The Hollywood Reporter Award Special 43A, December 16, 2021

The most prized films of the 2020-21 awards season seemed to show America its true face, puncturing a fantasy of perennial optimism. Movies like Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, Minari, Judas and the Black Messiah, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One Night in Miami, The United States vs. Billie Holiday and even Borat Subsequent Moviefilm each confronted the myth of the American dream; 2020 was a year of medical, cultural and economic turmoil that left many real-life people on the brink, and this year presented new social challenges in that wake of those omnicrises. The Great Resignation. The so-called “labor shortage.” The work-from-home question. As people around the world continue to rebuild and reevaluate their lives following the pandemic-related upheavals of the past two years —…

Don’t Look Up — a satirical black comedy that follows astronomers (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) trying to warn the world of an Everest-size comet on a direct collision course with Earth — reteamed writer-director Adam McKay and veteran editor Hank Corwin, who received Oscar nominations for his work on his two previous collaborations with McKay, The Big Short and Vice. For this Netflix film, Corwin was again called upon to combine various tones. “It’s a grand comedy until it isn’t,” he says of the story that was written with the climate crisis in mind. “One of the huge challenges was figuring out what the tone of the movie was and how it evolved. It was always moving. It was always kinetic.” One of the first scenes Corwin…

BEST PICTURE Sian Heder’s charming portrait of a hearing girl from an otherwise deaf family — the film swept Sundance this year en route to a record-breaking distribution deal with Apple — was a surprise inclusion on the top 10 list announced Dec. 8 by the American Film Institute. This black-and-white take on the Shakespeare classic, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand under the direction of McDormand’s husband, Joel Coen, brought more good news for Apple — and co-distributor A24 — when it landed in the AFI top 10. Amazon was shut out of the AFI top 10 list, even though most people thought that this Aaron Sorkin-directed behind-the-scenes portrait of a week in the lives of I Love Lucy stars Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem)…

“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That’s what I was put here to do.”WILL SMITH The King Richard star, to Interview magazine, reflecting on why he performs and what inspires him to keep coming back to it. “Meryl Streep was our last choice.”JENNIFER LAWRENCE The Don’t Look Up star, to Vanity Fair, joking that “so many other actresses had passed” on Streep’s role in the Netflix film. “Who the fuck cares about Adam McKay?”ADAM MCKAY The Don’t Look Up director, to Vanity Fair, musing about the fading concept of celebrity, particularly in regard to himself. “This poor guy had to tell Lin-Manuel Miranda every day not to sing.”ALEXANDRA SHIPP The Tick, Tick … Boom! star, to Town and Country magazine, remembering that the movie’s castmembers couldn’t sing too closely to…

Asghar Farhadi is a brilliant writer and director who at just 49 is already among the most accomplished filmmakers ever to emerge from Iran. The Hollywood Reporter has said that his films have “revolutionized new Iranian cinema, pulling it out of the much beaten path of realism pioneered by directors like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and onto a new, highly dramatized and theatrical road.” His films explore contemporary life’s complexities and moral dilemmas via brilliant screenplays that the Los Angeles Times has compared to a Russian doll, with “stories that are inside each other,” and that NPR has likened to an onion: “You peel one layer and there’s another layer fresh, ready for you.” Five of the nine features he has directed were chosen by Iran to represent it…

STUDIO Amazon RELEASE DATE Dec. 10 CAST Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, J.K. Simmons, Nina Arianda BEING THE RICARDOS Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem star in writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes drama set during one rocky week of production on I Love Lucy REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON DEC. 7 Hollywood adores few things more than a Hollywood story, so there should be no shortage of folks nostalgic for bygone studio days, ready to eat up Being the Ricardos. But this chronicle of a fraught week in the production of CBS’ phenomenally popular 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy, and the personal and professional lives of its married stars, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, arguably is as much about Aaron Sorkin as his celebrated subjects. From the walk-and-talks to the smug swipes at almost…