I’ve spaced it a bit on Shawn Ku’s “Beautiful Boy,” which is set to play the Toronto film festival next month.  There’s something a bit opportunistic and obvious to me about making a movie concerning the impact of a school shooting on the shooter’s parents, but nevertheless, Michael Sheen and Maria Bello appear to be […]

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I’m getting a look at Randall Wallace’s “Secretariat” tonight.  It may or may not be an awards play for Diane Lane.  I’ve heard both sides of the argument.  In the meantime, a new poster has been released by Disney, and yeah, it looks a little familiar.  But what else are you going to put on […]

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Director Anton Corbijn’s sophomore feature is not an Oscar film.  Unfortunately, such a classification immediately conjures skepticism, cynicism and wariness of a project slated for late summer/early fall release.  But the fact is, just because a studio knows a film won’t appeal to the sensibilities of awards season doesn’t mean it’s a turkey: it’s not […]

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I don’t know if everyone caught “The Late Show” last night, but last year’s Best Original Song winner, Ryan Bingham, took the stage with his band The Dead Horses to rock out the first single on their new album, “Junky Star.”  The album, produced by Oscar co-winner T Bone Burnett, released today. Here’s a clip […]

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With the fall festival circuit merely hours away (Guy is already getting settling in Venice), we’ve got a pair of clips from two anticipated titles to pass along today. First, there is Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere,” which is exclusive to Venice and features Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning in what isn’t likely to be an Oscar […]

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When you step off the plane and the first faces you encounter — not yet out of the baggage claim, even — are those of a friendly, familiar PR team who immediately furnish you with a press release, it’s fair to say that you’re very much at a film festival, even if Venice hasn’t yet […]

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• Peter Sciretta rounds up early reactions to Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go.”  It’s across-the-board praise and admiration. [/Film] • Nathaniel Rogers takes note of one of the biggest Oscar sleepers: Jacki Weaver in “Animal Kingdom.” [The Film Experience] • Sasha Stone talks marketing in the age of cynicism, ending with a hope that […]

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In a few hours’ time, a shiny and sensibly priced orange plane will whisk me off to the city of water, romance and the most expensive fleapit hotels this side of, well, anywhere for my second consecutive dive into the Venice Film Festival. Truth be told, I’m not quite ready for it… a surfeit of […]

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Amid the growing buzz for the films about to make the festival rounds over the next two weeks, it’s easy to forget that one rather high-end title is hitting theaters as soon as Wednesday. Anton Corbijn’s hitman drama “The American,” starring George Clooney, was once expected to be in the festival pack — certain rumours […]

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It goes without saying one of the most anticipated films of the fall movie season is Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” Going by the trailer, we’re in for a slice of genre goodness that taps many of the muscles the director has flexed early in his career. In an interview with MTV, Aronofsky offers an intriguing […]

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So nine years ago yesterday I started a crappy, embarrassing little amateur site on Yahoo!’s now defunct Geocities platform and called it Oscar Central. It was a way to blow off steam in film school, maybe fold an offline hobby (Oscar-watching, predicting, obsessing) into an online community that seemed to already have healthy numbers. Plus, […]

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• Rooster Cogburn must be a leftie this time out, because his patch covers his right eye!  See! [American Thinker] • Naturally, Thomas Friedman goes to bat for “Waiting for Superman.” [New York Times] • Lane Brown points out a strong season of lead actress contenders on the horizon. [Vulture]

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Funny, last year Berlin Film Festival organizers waited until November to make this announcement — I guess they thought that since the fall festival season begins this week, they may as well ride the buzz-wave a bit. Anyway, Isabella Rossellini has been tapped the preside over the jury at the festival’s 2011 edition in February, […]

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Since I imagine many of you are watching tonight, here’s a space to talk it up.  Interesting that the end of the television awards season today gives way to the beginning of the film awards season tomorrow.

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*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars. One last bit of excitement before the summer ends and Tapley starts posting random Redskins photos on Sundays. We have a dead heat race for the top spot at the box office, but estimates are handing the crown to “Exorcist: The Beginning” on this same weekend […]

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One thing I like about David Poland as an awards analyst is that he often makes an effort to expand the tight circle of contenders by bringing little-buzzed names into the conversation. Needless to say, this kind of punditry can lead to a lot of dead ends, but every now and then he lands on […]

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With Blockbuster Video preparing to go into Chapter 11 next month, it seems like it’s the end of an era…even if it was a long, painful, downward spiral of an end. The first video store I ever frequented was a company called Doorstep Video in the early 1990s.  But not long after I began going […]

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*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars. It’s the last full weekend of the summer, the last weekend of me being 27, and the last weekend for Friday Forecast on InContention. A time of introspection. A time of reflection. A time of paying another $20 to see those blue things in 3D again. […]

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