Notes On The Season: AFI’s Feel Good Awards Lunch; Benedict Cumberbatch Rocks SBIFF; And Shawn Levy On His Underdog Oscar Contender
12.03.2022 - 05:51
/ deadline.com
A column chronicling events and conversations on the awards circuit.
The AFI Awards 2021 for movies and television are always on of the highlights of the awards season. While they were take place on January 7 at their usual haunt — the Four Seasons — Omicron got in the way and AFI brass decided to play it safe and move to a March date. Their time finally came today, but at a new venue the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
The lunch, which draws the stars and creatives as well as top executives to an environment where none of them give speeches and everyone is a winner, with all going out on a high, kicked off a crucial weekend, the final one before Oscar balloting begins on March 17. Usually AFI is the Friday before the Globes and was planned for that slot again, but you know what happened with that.
Now, however, the event has taken on even more importance, as it puts a timely spotlight on its movie winners, eight out of ten which also match the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture — an even more prescient feat, given they were selected three months ago.
At the pre-lunch reception I chatted with AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale and mentioned the interesting situation where the four groups that anoint ten, rather than five, Best Pictures as it were – AFI, Critics Choice, PGA and the Academy, of course – all lined up with pretty much the same list, no more than two apart in any instance. Gazzale said, without disclosing specifics, that the AFI juried selections were almost all very close in the final count. That confirms my belief that this remains a very fluid year where a few votes can separate several movies at the top. With Critics Choice also delayed until this weekend, that show placed so close for the first time to the
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