective song that builds slowly? “Well, I was actually told what we needed to do by Michael Gracey,” he admitted with a grin. “He was like, ‘Look, the audience has been through a lot up to that point, and they’re gonna need a cuddle.’ And once he said that, it was like, ‘Oh, I get what you’re after now. So we set about, I dunno, making natural Xanax.” 

ABOUT THAT OTHER SONG GRACEY DIDN’T LIKE… Williams, by the way, still remembers that first song he was sure would be right for the movie. “It was a very different approach,” he said. “It was a mixture of Matt Monro, “The Italian Job” and Neil Diamond in “The Jazz Singer.” And in the end, we went for a completely different approach. I still think the other song’s really, really good.”

A pause, and a grin. “As you can probably tell, I’m not quite over it.”

“Harper and Will Go West” from “Will & Harper”
Songwriters: Sean Douglas, Kristen Wiig and Josh Greenbaum

MOVIE Josh Greenbaum’s documentary follows a cross-country road trip undertaken by Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, one of Ferrell’s closest friends and a former “Saturday Night Live” head writer who recently came out as a trans woman.

MAKING A LIST AND CHECKING IT TWICE Early in the film, Ferrell and Steele call Kristen Wiig from their car, ask her to write a theme song for them and then give her all sorts of requirements: It should be jazzy but also have a country twang, it should be fun but it should make you cry… The bit was a gag but the call was real, and Wiig and Douglas thought about it.

“Throwing all these different styles at me, we were kind of like, ‘What should we do?’” Wiig said. “They listed every type of music that you could possibly imagine, and we talked about making that version. But then it would’ve been a crazy song that probably would’ve made everybody anxious. I’m proud of us for getting as many of them in as we did.”

INTO THE GROOVE Greenbaum was friends with Wiig and with Sean Douglas, a successful songwriter and producer. The collaboration, which largely took place over a day and also involved Greenbaum, was easy, Douglas said. “They said they wanted it to feel like a road thing, which meant it should feel kind of folky and upstrokey and have a little Appalachian thing going,” he said. “I was playing it on piano, which doesn’t sound the same, but we were just off and running on the idea. We had a certain groove going and the first couple of lines, and then everyone keeps developing it and passing the ball back and forth, and by the end of the day you’ve got a song.”

Those first few lines, by the way, definitely set the tone: “Harper and Will go west / Just a couple old friends and a couple brand new breasts.”

THE UNMASKED SINGER A couple of weeks after they wrote the song, they got back together to record it. “I sang as a kid and I was in the choir, but I wasn’t a confident singer,” Wiig said. “And a lot of the musical stuff I did, especially on ‘SNL,’ was more jokey — and it was a character singing, which is easier for me. When it’s me singing, I get nervous. It’s vulnerable. The film has resonated with so many people and I’m more comfortable with it now, but I’m still getting there.”

And if it gets a nomination, will she sing it on the Oscars?  “Absolutely,” she said without hesitating. “That’s like a dream, right?”

“Kiss the Sky” from “The Wild Robot”
Songwriters: Maren Morris, Delacey, Jordan Johnson, Stefan Johnson, Michael Pollack & Ali Tamposi

MOVIE Chris Sanders’ animated epic is based on Peter Brown’s 2016 sci-fi novel for children, which tells the story of ROZZUM Unit 7134, or Roz, a futuristic robot who is programmed to be a helper, but accidentally becomes the guardian and surrogate mother to an orphaned goose.

CLUELESS Maren Morris had enjoyed a successful career as a Grammy-winning country singer and member of the all-female supergroup the Highwomen. But she hadn’t written for films when she was approached to write and record songs for the Dreamworks Animation project. “I truly had no idea what I was doing,” she said. “I just had to fake it and come from the place of, OK, this is about a robot that’s landed on this remote island and has to adapt really quickly into motherhood.”

With a son who was born in early 2020, that angle made sense to her. “I felt like I was right in that same seat, so I was able to come from that perspective.”

ACHIEVING LIFTOFF The song “Kiss the Sky” is heard during one of the film’s most spectacular sequences, when the timid young goose Brightbill overcomes his fear to join the rest of the flock as they take off on their massive migration. “With that scene of Brightbill taking flight and Roz realizing that this iteration of her journey has come to an end, I couldn’t help but think about my son going off to college. It makes me emotional to even talk about it now.”

BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME After writing and recording the song about motherhood, Morris got to show “The Wild Robot” to the son who’d inspired it when she rented out a theater in Nashville in October. “He had seen the trailer on my phone 1,000 times and was already a fan, and he knew my song was in it,” she said. “It was my third or fourth time seeing the movie, but when you get to watch something that you’ve already seen with your child, it feels new because you’re watching it through their lens now.

“He was just in awe. But when my song kicked in and he heard my voice, he was like, ‘That’s you!’ It was so precious and really emotional, I’ll never forget it. I’ve never had a moment like that, and I don’t know if I ever will again.”

“Winter Coat” from “Blitz”
Songwriters: Steve McQueen, Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson

MOVIE Steve McQueen’s drama looks at World War II through the viewpoint of a mother and son who are separated at a time when the Germans are raining bombs down on London.

THE NEW OLD SOUND The family at the center of “Blitz” is a single mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), her young son, George (Elliott Heffernan) and her father, Gerald (British rock icon Paul Weller in his first acting role), and the center of their family life is an upright piano on which Gerald is constantly playing the pop songs of the day. But McQueen enlisted composer Nicholas Britell, who had arranged period music for the director’s “12 Years a Slave,” to come up with some new songs that sounded old.

“He wanted songs that felt right for the period, that were really authentic to the world. But he also wanted to make sure the songs could speak to an audience today and feel impactful,” Britell said.

WHAT’S LEFT BEHIND For a song that Rita sings on the radio from the bomb factory where she works, McQueen began working with Britell. “He had this idea of when you’re missing somebody, an object could connect you to that person,” Britell said of the song that became “Winter Coat.” He brought in frequent collaborator Taura Stinson, who got it right away.

