This month there is a plethora of awards season contenders.
Opening on 6 November 2019, the biographical adventure ‘The Aeronauts’ stars Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl) and Felicity Jones (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story). The pair are reunited for the first time since ‘The Theory of Everything’ five years ago in which they delivered leading performances which won Redmayne an Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe and Jones nominations for all three. Will we see similar success this time?
Helen Mirren (The Last Station) and Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters) will appear in the drama thriller ‘The Good Liar’, directed and co-produced by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), released on 8 November 2019. While Mirren and Condon already have Oscars (for acting and writing, respectively), McKellen hasn’t but could that change this year?
Directed by James Mangold (Walk The Line), the biographical drama ‘Ford v Ferrari’ (titled ‘Le Mans ‘66’ here) will drive onto the silver screen on 15 November 2019 with Matt Damon (Invictus) and Christian Bale (Vice) in the leading roles. Oscars have been claimed by Damon and Bale before (for writing and acting, respectively) while Mangold received his first Oscar nomination for his previous film ‘Logan’. Could he join them by winning next year?
On 22 November 2019 the biographical film ‘Harriet’, about the slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman, will open in cinemas. Cynthia Erivo (Widows) has already won a Tony, Grammy and Daytime Emmy so could this be the film that competes her EGOT with an Oscar?
In Scotland I attended Dunfermline High School from 2010 to 2016 and Edinburgh Napier University from 2016 to 2020, emerging with two Advanced Higher and five Higher qualifications from the former and graduating with an undergraduate bachelor of arts honours degree in journalism from the latter. After two years away from further education due to the coronavirus pandemic, I'm going to be studying the MFA Photography course at York St John University in England from 2022 to 2024. I've achieved The Duke of Edinburgh’s (Bronze) Award and received grade five level certification for electronic keyboard from Trinity College London. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, writing, watching television series, listening to music and going to the cinema as well as catching up with friends, travelling by railway and hostelling overnight and overindulging in food and drinks in a pub or restaurant then having to go to the gym to burn it all off again.
By studying journalism and photography, my aim of practicing photojournalism professionally will hopefully be once step closer. Both are partial artforms requiring the rest of the work to be undertaken by the audience, the specialism of photojournalism, however, providing each of its two parts with greater context. Exploring photographic techniques (aerial, timelapse, editing) through a variety of journalistic styles (features, poetry, songwriting) will allow me to develop my portfolio, hone my camera skillset and narrow my focus further in anticipation of working life. Without a global pandemic to deal with this time. Fingers crossed.
