Monthly Archives: January 2009
The USC Scripter awards are being held tonight here in Los Angeles and they are doing one thing differently this year – they are announcing the winner at the actual event. The nominees are: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Iron Man The Reader Revolutionary Road Slumdog Millionaire I’d say they all had a shot here but Slumdog is probably the favorite to win...
This weekend, Saturday night, the DGA Awards will honor Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Ron Howard and Gus Van Sant. There probably isn’t much to write about here as Boyle has this one in the bag. He has it so much in the bag, in fact, that I don’t even think I’ll run predictions because what would be the point. ...
What if there were no such thing as “Slumdog Millionaire,” if it had fallen into a life of limbo, as seemed likely for a time before Warner Brothers farmed it out to Fox Searchlight? We can assume another film would be in the mix – “Revolutionary Road,” “The Dark Knight” or “Doubt” – but who would be in the frontrunner...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN_H2qdFULM[/youtube] One hopes that anyone who loves movies can move beyond this idea that they have to be validated by the Academy to remain in our hearts – those 6,000 people can only pick five. In looking over this video, three films stand out to me: The Dark Knight, Tropic Thunder and Benjamin Button – but there...
Knighthawk News has an interesting article about art direction, with a bit history. Actually, the site has a lot of great columns on the history of the Academy Awards worth checking out: It used to be quite common for films to get an Art Direction nomination and nothing else, but that has been less common since they did away with the separation of Color and Black-and-White...
With 29 points (I had to correct the form, which wasn’t picking up some of the points) but Mario is still the winner. Mario got all five Best Picture nominees correct. Mario Saez from Spain (email me, Mario!) Runners up (26): Frank Harrison, USA Jojo Cruz Ferreira, Portugal Lucia, Italy mark mercado, USA Michael Lewis, USA Patrick Larimer, USA Steve Hummel, Canada Steve...
Charlie Rose recently had a conversation with David Denby of The New Yorker and A.O Scott of The New York Times. They discussed the recent Oscar nominations.  Whether you agree with them or not, it was a fascinating discussion. Someone please give these guys a weekly show! I just wished there was at least one televison show out there with intelligent film critique....
The Academy released a statement today with the names of the producers involved with The Reader who will be credited with the Oscar should the film pick up a surprise win: Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Donna Gigliotti and Redmond Morris. Because four producers were listed on the credits form submitted for Oscar® consideration and Academy rules allow for only three...
The Gran Torino story is really interesting. Why before the nominations dropped, a few people were talking up Gran Torino’s chances. We were pretty devoted to it being The Reader if any were to upset but there were a great many who suspected the Clint movie would have done something. It might have if there had been just a little more time for the story to gain traction....