Features
Here’s an easy one for serious Oscar trivia geeks: what’s unusual about Hal Mohr’s 1935 Best Cinematography win for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” I offer no prize, but pat yourself on the back if you knew that Mohr was the first and only person to win an Oscar on write-in votes — or in other […]
Entries from February 2011
Who would get your write-in votes?
Posted by Guy Lodge · 4:11 pm · February 26th, 2011
Filed in: Daily
‘Meek’s Cutoff’ trailer
Posted by Guy Lodge · 12:20 pm · February 26th, 2011
If you’re feeling smothered by the whole Oscar rigmarole and can’t wait to start talking about some fresh movies, this trailer couldn’t have landed at a more welcome time. Of course, “fresh” is a relative term — it’s nearly six months since I was wowed by Kelly Reichardt’s studied, painterly Oregon Trail western (reviewed here) […]
Filed in: Daily
The Oscar-winning Boston Movie
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 10:17 am · February 26th, 2011
Filed in: Daily
CINEJABBER: The light bulb’s getting dim
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 9:12 am · February 26th, 2011
Catch up with the idea behind these weekend posts here. Well. Here we are. It’s probably going to be kind of difficult to use this weekly open thread for anything other than Oscar chatter, given tomorrow’s festivities, but here’s the space nevertheless. The Oscar Guide has been another lovely success this year and I thank […]
Filed in: Cinejabber
Interviews with the nominees
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 8:56 am · February 26th, 2011
I thought I’d bring this around one more time this weekend. We talked to 37 of this year’s Oscar nominees this season. A few more have been added since we first posted this last month: Ethan Coen (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, “True Grit”) Joel Coen (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, […]
Filed in: Interviews
Ranking Oscar’s 41 features (minus one)
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 8:22 am · February 26th, 2011
Every year, when I finally get around to everything, I like to toss up my arbitrary ranking of the year’s Oscar-nominated feature films (and invite you to do the same). There were 41 films nominated this year. One of them I didn’t see and won’t until some time this year, I imagine. But here’s the […]
Filed in: Daily
OSCAR GUIDE: Best Picture
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 8:11 am · February 26th, 2011
And so we come to the end of this year’s Oscar Guide, and the category that has been the cause of more conversation than ever this year: Best Picture. And that can’t be overstated. I can’t recall the last time the debate around a Best Picture winner was so heated, and I’m tempted to say […]
Filed in: Oscar Guide
Reminder: Join our Picktainment Oscar pool!
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 7:56 am · February 26th, 2011
If you haven’t joined our Oscar pool at Picktainment.com, you can do so by going here. Sign up for an account if you’re new and then go back to this link and start making your picks. I’ve completed the weighting of the categories. I had to settle on something because the poll stopped working randomly […]
Filed in: Daily
WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Twas the week before Oscar
Posted by In Contention Staff · 7:00 pm · February 25th, 2011
• We made you wait for it this year, but finally: Kris’s Top 10 Shots of 2010, parts one and two. • This week’s Off the Carpet column surveyed where the season has brought us thus far, and began tying the loose ends… • …culminating later in Kris’s final Oscar predictions of the 2010 season. […]
Filed in: Daily
Just walk away: final predictions
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 4:45 pm · February 25th, 2011
While Guy is pulling his hair out (I know the feeling), I’m backing off. At some point you have to put your pencil down and step away, and so I am. For me, the most difficult categories to pick — and the ones I found myself flip-flopping on down the stretch — were Best Supporting […]
Filed in: Daily
Césars for Polanski, ‘Gods,’ ‘Illusionist’… and Fincher
Posted by Guy Lodge · 4:35 pm · February 25th, 2011
When the nominations for the César Awards — known in glib terms as the French Oscars — were announced last month, I wrote that I anticipated a tight race between Roman Polanski’s widely acclaimed Euro thriller “The Ghost Writer” and Xavier Beauvois’s lofty Cannes prizewinner “Of Gods and Men,” with the latter just winning out. […]
Filed in: Daily
To the highest bidder
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 4:25 pm · February 25th, 2011
As you know, Banksy has been all over town making his presence known in the lead-up to the Oscars. All These Wonderful Things documentary know-it-all A.J. Schnack happened by one of the artist’s latest pieces 10 minutes before it was tagged and 20 minutes before the owner of the building started the inevitable removal procedure […]
Filed in: Daily
The five categories giving me hell
Posted by Guy Lodge · 3:48 pm · February 25th, 2011
With a little over 48 hours until the big night, I find myself in an uncommon state of disarray — my crammed Oscar weekend “To Do” list includes viewing all 15 short nominees in order to make an informed dart-throw of a prediction (stickler that I am, I held out for a theatrical screening), preparing […]
Filed in: Daily
Oscar’s foreign race hasn’t found the fix
Posted by Guy Lodge · 12:51 pm · February 25th, 2011
How do you solve a problem like Best Foreign Language Film? I’m not sure you can, but in the Academy’s case, it’s certainly not for lack of trying. The voting process in this eternally dissatisfying ghetto category is now such a Frankenstein’s monster of stages, rules, committees, sub-committees, longlists, shortlists and more committees that it’s […]
Filed in: Daily
Missing Ronni
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 12:21 pm · February 25th, 2011
A few choice quotes from this New York Times profile remembering Ronni Chasen in this, what would have been the busiest week of the year for her. She was very smart…She would always get there early so her noncelebrity client would get on camera, before all the stars would arrive. There is not a day […]
Filed in: Daily
Charting Oscar’s ups and downs
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 11:38 am · February 25th, 2011
Some of you may have been following Movieline’s Oscar Index. It has been a nice way to visually track the Oscar race all season, and now, they’ve put all of them together with the following time lapse video, showing all of Oscar’s ups and downs along the way:
Filed in: Daily
How ‘Salt’ could surprise and win Best Sound Mixing
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 10:21 am · February 25th, 2011
I stopped researching somewhere in the 1970s, but as far as I can tell going back that far, the Best Sound Mixing (formerly Best Sound) category has never included more than three Best Picture nominees. In a number of cases there were two, a great many years saw one and often enough, there were none. […]
Filed in: Daily
OSCAR GUIDE: Best Directing
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 9:36 am · February 25th, 2011
Coming down to the wire, the race for Best Directing remains a very close one. Earlier in the year the prevailing wisdom was that a split could be in the cards, with the Oscar-bait frontrunner more likely to win Best Picture and the zeitgeisty competition likely to see its talented helmer finally noticed. Then things […]
Filed in: Oscar Guide
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