Academy Award

They're going to increase the number of Best Picture nominees to 10 starting with next year's ceremony in a bid for more TV viewers. But there are not going to be any more than five actual contenders unless they also increase the number of Best Director nominees from five. Since I started hand...

Disappointingly, I think Michael Mann's much-anticipated (by me and many othes) "Public Enemies'' -- which screened last night in Manhattan in advance of Chicago premiere tonight and its July 1 opening (when I will have an actual review) -- is probably going to have a hard time getting a...

Just in case anyone had the slightest doubt, Pixar is going to receive another Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature and is the putative frontrunner for its latest instant classic, "Up.'' Arguably Pixar's funniest, most touching and most beautifully drawn feature, it's a massive...

The Oscars are mercifully over, but TCM's 31 Days of Oscar (begun back when the Oscars were held in March, a month that actually had 31 days, in case you were wondering) runs through next Tuesday. Tonight's first premiere, at 8 p.m. Eastern, is the underrated William Dieterle's masterpiece,...

Tyler Perry's "Madea Goes to Jail'' will collect a plus-sized $23 million over Oscar weekend, predicts Steve Mason at Big Hollywood. Per Tyler and Lionsgate's usual policy, there were no advance screenings for critics. Joe Leydon of Variety caught a midnight show and renders this very qu...

Pygmalion'' (1938), tonight's TCM premiere at 8 p.m. EST, has long been in the shadow of George Cukor's lumbering musical remake "My Fair Lady,'' which follows at 10. Which is a shame, since "Pygmalion'' is a great, vividly rendered film while "My Fair Lady'' is basically a transcription of...

Sunday night's big TCM premiere (8 p.m.) is Mitchell Leisen's never-on-video "No Time for Love'' (1943) one of seven films, all but one a comedy, starring the popular team of Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. In an amusing and offbeat entry from this underrated film stylist, Fred is a hu...

Richard Quine's "Bell Book and Candle'' (1958) has been on TCM before and it is available on DVD (in a regrettably bare-bones edition from Sony) but it is one of my favorite movies, so just try and stop me. Showing Thursday at 10 p.m. EST (following Rouben Mamoulian's highly recommended 1932 "...

The most expensive ($2 million) propaganda film ever made by a major U.S. studio, "Mission'' was reputedly personally commissioned by President Roosevelt to rally dubious Americans around our new ally World War II Stalin and bends the truth to defend Papa Joe's earlier alliance with Hit...

Even though the reactionary Al Capp's liberal-bashing comic strip was phenomenally popular in the 1950s (it was a fixture in the red-baiting New York Daily Mirror), Paramount demurred when Frank and his writing-producing partner, Norman Panama, proposed a musical version of "Li'l A...

Nobody on this side of the Atlantic has paid much mind to the British Academy Awards (also known as the BAFTAs or the Orange Awards, after their cell phone sponsor) since 2002, when Russell Crowe roughed up one of the producers afterwards in the men's room. Crowe was angry because his best ac...

Technicolor. "Rhapsody in Blue,'' released a year earlier in black-and-white, features top-notch musical performances by Al Jolson, Hazel Scott, Oscar Levant and Paul Whiteman (all as themselves) and expertly staged dance sequences, plus a lovely "An American in Paris'' montage cr...

There are no TCM debuts and no titles unavailable on DVD on Tuesday's schedule, which is devoted to the "architecture department.'' So I'm going to pick two selections from the "urban housing'' course, beginning with George Stevens' "The More the Merrier'' (1943) at 8 p.m. Jean Arthur and J...

Hollywood is holding its breath and praying for good weather as it opens six movies in wide release on Christmas Day in the face of what's looking more and more like the worst economic downturn since The Great Depression. I don't have a reliable box-office forecast yet, so I'll just run down...

By Lou Lumenick I have reviews of two Oscar contenders in today's Post. I award 3.5 stars to Clint Eastwood for his delightful, indie-style dramedy "Gran Torino,'' built around his career-capping performance as a grumpy, rifle-toting old racist who finds redemption in an unlikely manner. Three stars go...

By Lou Lumenick Among those regulars not gracing the red carpet at January's Golden Globe awards on Jan. 11 will be Nicole Kidman ("Australia''), Keira Knightley ("The Duchess'') and ... Will Smith, who also didn't make the HFPA cut with Sony's faltering stealth Oscar contender, "Seven Pounds.'' This diab...

By Lou Lumenick Stephen Daldry's "The Reader'' isn't on the list of viable Best Picture contenders -- just seven -- I enumerate in today's Post. I originally was going to repeat my thoughts about why "The Reader'' wasn't going to make the cut, but that seemed redundant after I took another whack at this sti...

By Lou Lumenick MGM is not screening Bryan Singer's troubled, delayed Hitler assassination plot thriller "Valkryie'' for top critics before the New York and Los Angeles film critics vote on their respective awards next week because "they've become quite convinced they'd never have a chance [at awar...

By Lou Lumenick Gus Van Sant's "Milk'' averaged a sizzling estimated $1.38 million over the three day weekend, landing in the No. 10 spot at only 36 locations. Focus says "Milk'' notched the best three-day average -- $38,375 -- for any film ever opening on 30 to 40 screens, doing especially well at San Franci...

By Lou Lumenick If you subscribe to the theory that the film with the most potential Oscar nominations is the frontrunner, which I usually do, then "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,'' which I saw last night at MOMA, is the clear-cut leader for Best Picture. There are 10 or more possible nods here, inclu...

By Lou Lumenick I've been no fan of frozen-faced Nicole Kidman, to put it mildly, in recent years. But she gives the first performance I've liked since "Cold Mountain'' (2003) in Baz Luhrmann's "Australia,'' which is more watchable and less of a mess than some of the early reviews out of Australia suggest...

By Lou Lumenick It's unclear when Paramount Vantage will be showing "Revolutionary Road'' to members of the New York Film Critics Circle for awards consideration, but the downsized studio division gave the trades the go-ahead to publish reviews late yesterday. Todd McCarthy in Variety stops short of...