‘Memory’ Offers Painful Reminder the Academy Still Owes Peter Sarsgaard an Oscar Nom: Will They Remember This Year?

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Andrey Zvyagintsev, the two-time Oscar-nominated Russian filmmaker of “Loveless” and “Leviathan,” will next direct “Jupiter,” a politically-minded movie set to shoot in Spain and France next spring. The movie will tell the story of a Russian oligarch’s reckoning with the harsh reality of his family’s future.

Hot on the heels of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the Invictus Games in Germany, it was the Prince of and Princess of Wales’ turn to shine. While Kate stepped out for important engagements in the UK, William jetted across ‘the pond’ for the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit in New York, armed with his ambitious goal to save the planet via the ten-year project. But there was heartache behind William’s heroism, arriving on Prince Harry’s adopted US ‘home turf’ amid no sign of a reconciliation between the two brothers.

Michael Nordine author Much like its protagonist — a ghastly superhero who gains his powers after falling into a vat of chemical waste — “The Toxic Avenger” refuses to die. Made for a paltry $500,000 in 1984, Troma’s cult classic spawned three direct sequels, a rock musical, two video games, a short-lived animated series and now a remake starring Peter Dinklage. Given the eco-friendly, anti-pollution message at the improbable franchise’s core, perhaps its reemergence shouldn’t be surprising.

Pete Kozachik, a visual effects and stop-motion artist whose work on acclaimed animated films by Tim Burton, Henry Selick and others brought recognition and an Oscar nomination, died Sept. 12 at his California home in the Bay Area following a years-long battle with aphasia and primary progressive aphasia. He was 72.

Guy Lodge Film Critic That perky exclamation point sets the tone for “Coup!,” a story of murder, class struggle, One Percent entitlement and a global pandemic that nonetheless unfolds with all the eager, scrappy energy of an off-Broadway musical, minus most of the songs. The pandemic in question is not the one you’re thinking of — Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman’s puckish comic thriller unfolds against the dire backdrop of the 1918 Spanish Flu — but it also sort of is, as its study of wealthy exceptionalism in a time of national crisis is clearly intended to chime with more recent memories of regimented distancing and mixed safety messages from on high.

Jessica Chastain is shutting down rumours about her personality on set.

John Waters shocked audiences with “Pink Flamingos” more than 50 years ago, he probably didn’t foresee major museum exhibitions of his trashy aesthetic and irreverent filmmaking. But half a century later, he’s become the elder statesman of rebellion, and the Academy Museum is celebrating Baltimore’s treasure with a career-spanning exhibit and accompanying film retrospective.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor It’s officially an original Barbie World. Greta Gerwig’s smash hit “Barbie,” which she co-wrote with Noah Baumbach, is a box office smash that has so far grossed more than $1.4 billion. Its awards prospects also continue to increase by the day.

Sean Penn is getting candid about politics and the Oscars.

Jessica Chastain is continuing the press tour for new movie!

Josh Allen is the quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and his love life is definitely going to be in the spotlight during the NFL season.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a proud brother-in-law right now!

Peter Sarsgaard and Cailee Spaeny were among the winners at the 2023 Venice Film Festival!

Christopher Vourlias Six years after “Loving Vincent,” their groundbreaking biopic of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh earned an Oscar nomination and raked in more than $50 million at the global box office, the filmmaking team behind that hit is back with a bigger, more ambitious animated feature that utilizes the same stunning hand-painted animation technique to tell an operatic story of life and love in a 19th century Polish village. “The Peasants” world premiered Sept.

Guy Lodge Film Critic The closing-night awards ceremony of the 80th Venice Film Festival has concluded, with the critical favorite and presumed frontrunner, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Emma Stone-starring adult fantasy “Poor Things,” living up to the buzz — it has taken the Golden Lion from Damien Chazelle’s jury. Other winners include Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Agnieszka Holland, Matteo Garrone and U.S.

With three competition titles across the last four editions, no contemporary filmmaker has been more present on the Venice Lido than director Michel Franco. 

Ellise Shafer Michel Franco’s heartbreaking drama “Memory” earned a strong eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Friday night as stars Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard wiped away tears. Franco, Chastain and Sarsgaard embraced as the audience cheered them on, with each taking their turn in the spotlight to accept the applause. After the crowd clapped for several minutes, Chastain was visibly emotional, dabbing at her eyes as she smiled with pride.

Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) lives behind an exceptionally well-locked door. Her apartment has three locks of different kinds, keeping out anyone who managed to get past the intercom protecting the front entrance. As a woman living alone with a teenage daughter, perhaps she has her reasons. Just tonight, a man followed her home from her high school reunion, catching the same train, shadowing her from the station and finally sleeping outside her building under a plastic bag. Strangely, she is quite blasé about that: In the morning, she deals with it, demanding this man’s phone and finding someone in his contacts who can come and pick him up.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “Memory” feels like the “Silver Linings Playbook” of Michel Franco’s career: an unexpectedly accessible romance between two damaged human beings, from an independent director who’s been known to put characters through some of life’s most punishing indignities. The previous film of Franco’s that it most resembles is “Chronic,” though the tough-love auteur spares us the bummer ending this time around. In that movie, he followed a hospice nurse through his rounds, then abruptly cut to black when the guy was sideswiped by a car.