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Living in a small town, away from LA and the glitz and glam of Hollywood, I’m always supportive of my local film festivals, be it the long and well-known Mill Valley Film Festival or San Francisco International Film Festival to the young upstarts like the Alexander Valley Film Festival put on by the Alexander Valley Film Society up in Sonoma …

Elle Fanning (20th Century Women) stars as Violet Valesnki, a shy teenager who dreams of escaping her small town and pursuing her passion to sing. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a local singing competition that will test her integrity, talent and ambition. Driven by a pop-fueled soundtrack and featuring music by Robyn, Ellie Goulding (that’s “Lights” …

Album of the Year winner Kacey Musgraves (Golden Hour) Country singer Kacey Musgraves won the Grammy Album of the Year, part of her clean sweep. She won all four of her nominations tonight that also included Country Album (Golden Hour), Country Song (“Space Cowboy”) and Country Solo Performance (“Butterflies”). She became the first country performer to win Album of the …

Roma (Netflix)The Favourite (Fox Searchlight) Alfonso Cuarón intimate epic Roma, which he directed, wrote, edited and shot, has won the 2019 BAFTA for Best Film. It also picked up wins for Director, Cinematography and Film Not in the English Language. Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite was the big winner of the evening though, taking seven wins of its field-best 12 nominations …

Cold War (Amazon) In a bit of an upset (or was it?), Łukasz Żal has won the feature film prize from the American Society of Cinematographers for his black and white lensing of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War. The 33rd American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Awards were held Saturday night at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland. Żal …

Leave No Trace (Bleecker Street) The 31st USC Scripter Awards were held last night at the Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library and gave us quite a surprise. Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace came out on top. The USC Scripter awards both the adaptation and the original source so Granik and Anne Rosellini were awarded along with author Peter Rock from …

Black Panther (Disney)If Beale Street Could Talk (Annapurna Pictures) Black Panther dominated the 19th Black Reel Awards with record-breaking 10 wins, including Outstanding Motion Picture, Outstanding Actor (Chadwick Boseman), Outstanding Supporting Actor (Michael B. Jordan) and Outstanding Director (Ryan Coogler). The film had a record-setting 17 nominations. Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk was next with four major wins …

Mark Bridges, Costume Design winner for Phantom Thread, gave the shortest speech at the 90th Oscars – 52 seconds (photo: The Hollywood Reporter) Earlier this week I detailed what it would take to get to a 3-hour Oscar telecast (and why I think they shouldn’t do it) that included a full time breakdown of last year’s show. Today, as an …

Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman reign in The Favourite The battle for the favourite performance of 2018 turned out to be a real battle of The Favourite(s). Co-stars Olivia Colman and Rachel Weisz took the top 2 spots on the AwardsWatch annual list of favourite performances of the year. It was the second time that the top two spots were …

Production Team Welcomes New Faces, Includes Veterans Producers Donna Gigliotti and Glenn Weiss today announced 11 key members of the production team for the 91st Oscars, which will air live on Sunday, February 24th on ABC.  It was previously announced that Weiss would be returning as director for his fourth consecutive year, while sharing producing duties with Gigliotti for the …