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    Riz Ahmed and Steven Yeun Make History at the 2021 Oscar Nominations

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonOscar Nominations HighlightsNominees ListSnubs and SurprisesBest Director NomineesStream the NomineesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRiz Ahmed and Steven Yeun Make History at the 2021 Oscar NominationsFor the first time, two men of Asian heritage are up for best actor. Their films, “Sound of Metal” and “Minari,” are also up for best picture.March 15, 2021Updated 5:19 p.m. ETRiz Ahmed in “Sound of Metal.”Credit…Amazon Studios, via Associated PressSteven Yeun in “Minari.”Credit…David Bornfriend/A24, via Associated PressIt’s been nearly 20 years since a man of Asian heritage notched a best actor nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.But this year, for the first time in the 93-year history of the Academy Awards, there are two: Steven Yeun (“Minari”), who was born in South Korea and raised in the United States, and Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”), who is a Briton of Pakistani descent. Both Ahmed and Yeun are first-time nominees.Their inclusion is especially notable because despite a spate of Asian-led films in recent years, including last year’s best picture winner, “Parasite,” the academy had failed to recognize the performers.Just two actors of Asian heritage have ever been nominated in the category: The Russian-born Yul Brynner (“The King and I”), and Ben Kingsley (“Gandhi,” “House of Sand and Fog”), whose father is Indian. Brynner and Kingsley each won the award once.Yeun and Ahmed have some tough competition: The other three nominees this year are Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), who won a posthumous Golden Globe for best actor in a drama, Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) and Gary Oldman (“Mank”).The New York Times’s co-chief film critic A.O. Scott called Yeun’s performance in “Minari,” as a Korean immigrant father who moves his family to the Ozarks, “effortlessly magnetic.” Scott praised his proclivity for finding “the cracks in the character’s carefully cultivated reserve, the large, unsettled emotions behind the facade of stoicism.”Ahmed won acclaim for his performance as a drummer who loses his hearing in “Sound of Metal,” which the Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis praised for its “extraordinarily intricate” sound design. She singled out Ahmed for his “tweaking urgency that’s poignantly credible — he’s a study in distress.”Even though only four men of Asian heritage have ever been nominated for best actor, the situation is far more bleak in the best actress category, where only one woman of Asian heritage has ever been nominated (Merle Oberon for the 1935 drama “The Dark Angel”), and none has won.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Directors Guild Nominations Make History With Two Female Contenders

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDirectors Guild Nominations Make History With Two Female ContendersThe group has never nominated more than one woman in a year. Emerald Fennell and Chloé Zhao made the cut, along with Lee Isaac Chung, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher. Emerald Fennell, second from right, on the set of “Promising Young Woman,” with her cast and crew, including Carey Mulligan, left, and Laverne Cox.Credit…Merie Weismiller Wallace/Focus Features, via Associated PressMarch 9, 2021, 2:07 p.m. ETThe Directors Guild of America announced its feature-film nominees on Monday that included more than one woman in the top directing category for the first time in the guild’s 72-year history.The selection of Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”), Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”), David Fincher (“Mank”), Aaron Sorkin (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”) and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) contained no curveballs: These five films have all had strong awards-season runs and are considered to be best-picture locks when the Oscar nominations are announced on March 15.Still, the inclusion of both Zhao and Fennell in the same race was a first for the guild. Though eight of the previous 10 DGA Award lineups were all-male, the guild has a slim but somewhat better track record than the Oscars when it comes to nominating women: Lina Wertmüller, Randa Haines, Barbra Streisand, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Valerie Faris, Kathryn Bigelow and Greta Gerwig have all made the Directors Guild cut in years past, while only Wertmüller, Campion, Coppola, Bigelow and Gerwig were also nominated for an Oscar.The guild’s selections tend to line up fairly closely with those of the movie academy, give or take one substitution: Last year, Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”), Sam Mendes (“1917”), Martin Scorsese (“The Irishman”) and Quentin Tarantino (“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”) were recognized by both groups, though DGA nominee Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”) was supplanted by “Joker” director Todd Phillips come Oscar time.That could provide a path forward for the “One Night in Miami” director Regina King, who was nominated for the best-director Golden Globe but missed the cut here. The guild did recognize King in the category reserved for first-time filmmakers, where she was nominated alongside Radha Blank (“The Forty-Year-Old Version”), Fernando Frías de la Parra (“I’m No Longer Here”), Darius Marder (“Sound of Metal”), and Florian Zeller (“The Father”).Here is the DGA Award nomination lineup:Outstanding Directorial Achievement — Feature“Mank,” David Fincher“Minari,” Lee Isaac Chung“Nomadland,” Chloé Zhao“Promising Young Woman,” Emerald Fennell“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Aaron SorkinOutstanding Directorial Achievement — First-Time Feature“The Forty-Year-Old Version,” Radha Blank“I’m No Longer Here,” Fernando Frías de la Parra“One Night in Miami,” Regina King“Sound of Metal,” Darius Marder“The Father,” Florian ZellerOutstanding Directorial Achievement — Documentary“Boys State,” Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss“My Octopus Teacher,” Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed“The Painter and the Thief,” Benjamin Ree“The Truffle Hunters,” Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw“Welcome to Chechnya,” David FranceAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Golden Globes 2021: Where to Stream the Winners

