Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Dead at 84. A remarkable career -- really, two careers. Decades of laboring in respectable if mostly undistinguished drama, then bursting out as an unexpected comedy star. And the second career almost negated the first. I find if I see him in one of his old movies, my instant impulse is to laugh. (...

People here whose opinions I respect -- BJ and Magilla among them -- have expressed great affection for Bening's work, so I can't say the online groundswell for her has come from nowhere. But the sheer volume and unanimity of the push for her since Sundance has persuaded me anew that Bening has a c...

Put me in the club with those thinking Emily Watson could have been cited for Gosford Park as well. Not many interesting alternates beyond her. Jennifer Connelly is drably efficient in an uninteresting role in a wildly overrated movie. She was considerably better two years later in her unnominated ...

I'll be hitting the road for Connecticut tomorrow, and don't expect much online time between now and then. So... I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to Wes for offering this board and to all (really: all) who participate. As you might have gathered, this year hasn't given me a whole l...

I haven't read the book, but would certainly not be surprised if it's full of fundamentalist undertones, since P. D. James comes from that side of the Tory universe. But I don't see any of that in the movie. What's causing society to break down is not who's putting what organ where, but the fact th...

Chcolat wasn't a very good movie, but there were some very good things in it including the work of one of our prolific posters from 1998-2000, a 1999 Oscar nominee who promised to give us a shout-out if he won (he didn't), but who sadly stopped posting here after the drubbing his UAADB "friend...

I'm not much inclined to churn out a prediction list at this point. There are plenty floating out there, all of which resemble one another to the point it makes my eyes glaze to try and locate the variations. Adding to that miasma doesn't strike me as fruitful activity. I do, however, have assorted...

This is even more idiotic than usual for O'Neil. It amounts to "You're the lead if anybody, but you have to perpetrate fraud because WE say so". Something that's been true for a while but was really made clear last year during the "Mo'Nique won't campaign" fracas -- O'Neil and h...

Evene if there are few touted titles missing, you have to say this is one area where the Academy heard criticism and acted on it. Back in the Thin Blue Line/Hoop Dreams days, not one of the well-known films here (Gift Shop, Client 9, Inside Job, Tillman Story, Superman) would have made it. Instead,...

So is Antonia San Juan -- who gives my favorite supporting performance of the year, in All About My Mother -- a man in drag, a transsexual, or natural-born woman? (Somehow doubt the last one) You'd think this would be discoverable, but I spent a while Googling, and gave up after encountering one co...

The Great Gatsby has never been properly made, so there is the chance that the new film will be worth doing With Baz Luhrman directing? I think it'll instantly lift the Clayton version several notches in retrospect. Agreed in general, that an Oz remake is a grisly idea, one you hope slips someone's...

Another, minor TV connection: Lee Grant was starring in a short-lived TV series called Fay between the release of Shampoo and her Oscar win. What's notable about this is, the show was cancelled after only a few episodes (routine today, but pretty shocking back then), and Grant went on The Tonight S...

Another, minor TV connection: Lee Grant was starring in a short-lived TV series called Fay between the release of Shampoo and her Oscar win. What's notable about this is, the show was cancelled after only a few episodes (routine today, but pretty shocking back then), and Grant went on The Tonight S...

I fear everything I say here will just be an echo of what many have already articulated...though my final vote differs from the so-far plurality. Lisa Kudrow is the clear omission -- a performance that completely transcended her Mad About You/Friends persona. It may have been the TV connection, in ...

Only 15 qualified, meaning a three-nominee slate this year. “Alpha and Omega” “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” “Despicable Me” “The Dreams of Jinsha” “How to Train Your Dragon” “Idiots and Angels” “The Illusionist” “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole” “Megamind” “My Dog Tul...