Academy Award

By orfilms@gmail.com (slashfilm.com) When Harvey Weinstein picked up the $2 million rights to A Single Man, he’s said to have personally guaranteed director (and former Gucci creative director) Tom Ford an Oscar for Best Director or Best Picture. And though a statuette for either category seems unlikely given ’09’s ’stiff...

On Angelina Jolie, who won the 1999 Academy Award for best supporting actress for Girl, Interrupted (Winona starred in and produced the film): “I never had any bad feelings about Angelina. And I was hurt that people thought that. Everyone assumed I was really jealous because I thought this...

By Philip French Scripted by Diablo Cody, who won an Oscar for Juno, this is the week's only vampire movie. A semi-serious, extremely bloody affair, it's set in the town of Devil's Kettle, where a band of Goths sacrifice the high-school beauty (Megan Fox) to Satan to take their band into the big time. Unfortu...

By Sevilla Festival De Cine Europeo For his part, Colin Farrell joked about the age and experience of his companion Christopher Lee when he announced that, after all the time he's been working in cinema, "I'm very interested in working with the great geniuses and young talents like Mr. Lee".

The Man and Boy walking.(Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) The Man. The Man and Boy. The director.(John Hillcoat) The director. The Man and Boy. Movie Poster. The thief. Man and Boy. Those evil men. The Man and Boy. Man and boy. Source If Viggo doesn't get nominated for an Oscar,

By Alex Billington A Single Man is both written and directed by American fashion designer Tom Ford, who is making his directorial debut with this film. David Scearce also help co-write the script, which is based on Christopher Isherwood 's novel of the same name. This first premiered at the Toronto Film Festi...

Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti in The Last Station AFI FEST 2009, Sat., Nov. 7 at the Santa Monica Laemmle Theater 4 on 2nd Street in Santa Monica. AFI FEST 2009 comes to a close with the following screenings: Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, which is set near the end of Leo Tolsto...

By tomoneil Can you spot the Oscar nominee for best picture? Which nun role was not nominated at the Oscars? Which two films swept the guild awards but weren't nominated for best picture at the Oscars? Who gave this shocking acceptance speech at the Oscars?

By tomoneil • Dave Karger thinks "Precious" has a shot at landing at least five Oscar nods -- best picture, director, actress, supporting actress and screenplay. And he thinks, "Once people get past the strange concept of [Mariah] Carey as an Oscar contender, they won’t be able to deny the power of her...

By tomoneil Oscars predix: Who's ahead in the best-actress derby Inglourious Basterds' goes for drama at the Golden Globes nuggets: Hugh Jackman hails new Oscar hosts | 'A Town Called Panic' calms Oscars toon race | Yea or nay to last-minute Oscar entries? Oscars predix for best pix from 16 experts

Director/choreographer Adam Shankman has only been the co-producer of the Oscars for three weeks. But Shankman and his co-producer Bill Mechanic, former head of Twentieth Century Fox, have managed to lock down the biggest part of the job, the host. We talked to Shankman about wrangling v...

That the delicate love story at the heart of Once had also taken root in real life only added to the film's appeal, particularly in the States. A media whirlwind followed and, as the Oscars race kicked in, the two stars found themselves in other-worldly situations.

By Xan Brooks And so it's official: the 82nd Academy Awards will be hosted (or at least co-hosted) by Steve Martin. And while I still hold out hopes that the producers might one year take a punt on Jerry Seinfeld, I still think this qualifies as a welcome comeback. The organisers had presumably consigned M...

By tomoneil In 2001, Goldstein issued his earliest odds on the best-picture race, betting on "Ali" in August — long before he saw it and seven months before the Oscar ceremony took place — with 4-to-1 odds. "Ali" wasn't even nominated; "A Beautiful Mind" triumphed.

By tomoneil • Alex Ben Block takes an in-depth look at the expanded best picture race observing that, "Tried-and-true campaign strategies are being tweaked, the definition of an 'awards movie' is being re-evaluated, and some are even questioning whether the value of the best picture nomination h...

By tomoneil OSCARS • Oscars' best-picture race: 12 front-runners • Gutsy Envelope gurus predict Oscar's best picture nominees • Governors Awards presenters to include trio of Oscar winners GOLDEN GLOBES • Will 'Avatar' be nominated for best picture at the Oscars?