“In my family, when someone passes away, you either take something they left behind, or they’ve left something to you,” she said. “It was a sentiment I was all too familiar with: putting on someone’s coat, the scent, the memories, the warmth, all of those things that come with it.”

TIME TRAVEL “Our goal was to make it feel like these were songs that already existed in the world of these characters,” Britell said. He stayed away from harmonies that might feel too modern, while Stinson combed over old books of poems and consulted with her 95-year old grandmother, whose family is British. “The best compliment that I’ve received is the people who say, ‘We really thought that was a song from that area,’” Britell said.

Stinson agreed. “Yeah! When I was at Middleburg (Film Festival), someone told me, ‘Oh, I love that song! I remember that!’” She laughed. “I thought, Do you, now?”

“The Journey” from “The Six Triple Eight”
Songwriter: Diane Warren

MOVIE Tyler Perry’s Netflix movie is a World War II drama about the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion of the Women’s Army Corps, an American battalion that was sent overseas during the war.

YES, IT’S HER AGAIN Diane Warren has been nominated for 15 Oscars, including the last seven years in a row, and she’s the only songwriter to receive an Honorary Academy Award. And every year, she’s back in the race and back on the circuit, still looking for her first competitive win. It’s an interesting contradiction for a woman who’s well known for preferring to work by herself (no cowriters!) in quiet rooms.

“I’ve learned to enjoy it,” she said. “You’re right, I’m basically a hermit, just trying to wrestle with these songs to make them great. But I love this time of year. It’s a forced social life that I’ve learned to enjoy, but I don’t let anything get in the way of my writing. I make sure I write every day. If I have a piano, a guitar and a cat, I’m happy.”

EASY COME A friend of Warren’s first told her about “The Six Triple Eight,” describing the entire movie in such detail that Warren said she saw it in  her head and for what she says was her first time ever, wrote a song for a movie without seeing any of the movie. “I was really touched and inspired by these women’s story. I sat down at the piano and started playing those chords, and all of a sudden I started singing, ‘It’s the journey/It’s the getting there to where you’re going to/Go through hell but still you’re gonna make it through.’ That kind of came with those chords.”

And while she doesn’t want to downplay the work she put into crafting the sultry slow-burn song, she also knows it came more easily than usual. “I’m a mad, crazy perfectionist with my songs,” she said, “but this one, I hate to say, almost wrote itself. I was watching on the sidelines going, ‘Well, OK, you’re writing that.’”

AND IT’S H.E.R. AGAIN, TOO  Back in 2021, Warren appeared on TheWrap’s virtual music panel with H.E.R., among other songwriters with work in the race. “She beat me!” said Warren, whose song “Io sì (Seen)” from “The Life Ahead”lost to H.E.R.’s “Fight for You” from “Judas and the Black Messiah.” “But that’s OK. She’s great.”

She felt that again when H.E.R. came into the studio in Warren’s Hollywood office, listened to “The Journey” and then immediately arranged and recorded it the same day. “It was one of the best performances I’ve ever heard in my life,” she said. “I’ve worked with the best singers ever — Whitney and Celine and whoever. And she was on that level of performance. Where she went vocally was just astonishing to me.”

*

Bonus Tracks

“Beyond” from “Moana 2“
Lin-Manuel Miranda landed an Oscar nomination for a song from the first “Moana” in 2016. Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear took over for the sequel, with their work including this driving Disney-princess statement of yearning. (Also submitted from the film: “Can I Get a Chee Ho?”

“I Always Wanted a Brother” and “Tell Me It’s You”from “Mufasa: The Lion King“
Miranda moved over to this Disney franchise that won Elton John an Oscar in its earliest incarnation. It gives him another chance to pick up the O he’s missing from an EGOT.

“Never Too Late” from “Elton John: Never Too Late“
Speaking of Elton John, he’s in the running for the second song he’s written with the title “Never Too Late” in the last five years. The first was written for the “live action” “Lion King” movie in 2019, while this one, with a nicely retro feel, is a collaboration with Brandi Carlile for the new documentary about his life and career.

“Under the Tree” from “That Christmas“
You wouldn’t necessarily think of Ed Sheeran as the guy to write a song for a movie starring grizzled heavyweights like Brian Cox and Bill Nighy — but if the movie is an animated one based on a book by the guy who wrote and directed “Love Actually,” and the song is a new Christmas song, why not?

“Sick in the Head” from “Kneecap“
The movie is an unruly, wildly fictionalized romp about the career of Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap, so of course the group offers its own driving statement of purpose: “I’m too far gone when it comes to mental health/Rather be sick in the head with a little bit of wealth.”

“Alone,” “The Big Blue Sky” and “Catch Fire” from “The End”
One of this year’s robust slate of musicals that you wouldn’t expect to be musicals, “The End” is a post-apocalyptic black comedy in which Tilda Swinton, George MacKay and others break into song awkwardly and endearingly.

“Out of Oklahoma” from “Twisters“
A couple of songs are eligible from “Twisters,” including this affecting country ballad sung by Lainey Wilson and written by Wilson, Luke Dick and Shane McAnally. (Luke Combs also has a song in the running, “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma.”)

“Not My Fault” from “Mean Girls“
There are eight credited songwriters on this spirited pop/hip-hop ditty, among them performers Megan Thee Stallion and Reneé Rapp and singer-songwriter-producer Ryan Tedder. (That’s too many under Academy rules.)

“Leash” from “Babygirl“
A provocative Nicole Kidman movie gets a provocative, tunefully assaultive end-credits song from Sky Ferreira.

“Beautiful That Way” from “The Last Showgirl“
For a film starring Pamela Anderson, an actress long dismissed as a lightweight, it makes sense to commission a song from Miley Cyrus, who has had her own experience being underestimated.

