Really good structure, well paced, with terrific acting all around.

Yep. It's just a solid, well-made and well-acted film, and I enjoyed it thoroughly even though I don't give two hoots about car racing.

Last night was Producer's Guild Award and 1917 won it for Best Picture, which is a good barometer for its Oscar chances. On a related note, Hahaha I love Rian Johnson.

Right now, my Oscar winner predictions go something like this:

Best Picture: 1917
Best Director: Bong Joon Ho (vs. Quentin Tarantino)
Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix
Best Actress: Renee Zellweger
Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt
Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern
Best Original Screenplay: QT for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (vs Noah Baumbach for Marriage Story)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Greta Gerwig for Little Women
Best International Feature: Parasite
Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 4
Best Documentary: American Factory
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins for 1917
Best Editing: Parasite
Best Production Design: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Sound Editing/Mixing: 1917 or Ford v Ferrari, maybe they'll split them since there are 2 awards
Original Score: Thomas Newman for 1917
Make up and Hair: Bombshell
Costume Design: Little Women (vs OUATIH)

OK, that's a complete shut-out for The Irishman, which doesn't sound quite right. Not sure which of my picks I'd push out to make room for it though.

I gotta admit, I haven't watched American Factory yet but I mostly want it to win for Best Doc so that Barack and Michelle Obama (who are producers for the film) could go up on the stage and give a rousing acceptance speech.

I follow Rian Johnson on Twitter (he's a fun follow if you ignore the occasional d-bags that still yell at him in his mentions for ruining Star Wars > 2 years later) and he just posted a photo of the gift he received from Danica McKellar (!) for mentioning her in Knives Out: [link]

That made me smile really wide. I *have* watched some of McKellar's TV movies -- haven't seen any thrillers, but she makes for a plucky and likable rom-com heroine. Also, happy as a clam that both Johnson and Daniel Craig are planning for a second Benoit Blanc movie!

On an unrelated note, NYT has an interview/oral history with the cast and crew on the making of Linklater's Before trilogy, which are some of my favourite films ever made: [link]

Talk about romantic poetry for Gen-Xers everywhere. Trying to imagine Michael Vartan (who was apparently the second choice) as Jesse breaks my brain a little. Who knows if he'd have had the same magical chemistry Hawke had with Delpy? We might not have had the 2nd and 3rd films.

I follow Rian Johnson on Twitter (he's a fun follow if you ignore the occasional d-bags that still yell at him in his mentions for ruining Star Wars > 2 years later) and he just posted a photo of the gift he received from Danica McKellar (!) for mentioning her in Knives Out: [link]

That is fantastic.

I saw a news item - it may have been originally from The Onion - but seemingly an older, devout Catholic lady had a saint's statue set up in a shrine in her home and she's pray to it. Turns out the saint was Elrond ....

Not the Onion. [link]

That is beautiful. I didn't see anything in the article about how effective prayers to St. Elrond were. Would he be the saint of fathers whose daughters make unexpected choices?

Isn't that all fathers with daughters?

He could be the patron saint of committees.

That's pretty good

I was just browsing a site setting life-size cardboard cutouts of celebrities and came across one of January Jones: [link]

How would you be able to tell they sent you the reproduction rather than the original?

If you're in the mood for ladies punching guys, you could do worse than Birds of Prey.