The Watchers

The Watchers

Friday 29 January 2021

The Watchers Film Show Blog is 9 today!


Can you believe it? The Watchers Film Show Blog is 9 years old today!

I'll be honest, I'm never sure whether this is meant to be a birthday or an anniversary, but either way, it's a time for celebration. 

Whilst the show itself started in November 2011, we decided to branch out into blogging after a few months of recordings (which means that in November of this year, we'll have been at this mad little enterprise for a decade!)

When we started the Blog, the MCU was still in Phase 1 and about ready to drop The Avengers; the DCEU was a few years off, whilst the news that Star Wars Episodes VII-IX were going to be made was still just a fever-dream in the minds of fans... there are those that argue it perhaps should have stayed that way, but we couldn't possibly comment... 

We were anxiously awaiting a new Daniel Craig Bond film (now, that feels familiar...) and we were knee-deep in awards season (that also feels familiar). 

In the nine years the blog has been running, we've had over 372,000 page views from all around the globe, including Italy, Turkmenistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Bolivia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Moldova, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Japan, and Australia, as well as over a thousand views from the mysterious "Unknown Region"

Wherever you are in the world, a massive Thank You! to everyone who's supported us, whether you've been with us from the beginning or found us recently. Your support is very much appreciated. 

With much love to you all,

The Watchers
(Rhys, Matt, & Tez)


Tuesday 26 January 2021

Awards Season 2021: Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominations


OK, folks. Awards season is now upon us, with today's announcement of the nominees for the 36th Film Independent Spirit Awards. These awards recognise films made wholly or partly outside the traditional studio system (although there is becoming an increasingly wide overlap between these and the more 'mainstream' awards).

Below is a selection of nominations:

Best Feature
First Cow
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Minari
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Nomadland

Best Director
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)
Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman)
Eliza Hittman (Never Rarely Sometimes Always)
Kelly Reichardt (First Cow)
ChloƩ Zhao (Nomadland)

Best Male Lead
Riz Ahmed (Sound Of Metal)
Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)
Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger)
Rob Morgan (Bull)
Steven Yeun (Minari)

Best Female Lead
Nicole Beharie (Miss Juneteenth)
Viola Davis (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)
Sidney Flanigan (Never Rarely Sometimes Always)
Julia Garner (The Assistant)
Frances McDormand (Nomadland)
Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman)

Best Supporting Male
Colman Domingo (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)
Orion Lee (First Cow)
Paul Raci (Sound Of Metal)
Glynn Turman (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)
Benedict Wong (Nine Days)

Best Supporting Female
Alexis Chikaeze (Miss Juneteenth)
Yeri Han (Minari)
Valerie Mahaffey (French Exit)
Talia Ryder (Never Rarely Sometimes Always)
Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari)

A full list of nominees can be found here.

With seven nominations, Never Rarely Sometimes Always leads the pack, with Minari at six, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Nomadland have five apiece.

For the first time this year, the Independent Spirit Awards will honour television series as well as films, with five new categories. In this inaugural batch of nominations, I May Destroy You, Little America, Small Axe, and Unorthodox were all honoured. 

The Film Independent Spirit Awards will be given out on Thursday 22nd April 2021, breaking with the usual tradition of them being handed out the day before the Oscars. This is due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which means the traditional location for the awards (a big white marquee on the Santa Monica Beach) will most likely be unviable.

Congratulations to all nominees!

Next stop on the awards season hypetrain is the Golden Globe nominations, which will be out on Wednesday 3rd February.

Monday 25 January 2021

State Of Play: January 2021


Hope you're all doing well and January has been as kind as it can be to yourselves. 

We're still in the grip of a deadly pandemic and the cinema schedules keep changing left, right, and centre, so thought it was worth looking at the lie of the land as we come to the close of the first month of a new year. 


To very few people's surprise, news broke late last week that No Time To Die was being shunted back again, this time to 8th October 2021 (from its revised April 2021 release). It's disappointing, but understandable. The world is still very much in flux, so I can appreciate the studios wanting to err to the side of caution. If it keeps this date, it will arrive a few days shy of six years after the last Bond movie, Spectre.


