In Contention

Tag: Oscars

  • AMPAS counts down to 83rd Oscarcast

    Via press release:

    On December 7 (tomorrow!), we will be 83 days away from the 83rd Academy Awards. Beginning tomorrow, we will be counting down to the February 27 ceremony by revisiting all of the Academy Awards ceremonies that have come before. You’re invited to visit Oscars.org on December 7 – and every day thereafter – to experience highlights from throughout the history of one of the world’s most anticipated annual events. We’ll be showcasing photos, audio clips, video segments and interesting facts (from the year’s awards winners and ceremony, as well as around the world in general) and all of the content featured will be shareable.

    We hope you’ll spend a few minutes each day venturing back in time as we continue on our journey forward to the 83rd Oscars. You can sign up for our RSS feed of the Countdown, follow us on Facebook (Facebook.com/The Academy) or Twitter (twitter.com/TheAcademy), or just check oscars.org each day.

  • 11/9 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Screenwriting hopefuls, Hooper on fugly ‘King’s Speech’ poster, MPAA shamed

    • Sasha Stone on the season’s screenwriting contenders. [Awards Daily]

    • “The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper also hates the poster everyone has been knocking. [Movieline]

    • David Poland split screens “The Social Network” star Armie Hammer. [The Hot Blog]

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  • Trailer for every Oscar-winning movie ever

    This very well may have run its course.  It was uploaded to YouTube (via Cracked) in March.  Someone sent it to me last night and I found it hilarious.  Sorry if it’s old news.

  • Combing through the first-half contenders

    With the year nearly at its midway point, the Hollywood Reporter’s Gregg Kilday has taken on the rather fruitless task of sussing out potential Oscar contenders from the last six months of releases. As you will no doubt be shocked to hear, he doesn’t find many — declaring “Toy Story 3” the year’s first viable Best Picture nominee (just as Pixar’s “Up” wound up as the earliest release on the 2009 slate).

    Not that this is a particularly new phenomenon. Bar the occasional “Crash,” “Erin Brockovich” or “The Silence of the Lambs” — films that tend to grow into their Oscar-contender status rather than have it thrust upon them — studios tend to save their prestige product for the year’s latter stages. Everyone and their pet lizard knows that.

    But as Kilday points out, considering last year’s expansion of the Best Picture field was a shameless grab for more blockbuster nominees, none of this year’s summer (or spring) behemoths up to now could be deemed credible contenders. (That he even bothers to consider the chances of “Alice in Wonderland” is cause for major shuddering.)

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  • The weary kind

    Thanks to the concerned (or hopeful?) couple of readers who emailed to ask if I had “retired,” but I’m still around, and will chime in this weekend. After a season of nearly six months, you’ll have to forgive me for feeling a little like Faye Dunaway here, in my favorite Oscar-related photo of all time. Except I don’t have an award to show for it.

    Faye Dunaway, the morning after her Oscar win, 1977

  • Oscar night open thread

    Oscars

    I want to say it’s been a truly wonderful season because of this community.  No matter how much I’ve moaned about the length of the circuit or my eventual crash in endurance, I never tire of getting up every day and delighting in the particulars of the season with like-minded friends, so thank you.

    For now, the floor is yours.  I’m hosting the annual Casa de Tapley Oscar fiesta, so I won’t be around these parts.  Use this space to dish the red carpet, talk about the show, cheer/bitch about the winners, etc.  I’ll likely have some comments throughout the night on Twitter if you’d like to follow me there.  And be sure you lock in your pool predictions at Awards Picks by 7:59pm EST.  Happy Oscars!

  • Bill Maher skewers Oscar dirty tricks

    EDIT: Well, the videos were pulled by HBO.  I laughed.  Onward…

    The bit starts about 20 seconds in:

    After the jump, a pro-Hollywood product tirade from the same show that could be the kind of opinion that leads to a win for Cameron and company tomorrow night.

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  • Ranking Oscar’s 43 features

    Tahar Rahim in A ProphetLast year I did this just for fun, so I thought I’d give it another whirl.  My ranking of the 43 features nominated for an Oscar this year.  (Interesting to note, last year it was 36 films.  I wonder if it’s always pretty close to 40.)

    Feel free to offer up your list of whatever you’ve seen in the comments section.  The top 10 here, the rest after the jump:

    1. “A Prophet”
    2. “A Serious Man”
    3. “Up in the Air”
    4. “The Cove”
    5. “Avatar”
    6. “Precious”
    7. “An Education”
    8. “The Lovely Bones”
    9. “Star Trek”
    10. “The Messenger”

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  • Oscar’s bookshelf

    SpringPad blog has a nifty graphic illustrating 20 Best Picture-winning films that were adapted from literary works (not other films or plays, if I get the gist).  Trivia nuggets throughout.  Click on the image below for a larger version.

    Oscar bookshelf

  • Terry Gilliam calls bullshit on the Oscars

    Terry GilliamAs certain as carols on Christmas Eve, you can always rely on the pre-Oscar weekend to bring a surfeit of “why the Oscars don’t matter” pieces — all other angles on the race having been exhausted in the preceding months. Hey, I sort of did one myself yesterday.

