Here’s what happened today in Oscar History.
Born








Died




Released




Oscar Nominations

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(February 21, 2021) Original
May 28, 2021
From IMDb: “A live-action prequel feature film following a young Cruella de Vil.”
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Review: (#1) There’s little interesting about this design. It looks like Emma Stone is posing for a fashion magazine rather than a film poster. (#2) While this isn’t much more interesting than the prior design, Stone’s smirk certainly makes more of a statement here.
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Review: Emma Stone’s voiceover might set the place, but it doesn’t set a sufficient tone. That comes later in the trailer which has a lot of interesting visual elements, but doesn’t quite make the film feel necessary.
A contender for Production Design, Costume Design, and Makeup & Hairstyling. I don’t see it competing anywhere else.
We had one film release this past weekend with the potential for Oscar nominations.
I had already written this one a few months ago when it was going to release within 2020 rather than a brief critics-qualifying run. Here’s a link back to it.
(February 14, 2021) Original
February 12, 2021
From IMDb: “A scheduling mix-up at an Airbnb brings four twenty-somethings together, each navigating the open waters of where, how, and with whom they’re supposed to be.”
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Review: (#1) With a film that includes a sort of love triangle, it seems strange to ignore that and go for something simplistic and fakely romantic with a color scheme that’s not that interesting.
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Review: Having the protagonist take his glasses off at a regular interval makes it difficult to follow the narrative. There’s a modest throughline of his voice that kind of keeps things going, but it’s insufficient. As a result, this romantic love triangle doesn’t seem nearly as interesting as it should.
None.
Below are seven previews for films opening next weekend.
(February 14, 2021) Original
February 5, 2021
From IMDb: “A grandson of a Klansman comes of age in the deep south and eventually joins the Civil Rights Movement. Based on Bob Zellner’s autobiography “The Wrong Side of Murder Creek.””
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Review: (#1) The colors work, but the staid character positions and insets are utterly unoriginal. (#2) Take the prior design, re-do the insets to something more interesting, but eliminate all the unique colors and keep everything else the same and you have an uninspired design.
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Review: The first thing you should do when you come up with an idea that has a white man at the center of the Civil Rights movement is decide if it’s a story that really has to be told. This trailer does nothing to sell that idea to the viewer, making it feel like a shoddy effort.
None.
(February 14, 2021) Original
January 29, 2021
From IMDb: “A woman with an adopted child is contacted unexpectedly by the child’s birth mother.”
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Review: There was no poster immediately available for my review. Should one become available in the future, this section will be updated.
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Review: There’s an interesting premise about adoptive mothers and teen motherhood at the heart of this film, but the trailer moves along so ploddingly that it’s difficult to maintain interest through to the end.
None.
Every week, we’ll take a look back in 5-year intervals at the box office past to explore how Oscar’s nominees were doing at the box office each weekend historically. The first section under each year is the positioning of all Oscar nominees during that weekend at the box office (as well as a section looking at the inflation-adjusted numbers). The third section is an alphabetical list of those films and the categories in which they were nominated. And to start each week off, we’ll be looking at the films releasing over the weekend that have the best chance of getting Oscar nominations and specifying the categories where we think they have the best shots at this stage of the game. If you have any suggestions for more data you’d like to see, please let us know.
Oscar Potential: Picture, Directing, Actress (Frances McDormand), Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Film Editing, Cinematography.
Below are our face-offs for this week. Choose the better winner in each category. For more information on how the game works, click here.