11th hour addition brings tally to 11 nominated films
The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) has announced that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has earned a Critics’ Choice Award nomination for Best Picture. The film was not screened for BFCA voters in time for the initial nominations balloting, but after members of the nation’s largest film critics group saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens last week it was decided to hold a special referendum yesterday to determine if it would have been nominated if the BFCA membership had been able to consider it.
The exception was made for only the Best Picture category and all other Critics’ Choice Award nominations remain as previously announced. Star Wars: The Force Awakens joins The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Carol, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, Sicario and Spotlight as Critics’ Choice Award Best Picture nominees.
While making an amendment to the Critics’ Choice Awards nominations is highly unusual, having an 11th Best Picture nominee is not unprecedented. In 2000, Cast Away was similarly screened too late for normal consideration and the BFCA included it among 11 Best Picture nominees.
It is the purpose of the Critics’ Choice Awards to honor the finest in cinematic and television achievement. BFCA made this exception to its rules and included Star Wars: The Force Awakens to serve this purpose.
Winners will be revealed at the 21st annual Critics’ Choice Awards show on January 17th, televised live at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on A&E, Lifetime and LMN, and hosted by T.J. Miller.
The 21st Annual Critics’ Choice Awards” will be produced by Bob Bain Productions and Berlin Entertainment.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More