"Perfectly a Strangeness": three donkeys explore the grounds of the La Silla Observatory in the mountains of Chile. It's gorgeous to look at, and I liked the contrast between the natural surroundings and the workings of the automated telescope, but this seemed very slight to us. (49/50) #oscarwatch
It was great to have those exact same feelings a few years ago and I'm glad you're getting them now! Good luck this season (except when Legacy plays Racing of course).
30 years ago tonight:
Beck, "Girl"
โIf I Had Legs Iโd Kick Youโ: the mother of a young daughter with a feeding condition has to confront crises on about 14 fronts at once - both personal and professional - with no support system. Rose Byrne is amazing in this but I donโt know that this is a film you โenjoyโ. (48/50) #oscarwatch
"The Devil is Busy": a day in the life of the staff at an Atlanta-area women's health clinic, particularly through the eyes of the chief of security. (47/50) #oscarwatch
"Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" (I prefer the Urge Overkill version)
Crossword clue reading โโFeliz ___ nuevo!โ (Spanish "happy new anus!")โ
We at AVCX crosswords believe that N and ร are different letters
A man named Jaafar is playing his uncle, the title character, in an upcoming 2026 biopic. What is their shared surname?
R.E.M., "Begin the Begin"
we finally reached the end of this calendar event i accidentally made 12 years ago
"แนขawt Hind Rajab (The Voice of Hind Rajab)": workers at a Red Crescent office in the West Bank talk to a 6-year-old girl in Gaza trapped in a car after the other passengers were killed, and desperately try to get an ambulance to her. Her voice is taken from actual recordings. (46/50) #oscarwatch
"Children No More: 'Were and Are Gone'": a group of activists in Tel Aviv lead a weekly silent protest, holding up photos of Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks. (By the end of the film, over 18,000 such children were known to be dead.) (45/50) #oscarwatch
There was a contest years ago in Games Magazine to write the best review of a film by anagramming the letters in the title. IIRC the winning entry was "The Towering Inferno: Not Worth Fire Engine".
Welcome to LL108, LLamas!
Not only extremely white, but expensive.
"Jane Austen's Period Drama": after a proposal gets interrupted when he believes she's injured upon seeing period blood on her dress, the bride-to-be and her sisters secretly argue the merits of disclosing the ins and outs of the female reproductive cycle to the clueless suitor. (44/50) #oscarwatch
"Deux personnes รฉchangeant de la salive (Two People Exchanging Saliva)": in a surreal world where kissing gets you shoved into a cardboard box and tossed off a cliff, and people pay for things by being slapped, a lonely housewife and a playful shopgirl feel a mutual attraction. (43/50) #oscarwatch
"Butcher's Stain": an Arab Israeli man working as a butcher in a grocery store is anonymously accused of pulling down a poster of Israeli hostages in the break room. (42/50) #oscarwatch
"A Friend of Dorothy": an elderly widow (Miriam Margolyes) and a young Black man have an unlikely friendship, as he provides her companionship (and opens her daily cans of prunes) and she encourages his interest in becoming an actor. Probably my fave of the live-action shorts. (41/50) #oscarwatch
"The Singers": the denizens of a rundown bar have an impromptu singing contest for $100 and a free beer. Loosely based on a novel by Ivan Turgenev. (40/50) #oscarwatch
As Becky notes in a follow-up post, the photographer was Elsa of Getty Images, and you better believe sheโs consistently the best sports photog in the world. At this point, I just assume itโs her when I see an incredible shot
USA USA USA!!!
What three-letter ticker symbol does the company Harley-Davidson trade as on the New York Stock Exchange?
"Retirement Plan": Domhnall Gleeson narrates an old man's list of things he'd like to do now that he's retired, ranging from the silly (gonna organize the computer desktop!), to the poignant, to the practical, to the sad. Probably my favorite of this year's animated shorts. (39/50) #oscarwatch
"Papillon (Butterfly)": a gorgeous remembrance of Olympic swimmer Alfred Nakache, a Jew from Algeria who competed for France, but was barred from competing in the 1936 Berlin games and eventually sent to Auschwitz (where the rest of his family died). Animated via oil painting! (38/50) #oscarwatch
โThe Girl Who Cried Pearlsโ: a Parisian man tells his his granddaughter a tall tale about his hardscrabble youth in Montreal, when he lived next door to a pretty but sad girl whose tears turned into pearls. (37/50) #oscarwatch
โForevergreenโ: imagine โThe Giving Treeโ, but with a stop-motion bear instead of a boy. I could have done without the Bible verse at the end. (36/50) #oscarwatch
โThe Three Sistersโ: three sisters living alone on a small island vie for the attention of a burly sailor who rents one of their houses. (35/50) #oscarwatch
"ๅฝๅฎ (Kokuho)": the son of a yakuza boss goes to live and train with a master kabuki actor, and the film tracks the ups and downs of his career as he tries to become the greatest "onnagata" (male actor of female parts) in the world. "Kokuho" is Japanese for "national treasure". (34/50) #oscarwatch