This decision has set off a bit of a domino effect, with a lot of other films now having been moved, including Edgar Wright's horror-thriller Last Night In Soho (now due October 22nd 2021), Ghostbusters: Afterlife (now 11th November), and A Quiet Place: Part II (17th September), with Jared Leto's Morbius, and Tom Holland's Uncharted shifted into 2022.  


Before Christmas,
Warner Bros. announced that their full slate for 2021- 17 films in total, including The Matrix 4, Dune, and The Suicide Squad- would follow the example of Wonder Woman 1984 and be released on both HBO Max and in cinemas (where possible) on their respective release dates. Already, the Sopranos prequel The Many Saints Of Newark has had a date change, so others may follow.

Here are the current releases at the moment, correct as of 25th January 2021. Films below marked with an asterisk are Warner Bros. films and will be released on HBO Max on day of release as well as cinemas. 


2021

March 5     Coming 2 America (Amazon Prime)

March 5     Raya And The Last Dragon (Disney+)

March 26     Godzilla Vs. Kong *

May 7     Black Widow

May 28     F9

June 18     In The Heights *

July 2     Top Gun: Maverick

July 9     Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings

July 16     Cinderella

July 30     Jungle Cruise

August 13     BIOS

August 20     The King's Men

September 17     A Quiet Place: Part II

September 24     The Many Saints Of Newark *

October 1     Dune *

October 8     No Time To Die

October 15     The Last Duel

October 22     Last Night In Soho

November 5     Eternals

November 11     Ghostbusters: Afterlife

November 19     Mission: Impossible 7

December 3     Nightmare Alley

December 10     West Side Story

December 17     Sony/Marvel Spider-Man 3

December 22     The Matrix 4 *



2022

January 21     Morbius

February 11     Thor: Love And Thunder

February 11     Uncharted

March 4     The Batman

March 25     Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness

July 8     Black Panther 2

July 15     Fantastic Beasts 3

November 4     The Flash

November 11     Captain Marvel 2


At the moment, the first big blockbusters of 2021 will be Black Widow and F9 in May - but it's probably too early to say that those dates will definitely hold. 

This is something that I found out today, and which I found very telling: of the many films who advertised during last year's SuperBowl (a traditional spot for new releases to advertise to a massive audience and where the cost of a 30-second slot was around $5.6m), only four have actually been released: they are The Invisible Man, Sonic The Hedgehog, Mulan, and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge On The Run. 

We'll keep you updated if when things change again. 

Sunday 24 January 2021

For Your Consideration: Possible Contenders For Awards Season 2021

Yes- with all the sinking inevitability of a scheduled dentist's appointment (and no doubt, for some of you, just as painful)- it's time to turn our attention to awards season. 

What's this? I hear (some of) you cry. Awards season? Really? Given everything that's going on in the world? You didn't think that they'd let a little thing like a worldwide pandemic stop this annual festival of self-congratulation, did you? 

In June of last year, the Academy decided on an eight-week postponement of the 93rd Academy Awards from February to April, and the majority of awards bodies amended their schedules accordingly.  

Despite cinemas worldwide closing, films being delayed or moved to streaming, and various other issues, films have still been released, festivals have still gone on, so there's still some merit (if that's the right word) of my annual prognostication on the films you'll be hearing a lot about over the next few months. 

Winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, as well as the prestigious People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, Nomadland seems to be one of the frontrunners for this year's awards season. Directed by ChloĆ© Zhao (The Rider, Eternals), the film stars Frances McDormand as a woman who embarks on a journey through the American West as a modern-day nomad after losing everything in the Great Recession of 2011. McDormand will almost certainly get nominated for her lead role and David Strathairn might get a look in for his supporting role as a fellow nomad, while Zhao is also a shoo-in for Best Director. 


Aaron Sorkin's The Trial Of The Chicago 7 is in a strong position for some awards love, being a biographical/historical drama about American history full to the brim with strong performances. Based on the infamous trial that followed the violent altercations at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention, the film feels very timely (given recent events). Whilst Best Picture and Screenplay nods are pretty secure, the issue comes with deciding on any acting awards, as the Netflix For Your Consideration page names all ten main actors in the Best Supporting Actor category! Most likely to receive a nod should be Sacha Baron Cohen, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Mark Rylance.