“Folie À Deux” from “Joker: Folie à Deux“
In between the old standards like “For Once in My Life,” “That’s Entertainment” and “I’ve Got the World on a String,” Lady Gaga whipped up a waltz that sounds as if it came from another time, or maybe another mental state.

“Why I’m Here” from “Shirley“
The surprise 2023 Grammy winner for Best New Artist, Tamara Joy, downplays her jazz roots for this dignified anthem celebrating the pioneering Black politician Shirley Chisholm.

“Compress/Repress” from “Challengers“
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have two Oscar wins and three nominations for their work as composers, but they have yet to be nominated for one of their movie songs. This piece of electronica, both stately and jittery, includes a vocal appearance by Reznor’s wife, Mariqueen Maandig.

“Dare to Be” from “Cabrini“
This period drama about a female Catholic missionary in the late 1800s is another family affair: Andrea Bocelli sings the big, stately ballad in Italian, and his daughter Virginia chimes in in English.

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Talking With Oscars Song Contenders: Pharrell Williams, Kristen Wiig, Robbie Williams … and Yep, Diane Warren Too appeared first on TheWrap.

The win for the drama starring Sebastian Stan came as a surprise at the end of a show in which “Nickel Boys” and “Sing Sing” had been the big winners, and in which “Anora” came in with the most nominations but left empty-handed.

In the gender-neutral acting categories, Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin won the lead and supporting awards for “Sing Sing.” Domingo’s category also included Pamela Anderson for “The Last Showgirl,” Nicole Kidman for “Babygirl,” Marianne Jean-Baptiste for “Hard Truths” and Mikey Madison for “Anora,” while Maclin’s included Yura Borisov for “Anora,” Guy Pearce for “The Brutalist,” Kieran Culkin for “A Real Pain” and Danielle Deadwyler for “Nickel Boys.”

“Nickel Boys” star Brandon Wilson won the award for breakthrough actor, while that film’s director, RaMell Ross, won the first-ever Gotham Award in the new Best Director category.

The award for international film went to Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light,” an understated drama set in India that was bypassed by that country’s Oscar submission committee because they felt it wasn’t Indian enough.

The Best Documentary Feature winner was “No Other Land,” which was made by an Israeli-Palestinian collective and was filmed over five years on the West Bank.

Azazel Jacobs won the screenplay award for “His Three Daughters.” The Breakthrough Director award went to Vera Drew for “The People’s Joker.”

Going into the show, “Anora” led all films with four awards. “Nickel Boys” and “I Saw the TV Glow” were nominated for three, while films with two nominations included “All We Imagine As Light,” “His Three Daughters,” “The Brutalist,” “Sing Sing,” “Hard Truths,” “A Different Man” and “The Fire Inside.”

In the first 20 years of the Gotham Awards’ Best Feature category, its winner went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture only six times, beginning with “The Hurt Locker” in 2009 and also including “Birdman,” “Spotlight,” “Moonlight,” “Nomadland” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” But the Gotham winner was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar 13 times in that stretch.

The show also included special tributes to Zendaya (Spotlight Tribute), Denis Villeneuve (Director Tribute), Franklin Leonard and the Black List (Anniversary Tribute), “The Piano Lesson” (Ensemble Tribute), “Sing Sing” (Social Justice Tribute), Angelina Jolie (Performer Tribute) and Timothee Chalamet and James Mangold for “A Complete Unknown” (Visionary Tribute).

The ceremony took place at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

Here is the complete list of nominees. Winners are indicated by *WINNER.

Best Feature
“Anora”
“Babygirl”
“Challengers”
“A Different Man” *WINNER
“Nickel Boys”

Best International Feature
“All We Imagine as Light” *WINNER
“Green Border”
“Hard Truths”
“Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell”
“Vermiglio”

Best Documentary Feature
“Dahomey”
“Intercepted”
“No Other Land” *WINNER
“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
“Sugarcane”
“Union”

Best Director
Payal Kapadia, “All We Imagine as Light” 
Sean Baker, “Anora” 
Guan Hu, “Black Dog” 
Jane Schoenbrun, “I Saw the TV Glow” 
RaMell Ross, “Nickel Boys” *WINNER

Best Screenplay
“Between the Temples,” Nathan Silver, C. Mason Wells
“Evil Does Not Exist,” Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
“Femme,” Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping
“His Three Daughters,” Azazel Jacobs *WINNER
“Janet Planet,” Annie Baker

Breakthrough Director
Shuchi Talati, “Girls Will Be Girls” 
India Donaldson, “Good One” 
Alessandra Lacorazza, “In the Summers” 
Vera Drew, “The People’s Joker” *WINNER
Mahdi Fleifel, “To a Land Unknown” 

Outstanding Lead Performance
Pamela Anderson, “The Last Showgirl” 
Adrien Brody, “The Brutalist” 
Colman Domingo, “Sing Sing”  *WINNER
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, “Hard Truths” 
Nicole Kidman, “Babygirl” 
Keith Kupferer, “Ghostlight” 
Mikey Madison, “Anora” 
Demi Moore, “The Substance” 
Saoirse Ronan, “The Outrun” 
Justice Smith, “I Saw the TV Glow” 

Outstanding Supporting Performance
Yura Borisov, “Anora” 
Kieran Culkin, “A Real Pain” 
Danielle Deadwyler, “The Piano Lesson”
Brigette Lundy-Paine, “I Saw the TV Glow” 
Natasha Lyonne, “His Three Daughters” 
Clarence Maclin, “Sing Sing” *WINNER
Katy O’Brian, “Love Lies Bleeding” 
Guy Pearce, “The Brutalist” 
Adam Pearson, “A Different Man” 
Brian Tyree Henry, “The Fire Inside” 

Breakthrough Performer
Lily Collias, “Good One” 
Ryan Destiny, “The Fire Inside” 
Maisy Stella, “My Old Ass” 
Izaac Wang, “Didi” 
Brandon Wilson, “Nickel Boys” *WINNER 

The post ‘A Different Man’ Named Best Film at 2024 Gotham Awards – Complete List of Winners appeared first on TheWrap.

