The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association voted the musical drama A STAR IS BORN as the best film of 2018. Rounding out the composite list of the top 10 films of the year were ROMA (2), THE FAVOURITE (3), VICE (4), BLACKkKLANSMAN (5), BLACK PANTHER (6), GREEN BOOK (7), IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (8), EIGHTH GRADE (9), and CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (10).
The 30th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will open with All is True directed by Kenneth Branagh on Friday, January 4, and close with Ladies in Black, directed by Bruce Beresford on Sunday, January 13. The Festival will screen 223 films from 78 countries, with a focus on cinema from France, India and Mexico, Premieres, Talking Pictures, Book to Screen, Special Presentations, FLOS: Foreign Language Oscar Submissions, Gay!La, Local Spotlight, Modern Masters, True Stories, World Cinema Now, a 30-film retrospective of selections from past festivals and more.
In All is True, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen star in Branagh’s intimate, revelatory portrait of William Shakespeare in the last act of his life. His career over, he returns to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon to encounter old ghosts, old loves, and his resentful family. Branagh is expected to attend.
Ladies in Black, set in Sydney in 1959, Oscar®-nominated writer/director Bruce Beresford takes us back to the heyday of glamorous upscale department stores, when a concierge met you at the door and clerks wore gloves. The film from Lumila Films stars Julia Ormond, Angourie Rice, Rachael Taylor, Ryan Corr, Shane Jacobson and Alison McGirr. Beresford, Ormond, Taylor and McGirr are expected to attend.
A Star is Born leads the nominees for the 25th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards® for outstanding individual, cast and ensemble performances in film with four nominations, followed by BlacKkKlansman and The Favourite with three nominations each. The cast of BlacKkKlansman and A Star is Born were also nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture along with Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody and Crazy Rich Asians.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has selected Yalitza Aparicio (Roma) Sam Elliott (A Star is Born), Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade) Claire Foy (First Man), Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace), John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman) and Steven Yeun (Burning) to receive the 2019 Virtuosos Award at the upcoming 34th edition of the festival.
The African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) named Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther” the Best Film of 2018 along with Best Director (Ryan Coogler) and Best Song (“All the Stars” performed by Kendrick Lamar and SZA with music and lyrics by Kendrick Lamar, Anthony Tiffith, Mark Spears, Solana Rowe and Al Shuckburgh) making it AAFCA’s top award-winner of 2018.
Sight & Sound, the BFI’s international film magazine, today named Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma as the Best Film of 2018 in one of the most anticipated and respected critics’ opinion poll: Sight & Sound’s Films of the Year. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar®-winning Phantom Thread is in second place, followed by Lee Chang-dong’s Burning in third.
The San Francisco Film Critics Circle named Roma the Best Picture of 2018 along with Best Foreign Language Picture but gave the award for Best Director to Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman. BlacKkKlansman also won the awards for Best Original Score and Best Screenplay, Adapted.
“The Favourite” leads the nominations for the 24th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards this year with 14 nominations including Best Picture, Olivia Colman for Best Actress and Best Actress in a Comedy, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz both for Best Supporting Actress, Best Acting Ensemble, and Yorgos Lanthimos for Best Director.
The Hate U Give leads this year’s winners of the 2nd Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society Awards with a total of four awards including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade followed closely with three awards including Best Independent Film, Best First Feature, and Best Performance by an Actress 23 and Under for Elsie Fisher.
Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” is the clear favorite with the Chicago Film Critics Association, earning the most nominations of all for their 2018 film awards with nine. In addition to being one of the finalists for Best Picture, Cuaron himself was personally nominated in four additional categories for Director, Original Screenplay, Cinematography and Editing, the latter alongside Adam Gough. Yalitza Aparicio, the non-professional chosen by Cuaron to star in the film received two nominations herself for Best Actress and Most Promising Performer and it also received nods for Art Direction/Production Design and Foreign Film.
If Beale Street Could Talk[/caption]
The nominations were announced this morning for the 76th Golden Globe Awards, and films nominated for the top prize – Best Motion Picture Drama include BlacKkKlansman, If Beale Street Could Talk along with Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star Is Born. In the Best Foreign Language Film category, Capernaum (Lebanon), Girl (Belgium), Never Look Away (Germany), Roma (Mexico) and Shoplifters (Japan) will compete for the Golden Glob
The 76th Golden Globes will take place at International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton on January 6th, 2019.
Director Spike Lee will receive the Career Achievement Award at the Film Awards Gala of the 30th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF). The Festival runs January 3-14.
“Spike Lee has been an outstanding warrior for equal rights while creating an iconic body of film and television work over his 30-year career,” said Festival Chairman Harold Matzner. “In BlacKkKlansman, Lee directs one of his best and most provocative films about an African-American detective and a white detective who are determined to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs. It is our great honor to present the Career Achievement Award to Spike Lee.”
Lee joins previously announced honorees Glenn Close, Bradley Cooper, Alfonso Cuarón, Regina King, Rami Malek, Melissa McCarthy and the film Green Book. Past recipients of the Career Achievement Award include Annette Bening, Kevin Costner, Bruce Dern, Robert Duvall, Clint Eastwood, Sally Field, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson.
From visionary filmmaker Spike Lee comes the incredible true story of an American hero. It’s the 1970s, and Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Determined to make a name for himself, he bravely sets out on a dangerous mission: infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. The young detective soon recruits a more seasoned colleague, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), into the undercover investigation of a lifetime. Together, they team up to take down the extremist group as it aims to sanitize its violent rhetoric to appeal to the mainstream. The Focus Features film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Spike Lee’s three-decade career includes She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do The Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Crooklyn, Clockers, Girl 6, Get on the Bus, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, Bamboozled, 25th Hour, She Hate Me, Inside Man, Miracle at St. Anna, Red Hook Summer, Old Boy, and Chi-Raq. Lee’s outstanding feature documentary work includes the double Emmy Award®-winning If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, a follow-up to his HBO documentary film When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts and the Peabody Award-winning A Huey P Newton Story. In the television arena, Lee is currently in post-production on Season 2 of his Netflix Original Series She’s Gotta Have It, a contemporary update of the classic film.