British actress Vanessa Kirby won the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival for her lead role as Martha in Pieces Of A Woman, KornĆ©l MundruczĆ³'s heart-wrenching drama about a woman whose home birth ends in unbearable tragedy. Whilst the subject may be a bit raw and intense for some, expect to see Kirby's name mentioned a lot. Also in a strong position for nomination is Ellen Burstyn, whose supporting role as Martha's overbearing mother Elizabeth has also been getting a lot of praise. Fun fact: if Burstyn does get an Oscar nod for her performance, she'll become the oldest actor to be nominated for a competitive acting award (as she is a couple of months older than Christopher Plummer, who currently holds that honour). 


The big screen adaptation of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is bound to see some awards love, especially for the late Chadwick Boseman in Best Actor categories and Viola Davis in the Best Actress races. There's a chance that Glynn Turman could get a surprise nod in the Best Supporting Actor category and I'd say it's got a good chance of featuring heavily in certain technical categories (most notably Costume, Hair & Make-Up, and Production Design). Best Picture nods wouldn't be out of the question either, neither would an Adapted Screenplay nod for Ruben Santiago-Hudson's script. 


Boseman might make Oscar history if he also gets a Supporting Actor nod for his role in Spike Lee's war drama Da 5 Bloods (he'd be the first actor to receive two posthumous acting Oscar nominations in one year). He appears in flashbacks as the squad's leader (Stormin' Norman), whilst the main story follows the four Vietnam vets on their return to the country to search for his remains. Again, Best Picture and Best Director nods can be expected, whilst it is Boseman and Delroy Lindo who are garnering a lot of the critical appreciation for their performances.  


Hollywood loves films about films, so David Fincher's Mank (despite it's fairly awful title) is bound to get some awards love. Telling the story of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he completes the screenplay for Citizen Kane, you can expect to see Gary Oldman mentioned for his lead performance as the alcoholic screenwriter, with Best Picture and Director nods highly likely too. You may also see Amanda Seyfried getting her first Oscar nod for her supporting role as silent movie actress Marion Davies.


Oscar-winning actress Regina King might be getting a second Oscar nod this year, but it will be for Best Director. She helms One Night In Miami..., a drama which imagines the meeting between four icons. The night in question is February 25th, 1964, when Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston to become Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World. Clay spent the evening with three of his friends: Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown. One Night In Miami... won the People's Choice Award (First Runner-Up) at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the performances of the four leads- Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr.- have all been praised. 


Now, some of you might be wondering if I've lost the plot somewhat by saying that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm has a shot at awards season. Well, first of all, the original 2006 film- Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan- was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar at the 2007 Oscars (losing out to The Departed). Secondly, there's been a lot of praise for the performance of Maria Bakalova who plays Borat's daughter Tutar, so a surprise Best Supporting Actress nod for her might not be out of the question. 


Over the last couple of years, several foreign language films (such as Roma and Parasite) have also been nominated for Best Picture. So it's entirely possible that Minari, Korean-American director Lee Isaac Chung's semi-autobiographical drama about a Korean family making a new life in for themselves in 1980s Arkansas, could do the same. Praise has been given both to Chung's direction and script, as well as the performances by Steven Yeun as patriarch Jacob and Youn Yuh-Jung as grandmother Soonja. 



There are a couple of LGBTQ+ films which might get some awards attention. Firstly, Ammonite (written and directed by Francis Lee, who wrote and directed God's Own Country) which has Kate Winslet playing nineteenth-century fossil hunter Mary Anning and Saoirse Ronan as Charlotte Murchison, a young woman who Anning meets at the seaside and forms an intense relationship with. Secondly, there is Supernova, written and directed by Harry Macqueen. It features Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as Sam and Tusker, partners of 20 years, who travel across England in an RV to visit places and people from their past, as Tusker has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia.


Below are several films that have performances that might get nods somewhere along the line:


Promising Young Woman: Carey Mulligan (An Education) plays Cassie, an avenging angel in this timely and fascinating revenge drama, written and directed by Emerald Fennell.

Hillbilly Elegy: Ron Howard directs this adaptation of J.D. Vance's best-selling but controversial memoir about the author's life growing up in an Ohio town; you may see Amy Adams and Glenn Close mentioned for their performances as J.D.'s drug-addict mother and his foul-mouthed grandmother respectively. 