The list of songs is five fewer than last year, when 94 songs qualified. The scores fell two short of last year’s total of 148.

In the song category, Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical “The End” and the singer-songwriter drama “Dandelion” submitted three songs each, the maximum number of submissions allowed under Oscar rules. Films that submitted two songs included “Emilia Perez,” “Aadujeevitham – The Goat Life,” “Albany Road,” “Am I Racist?,” “Captain Avispa,” “The Garfield Movie,” “I Saw the TV Glow,” “Moana 2,” “Left Behind,” “Mufasa: The Lion King,” “Twisters” and “Your Monster.”

All of the  songs considered to have the best chance of making the shortlist are eligible, including “El Mal” and “Mi Camino” from “Emilia Perez,” “Winter Coat” from “Blitz,” “Harper and Will Go West” from “Will & Harper,” “Piece by Piece” from the Pharrell Williams documentary of the same name, “Never Too Late” from “Elton John: Never Too Late” and “The Journey” from “The Six Triple Eight,” the latest entry from 15-time nominee Diane Warren.

Contending songwriters include Lady Gaga (“Folie a Deux” from “Joker: Folie a Deux”), Ed Sheeran (“Under the Tree” from “That Christmas”), Lin-Manuel Miranda (songs from “Mufasa: The Lion King”), Sky Ferreira (“Leash” from “Babygirl”) and Miley Cyrus (“Beautiful That Way” from “The Last Showgirl.”)

“Wicked,” the year’s biggest musical, is ineligible in the song category, because it only includes songs written for the 2003 stage musical. The film’s sequel, which will be released next year, contains two new songs and will be eligible for the 2025 Oscars.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are in the running with the song “Compress/Repress” from “Challengers,” as well as with the scores to that film and “Queer.” Reznor and Ross were listed in some quarters as contenders for the song “Vaster Than Empires” from “Queer,” but that fact that the late author William Burroughs had a songwriting credit meant that it was never really eligible.

Films missing from the list of eligible scores include “Anora,” “Dune: Part Two” and a lot of movies that are heavy on songs, including “Back to Black,” “Better Man,” “Bob Marley: One Love” and “Piece by Piece,” though the song-heavy musicals “Wicked,” “The End,” “Emilia Perez”  and “Moana 2” are included – as is the upcoming “Mufasa: The Lion King,” although its listing marked with the notation “eligibility to be determined.”

Members of the music branch may vote for up to 15 songs and 20 scores during first-round voting that begins on Dec. 9 and ends on Dec. 13. Shortlists will be announced on Dec. 17, with the song shortlist remaining at its usual 15 and the score shortlist expanded to 20.

Here are the lists of eligible titles:

Songs (listed by movie title)
“Aadujeevitham – The Goat Life”: “Istigfar”
“Aadujeevitham – The Goat Life”: “Puthu Mazha”
“Albany Road”: “Albany Road (Theme Music)”
“Albany Road”: “Built for This”
“Am I Racist?”: “Am I Racist”
“Am I Racist?”:  “Do the Work”
“Americans With No Address”: “Pain Has a Purpose”
“Argylle”: “Electric Energy”
“Babygirl”: “Leash”
“Back to Black”: “Song for Amy”
“Band of Maharajas”: “Ishq Walla Daqu”
“Better Man”: “Forbidden Road”
“Between the Temples”: “A Country Dance”
“Blitz”: “Winter Coat”
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.”: “Then I Will”
“The Book of Clarence”: “Nazarene”
“Cabrini”: “Dare to Be”
“Captain Avispa”: “El Baile De Los Zanganos”
“Captain Avispa”: “Mi Amor”
“Celebrating Laughter, the Life and Films of Colin Higgins”: “Whoever You Are”
“Challengers”: “Compress/Repress”
“City of Dreams”: “City of Dreams”
“Dandelion”: “Custer Park”
“Dandelion”: “Honey”
“Dandelion:” “Thin Elephant”
“Despicable Me 4”: “Double Life”
“Don’t Say It”: “You’re Never Far Away”
“Elton John: Never Too Late”: “Never Too Late”
“Emilia Perez”: “El Mal”
“Emilia Perez”: “Mi Camino”
“The End”: “Alone”
“The End”: “The Big Blue Sky”
“The End”: “Catch Fire”
“Exhibiting Forgiveness”: “Bricks”
“Ezra”: “Ezra”
“Fighting Spirit: A Combat Chaplain’s Journey”: “The Piece/Peace That You Are Missing
“Following Harry”: “Not on My Watch”
“From Embers”: “Panorama”
“The Garfield Movie”: “Good Life”
“The Garfield Movie”: “Let It Roll”
“Glitter & Doom”: “What We Wanna Be”
“The Greatest Hits”: “Never Lost”
“His Three Daughters”: “In Time”
“The Hopeful”: “Made for You”
“I Saw the TV Glow”: “Claw Machine”
“I Saw the TV Glow”: “Starburned and Unkissed”
“The Idea of You”: “The Idea of You”
“The Imaginary”: “Nothing’s Impossible”
“Joker: Folie a Deux”: “Folie a Deux”
“Kneecap”: “Sick in the Head”
“The Last Showgirl”: “Beautiful That Way”
“Left Behind”: “Between the Lines”
“Left Behind”: “One of Us”
“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim”: “The Rider”
“Lovely Jackson”: “Freedom”
“Mean Girls”: “Not My Fault”
“Megalopolis”: “My Pledge”
“Moana 2”: “Beyond”
“Moana 2”: “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?”
“Mufasa: The Lion King”: “I Always Wanted a Brother”
“Mufasa: The Lion King”: “Tell Me It’s You”
“The Neon Highway”: “The Neon Highway”
“Nightbitch”: “Summer Blue”
“The Other, Gold”: “Black Truck”
“The Other, Gold”: “Callin Angels”
“Piece by Piece”: “Piece by Piece”
“Problemista”: “Huele a Fraude”
“Putul”: “Iti Maa”
“Ray of Hope”: “Emotional”
“Red One”: “Christmas Magic”
“Sasquatch Sunset”: “Creatures of Nature”
“Shirley”: “Why I’m Here”
“Sing Sing”: “Like a Bird”
“The Six Triple Eight”: “The Journey”
“Smile 2”: “New Brain”
“Sonic the Hedgehog 3”: “Run It”
“Spellbound”: “The Way It Was Before”
“Strange Darling”: “Better the Devil”
“That Christmas”: “Under the Tree”
“Thelma the Unicorn”: “Just As You Are”
“Transformers One”: “If IFall”
“Twisters”: “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma”
“Twisters”: “Out of Oklahoma”
“Ultraman: Rising”: “No Better”
“Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World”: “On the Corner at the Center of the World”
“The Wild Robot”: “Kiss the Sky”
“Will & Harper”: “Harper and Will Go West”
“Your Monster”: “Little Miss Polka Dot”
“Your Monster”: “My Stranger”

