I wrote a preview piece for the Oscars 2009 way back on February 9 for Variety. Here are the films that seem to have a great potential to be good, whether or not they trip the light fantastic at the Kodak or not. The names attached, the subject matter, the stars, the release date and the studio are the ingredients that often make a sight-unseen premature Oscar contender....
Monthly Archives: February 2009
I was waiting to hear something from Scott Foundas at the LA Weekly, as he seems to be the one critic lately who can be counted upon to call out the Academy for their safe choices. The thing I’ve realized about the Academy is that when it comes to judging films themselves, not actors, they go by the “I just liked it” rule. They have no other criteria...
The day the Oscar ceremony was held, I had come down with a pretty bad cold. The season had taken its toll on me at last.  That made me slightly funny in the head so that I forgot to, for instance, thank Dora, who single-handedly kept the FYC gallery running this entire year. I also forgot to thank Daniel Kenealy, who wrote many articles for the site. And Nancy. And...
From squalor to star spotting: Rubina poses with one of the film’s eight Oscars (click to enlarge) Can’t argue with last week’s conclusion that a billion dollars is better than an Oscar. This week Danny Boyle beats that deal all to heck with an offer even more directly life-altering. The Mumbai kids gave Slumdog Millionaire its roots in reality, so...
Simultaneous tipsters, Nadeem guides us to a video companion to go along with vcb‘s link to a still for Amenabar‚Äôs ‚ÄúAgora,‚Äù with Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella. According to Variety, Agora, Amenabar’s second English-language film after The Others is set in Roman Egypt in the fourth century A.D. Weisz plays astrologer-philosopher Hypatia...
Keith Olbermann speculates that speeches at this year’s Oscars addressed political issues with a freedom that was often frowned upon during the Bush era. Of the 40 hours of TV Oscar analysis I’ve seen in the past 48, the depth of this 6-minute segment make the rest look like the cover of US magazine. (click the jpg above to link to the video on Olbermann’s...
(click to enlarge) So, unless I’m mistaken, the Inglourious Basterds are sort of like the Boy Scouts, right? And these posters represent merit badges in Sports, First Aid, and um, Woodcarving? Grim, brutal and dripping with the impact of potent and perverse fetish objects, the overcast grays and desaturated reds of these posters are a direct visual extension of...