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedBest and Worst MomentsWinners ListStream the WinnersRed Carpet ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGolden Globes 2021: Where to Stream the WinnersNearly all of the big winners from the evening are available to stream. Here’s a look at where to find them and what The Times first had to say about them.Sacha Baron Cohen in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” which won the award for best musical or comedy at the Golden Globes.Credit…Amazon StudiosMarch 1, 2021, 11:31 a.m. ETDuring a normal year, when many of the awards-contending movies are released late in the season, home viewers often have to wait for a month or two to catch the winners on various streaming services. But the one benefit to an awards show during a pandemic year is that all the winners are immediately available — or so we might have assumed.To the surprise of many Golden Globes prognosticators — and to the actress herself — Jodie Foster won best supporting actress for “The Mauritanian,” a 9/11-themed legal drama that’s currently in theaters, but will arrive on VOD on Tuesday, March 2nd. (Our critic, Jeannette Catsoulis, would advise you to proceed with caution.) Otherwise, the night’s big winners on the film side are scattered among the streaming giants, with “Nomadland” and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” on Hulu, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” on Amazon Prime and “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “I Care a Lot” on Netflix.The awards were not distributed quite so democratically for the TV slate, where the fourth season of Netflix’s “The Crown” took best drama as well as prizes for three of the four acting categories. Netflix also has The Queen’s Gambit,” which won for best limited series or TV movie and for Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance as an American chess grandmaster of humble origins. And the service is streaming all six seasons of the best musical or comedy winner “Schitt’s Creek.”Here’s a guide to the major-category winners that are currently a click away, along with excerpts from their New York Times reviews or features.Movies‘Nomadland’Won for: Best picture, drama; best director“In a fine Emersonian spirit, the movie rebels against its own conventional impulses, gravitating toward an idea of experience that is more complicated, more open-ended, more contradictory than what most American movies are willing to permit.” (Read the full Times review by A.O. Scott.)Where to watch: Stream it on Hulu.‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’Won for: Best musical or comedy; best actor, musical or comedy“Would I call this the best movie of 2020, from the standpoint of cinematic art? Look, I don’t know. It’s been a weird year. But I would insist that this sequel to a cringey, pranky, 14-year-old classic is undeniably the most 2020 movie of all time.” (Read the full Times article on the Best Movies of 2020, in which A.O. Scott put Sacha Baron Cohen’s satire at #1.)Where to watch: Stream it on Amazon Prime.‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’Won for: Best screenplay“‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ is a mixed bag. While [Aaron] Sorkin draws some of his dialogue from court transcripts, he also exercises the historical dramatist’s prerogative to embellish, streamline and invent. Some of the liberties he takes help to produce a leaner, clearer story, while others serve no useful purpose.” (Read the full Times review by A.O. Scott.)Where to watch: Stream it on Netflix.‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’Won for: Best actor, drama“Of course it’s hard to watch Levee — to marvel at [Chadwick] Boseman’s lean and hungry dynamism — without feeling renewed shock and grief at Boseman’s death earlier this year. And though ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ has been around for a long while and will endure in the archive, the algorithm and the collective memory, there is something especially poignant about encountering it now.” (Read the full Times review by A.O. Scott.)Where to watch: Stream it on Netflix.‘The United States vs. Billie Holiday’Won for: Best actress, drama“Andra Day, who plays Holiday, is a canny and charismatic performer, and the film’s hectic narrative is punctuated with nightclub and concert-hall scenes that capture some of the singer’s magnetism. Rather than lip-sync the numbers, Day sings them in a voice that has some of Holiday’s signature breathy rasp and delicate lilt, and suggests her ability to move from whimsy to anguish and back in the space of a phrase.” (Read the full Times review by A.O. Scott.)Where to watch: Stream it on Hulu.‘I Care a Lot’Won for: Best actress, musical or comedy“An unexpectedly gripping thriller that seesaws between comedy and horror, “I Care a Lot” is cleverly written (by the director, J Blakeson) and wonderfully cast. Marla is an almost cartoonish sociopath, and [Rosamund] Pike leans into her villainy with unwavering bravado.” (Read the full Times review by Jeannette Catsoulis here.)Where to watch: Stream it on Netflix.‘Judas and the Black Messiah’Won for: Best supporting actor“‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ represents a disciplined, impassioned effort to bring clarity to a volatile moment, to dispense with the sentimentality and revisionism that too often cloud movies about the ’60s and about the politics of race.” (Read the full Times review by A.O. Scott.)Awards Season More

