Also in Friday afternoon's round-up of news briefs: The estate of author William Faulkner is suing over a quote used in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris; Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi wins a major peace prize; And a preview of the weekend's Specialty Release newcomers.
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New York was central to most of Woody Allen's film career until he headed to Europe in the mid-2000s, with features set in London, Paris, Rome and Barcelona, but if some Allen fans have their way, he'll be shooting in Israel. Now that he has To Rome With Love making its way to screens in the U.S., the Oscar-winning filmmaker is reportedly headed to San Francisco for his next project, which will star Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale and curiously, Andrew Dice Clay. But if a group of L.A.-based Jewish campaigners have any say, his follow-up will be in Israel and they're looking to put their crowd-funding wares to the test in order to lure Allen to film in the Jewish state.
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Hollywood's biggest (and possibly most anticlimactic) night is upon us, which can only mean one thing: Movieline's third annual Oscar Liveblog Extravaganza! Join your Movieline editors and loyal readers as we parse the Academy Awards to within an inch of their glamorous lives. The fun begins on the red carpet at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, with the Oscarcast proper commencing at 8:30 p.m ET/5:30 p.m. PT. And in any case, keep abreast of this year's Oscar class with our commentary after the jump.
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Meet Otis the Oscar Cat, Movieline's resident feline awards prognosticator. Like the majority of Academy members, he's white, male, and owns a black tie; his tastes tend toward the traditional, although he'll bite at the occasional tasty treat. To get an inside line on Sunday's Best Picture winner, we consulted Otis for his Oscar picks -- will the Academy Award go to The Artist, starring that rascally pup Uggie? Or perhaps War Horse, by a nose?
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Each Wednesday for the past five months, my colleague S.T. VanAirsdale has fearlessly navigated the ever-shifting Academy Awards tides with his weekly Oscar Index, a gig that’s enough to make even the most intrepid seafaring mortal long for dry land. It’s in sight, Stu! By this coming Monday morning, all of our meticulously calibrated predictions, as well as our wayward hopes for our own personal favorites, will amount to little more than scraps of speared whale blubber, receding in the distance as we move toward next year’s Oscar broadcast. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s still time to savor the last-minute glitter wave. To that end, here are my own Oscar predictions for each category, followed by the candidates I wish would win.
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And why? Because they're based on hype. But that's OK, Ben Zauzmer — Harvard freshman, analytical whiz kid and proprietor of the new "matrix algebra"-based awards prognostication site Ben's Oscar Forecast! Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has the science down and is soliciting interns for next year's awards-season death march. Inquire within.
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*: As determined by Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics after crunching 23 weeks of data from the awards cognoscenti and beyond. Thank you for reading; our work here is done.
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The Writers Guild of America gave out its annual awards on Sunday night, bestowing its hardware to the year's most accomplished film and television scribes... whose work was developed and produced under WGA rules and conditions, which disqualified Artist writer-director (and Oscar frontrunner) Michel Hazanavicius among a few others, but whatever. Congrats to all!
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You know that when two of the most respected pundits in all of Oscardom argue (within days of each other!) for curtailing both the epic Academy Awards season race and the ceremony in which it culminates, patience for all this crap is wearing thin. With that in mind — and also considering that the "race" for most of these categories ended weeks or months ago — who's up for an Oscar Index lightning round? (The entire staff at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics raises its hands.) OK, then — to the Index!
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"Let's have a moment of silence for the suffering Oscar bloggers as they enter the most trying and mortifying weeks of their labors." Such was Glenn Kenny's tweeted lament earlier this week -- one eerily anticipating today's latest, sanity-thrashing edition of Oscar Index. And that's just its effect on readers! You really don't want to see the catatonic pall saturating Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. On the other hand, we're gonna make a fortune recycling this mounting pile of wine bottles. To the Index!
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It's a little difficult for the specialists at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics to come into work these days, what with the pall of predictability settling in over the awards landscape and the painstaking studies into backlash physics yielding less and less of practical substance. What's a frustrated kudologist to do? Besides drink for the next four weeks straight, I mean. Let's look for ideas and encouragement for all in this week's Oscar Index.
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There's good news and bad news to begin this post-nomination, next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-last installment of Oscar Index. The good news? It's kind of almost over! The bad news? Oy. Please don't make me repeat it.
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As you may have heard or read, the 2012 Academy Award nominations have stirred strong reactions in certain pockets of the Oscar snubculture. And you just know that Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close filmmaker Stephen Daldry -- a first-time non-nominee for Best Director -- is seething somewhere out there: "But at least two of those guys won't even show up!" Fair enough! Or is it?
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Give the Academy some credit: They made awards season fun for a little bit longer. At least my mind was blown this morning as AMPAS president Tom Sherak and Jennifer Lawrence announced The Tree of Life, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Demián Bichir and a few other shocks among the 2012 Oscar nominations.
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We're a little more than half a day away from learning who and what will compete for the 84th annual Academy Awards -- an elite class through which Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics had combed for four months in its fail-safe, fool-proof and bracingly handsome Oscar Index. This calls for one last sweep through each of the Academy's categories (with the exception of live-action, animated and documentary short, about which even our pointiest-headed Oscar wonk cannot speak yet with authority); check our team's work against your own, and drop back by Movieline tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. ET/5:30 a.m. PT as we deliver nominations, reactions, analysis and more.
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