The Life Ahead: Sophia Loren's performance in this drama, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, has been getting rave reviews; she plays a Holocaust survivor who takes in a street-kid who has robbed her. Fun fact: if Loren does receive an Oscar nomination for this performance, she will become the person with the longest gap between Oscar nominations (as this would come a full 56 years after her last nod, for Marriage Italian Style in 1965)



(Finding) The Way Back: Ben Affleck has been getting rave reviews for his performance in Gavin O'Connor's sports drama, as a former basketball wunderkind (who has struggled with alcoholism) who reluctantly accepts a job coaching the team at his old school. 

Judas And The Black Messiah: Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) and LaKeith Stanfield (Knives Out) could both get some awards love for their performances as Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton and William O'Neal, the undercover FBI agent who betrayed him, in this biographical drama directed by Shaka King.  

News Of The World: Tom Hanks might get a nod for his performance as an American Civil War veteran who has to return a 10 year old girl to her family in this Western adventure drama directed by Paul Greengrass.




Malcolm & Marie: Zendaya (Spider-Man: Homecoming) and John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman) could both be up for awards for their performances in this neat little two-hander written and directed by Sam Levinson. Shot in June and July 2020, the production followed strict COVID-19 safety protocols to ensure the cast and crew worked in a safe environment. 

Sound Of Metal: Riz Ahmed could get nominated for his performance in this musical drama directed by Darius Marder, as a heavy metal drummer who begins to lose his hearing. Olivia Cooke could see some Supporting Actress nominations for her role as Ruben's singer girlfriend Lou, whilst Paul Raci could get a nod or two as the founder of a commune for the Deaf.

The Father: French playwright Florian Zeller directs this adaptation of his own play, with Anthony Hopkins in the title role as a man struggling with dementia, and Olivia Colman as his daughter.  


 

So what about the two big blockbusters that did get released last year: Tenet and Wonder Woman 1984? Does awards glory await for them? Almost certainly in the technical fields (Visual Effects, Sound and suchlike). Of the two, Tenet has a better chance at major nominations (Best Picture and Director) but lukewarm reviews of both might not do either any good. But in a year where a lot of big budget stuff didn't see the screen, who knows?


The timetable for the major awards in 2021 is as follows:

Film Independent Spirit Awards
Nominations announced: 26th January 2021
Awards ceremony: 22nd April 2021

Golden Globes
Nominations announced: 3rd February 2021 
Awards ceremony: 28th February 2021

Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards
Nominations announced: 4th February 2021
Awards ceremony: 14th March 2021

Critics' Choice Awards
Nominations announced: 7th February 2021
Awards ceremony: 7th March 2021

Writers' Guild Of America (WGA) Award
Nominations announced: 16th February 2021
Awards ceremony: 21st March 2021

Directors' Guild Of America (DGA) Award
Nominations announced: 9th March 2021
Awards ceremony: 10th April 2021

BAFTA Film Awards
Nominations announced: 9th March 2021
Awards ceremony: 11th April 2021

Producers' Guild Of America (PGA) Award
Nominations announced: 12th March 2021
Awards ceremony: 24th March 2021

Golden Raspberry Awards (Razzies)
Nominations announced: 14th March 2021
Awards ceremony: 24th April 2021

Academy Awards (Oscars)
Nominations announced: 15th March 2021
Awards ceremony: 25th April 2021


So spreadsheets at the ready, my friends... because...

Sunday 10 January 2021

Review: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (UK Cert 15)

1927. On a sweltering hot Chicago day, renowned blues singer Ma Rainey attends a recording session for a new album. There are tensions between members of the band- with young trumpeter Levee, eager for his own record deal, clashing with established older members Toledo and Cutler- which escalate further when Ma arrives an hour late and begins her demands.  

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is the second piece in playwright August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle [also known as the Century Cycle] which looked at the Black experience throughout the twentieth century (with each play set in a different decade). Another of the Pittsburgh Cycle plays, Fences, was filmed in 2016, directed by Denzel Washington. Washington acts as producer here, as part of an arrangement to bring Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle to the big screen. Direction duties are taken by George C. Wolfe (Nights In Rodanthe), with the script adapted from Wilson's source material by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. 


