So, the Oscar nominations are here. I’m not trying to sound too cool, but I don’t really care. I barely pay attention the awards in the groups that I vote for, and as usual, the Academy Awards don’t share my particular taste. For the most part, the nominees are safe and expected and what they are.
Admittedly, when I heard Greta Gerwig was making yet another adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, I wasn’t particularly enthused. I’m a fan of Gerwig, as an actor, writer, and now director—Lady Bird was one of my favorite movies of 2017. But come on, this novel had already been adapted roughly one million times. (And for those of us of a certain age, Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 version is pretty definitive.) Why couldn’t she focus on telling original stories and new ideas and all that? Yeah, I was wrong, this is delightful.
It’s that time of year again. The calendar is running out, the holidays loom on the horizon, and every turns to the past year to reflect and examine. And for film critics, that means looking over the movie offerings and evaluating the haul. I’m fortunate enough to belong to multiple groups of like-minded film nerds, and one of them, the Seattle Film Critics Society just announced our nominations for our end-of-year awards.
