Steve Bellamy, president of Kodak Motion Picture and Entertainment, is celebrating a total of 29 Academy Award nominations for movies shot on Kodak film. “La La Land,” “Fences,” “Hidden Figures,” “Jackie,” “Nocturnal Animals,” “Loving,” “Silence,” “Suicide Squad” and “Hail Caesar!” were all captured on KODAK 35mm and 16mm Motion Picture Film stock.
On the heels of movies captured on film winning nine of the 14 motion picture awards at the Golden Globes and taking 34 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nominations, the 29 Academy Award nominations reflect a resurgence of motion picture artists understanding just how valuable film is as a tool for storytelling. The big winner was “La La Land” with 11 BAFTA and 14 Academy Award nominations.
Having already garnered two Golden Globes nominations, “Loving” director Jeff Nichols said: “There was no way I was going to make ‘Loving’ unless we were going to shoot it on 35mm film. It was a love story that needed an emotive medium like celluloid. The story just would not have worked on a 2K or a 4K video camera.”
Even for smaller-budget and short movies, film matters. Currently playing at the Sundance Film Festival is the film work of the next generation of great directors – “Beach Rats,” director Eliza Hittman; “Frantz,” director François Ozon; “Golden Exits,” director Alex Ross Perry; “Person to Person,” director Dustin Guy Defa; and “Call Me by Your Name,” director Luca Guadagnino. Academy Award-nominated directors shooting on film – Jeff Nichols and Damien Chazelle – started their careers in Park City, Utah. Film also dominated at Cannes Film Festival this year with the top five awards going to movies shot on film. And at the 2016 Hollyshorts Film Festival, of the near 4000 submissions, only two movies were shot on film. These two, however, took three of the top awards.
“Movies captured on film are winning nominations and awards at a disproportionately high rate,” said Bellamy. “The best artists are choosing film, but it goes beyond their choices. You don’t just see film, you feel it. There is an emotive dynamic with film that makes heartfelt moments more heartfelt, joyful moments more joyful, sad moments sadder. Film benefits from the world’s greatest motion picture artists using it, but the world’s greatest motion picture artists also make better movies because they use film.
Similar to the previous two years, film fared very well in 2016 with blockbusters like “Jason Bourne,” “Jack Reacher,” “Justice League,” “Suicide Squad,” “The Magnificent Seven,” and “Hail Caesar!” – all of which were captured on film.
Below is a complete list of Academy Award© Nominees for movies captured on Kodak film stock:
BEST PICTURE:
“Fences”
“Hidden Figures”
“La La Land”
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE:
Ryan Gosling, “La La Land”
Denzel Washington, “Fences”
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE:
Ruth Negga, “Loving”
Natalie Portman, “Jackie”
Emma Stone, “La La Land”
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:
Michael Shannon, “Nocturnal Animals”
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:
Viola Davis, “Fences”
Octavia Spencer, “Hidden Figures”
CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Linus Sandgren, “La La Land”
Rodrigo Prieto, “Silence”
COSTUME DESIGN:
Madeline Fontaine, “Jackie”
Mary Zophres, “La La Land”
DIRECTING:
Damien Chazelle, “La La Land”
FILM EDITING:
Tom Cross, “La La Land”
MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING:
Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini and Christopher Nelson, “Suicide Squad”
MUSIC:
Mica Levi, “Jackie”
Justin Hurwitz, “La La Land”
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG):
Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul. “City of Stars” from “La La Land”
Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul. “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” from “La La Land”
PRODUCTION DESIGN:
Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh, “Hail, Caesar!”
David Wasco, Sandy Reynolds – Wasco, “La La Land”
SOUND EDITING:
Ai-Ling Lee, Mildred latrou Morgan, “La La Land”
SOUND MIXING:
Andy Nelson, Ai-Ling Lee and Steve A. Marrow, “La La Land”
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY):
August Wilson, “Fences”
Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi, “Hidden Figures”
WRITING (ORIGNAL SCREENPLAY):
Damien Chazelle, “La La Land”
Review: Rachel Morrison Makes Feature Directorial Debut With “The Fire Inside”
"The Fire Inside," about boxer Claressa "T-Rex" Shields, is not your standard inspirational sports drama, even if it feels like it for the first half of the movie.
There's the hopeless dream, the difficult home life, the blighted community, the devoted coach, the training montages, the setbacks and, against all odds, the win. We've seen this kind of story before, you might think, and you'd be right. But then the movie pulls the rug out from under you: The victory is not the end. "The Fire Inside," directed by Rachel Morrison and written by Barry Jenkins, is as much about what happens after the win. It's not always pretty or inspirational, but it is truthful, and important.
Sports dramas can be just as cliche as fairy tales, with the gold medal and beautiful wedding presented as a happy ending. We buy into it time and time again for obvious reasons, but the idea of a happy ending at all, or even an ending, is almost exclusively for the audience. We walk away content that someone has found true love or achieved that impossible goal after all that work. For the subject, however, it's a different proposition; Life, and all its mundanities, disappointments and hardships, continues after all. And in the world of sports, that high moment often comes so young that it might be easy to look at the rest of the journey as a disappointing comedown.
Claressa Shields, played by Ryan Destiny in the film, was only 17 when she went to the 2012 London Olympics. Everything was stacked against her, including the statistics: No American woman had ever won an Olympic gold medal in the sport before. Her opponents had years on her. She was still navigating high school in Flint, Michigan, and things on the home front were volatile and lacking. Food was sometimes scarce... Read More