Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

As I indicated in the post, I liked all three performances, but I view them all as fairly lightweight -- especially compared to my winners around them, like March in '32, Muni in '33 and Huston in '36. This may just mean I'm one of those dreaded people who give more credit to Serious Movies than co...

This is, as you say, the first modern-day slate of nominees, and I think, in this category at least, it feels pretty substantial: you get the feeling a comparable group might be nominated in any good current year. Chaplin/Modern Times is the glaring omittee, but I think by then the Oscars had made ...

A couple of things about that article: Does anyone really believe bad-mouthing about the real-life characters in movies matters to Oscar voters? If anything, it probably strikes them as dirty campaining, and reinforces the determination to stick with the film. It's odd to see The English Patient on...

For the record, Sasha is at least as much a woman's name in the US as it is a man's (at least, in the circles I travel). Sasha has always seemed to me a nice lady, but, perhaps under the pressure of generating content daily, she tends to be obsessive/compulsive on certain Oscar issues. (She must ha...

A year ago, if we told you we would have a critic's sweep, followed by a PGA upset and a complete surprise from the DGA, you would have been very thankful for this Oscar season! See, here's the thing: I don't give a damn about "the season". I'm interested in the Oscars. And the Oscars thi...

Would Italiano like to explain again how un-boring this Oscar season has now become? In the space of one week, we've gone from Social Network in a landslide to King's Speech in a landslide. I don't view that as upgrade. Last year's repeat of Waltz/Mo'Nique at every TV awards show was explicable -- ...

I'm just basically dreading that the SAG's -- moments away -- will drain the last drops of suspense out of the year's races. Prior to last night, I'd have said the template of actors -- Firth, Portman, Bale, Leo (with Bening maybe the strongest upset possibility), and The Fighter for ensemble. Now ...

I've never felt the fun go out of an Oscar race so fast. No, well, it makes things less boring - and I am not a fan of The Kings's Speech. King's Speech PGA/Social Network DGA/The Fighter SAG would have made it very exciting. I think last night's result makes it considerably less fun. And if SAG fo...

I'm speaking blindly here, having still not seen The King's Speech, but everything about its profile -- the subject matter, the Weinstein "some movies you feel" sales pitch, the gleeful tone of the people supporting it -- suggests to me it's the reactionary choice of the year, and it's sh...

Damien is correct, that it generally amounted to 50% of grosses, but there was some variation by the late 70s, when certain big-budget/reputation movies started demanding larger cuts of the early week grosses. I seem to recall A Bridge Too Far, a star-laden attempt to replicate The Longest Day, dyi...

Okri wrote:I love the fact that the one you loved is probably my least favourite Leigh film.

Really? What's your rough pecking order? And how enthuasiastic or un- are you at either end?

Yeah -- much as our initial impulse is to say, Great, down with the tyrant, it's far from a given that whatever follows will be anything positive. It could be another Iranian revolution, replacing a horrible dictator with a repressive theocracy...only this time tied into already-existing radical gr...

Shakespeare in Love vs. Saving Private Ryan was a real enough face-off, but most of us thought by Oscar night that the Spielberg film had staved off the competition. The shock was that we'd calculated incorrectly. Alot of historic face-offs are also apparent mainly in retrospect. I was a devoted Ca...

I'm waiting on my wife's availability for The King's Speech. Otherwise in the top categories, I'm short Biutitful (may catch it tomorrow), Animal Kingdom (got the netflix DVD today) and Another Year (will see it if it fits the schedule). I'm aware of the fact that the way we all run our lives, cert...