I am getting on the ball for my annual push to see as many films nominated for Academy Awards as possible before the broadcast. The nominations were announced over two weeks ago on Tuesday, January 23. The ceremony is in four weeks on Sunday, March 4. Jimmy Kimmel hosts ( Read more... )

It's time to make picks! I love writing this post every year, as fast as I can (I'm usually running out of time because I watched one of the movies in the morning, like 12 YEARS A SLAVE which turned all my choices upside down in 2014). This time I've seen only 15 of the 38 films nominated outside the short, foreign, and documentary film categories ( Read more... )

This review contains SPOILERS ( Read more... )

The Oscars are on February 26, and the nominations were announced January 24. Here I am just getting organized to see all the films! Busy work season, etc. The nominations were spread around quite thinly this year. The nine Best Picture nominees are also the nine most-nominated films, ranging from 14 nominations (LA LA LAND) to three (HIDDEN ( Read more... )

OMG this is a lovely, lovely film.

This and THE DANISH GIRL are the two Oscar-nominated films I have seen from 2015 that struck me as stunning works of art.

Gotta record my picks! Thanks to Forbes.com for the conveniently pastable list of nominees, in presentation order. I'm skipping the foreign, documentary, and short film categories. These are the films I would choose, not the ones I expect the Academy to select.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTORChristian Bale, The Big Short ( Read more... )

I'm sure I saw some 2015 movies that aren't nominated for Oscar--ANT MAN? AGE OF ULTRON? SISTERS? But they aren't on my mind today; it's the Oscar nominiees. As of today, I have seen 20 of the 32 films nominated for at least one Oscar outside the foreign, documentary, and short film categories. These account for 63% of the films nominated in these ( Read more... )

It has been a busy 2016, and I did not put up my traditional post to reflect on the Academy Award nominations when they were announced on January 14th. No fear, I have still kept up my annual attempt to see all the nominated films I can, despite it being the busy season at work. In this case, I have seen all films this year with multiple ( Read more... )

I just got off a plane from LA this morning with girljim and we're back just in time for the red carpet for the Oscars. I want to record some thoughts and predictions before the awards get handed out, so I've got to move fast ( Read more... )

The big story in the press coming out of Thursday's nominations is the lack of diversity in the nominations. All 20 acting nominations went to white people for the first time since 1998. None of the eight best picture nominees is a film with a female protagonist, while only one, SELMA, has a nonwhite protagonist (although extra points may be ( Read more... )