Scores
AADUJEEVITHAM – THE GOAT LIFE
ALIEN: ROMULUS
AM I RACIST?
AMERICANS WITH NO ADDRESS
ARGYLLE
BABYGIRL
BAND OF MAHARAJAS
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
BLINK TWICE
BLITZ
THE BOOK OF CLARENCE
BOY KILLS WORLD
THE BRUTALIST
BULL STREET
CABRINI
CAPTAIN AVISPA
CHALLENGERS
CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT
CITY OF DREAMS
CONCLAVE
DADDIO
DAUGHTERS
DAY OF THE FIGHT
THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE
THE DEAD DON’T HURT
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
THE DELIVERANCE
DÌDI
A DIFFERENT MAN
EMILIA PÉREZ
THE END
EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS
EZRA
THE FALL GUY
FANCY DANCE
THE FIRE INSIDE
FLOW
FLY ME TO THE MOON
FOLLOWING HARRY
FRIDA
FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA
THE GARFIELD MOVIE
GLADIATOR II
GOODRICH
THE GREATEST HITS
HARD TRUTHS
HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON
HERE
HERETIC
HIS THREE DAUGHTERS
HIT MAN
THE HOPEFUL
HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 1
I AM: CELINE DION
IF
I SAW THE TV GLOW
THE IDEA OF YOU
I’M STILL HERE
IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS
INSIDE OUT 2
THE INSTIGATORS
IT ENDS WITH US
JOY
JUROR #2
KENSUKE’S KINGDOM
KINDS OF KINDNESS
KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
KNEECAP
KNOX GOES AWAY
THE LAST SHOWGIRL
LEE
LISA FRANKENSTEIN
LONGLEGS
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM
LOS FRIKIS
THE LOST LEGACY OF TONY GAUDIO
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
MAXXXINE
MEGALOPOLIS
THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE
MOANA 2
MONKEY MAN
MUFASA: THE LION KING (Eligibility to be determined)
MY OLD ASS
NICKEL BOYS
NIGHTBITCH
NOSFERATU
ONE LIFE
THE ORDER
ORDINARY ANGELS
THE OUTRUN
PEDRO PÁRAMO
THE PIANO LESSON
PROBLEMISTA
PUTUL
QUEER
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE
RAY OF HOPE
RED ONE
THE RETURN
REZ BALL
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
RUMOURS
SAMUEL: HOLLYWOOD VS. HOLLYWOOD
SASQUATCH SUNSET
SATURDAY NIGHT
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG
SEEKING MAVIS BEACON
SEPTEMBER 5
SHIRLEY
SING SING
THE SIX TRIPLE EIGHT
SKINCARE
SMILE 2
SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT DYING
SPACEMAN
SPEAK NO EVIL
SPELLBOUND
STATE ORGANS: UNMASKING TRANSPLANT ABUSE IN CHINA
STRANGE DARLING
THE SUBSTANCE
SUNCOAST
SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY
THAT CHRISTMAS
THELMA
THELMA THE UNICORN
TOUCH
TRANSFORMERS ONE
TUESDAY
TWISTERS
ULTRAMAN: RISING
UNSTOPPABLE
VESELKA: THE RAINBOW ON THE CORNER AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD
THE WAIT
WAR GAME
WE GROWN NOW
WE LIVE IN TIME
WE WILL DANCE AGAIN
WHITE BIRD
WICKED
WIDOW CLICQUOT
THE WILD ROBOT
WILL & HARPER
WOLFS
WOMAN OF THE HOUR
YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA

CORRECTION: The original version of this story mistakenly said that 79 songs qualified. The number has been corrected.

The post Oscars Song Race Contains 89 Songs, But Nothing From ‘Wicked’ – Complete List appeared first on TheWrap.

Shannon was wrong: Almost 20 years after he became intrigued by a book about one such gang, Nichols finally made “The Bikeriders” with Austin Butler, Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer. It was made in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and premiered to rave reviews at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival.

But what should have been the triumphant culmination of his two-decade quest was bittersweet at best. In the wake of the writers and actors strikes, 20th Century Studios pulled the film off its release schedule and eventually sold it to Focus Features, which finally released it to modest box-office returns in June of 2024.

“The Bikeriders” deserved better: Only the sixth film in Nichols’ 17-year career, the film is tough and stylish, one of the year’s best dramas. It drips with the machismo of biker gangs, until you realize that it’s really the story of Comer’s Kathy, an indelible character based on a real-life woman who hung out with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Illinois.