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    ‘Minari’ wins best foreign-language film, but not without controversy.

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedMoments and AnalysisGlobes WinnersGolden Globes ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main story‘Nomadland,’ ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ and ‘The Crown’ Led a Remote Golden Globes‘Minari’ wins best foreign-language film, but not without controversy.Feb. 28, 2021, 10:00 p.m. ETFeb. 28, 2021, 10:00 p.m. ETMaya Salam and The director Lee Isaac Chung, with his daughter, accepting the foreign-language film award for “Minari.”Credit…NBC“Minari,” Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical story about a Korean-American family seeking the American dream in rural Arkansas during the 1980s, was the favorite for the best foreign-language film Golden Globe, and on Sunday night, it secured the trophy.“This one here, she’s the reason I made this film,” Chung said in his acceptance speech, while tightly hugging his young daughter. “Minari is about a family. It’s a family trying to learn how to speak a language of its own,” he said. “It goes deeper than any American language and any foreign language; it’s a language of the heart.”His message was a nod to the controversy surrounding his movie. The film did not meet the Globes’s 50 percent English language requirement — the characters mostly speak Korean — so it was entered under the foreign-language category, even though Chung, 42, is an American director, the movie was filmed in the United States and it was financed by American companies.[embedded content]And because “Minari” was in the foreign-language film category, it could not contend for the either best-picture awards. (Worth noting, the film’s distributor, A24, submitted “Minari” in the foreign-language category.) The cast of “Minari” was eligible for acting nominations but did not receive any.The classification drew accusations of racism and favoritism — Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” (2009), for example, did not meet the English language requirement either, and yet was nominated for a best-picture prize — and calls for changes to the rules.“Maybe the positive side of all of this is that we’ve made a film that challenges some of those existing categories, and adds to the idea that an American film might look and sound very differently from what we’re used to,” Chung recently told The New York Times. “It’s hard to say, ‘I demand a seat at a table for best picture.’”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More