By tomoneil • Jeff Wells embeds the new trailer for "Green Zone" and wonders why Universal bumped this new pic by Oscar nominee Paul Greengrass ("United 93") to March. Theorizes Jeff, "They figured the Academy would never nominate two Iraq War movies for best picture, and that 'The Hurt Locker' was to...

The Hurt Locker, Precious and Clint Eastwood's new movie Invictus have emerged as Oscar Best Film favourites in the first serious Internet critics list of the awards season.

The shocking omission of "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" from the list of Gotham Awards nominees has triggered an uproar. Does this mean that there's a backlash against the likely Oscars contender since it swept top awards at the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals? Wi...

By tomoneil The shocking omission of "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" from the list of Gotham Awards nominees has triggered an uproar. Does this mean that there's a backlash against the likely Oscars contender since it swept top awards at the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals? Wi...

If it's the middle of October and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hasn't announced either a show producer or host for the upcoming ceremony people are going to start whispering. In fact, a very small group of people -- some of them Academy members -- are going to get a wee bit ne...

By tomoneil However, that may be a big plus for its Oscar hopes. Hollywood voters have always been accused of having blind veneration for Marxism even after the rise of Stalinism and Maoism and the fall of the Iron Curtain. Five years ago Meryl Streep won an Emmy for her fawning portrayal of a heroic Eth...

By FilmNewYork Award-winning producer Ted Hope, one of the most respected independent producers in the film industry, will be honored with the honorary Trailblazer Award at the 10th Anniversary edition of the Woodstock Film Festival, which opened today. Hope is a true indie pioneer who has shepherd...

By Daniel Getahun(noreply@blogger.com) In other words, I feel like Diablo Cody's gimmick is making high school students talk like witty, culturally-informed 30 year-olds - like Diablo Cody. And most of the one-liners were from her daily conversations. And that deserves an Oscar? And a BAFTA? And a WGA Award? And 17 other Best Scr...

By Jeremy Kay Awards season campaigning is like that. It's a sophisticated barrage of screenings, on-stage Q&A sessions, TV ads, screenings, appearances on the talk-show circuit, screenings and DVD screeners that bleeds into the psyche until the voters who decide these things are blubbering...

By Marshall Fine Jennifer pops up in Needy's kitchen later that night, covered with blood and spewing black vomit. The next day in class, however, Jennifer seems none the worse for wear. When male classmates start turning up brutally disemboweled, Needy eventually figures out that Jennifer is responsib...

By Gregory Weinkauf That genius -- né Melvin Kaminsky in New York in 1926, world-renowned as Mel Brooks -- received a glorious tribute Friday night at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theater, in Los Angeles. The capacity event was open to the public, and yet sustained a cozy fam...

By Xan Brooks, Jason Solomons, Andrew Pulver And finally, Jason meets Courtney Hunt, whose feature directorial debut Frozen River scored two nominations at this year's Oscars: best screenplay for her and best actress for Melissa Leo's gutsy portrayal of a woman forced into people-smuggling to make ends meet. Hunt shares why she c...

By Vanessa Thorpe We have got so much talent in this country, but our industry is just an adjunct of the American film industry," said Gems, who has submitted testimony to the committee. "Hollywood dominates. Of course, at the moment Hollywood has the best overall product, but we invented cinema in many resp...

By Barry Levinson I thought I'd ask one of the so-called treasured demographically enhanced viewers what they thought of the Oscar changes. I have been reading about the Academy of Motion Pictures changes for the coming Oscar telecast. What seems clear is that the changes are basically about achieving hig...

By Jason Solomons, Xan Brooks lt;p>On this edition of Film Weekly, Ryan Fleck, co-director of the Oscar-nominated Half Nelson, joins Jason Solomons to talk about his new film <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/126617/sugar">Sugar</a>, a subtle take on the American dream through t...

By Brad Balfour It had a very sizeable Japanese audience before the Academy Award but the box office has more than doubled [to over $60 million] after the Academy Award, yet there's a part of me that wishes it wouldn't take an Academy Award for it to get that big.

By Marshall Fine When Departures won the Oscar in February as best foreign-language film, no one was more surprised than director Yojiro Takita. But then, Departures was a... When Departures won the Oscar in February as best foreign-language film, no one was more surprised than director Yojiro Takita.

By Brad Balfour I made another picture, Harry Brown [recently] and I saw the one picture that the director Daniel Barber made. I think that it was called The Tonto Woman. He got nominated for the [Best Live Action Short] Oscar in 2008 for it and this is his first feature. So I like to do that. I mean, even Christoph...