Chadwick Boseman's unexpected passing from colon cancer in August 2020 makes Ma Rainey's Black Bottom his final film role. For anyone who only knows Boseman through Black Panther and the other MCU films, you've only seen a fraction of what Boseman could do as an actor. Honestly, he has never been better on screen. Levee is a fascinating multi-faceted character: ambitious, flirtatious, forthright, deeply wounded, confident, quick to anger. A man who wants more than he's got but (perhaps) naĆÆvely thinks he'll get it. Levee gets two big moments (what no doubt look like massive chunks of text on a page): one where he describes what happened to his parents, and one where he rails at the notion of God. Boseman is simply breath-taking in these moments. Such a magnetic and charismatic performance, and a poignant reminder of what the acting world has lost. 

Frankly, Viola Davis could read a takeaway menu and make it engrossing. Here, she's utterly superb as the rambunctious, take-no-prisoners Ma. Despite limited screen-time (27 minutes of a 94 minute film), she looms large over proceedings. There's a short, but very powerful scene, right at the beginning when Ma arrives at the studio and her car is damaged; immediately, she is out of the vehicle and starts to remonstrate with a white policeman. The cop's reaction is telling: he's never had a Black person, let alone a Black woman, speak to him in such a way before. What's also interesting is Ma has a girlfriend, Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige), but that's never made an issue of or seen to be something controversial or wrong. Ultimately, Ma knows her worth- she knows the white producers see her voice only- but she'll be damned if she doesn't get the respect she's due. In a career of fascinating performances, this stands high as one of Davis' very best. 

As with Fences, the ensemble cast all meet the high standards laid down by the leads. Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, and Glynn Turman are just superb as the old-timers in the band, laughing at Levee's naivete and wanting to get the session done to get paid and go. There's such an authentic camaraderie between the men; you can believe them as an established group. Jeremy Shamos and Jonny Coyne play Ma's manager Irvin and studio owner Sturdyvant, at odds with how to deal with Ma: Irvin knows that you catch more flies with honey when it comes to Ma, whilst for Sturdyvant, time is money. Rounding out the cast are Paige as Dussie Mae- a sensuous and flirty performance- and Dusan Brown as Ma's nephew Sylvester whose stutter causes issues with the recording of the titular "Black Bottom". 

Brandford Marsalis' incidental music and arrangements of 1920s blues songs is absolutely sublime, as are the fantastic costumes by Ann Roth, whose attention to detail- from Ma's OTT dresses to Levee's yellow shoes- is unparalleled. Wolfe doesn't pull many directorial tricks, allowing the script to do the talking, and focuses on the action in an unobtrusive way. 

Ultimately, as with Fences, this feels like watching a theatre broadcast rather than a film. That said, it certainly doesn't take away from the raw power of the performances. Expect to see this getting some major awards love in the upcoming months. 

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez

Friday 1 January 2021

Happy New Year from The Watchers!

 


Happy New Year!

Hopefully, 2021 has got off on the right foot with you all! It might have been a very different New Year's Eve than in other years, but we hope it was enjoyable however you spent it.  

It's safe to say that 2020 was a challenging year for many of us in many different ways, so we dearly hope that 2021 is a better year for everyone. 

Whilst the stroke of midnight didn't magically erase any of the issues that plagued 2020- with us all waking up like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard Of Oz and realising the past 12 months were a particularly virulent fever-dream- there are many reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the upcoming year. We might not be out of the woods just yet, but at least we've got more of an idea of which way we're heading. 

In terms of 2021's film releases, the ones that The Watchers are looking forward to are No Time To Die, Black Widow, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Death On The Nile, Halloween Kills, Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, Eternals, Justice League: The Snyder Cut, and A Quiet Place: Part II, although we are sure that there will be many others along the way. 

We will, of course, continue to monitor the situation as things are still liable to change (especially in the first quarter of the year). For the half-dozen or so awards enthusiasts among you, there will also be full coverage of the 2021 awards season when that rolls around. Tez is itching to get his spreadsheet started... 

All the very best for a precedented and stable 2021, with few surprises (unless they're good, of course)

The Watchers
(Rhys, Matt & Tez)