For Nichols, the Little Rock-born director whose previous films include “Take Shelter,” “Mud” and “Loving,” the initial appeal was as much visual as narrative. “It was really about the style: the way they dressed, the way they had their hair,” he said of the world he discovered in Danny Lyon’s book of the same name. “I feel like that’s such a big part of the subculture, and I find it especially interesting because there’s something so masculine about a motorcycle club that you wouldn’t think they think about style or fashion.”

He laughed. “But they do. And that’s something I experienced in the mid ’90s with the punk-rock scene in Little Rock, Arkansas. You see these kids roll out and at first glance you think they just kind of bounced out of the gutter, but then you realize, no no no.”

Lyon’s original book consisted entirely of black-and-white photos, but Nichols wasn’t interested in the monochrome approach; he wanted the vibrancy of the color photos he saw in a later edition. But he also had to figure out how to create striking characters to go with the striking looks, and how not to be intimidated by a subculture that felt very foreign to him.

“I felt like a bit of a fraud, you know?” he said. “It took me a long time to get up the courage to enter that world.” He needed to fictionalize the story rather than stick to the real Outlaws, to enable himself “to take ownership of the story enough to feel good about sitting down and writing it, to be honest.”

Comer’s character was a key; Kathy finds herself in a love triangle of sorts, with her charismatic but hot-headed husband, Benny (Butler), torn between his love for her and his attraction to the gang and its leader, Johnny (Hardy). And if the dynamic is charged between the three central characters on screen, Nichols said it was like that on the set, too.

“Tom knew about Jodie and knew she was good, but they had never worked together,” he said. “The first scene they did together was the scene where she comes into the bar to challenge him [about Benny] and say, ‘You can’t have him. He’s mine.’

“I always talk to the actors and say, ‘Who would like to go first?’ because we’ve got to point the camera in one direction or the other because of the lighting. Jodie said, ‘I’ll go first,’ and we were all a little nervous. It was our version of the scene from “Heat”(between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro). We had these two powerhouses coming together for the first time, and she came in like a shotgun blast.

“I don’t mean this in a negative way about Tom, but I think she was so good and came in with so much energy that he forgot a line. And his reaction as Johnny was to actually slow down. She’s trying to deliver these lines and he’s slowing everything down. It was frustrating her, but she was supposed to be frustrated in that scene.

“As a director, it was one of the most fun things I’ve ever gotten to watch.” 

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Jeff Nichols’ Favorite Part of Making ‘The Bikeriders’: Watching Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer Go Head-to-Head appeared first on TheWrap.

But Plan B producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner came to him and his producer Joslyn Barnes about the Colson Whitehead novel “The Nickel Boys,” a harrowing story based on a real-life Florida reformatory that abused and even killed young Black teens for decades. Ross figured that Gardner’s work on Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” a narrative film with the feel of a giant art project, might make her the right person to help him with a bold film shot almost entirely from the perspective of Elwood and Turner, two Black teenagers who wind up in the brutal Nickel Academy.

When you initially read the Colson Whitehead novel, could you see the kind of film you’d like to make?
It was the first time I’d ever read a book thinking about adaptation while reading it, because it never had crossed my mind that I’d be doing that. But my first idea was point of view. I was like, Oh, that would be interesting if I shot it from Elwood’s perspective. To me, the imagery from this time period needed the poetic world. It’s very absent, I think, from archival footage or mainstream cinema from the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s and ’70s.

That was my first thought, but I didn’t think immediately that MGM and Plan B were going to make a film that’s POV. But I said to Joslyn, “It’d be really cool if I could do this POV, although I don’t know if they’d really do it.” And in typical Joslyn fashion, she was like, “I think that’s a great idea.” [Laughs]

But the film isn’t always shot from Elwood’s perspective — at one point, it begins shifting between him and Turner.
The problem with giving a character POV is that you then have to ask, “Why doesn’t everyone have POV?” It was important to me to centralize Black subjectivity, so I was going to give it to Black characters. We give it to Turner, and then you’re going back and forth as their perspectives and their world views are intertwining. And you find out why later on.

In cinema, there’s a vocabulary of camera movement that is very different than if you were actually looking through somebody’s eyes. I suppose this film is somewhere in between, because it’s more lyrical than if you just followed a person’s eye movement.
Yeah. But it’s also not as lyrical as your memory would be. Cinema lends itself to the play between the surreal, the symbolic, the experiential, the nonsensical and the aesthetic. It’s on this weird carousel that’s always turning.

There is a lot of violence inflicted on the characters in the film — but the way you tell the story, the film is visceral, but it’s not graphic.
Yeah, yeah. Those were really early conversations. A lot of the conversations were about the effectiveness of some of the techniques we were going to use. Like, let’s not show one punch in the boxing match. And we did end up showing one or two. But the boxing match has to be more about the audience’s reactions than it is about the fight. It’s not about the beating scene. Why don’t we use sound and our senses and the actual images of people who these things happen to, as opposed to watching a fictional character be tortured for  the delight or the horror of the audience? 

There are a variety of different ways in which we experience trauma as human beings without seeing it. I guess because cinema’s so visual, the habit is to show, you know? We think showing somehow means honoring when it may have done the opposite over time.

Does it change the responsibility you have in making this movie to know that Nickel Academy is based on a real place, the Dozier School for Boys?
I guess so.  I wouldn’t say it changes the responsibility, but I would say it heightens the ethical stakes. Making specifically fiction films, you’re almost sacredly blockaded from ethics. You’re like, “This is just fiction, we’re allowed to do this. We’re supposed to take this leeway.” But I think given the proximity of the events to now…

The real school only closed in 2011, right? There’s someone on death row in Florida right now who went to the Dozier School and is citing it as a primary reason why they turned to chaos in their life. It also has a specific intersection with my interest, which is Black subjectivity and Black representation. And also to me — and maybe this is about responsibility — it seemed like an opportunity to try to make a cinematic difference or an aesthetic difference. You could make a statement because all of the material is perfectly aligned.

