Features







2007-08 Oscar Calendar



[Monday, December 3, 2007]

Official Screen Credits
Forms Due.


[Wednesday, December 26, 2007]

Nominations ballots mailed.


[Saturday, January 12, 2008]

Nominations polls close
5 p.m. PST.


[Tuesday, January 22, 2008]

Nominations announced
5:30 a.m. PST
Samuel Goldwyn Theater


[Wednesday, January 30, 2008]

Final ballots mailed.


[Monday, February 4, 2008]

Nominees Luncheon


[Saturday, February 9, 2008]

Scientific and Technical
Awards Dinner


[Tuesday, February 19, 2008]

Final polls close 5 p.m. PST.


[Sunday, February 24, 2008]

79th Annual
Academy Awards Presentation
Kodak Theatre

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“Don’t Knock Masturbation; it’s Sex with Someone I Love.”

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The awards season began in earnest last week, with screenings of “Babel” happening in Los Angeles and Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” landing a number of reviews. Few of said reviews have found anything particularly wrong with the film, be them raves or mere acceptance pieces. Stone’s film releases this Wednesday, while screenings of New Line’s “Little Children,” another awards hopeful, begin to rev up as well (though some of us can't seem to understand the meaning of the term "embargo"). It really looks like the summer is gone.


Warner Bros. made a last minute shuffle last week on two potential Oscar prospects as “The Fountain” and “Luck You” got brand new release dates further into the calendar. David Poland’s Movie City News even began its Screening Series on Thursday with a screening of “The Illusionist,” plus the re-launch of the Gurus o’ Gold earlier in the week on Tuesday.


And over the weekend? The beautiful one-sheet for Kevin Macdonald’s “The Last King of Scotland,” a film still lurking on the periphery of consideration by those who write about this kind of thing.


The engine is humming. I just hope we don’t stall.

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Now is the time for all the studios to send their game-hunting publicists out into the wild to tame the journalistic beasts of the film awards conversation. “This film is the studio’s top contender; that film is not.” “This film turned out better than expected; that film did not.” The Toronto International Film Festival is now exactly one month away, and in the next 30 days, flags will be planted, egos will be stroked, the bed will be made for films to lie down and ultimately wow us with their illustrious prowess, or otherwise disappoint us with difficulties performing. Basically, the season has started, but we’ve still got a lot of dog and pony stuff to go before anything even begins to settle into a viable mixture worth discussing. So what can we talk about in the meantime?


How about coverage? Last year marked a brand new age in the world of awards watching on the internet. Folks like Emanuel Levy had been writing about the Oscars for years when the web boom came along, providing an outlet for all those obsessed with this time of year to start gabbing about this film’s chances or that film’s.


Sasha Stone’s Oscarwatch.com is unquestionably the site that paved the way for this movement, and she rarely gets the credit she deserves. Awards aficionado Tom O’Neil cooked up GoldDerby.com soon after, offering a space for various sanctioned pundits to toss in their two cents on the race unfolding before them. That may very well have been the first mark of professional punditry that thrives today as an advertising beacon for various publications.


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Speaking of advertising, internet columnist David Poland saw an opportunity to cash in on the proceedings in 2002 when he launched MovieCityNews.com, a renegade news source that plays like a trade with attitude (for lack of a better term). He ushered in the age of Oscar ads we live in today, at once creating a monster and the ultimate symbiotic relationship during this time of year for journalists and studios.


The bar was raised in 2005, but no one involved in raising it seemed to rise up to it. The Los Angeles Times purchased Tom O’Neil’s GoldDerby.com, also bringing in former Premiere writer Steve Pond and fashionista Elizabeth Snead to blog the season as they saw fit. The New York Times tapped the witty David Carr to blog in his own fashion, a fashion he determined halfway through the season to be more dependant on recognizing the futility of it all, thereby creatively rising above the pack. And USA Today set aside some net space for Steve Bowles to talk up the Oscar race as the "O-Factor" joined the fray.


Ironically, the trades did not do much in the way of improving their respective awards coverage pages, though The Hollywood Reporter’s Anne Thompson took up blogging and spent plenty of time dishing on the Oscar flurry.


So, we’ve entered the age of traditional media, “sanctioned” if you will, elbowing their way into the game. Meanwhile, folks like Ms. Stone keep doing the same purposeful thing she’s always done; her niche is her own. Countless, in many cases faceless amateur Oscar sites and blogs continue to pop up, while the insularity of message boards still finds room for tangible discussion from time to time.


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I’ve written about the history of internet awards coverage until I was blue in the face, but the point here is to ask, “What’s next?” Is the whole machine grinding into the perfect tool for usage by studios and publicists, out to manipulate, as their job dictates? Are we playing into their hands, or are they playing into ours? That might seem like an immature question, and one might wager that no hands are being played into, given that everyone wins. But while everyone wins, I think everyone loses all the same, because a system like this is destined to stagnate.


What I hunger for is variety and insight, and that’s typically difficult to find in this world of largely reactionary commentary. I by no means succeed in bringing as much to the table, but I try, and I guess what I’m hoping for this season is to see these many different outlets do just that – try.


