It's time once again to return to Movieline's recently undertaken mission to honor this year's acting and directing nominees with a tribute that will surely outlive any trophy they could ever hope to receive: one of our daily inaugural Awards-Season Trading Cards. Today, let's give it up for Best Supporting Actress nominee (and Hollywood rookie) Hailee Steinfeld!
From Anne Hathaway's breezy charm to James Franco's conception of an Oscar statuette as a murder weapon, there's plenty to recommend in this new featurette of your Academy Awards hosting tandem. But pound-for-pound, little is more thrilling than the prime real estate occupied by Black Swan as the clip comes to a close. Clearly someone has been reading Oscar Index and knows precisely what time it is. Holler! And if you're reading this, too, Anne, please drop Jacki Weaver's name in the next one. Thanks.
Heads up, Harvey! Incoming fire at 10 o'clock! Don't let the Academy get anywhere near this hot potato: A writer at Big Hollywood has finally said what needed to be said about the vexed stutterer whose dramatic, heart-wrenching travails have touched the hearts of awards voters everywhere: Who the hell feels sorry for the King of England?
It's time once again to return to Movieline's recently undertaken mission to honor this year's acting and directing nominees with a tribute that will surely outlive any trophy they could ever hope to receive: one of our daily inaugural Awards-Season Trading Cards. Today, let's give it up for Best Director nominee Tom Hooper!
"The fun but disquieting scenario is if that film wins and five guys in monkey masks come to the stage all saying, 'I'm Banksy!' Who the hell do we give it to? [...] That's the fun part of this job. There's always some crazy-ass wrinkle you never thought of before." And with that, Academy executive director Bruce Davis is plotting a "procedure" by which the elusive graffiti artist can claim his Oscar should Exit Through the Gift Shop win Best Documentary, which of course it should and it will. For starters: He's discouraged from attending. Ha! The guy tagged the West Bank Barrier. Who can stop him? Anyway, I'm free to collect the award that night if anyone needs me, inquire within. [The Wrap]
Because Lord knows you just haven't gotten a close enough read on Melissa Leo's totally ill-advised (or totally admirable, depending on whom you ask) "Consider..." ad campaign, why not take in this behind-the-scenes video of the photo shoot that brought it all together? At the very least it's got a good beat, and you can dance to it.
As we race toward O-Day, Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has worked tirelessly to parse the latest input, insight and insanity to arise in the build-up to the 83rd Academy Awards. It hasn't always been pretty, but it's as close to empirically accurate as you're going to get without a peephole at PricewaterhouseCoopers. And this week we've been especially busy. To the Index!
Much of the emotional power of Joel and Ethan Coen's Best Picture contender True Grit comes from the contributions of longtime collaborator and nine-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins, a cinematographer whose compositions and visual choices lend the Western a subtle, nostalgic quality. It's fitting, then, that when Deakins played My Favorite Scene with Movieline recently, he pointed toward a film that also utilizes the understated to great -- but very different -- effect.
It's time once again to return to Movieline's recently undertaken mission to honor this year's acting and directing nominees with a tribute that will surely outlive any trophy they could ever hope to receive: one of our daily inaugural Awards-Season Trading Cards. Today, let's give it up for Best Actress nominee Natalie Portman!
Looks like reduction is the name of the game today! Variety has just asked all five Best Director nominees to sum up their entire film with a one word theme. Well, all of the nominees except David Fincher, who, true to form, had his editors chime in instead. Anyway, just to get your brains fired up in the morning, take a shot at matching each one word theme to the films, which actually have quite a bit overlap... you know, when they are reduced to one word.
"Tom Hanks just announced as presenter. Will be the Best Pic presenter do we think?" And with this tweet today Oscar-watcher Sasha Stone has commenced the speculative chatter around the most influential temp job in Hollywood: Who will present this year's Academy Award for Best Picture? Better still, assuming it's not too late for America's voices to be heard, who should present the hardware?
The Oscars are historically a fertile testing ground for bold, strange counterintuition (ask Rob Lowe or David Letterman), and this year is no different: Awardscast producers Don Mischer and Bruce Cohen plan to broadcast Oscar-related tweets from nominees' mothers in the preshow on Feb. 27.
It's time once again to return to Movieline's recently undertaken mission to honor this year's acting and directing nominees with a tribute that will surely outlive any trophy they could ever hope to receive: one of our daily inaugural Awards-Season Trading Cards. Today, let's give it up for Best Supporting Actor nominee Jeremy Renner!
Today's the day this year's Academy Awards darlings convened for the nominees luncheon, that annual ritual where power brokers, megastars, Hollywood up-and-comers and respected craftspeople get together and bond over mutual fortune and the occasional quest to locate some Tide-2-Go for errant wine droplets. Another topic of conversation: The whereabouts of David Fincher and Scott Rudin, the reeling Social Network tandem who were nowhere to be found.
In a fascinating new essay/tribute, indie publicist extraordinaire Reid Rosefelt recounts how the Weinsteins' three-decade journey to awards-season supremacy began with a single, garish step: "They had taken the Brazilian artwork, unbuttoned the top button of Eréndira's blouse and added extra cleavage to Claudia Ohana's chest. Cleavage! I died laughing. I had never seen anything so crass. Would art filmgoers want to see the film more if they believed that Claudia had slightly bigger breasts?" Ha! Anyway, I love the smell of Weinstein mythology in the morning. [My Life as a Blog]
FILM NEWS 
