Advertisement

Newsletter: Gold Standard: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ wins its first honor. More to come?

Share

Welcome to the Gold Standard, the newsletter from the Los Angeles Times that helps guide you through the ins and outs of the awards season, leading up to the Oscars. I’m Glenn Whipp, The Times’ awards columnist and your newsletter host. 'Tis the week before Christmas, which means Hollywood is about to hibernate with DVD screener stacks of award contenders. Let's survey the landscape.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" was honored this week by the American Film Institute. (Disney/Lucasfilm)

'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' makes the AFI list

AFI jurors -- comprised of journalists, academics and film critics -- delayed their list this year so they could watch all the movies. (Imagine that.) A day after seeing "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the American Film Institute announced its AFI Awards. And guess what? "Star Wars" made the list, along with "The Big Short," "Bridge of Spies," "Carol," "Inside Out," "Mad Max: Fury Road," "The Martian," "Room," "Spotlight" and "Straight Outta Compton."

Was the inclusion of "The Force Awakens" the result of a sugar high or a case of good timing? In my experience, there is no such thing as luck. But we'll see. Academy members will have two chances to see the movie this weekend.

The latest on the best picture Oscar race

I'm not including "The Force Awakens" among my predicted best picture nominees (yet). One film moving up on the list, which you can read here, is "The Big Short," the caustic comedy detailing how the subprime mortgage bubble caused the economy to collapse in 2008 and why it might very well happen again. Sounds like fun, huh? Actually, in the capable hands of Adam McKay, it is. And, with awards voters at least,  it looks like it's ahead of "The Revenant," "Joy" and "The Hateful Eight," a trio of movies that entered December with outsized Oscar expectations.

Michael Fassbender, the star of "Steve Jobs." (Robert Caplin / For the Los Angeles Times)

Michael Fassbender talks 'Steve Jobs,' iPhone etiquette

I sat down with Fassbender and "Jobs" director Danny Boyle at the New York Film Festival during a brief break that the perpetually working actor had from shooting "Assassins Creed." We talked about "Jobs," of course, and also about all those devices the Apple co-founder helped bring into our world.

"The levels of communication now, whether it's texting, answering the phone, emailing, twittering … where does one find the time?" Fassbender asks. "It's an annoyance. Bing! Bing! Bing! We'd all be in a better place mentally, I think, if we just turned them off and looked at each other."

For the record: He didn’t check his phone once in the hour we spent together.

Still on the fence about whether 'The Martian' is a comedy?

Take this quiz. It might help.

Feedback?

I’d love to hear from you. Email me at glenn.whipp@latimes.com.

Can’t get enough about awards season? Follow me at @glennwhipp on Twitter

Advertisement