    True to form, today we have David Thomson in the Guardian dismissively asking, “Who cares about the Oscars?” (If Mr. Thomson did some digging around the web, he’d be in for a nasty surprise.) Elsewhere, you’ll surely be stunned to learn that Armond White doesn’t approve of the annual ceremony, either: Kathryn Bigelow is better than a stinky Oscar, runs his general argument.

    Both pieces contain several nuggets of truth, but highbrow film critics kicking the Academy to the curb is hardly revelatory. More fun, then, is Vanity Fair’s slightly more inside view from filmmaker Terry Gilliam, a one-time Oscar nominee for “Brazil” whose latest effort, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” will compete in two technical races on Sunday.

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  • Thank yous

    (Courtesy: Vulture)

  • Horror at the Oscars

    Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the LambsNo, I’m not talking about the news that Martin Short and Neil Patrick Harris will be opening the show with a song and dance, but this nugget from Bloody Disgusting:

    While the Academy continues to fail to recognize horror in their prestigious festivities (has it really been 19 years since Silence of the Lambs?), Bloody Disgusting has been tipped off that the 82nd Annual Academy Awards…will feature a segment dedicated solely to our beloved genre. No word on what exactly will happen – at least it won’t feature a singing and dancing Hugh Jackman (I’m still embarrassed for him) – but it will be either an homage via clips or song about horror…If they’re going to work our way into our hearts, we need to see more than District 9 and  Inglourious Basterds getting love…

    Hm.  Thoughts?

  • OFF THE CARPET: Back and forth…forever

    (from left) Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard in An EducationThe Circuit has run its course.  With the Visual Effects Society‘s awards gala last night and the press release announcement of the International Film Music Critics Association’s list of winners this morning, it’s on to the big show.  But the excitement is ever so slightly dampened, given the drama of the final stretch.

    I recently delighted in reading David Poland and Steve Pond take the overall tone the season eventually developed to task. The former may have his head in the sand vis a vis dirty campaigning, and the latter might be (as he admits) naive to ask for a spirit of togetherness when, the fact is, jobs are on the line. But the overall gist, I’m with it.

    The Oscar season is, by its nature, reductive and combative. But let’s say it together: It’s a pointless exercise with the original and still stated intent of drumming up awareness of an industry’s product. And it is, indeed, unfortunate that what appeared to be one of the cleanest seasons I’ve ever seen was sullied in the fourth turn by the inherently craven nature of those involved — on all sides, I might add.

    But when the dust settles, what are we left with? The movies. And the movies are why we’re all here.

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  • A whole lotta Oscar talk

    Sandra Bullock in The Blind SideOne of my favorite annual Oscar-blog institutions kicked off last night: Nathaniel Rogers’s three-day Oscar Symposium, in which six awards “experts” (remove quote marks as applicable) gather to discuss, debate, dismantle and generally disrespect this year’s Oscar race.

    I’m on the panel this year, but don’t let that put you off — Sasha Stone, Karina Longworth, Tim Robey, Peter Knegt and, of course, Nathaniel himself are all on hand with abundant wit and insight. Join the fun here. As a taster, meanwhile, here’s Sasha’s frightening trip into the mind of a harried voter:

    Avatar – no, that one made me nauseous and dizzy. The Hurt Locker. What’s the Hurt Locker? What IS a Hurt Locker? Who’s in it? Who? Oh. Who’s he? It won all of those awards, that’s right. I remember seeing an ad about it last night. Huh. Up in the Air, I did see that. It has George Clooney in it. It wasn’t bad. Kind of depressing. The Blind Side – that was a really good movie. And Sandra is so beautiful. She was going to star in that film I almost made. Anyway, It was so nice to see someone do something positive. I think I’m going to vote for that one.

  • Almost there

  • The numbers behind the Academy Awards

    This is a massive graphic, so click on the jump to check it out.  Courtesy of Business Pundit.

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  • Oscar’s class of 2009

    Bingham in the back right, cheesing. Hilarious. Bridges alongside former co-star (and fellow frontrunner) Sandra Bullock. Quentin Tarantino, arm around Sally Menke, loyal as always. A trio of supporting actress contenders in Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga up front. Ivan Rietman with son Jason, fellow nominees, first time ever for the former.

    A nice shot, as always. Click for a larger version.

    Oscar class of 2010

  • Oscar app at iTunes

    Academy Awards HeroYou guessed it: There’s an app for that.

    Thanks to Film School Rejects for pointing us to a new app for iPhone and iPod touch, “Academy Awards Hero.”  For 99 cents you can do the following:

    View all of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards® nominees and vote for your pick to win. Share your votes with your friends on Twitter and see who can pick the most winners. You can even view beautiful full screen trailers and film info for the 2010 nominees, all built right into the app.

    Also deepen your movie knowledge with the app’s database of past winners and nominees from the inaugural year in 1927 up to today. You can view all nominees and winners by year and category. With a beautiful interface and lots of great movie info, this app is a must have for any movie lover.

    Although I imagine it’s only a matter of time before the Academy cracks down on the use of its likeness and namesake for the purposes of profit.  After all, we were a casualty once upon a time.