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post ‘Nickel Boys’ Director RaMell Ross Says Making Movies Is Like Jumping on a ‘Weird Carousel’ appeared first on TheWrap.

How did you get involved in the film? It came after Will and Harper had already decided to make a trip across the country, and potentially film it?
Yeah. once the idea of doing this road trip came about, the possibility of it being a documentary is when I became part of the conversation, as a documentary filmmaker but also as a fairly long friend of both Will and Harper. I’ve known Will for about eight years, and knew Harper for about four. Kristen Wiig introduced us when she had Harper come in to do a punch-up on “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” which was my first narrative film. They approached me and said, “Josh, do you think there’s a documentary here?” to which I answered, “Absolutely.” A few months later, we were on the road driving across the country.

Had Harper already come to terms with the idea of putting a very sensitive part of her life on film?
I think they had mostly gotten past that. I know it took a while for Harper to come around to the idea of not only of doing the trip but of it having it filmed. But I think that’s a reason why I made a lot of sense as director. I had a pre-existing relationship with both of them, which helped because it was super important for creating a very safe space for them to be able to be open and vulnerable and honest — not just for one another, which is hard for anybody, but in front of cameras.

And I think the three of us share a similar comedic sensibility. We all wanted whatever came out of it to be funny. I think Will and Harper’s love language is comedy, and so it was very important to them that whoever was directing this film had a sense of comedy. I think I was perhaps the last piece of the puzzle that made Harper finally just say, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

When you sat down to think about what this film would be, what were the big questions you had to answer? 
There were a lot. I think my first question was, What is the film exploring?  The concept of the trip was: Harper loves this country, but she’s not sure if it loves her back since her transition. She was going to the places she used to love, these small towns and dive bars, and seeing if she can still feel comfortable. So we had to make sure we had a small and nimble crew so that if Will and Harper had any idea of, “Ooh, let’s pop into this place, let’s go go-kart racing,” I was able to follow them with a crew.

The big second question was about their friendship and their relationship. It was a big change obviously for Harper, but as Will says in the film, it was uncharted waters for him. That was always going to be the deeper thing the film explored, and the more universal themes of empathy and love and acceptance and growth and change within a relationship.

But how do I capture that? A lot is going to be in the car. We came up with some fun creative ideas like mounting two cameras on the hood of Harper’s Grand Wagoner. One was a two-shot and it was strapped down. I also put a second camera next to it with a longer lens, and I had a remote head to pan back and forth.

And the last part of it was that I wanted to make sure I was capturing Harper’s version of America that she loves. She loves to find the beauty in the mundane and the quote-unquote ugly. So that goes down to choosing lenses, and I chose these beautiful old Cooke prime lenses that have soft characteristics to capture the way she sees America. 

Obviously it’s ideal for you if the conversations start out tentative and get more intense and open by the time they get three quarters of the way across the country. But can you tell them, “Don’t get into it too much in the first week?” 
It’s a very astute observation. That’s the concern — and by the way, not only that, but given the nature of how I was shooting it, where we’re tracking their trip and they start in New York and make their way across the country, you can’t really do what you can normally do in a documentary, which is take a scene that maybe happened 15 days in and edit it so it looks like it’s Day 2. That wasn’t on the table, given that you could see where we were in the country.

I had them both send me questions they wanted to ask one another, so I had what I called the question or conversation bible in case they ran out of things to talk about, which they shockingly didn’t across 16 days. But what really happened is the organics of how these conversations go. Nobody jumps into the most difficult conversation on Day 1, you know? It played out in the way that you expect, which is that they started in lighter, more comfortable territory, and as the journey went along they let some of their inhibitions down, both with each other and in front of the camera. 

What was it like sitting down with 250 hours of footage?
The word I would use is overwhelming, and I mean that in both a positive and negative connotation. The first cut of the film that I thought was really working was five hours long. And the secret was to let go of some of the comedy. They’re two of the funniest people I know, by far. But once I let go of that and focused on structuring the film around moments of growth and change and more emotional story beats, I got the film to a reasonable length and could start to fold back in the more comedic moments. 

In the film, the experience of traveling across the country did seem to help Harper figure out her relationship with this country and her view of herself. But the way the film has been received and embraced must have been a continuation of that journey in some ways.
Absolutely. All of us, but particularly Harper, have undergone incredible growth since starting to make the film. And then obviously this transformation has taken on a whole new identity since the film’s been released. Even making the film, one of my favorite moments was when she decided to go in alone to that bar in Oklahoma. She did not want Will by her side. She wanted to see if she could do this on her own. And she was met with a surprising amount of love and acceptance, even without Will in there, in a bar where I was certain that love and acceptance was not going to be the outcome.

And shortly thereafter she was at the race track and she said, “I think I’m realizing I’m, I’m not afraid of other people hating me. I’m afraid that I of hating myself.” She’s still on that journey — and I think a lot of trans people can relate to this, but also everyone can relate to this. There’s a universality in learning how to love yourself, all flaws and all. That’s what a lot of the journey of the back half of the film is about, and it’s been wonderful to see that continue as the film has been out in the world. 

Did the experience make you think that America does still love Harper?
Yes, but obviously we have a ways to go. The reality right now is that we’ve got a soon-to-be president who spent over $215 million on campaign ads that target trans people. I can speak for all three of us when I say our film took on a whole new meaning [after the election]. He and his loudest supporters regularly go after the trans community and spread division and hate in general, not just at the trans community.

The last time Trump was president, hate crimes spiked 20%. And for me and I think all of us, the only way to push back against this hate and division is with love and empathy. On social media, people have become nothing more than avatars and usernames. We’ve lost touch with each other’s humanity, and I feel a lot of politicians are exploiting that. And so stories like ours, stories of love and friendship and allyship, are how we fight back.

A version of this story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post How ‘Will & Harper’ Took on a ‘Whole New Meaning’ After Trump’s Election appeared first on TheWrap.

