Hi y’all. I’m not gonna lie, I was supposed to put this newsletter out earlier, but I’ve just been really fucking mad all week — nay, all year, which I guess is the fringe benefit of it being the first real week in January still? Mad about the general state of the world, I should clarify. I’m not mad about the ASC nominations. I thought those were nice; “Train Dreams” really does look that gorgeous, and IndieWire has made no secret of our collective love for Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s work on “Sinners,” too.

The Art Directors Guild’s and Casting Society’s nominations for their annual awards, respectively, were also interesting. A much more varied bunch, in both cases, because of all the different categories. CSA’s is less useful for predictions for the new casting Oscar category (and preempted by the Oscar shortlist, anyway), but the guild that gives some nominations love to “The Naked Gun,” is automatically the best guild. Congratulations, Casting Society, on your excellence. 

Anyway, hopefully, we’ll be back to our regular Tuesday slot next week to do one of my favorite things, which is for us all to be mystified by The Golden Globes together. 

There are some nice things on the site, though, this week. Jim Hemphill has a great piece on some cinematography that did not make the nominee cut for the ASC awards: Seamus McGarvey’s tragicomic camera in “Die My Love.” We’ve also got some more “Marty Supreme” appreciation for the Lower East Side (Jack Fisk’s Version), and ’80s bangers in a post-war period piece. Chris O’Falt has also been podcasting up a storm . Some really great conversations on Toolkit are out at last; I especially enjoyed the one he had with Mona Fastvold about “The Testament of Ann Lee.” It’s always great when a filmmaker dives in and articulates how they took conceptual ideas and translated them into a visual language, and Chris and Mona really get into that in terms of how the film opens up when it crosses the ocean and gets to America. 

We’ll have Chris up again this weekend with a fantastic Toolkit with Kristen Stewart on “The Chronology of Water.” Then I’m up to bat next week with talks with, first, Kleber Mendonça Filho on “The Secret Agent” — expect some really fun Saul Bass nerdery here, as well as a really wide-ranging conversation about filmmaking tools; then we’ll have a Toolkit with Park Chan-wook on “No Other Choice” — yes, I was completely overwhelmed by how smart about cinema, especially sound, Director Park is, but I did not run from the room screaming; please clap. 

Oh, and we’ve also just had IndieWire’s first edition of our Craft Roundtables air on PBS SoCal, and they are now available to stream on pbssocal.org. Those were talks I was intensely jealous of not being in the room for these — each group of department heads is really fun; they’re working on movies with very diverse budgets and goals, so you get all sorts of perspectives, but there are themes across the care and (pun intended) craft in the work. But now all of us can be! Take it easy, newsletter reader, and see you next week. 

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