By rss@youtube.com (kandeejohnson) Keywords: angelina jolie angelina make-up make up pin-up pin up cat eye liner eye-liner brad pitt brangelina angie hollywood celebrity kandee johnson make-up artist red carpet red-carpet pretty fast easy how to how-to tutorial retro glamour glam Oscars the oscars awards academy awa...

By tomoneil Can 'Watchmen' win over the Oscars? Cheers and boos for the Oscars show Live blogging the Oscars Get Gold Derby on Twitter. Join the Gold Derby Group at Facebook. Become friends with Tom O'Neil on Facebook. Get Gold Derby RSS feed via Facebook. RSS Feedburner. RSS Atom.

Shadow and movies and light and it's almost 11 pm, do you realize that? I really thought you people were going to bring this in on time... ish. We were doing so well, and then it's like, we have four awards left and suddenly they take ten minutes each or something. Here's a montage of the current best...

By Hugh Hart Despite the Academy's longstanding bias against popcorn flicks, Ledger is expected to win the Best Supporting Actor trophy Sunday. (The Academy also managed to toss six technical category nominations in the direction of Christopher Nolan's Batman epic.)

By Hannah Pool Are you going to the Oscars? Yes. I'm looking forward to it. It's my first time at the Oscars. It was my first time at the Baftas, the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, my first English film, my first everything. It couldn't have been a better first.

By Jason Solomons, Xan Brooks How does it feel to be nominated for a Bafta and what does it mean when you win one? Jason Solomons gets the lowdown from Simon Chinn, the Bafta-winning producer of Man On Wire, the acclaimed documentary about Philippe Petit's WTC wire-walk which is about to be rereleased theatrically – ap...

By tomoneil Nominated for 11 awards at the 1974 Oscars, "The Godfather: Part II" won six: best picture, director (Francis Ford Coppola), supporting actor (Robert De Niro), screenplay (Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo), music score and art direction. In the best picture derby, it beat Coppola's ot...

By tomoneil By winning best picture at the BAFTA Awards, "Slumdog Millionaire" just became the second film, after "American Beauty," to sweep the top prizes from all of these awards: Golden Globes, National Board of Review, Critics Choice and the four guilds — producers, directors, writers and ac...

By tomoneil Considering how restrictive the Oscars are about membership, let's guess that no more than half of that BAFTA gang also belongs to the Oscar academy. My guess is that means that there's probably an overlap of 1,000 voters between the two voting groups, which both have between 5,000 and 6,0...

By Jason Solomons, Catherine Shoard Next, Jason gets together with Catherine Shoard to review the reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road (clue: it ain't Titanic), Jean-Claude van Damme's comeback film JCVD (not Charlie Kaufman) and the reissued Barry Lyndon ("extraordinarily prescient a...

By orfilms@gmail.com (slashfilm.com) In this episode of the /Filmcast, Dave Chen, Devindra Hardawar, and Adam Quigley discuss their thoughts on this year’s deeply unsatisfying Oscar nominations, reflect on the intellectual bankruptcy of a Tom and Jerry movie, and vehemently debate the merits of Alan Ball’s Towelhead. We...

By Kyle Buchanan The year-end demolition derby that is Oscar season is ramping up, and among the next big films to face the gauntlet is Gus Van Sant's Harvey Milk biopic, Milk. Already the recipient of oodles of pre-release buzz (so there, says Focus Features), its release Wednesday will cap a period of rea...

By James Rocchi Alex Gibney's Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room won acclaim for its inventive, expressive but journalistic and rigorous expose of the facts and finances behind a story that came to represent turn-of-the-millennium capitalism gone mad. Now, with Taxi to the Dark Side, which opens tod...

By James Rocchi In an Esquire piece celebrating "The Casting Mistake of the Year," Joel and Ethan Coen explained how Josh Brolin wound up cast in one of No Country for Old Men's lead roles: "Our movie version of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men had Tommy Lee Jones in place -- no mistake there -- as a cr...

By James Rocchi What movies are going to be snubbed by Oscar because they don't speak Hollywood's language? Does Into the Wild play better for Baby Boomers than younger audiences? Can Once get a second chance? And do movie journalists have a responsibility to reflect the Oscar race, or to try and influen...

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: Escape Pod, the killer science fiction story podcast, is running all the Hugo nominees for best short story, starting with Tim Pratt's wonderful "Impossible Dreams," about a film-geek who discovers a video store from another dimension. He went to the Sci-Fi shelf—and ha...