In the final analysis, however, insularity reigns supreme. These issues are of no concern to anyone outside of the metropolitan centers that live and breathe the entertainment industry. The audience is extremely limited, but that audience dictates something broader in context, so the importance in the eyes of those with the power is in no way reduced. However, covering the Oscar race has to contain an element of personal commentary to have any spice whatsoever, and to assume there is any sort of journalistic benefit to the whole matter is to have a blinded view of journalism indeed. Yet here I am, writing about the Oscars.


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There is no “answer,” and there very well may be no “truth.” It has taken living neck deep in the race in Los Angeles – in utero, if you will – to fully comprehend that notion. The search is fun, and defining the season is a joy. Rooting for favorites is hard to escape, though objectivity is not necessarily fleeting. However, there are now far too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough items on the menu. Someone needs to think up a clever new soufflé.


Maybe things will stay in the rut they were in last year, and then we’ll know. We’ll know that a new standard of “one hand washes the other” has been established, likely to survive, well, as long as each entity is served. Or maybe personalities will show themselves and bring both entertainment and enlightenment to the table, but those times might be a ways off. Traditional media still has to catch up in the web world, let alone set interesting standards in this rapidly growing zone of film awards coverage.


All the while, we’re looking toward a ceremony that, year in and year out, boasts an outcome that is as subjectively acceptable or unacceptable as anything else. And complain though we may, chastise though we feel we must, each and every year, the glamour grabs us, and the fantasy takes us in.


You want to know what the funny thing is? No one is watching.


Main Category Charts
Technical Category Charts
Oscar Predictions Archive
"The Contenders"



Previous Oscar Columns:
7/31/06 - "Old and New, the Oscar Season Approaches"

Comments

Interesting thoughts, it is interesting to see how oscar fandom shapes this whole thing...

I guess that's why on my blog I like to talk about the Oscars year round but also don't limit the conversation to oscar talk but try to keep it rounded, and even in the process make the diverse viewership of my audience aware of Oscar-type films early, creating interest for a wider audience in quality films.

--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com

Well that's not necessarily "new" either, as a number of sites specialize in Oscar talk in conjunction with film commentary. Specifically with the Oscar stuff, though, no one seems to be willing to diversify and it's a bunch of people largely responding to one another's coverage, rather than trying to freshen things up.

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2008 Year in Advance Predictions


UPDATED: 2/25/2008





Main Charts | Tech Charts



[Motion Picture]

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

“Doubt”

“Frost/Nixon”

“Revolutionary Road”

“The Soloist”



[Directing]

David Fincher
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Ron Howard
“Frost/Nixon”

Gus Van Sant
“Milk”

Sam Mendes
“Revolutionary Road”

Joe Wright
“The Soloist”



[Actor in a Leading Role]

Benicio Del Toro
“The Argentine”

Jamie Foxx
“The Soloist”

Frank Langella
“Frost/Nixon”

Sean Penn
“Milk”

Brad Pitt
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”



[Actress in a Leading Role]

Vera Farmiga
“Nothing But the Truth”

Angelina Jolie
“Changeling”

Julianne Moore
“Blindness”

Meryl Streep
“Doubt”

Kate Winslet
“Revolutionary Road”



[Actor in a Supporting Role]

Josh Brolin
“Milk”

Russell Crowe
“Body of Lies”

Robert Downey, Jr.
“The Soloist”

Heath Ledger
“The Dark Knight”

Michael Sheen
“Frost/Nixon”



[Actress in a Supporting Role]

Amy Adams
“Doubt”

Kathy Bates
“Revolutionary Road”

Cate Blanchett
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Catherine Keener
“The Soloist”

Carice van Houten
“Body of Lies”



[Writing, Adapted Screenplay]

“Body of Lies”

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

“Doubt”

“Frost/Nixon”

“Revolutionary Road”



[Writing, Original Screenplay]

“Changeling”

“Hamlet 2”

“Milk”

“The Soloist”

“WALL·E”



[Art Direction]

“Australia”

“Defiance”

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull”

“Red Cliff”

“Revolutionary Road”



[Cinematography]

“Australia”

“The Dark Knight”

“Defiance”

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull”

“Revolutionary Road”



[Costume Design]

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

“Doubt”

“The Other Boleyn Girl”

“Red Cliff”

“Revolutionary Road”



[Film Editing]

“Body of Lies”

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

“Defiance”

“Frost/Nixon”

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull”



[Makeup]

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

“The Dark Knight”

“Red Cliff”



[Music, Original Score]

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull”

“The Soloist”

“Revolutionary Road”

“WALL·E”



[Music, Original Song]

coming soon



[Sound Editing]

“Defiance”

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull”

“Iron Man”

“Speed Racer”

“WALL·E”



[Sound Mixing]

“Defiance”

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull”

“Cloverfield”

“The Chronicles of Narnia:
Prince Caspian”

“WALL·E”



[Visual Effects]

“The Chronicles of Narnia:
Prince Caspian”

“The Incredible Hulk”

“Iron Man”



[Animated Feature Film]

“9”

“Kung Fu Panda”

“WALL·E”



[Foreign Language Film]

coming soon



[Documentary, Features]

coming soon



[Documentary, Short Subjects]

coming soon



[Short Film, Animated]

coming soon



[Short Film, Live Action]

coming soon