If nothing else, the anticlimactic end to last night’s Academy Awards ceremony proves definitively that the accounts who tabulate the votes aren’t tipping off the ceremony’s producers about the winners. The shift of the Best Picture category to take place … Continue reading Oscarland
In this Oscar year with a calendar that has been understandably scrambled, it’s been especially difficult to undertake my usual process of selecting the twenty performances I would submit to the Academy were I gifted with an Actors Branch nominating … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Precious Metal
In this upside-down movie year that sprawled beyond the boundaries actually set by the calendar, it makes sense that the Oscar nominations would bring their own unique set of surprises. What makes the morning especially discombobulating for this long-time Oscar … Continue reading Promising Young Directors — Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations
When Tom Hanks tells you to turn the lights back on, you turn the lights back on. After Parasite secured its historic win in the Best Picture category and the first producer delivered their acceptance speech, the show producers dimmed … Continue reading Parasite by the Oscar Lights
With the annual Academy Awards ceremony mere days away and the sharing of my personal assessment of the previous year’s ten finest films duly completed, tradition holds that I put my pontificating about performance into the format of an Actors … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Women and Chill Don First
“Congratulations to those men,” Issa Rae said pointedly and gracefully this morning, immediately after listing the five contenders in the directing category for this year’s Academy Awards. The annual announcement of new nominations is always going to be a hash … Continue reading Women Belittled — Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations
When Julia Roberts slipped her slender fingers across the seal of the Best Picture envelope, I was actively afraid she was going to pull out a card with the title Bohemian Rhapsody typed onto it. So I mostly felt relief … Continue reading All We Hear is Academy Ga Ga
As tradition mandates around these digital parts, the completion of the top ten films countdown is followed promptly by a celebration of the same year’s finest acting achievements, following the same model employed by the Academy. Had I been gifted … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Support the Favourites
It’s been a notably rocky year for the the most hallowed of entertainment honors, so it’s fitting that the announcement of this year’s Academy Award nominees was a mix of the woefully predictable with gleaming bursts of the daring. In … Continue reading Popularity Contest — Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations
Not that long ago, the Academy Awards spent one of their annual ceremonies giving practically every trophy they could to The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Directed by Peter Jackson, the film was the concluding feature in a trilogy of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnum opus. It won in every category in which it was nominated, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Directing, and — the top prize — Best Picture. It became one of three films in Academy Awards history to tally eleven total wins. It was also the highest grossing film of the year, by … Continue reading Bait Taken — The Academy Awards Shake-Up
