‘Hamnet’ Wins the VAFF Audience Award
The 38th annual Virginia Film Festival has honored Hamnet, Chloe Zhao’s fictionalized take on the death of Shakespeare’s son, for...
David Phillips has been a Senior Writer for The Contending from its inception on 8/26/2024. He is a writer for film and TV and creator of the Reframe series, devoted to looking at films from the past through a modern lens. Before coming to The Contending, David wrote for Awards Daily in the same capacity from August 2018 to August 2024. He has covered the Oscars in person (2024), as well as the Virginia Film Festival, and served as a juror for both the short and the full-length narrative film categories for the Heartland Film Festival(2024) He is a proud member of GALECA and the IFJA.
The 38th annual Virginia Film Festival has honored Hamnet, Chloe Zhao’s fictionalized take on the death of Shakespeare’s son, for...
Chloe Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of Nomadland, took four years between helming Eternals for Marvel before returning with Hamnet. Zhao...
The Choral: It has been more than thirty years since Director Nicholas Hytner’s first film, The Madness of King George,...
Night four at the Virginia Film Festival was spent watching two films that showcase men grappling with the unforgiving natural...
Day 3 of the Virginia Film Festival could be called Foreign Film Friday. Last night I viewed the Oscar contender...
Night two of the Virginia Film Festival was all about two very different women attempting to make their way through...
Well, baby, everything dies, that's a fact But maybe everything that dies someday comes back –Atlantic City, Bruce Springsteen For...
I went to Lilith Fair in its inaugural year (1997) for one reason and one reason only: Sarah McLachlan. It...
The early brief on the Best Actor category was that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s foray into the field of “serious...
I’m under no illusions that any documentary with the full compliance of a political subject is going to be unbiased....