Fifteen new films were added to that room on Wednesday, a departure from the usual weekly additions, which typically come every Friday. The newcomers include Best Picture contenders “Conclave” and “The Piano Lesson,” following a Nov. 22 influx that included “Emilia Perez,” “Joker: Folie a Deux,” “Juror No. 2,” “Nightbitch,” “A Real Pain,” “The Room Next Door,” “Saturday Night” and “September 5.”

But some major films are still missing, Neon’s “Anora” and A24’s “The Brutalist” foremost among them. Other contenders that haven’t shown up in the screening room include last weekend’s big releases, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” along with the yet-to-be-released “A Complete Unknown,” “Nosferatu,” “Maria” and “Nickel Boys.”

In the case of “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” it’s logical that Universal and Paramount would keep those films off screening platforms while they’re making big money in theaters. When it coms to the films that haven’t been released, it’s understandable that companies would feel as if they have enough time with voters who don’t cast their nomination ballots until the second week of January. (Voters for other awards like the Critics Choice Awards, who vote earlier, have received screeners of “Maria” and others.)

And the inclination to wait can be particularly strong for directors who are particular about the formats in which their films are seen: “The Brutalist,” for example, is clearly designed as a theatrical experience, with a built-in intermission that includes a card that appears on the screen while music written for the break plays. The film has been screened aggressively for voters and will be added to the Academy Screening Room in December.

As of Thanksgiving, there are 144 films in the Academy Screening Room, out of which about 30 to 40 have a realistic chance of receiving an Oscar nomination, and the same number an outside chance. Placement in the room requires a payment of $20,000 to the Academy, or $25,000 to add forensic watermarking. Films with budgets of less than $10 million are eligible to apply for a reduced rate.

Currently, the films in the main screening room include 20 documentaries, 11 animated films and 15 entries in the Oscars Best International Feature Film race. Films that qualify in those categories are also put in special screening rooms devoted to the categories free of charge.

Here’s the full list of films in the Academy Screening Room as of Thanksgiving:

“The Absence of Eden”
“Albany”
“Alien: Romulus”
“All We Imagine as Light”
“Am I Racist?” (documentary)             
“American Star”
“Americans With No Address” (documentary)
“The Apprentice”
“Argyle”
“Armand” (international)
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
“Between the Temples
“The Bibi Files” (documentary)
“The Bikeriders”
“Blink Twice”
“Blitz”
“Bob Marley: One Love”
“Cabrini”
“Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid” (documentary)
“Celebrating Laughter: The Life and Films of Colin Higgins” (documentary)
“Challengers”
“City of Dreams”
“Civil War”
“Conclave”
“The Count of Monte Cristo”
“Daddio”
“Dahomey” (documentary, international)
“Dandelion”
“Daughters” (documentary)
“Day of the Fight”
“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” (animated)
“The Dead Don’t Hurt”
“Deadpool & Wolverine”
“The Deliverance”
“The Devil’s Bath” (international)
“Didi”
“A Different Man”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Elton John: Never Too Late” (documentary)
“Emilia Perez” (international)
“Everybody Loves Touda” (international)
“Exhibiting Forgiveness”
“Ezra”
“Fall Guy”
“Fancy Dance”
“Firebrand”
“Flipside” (documentary)
“Flow” (animated)
“Fly Me to the Moon”
“Frida” (documentary)
“From Embers”
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”
“Ghostlight”
“The Girl With the Needle” (international)
“Good One”
“Goodrich”
“The Greatest Hits”
“Heretic”
“His Three Daughters”
“Hit Man”
“The Hopeful”
“Horizon: An America Saga Chapter 1”
“How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” (international)
“I Am: Celine Dion” (documentary)
“I Saw the TV Glow”
“The Idea of You”
“I’ll Be Right There”
“I’m Still Here” (international)
“The Imaginary”
“In the Land of Saints and Sinners”
“Inside Out 2” (animation)
“The Instigators”
“It Ends With Us”
“Janet Planet”
“Joker: Folie a Deux”
“Juror No. 2”
“Kinds of Kindness”
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”
“Kneecap” (international)
“The Last Showgirl”
“Late Night With the Devil”
“Lee”
“The Listeners”
“Longlegs”
“Lost Ladies” (international)
“Love Lies Bleeding”
“Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” (documentary)
“Martha” (documentary)
“Maxxxine”
“Memoir of a Snail” (animated)
“Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” (documentary)
“Murderess” (international)
“My Old Ass”
“My Penguin Friend”
“Nightbitch”
“The Piano Lesson”
“Piece by Piece” (animated, documentary)”
“One Life”
“The Outrun”
“Porcelain War” (documentary)
“Problemista”
“Queens” (international)
“A Real Pain”
“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” (documentary)
“The Room Next Door”
“Rumours”
“Santosh” (international)
“Saturday Night”
“Sasquatch Sunset”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (international)
“Separated” (documentary)
“September 5”
“Shirley”
“Sing Sing”
“The Six Triple Eight”
“Skincare”
“Small Things Like These”
“Spellbound” (animated)
“The Substance”
“Sugarcane” (documentary)
“Suncoast”
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” (documentary)
“Thelma”
“The Thicket”
“Touch” (international)
“Transformers One” (animated)
“Tuesday”
“Twisters”
“Ultraman: Rising” (animated)
“Unstoppable”
“Vermiglio” (international)
“The Wait”
“Waves”
“We Grown Now”
“We Live in Time”
“White Bird”
“Wicked Little Letters”
“Widow Cliquot”
“The Wild Robot” (animated)
“Wildcat”
“Will & Harper” (documentary)
“Wolfs”
“The Young Woman and the Sea”
“Zurawski vs. Texas”

The post Academy Screening Room Nears 150 Films for Voters to Watch – but It’s Missing Some Major Contenders appeared first on TheWrap.