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Festival Coverage || ||

Red Hook Summer Collaborator James McBride: Hollywood Forces Black Artists to Be 'Cultural Maids'

Days after the polarizing Red Hook Summer hit Sundance, co-writer/co-producer James McBride unleashed a passionate missive comparing the black artists' experience to cultural servitude: "You get to drive the well-meaning boss to and fro, you love that boss, your lives are stitched together, but only when the boss decides your story intersects with his or her life is your story valid. Because you’re a kind of cultural maid. You serve up the music, the life, the pain, the spirituality. You clean house. Take the kids to school. You serve the eggs and pour the coffee. And for your efforts the white folks thank you. They pay you a little. They ask about your kids. Then they jump into the swimming pool and you go home to your life on the outside, whatever it is. And if lucky you get to be the wise old black sage that drops pearls of wisdom, the wise old poet or bluesman who says ‘I been buked and scorned,’ and you heal the white folks, when in fact you can’t heal anybody." [40Acres.com]

The Oscars || ||

Hugo Dominates; Tree of Life, Extremely Loud Shock 2012 Oscar Nominations

Hugo Dominates; Tree of Life, Extremely Loud Shock 2012 Oscar Nominations

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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The Oscars || ||

Oscar Index Special Edition: Predicting the 84th Academy Award Nominations

Oscar Index Special Edition: Predicting the 84th Academy Award Nominations

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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The Oscars || ||

Oscar Index: Left Out in the Gold

Oscar Index: Left Out in the Gold

Smack in the middle of a two-week frame yielding two awards shows and a pair of nomination announcements that will culminate in this year's Oscar nods, the researchers at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics have gained minimal insight into where the Academy may take the 2011-12 awards race in next Tuesday's final nominations. Or maybe they're all just sleeping. It's been that kind of year. Let's check their work in this week's Oscar Index.
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Awards || ||

Lightning Round: Let's Predict the 2012 Golden Globe Award Winners!

Lightning Round: Let's Predict the 2012 Golden Globe Award Winners!

As yet another incredible season begins to gradually wind down, we're roughly 48 hours away from one of the year's most closely watched, hotly competitive high-stakes all-star showdowns to date. But enough about the New York Giants' journey on Sunday to battle their NFC-rival Green Bay Packers. We've got the 69th annual Golden Globe Awards to predict!
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Awards || ||

A Few Takeaways as The Artist Tops Critics Choice Movie Awards

A Few Takeaways as The Artist Tops Critics Choice Movie Awards

So much for The Artist's fade: Michel Hazanavicius's silent black-and-white throwback won both Best Picture and Best Director at Thursday night's Critics Choice Movie Awards, a nice bit of prime-time validation shared in part by George Clooney and the ladies of The Help. Read on for the full list of winners (and a few takeaways).
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The Oscars || ||

Oscar Index: They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Oscar Index: They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

What a week at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, where the pundits' hustle harmonized with the guilds' bustle to create a heavy-duty wake-up call for some otherwise dormant awards-season underdogs. They also telegraphed danger for a few juggernauts once thought unassailable. What does it all mean as we head into the Critics Choice and Golden Globe Awards weekend? To the Index!
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Awards || ||

Women Film Journalists Favor Artist, The Help, Bridesmaids

"THE HELP"FF-001Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) overhears the exchange between Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone, center) and her friends in DreamWorks Pictures' drama, "The Help", based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett.©DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

Awards! So many awards -- this time around it's the Alliance of Women Film Journalists passing along the EDA Awards, their annual choices for the best, worst, weirdest and otherwise noteworthy films of 2011. Find an old standby at the top of the list, along with a few of the Alliance's customarily female-forward and refreshingly cheeky ("Most Egregious Love Interest Age Difference Award," anyone?) accolades. Congrats to all the winners!
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The Oscars || ||

Oscar Index: Draggin' Tattoo? Don't Bet on It

Oscar Index: Draggin' Tattoo? Don't Bet on It

The first Oscar Index entry of 2012 finds Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics a little hungover from the holidays and lot bored from the protracted inertia of awards season. Not even this week's Producers Guild Award nominations could do much to shake up a contest that appears to be both wide open and solidifying into place at the same time. Let's investigate...
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The Oscars || ||

Oscar Index: Giddyup, War Horse!

Oscar Index: Giddyup, War Horse!

Well, this should go pretty fast: The holiday week has offered a dearth of new narratives to trace and pulses to take, with only one film demonstrating any significant mobility in the studies coming out Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. Let's get to it!

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Awards || ||

Oscar Index: Enough About Bridesmaids, Already

Oscar Index: Enough About Bridesmaids, Already

Screw Christmas. Forget Hanukkah. To hell with New Year's. There is only one holiday we celebrate in the dank, windowless labs of Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, and that is Oscar Night. Thus the latest edition of Oscar Index, offering all the festive year-end joy you can possibly stand. Let's get to it!

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Lists || ||

Let's Rank the 10 Finest Screen Performances of 2011

Let's Rank the 10 Finest Screen Performances of 2011

If you're both a movie fan and a consummate statistician, it's easy to love and appreciate the Oscars for shoehorning the majority of film history into a manageable grading rubric. I'm an Oscar apologist myself, and I still have one bone to pick with the Academy -- and all award-spewing organizations: the unnecessary reliance on gender-based categories. Is it not more thrilling to pit all actors against each other? Is there such an objective difference between Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock? Meryl Streep and Robert Downey Jr.? "Actor" is a gender-neutral term, and I think we'd all better off -- and better entertained -- without the meaningless siphoning. Thus, I'm stacking up the best performances of 2011 without categorical regard for gender or role size. It's a winner-take-all affair, and this winner definitely wants it all. Here's my top 10:

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Awards || ||

Oscar Index: Extremely Artist and Incredibly Horse

Oscar Index: Extremely Artist and Incredibly Horse

It's week three of the 2011-12 Oscar Index, and the latest measurements, readings and conclusions are in from Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. And aside from a few startling exceptions, they don't look that different than the ones disseminated here last week. But make no mistake: Like it or not, stuff is happening! Read on for the latest developments.

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Newswire || ||

Week in Review: We've Had the Time Of Our Lives

Another summer week draws to a close today -- and not a bit too soon, after five days worth of catsuit drama, Dirty Dancing remake controversy, stoner-on-Santa Claus violence and Breaking Dawn sex talk. Let's take a look at some of our favorite stories from the past few days before kicking the weekend off with a Four Loko-related arrest. Just kidding! I think we all learned our lesson from that troublesome Twilight star.

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Newswire || ||

Association of Black Women Historians Objects to The Help in Open Letter

Association of Black Women Historians Objects to The Help in Open Letter

Looks like not everyone gave The Help a pleased-as-punch A+ CinemaScore rating; in an open letter released this week, The Association of Black Women Historians decried the film and Kathryn Stockett's source novel of the same name, citing what they describe as "widespread stereotyping" in the film's depiction of the black experience in the Jim Crow South.

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