By Maria Esteves - January 25, 2009
The 81st Academy Awards nominations was announced by President Sid Ganis of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and 2006 Oscar winner Forest Whitaker "The Last King of Scotland" on Thursday, January 22, 2009. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON picked up 13 Oscar nominations including best picture and best director. The next frontrunner with 10 Oscar nominations was SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE including best picture.
The 81st Academy ...
2007 0SCARS COMING UP -- AND THE WINNERS MIGHT BE ...by Alex Deleon, HollywoodNo self-respecting film critic can resist the temptation to try to predict who the winners will be on Oscar night, so, for better or for worse, with the big self-congratulation orgy less than a week away -- here are my predictions and conjectures.Helen Mirren(The Queen) and Forest Whitaker (The Dictator) will easily claim the Best Actress and Best Actor prizes, respectively. (The odds of anyone else upsetting the fron...
Tonight, February 25, the world will watch in baited breath to see if one of their cinematic favorites walks away with the industry's highest honor – the Oscar. Every year presents its fair share of surprises, triumphs, heartaches and snubs. What makes this Academy Award ceremony particularly exciting is the monumental year of quality films that it represents. 2006 was a sensational year at the movies, highlighted by an unprecedented number of fine roles for women. With so much great work...
Vizu Answers, (http://answers.vizu.com), the Internet's first do-it-yourself market research service, polled readers of more than 20 blogs to reveal predictions for top honors in the 79th Annual Academy Awards. Respondents have strong opinions on who will bring home a statue in the key categories. More than half of those polled think "Babel" deserves the Best Picture Oscar, while more than a one-third think Forest Whitaker should get a Best Actor nod for his role in "The Last King of Scotland." ...
Every time Forest Whitaker showed up on a talk show to hock his new film "The Last King of Scotland", I felt an unease in the pit of my stomach. Every clip shown of the film throughout this ever-raging fire of awards season has been a full assault display of Whitaker in screaming pipes mode. I came to expect that this was the only note the performance would deliver; one of excessive volume and fury-induced spittle.As it turns out, there's a reason why Whitaker has been generati...
On Sunday, February 25, the world will watch in baited breath to see if one of their cinematic favorites walks away with the industry's highest honor – the Oscar. Every year presents its fair share of surprises, triumphs, heartaches and snubs. What makes this Academy Award ceremony particularly exciting is the monumental year of quality films that it represents. 2006 was a sensational year at the movies, highlighted by an unprecedented number of fine roles for women. With so much...
Film festivals come in various shapes, sizes, formats and orientations. The currently ongoing 22nd installment of the Santa Barbara Film Festival is a bit off-beat in certain aspects. Lasting eleven days and presenting some 200 films it is certainly not small -- more like "medium to large."
In terms of importance, however, while it is not considered to be quite in the same class as the North-American majors, Sundance, Telluride, Chicago, New York, Toronto and Montreal, it can nevertheless ce...
MIRREN AND WHITTAKER SHINE AT S.A.G. AWARDS
by Alex Deleon, Santa Barbara
This is the jolly season of awards in Southern California -- seems like there's a different one every week somewhere in L.A. or vicinity. Following the Golden Globes (Foreign Press Awards) a couple of weeks back we now have the Screen Actors Guild (S.A.G.) awards which are similar and yet a bit different. Both sets of awards go to both film and television personalities, but the Globes recognize all kinds of categories (w...
Toronto Opens 2006 Festival with World Premiere of “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen”The largest and one of the most respected Film Festivals in the world will open its doors to the public with Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen". Their last film "Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner),” had won the Camera D'or in Cannes and then the prize for best Canadian film here in Toronto in 2001. Festival Co-Director Noah Cowan felt that this was one of the most important film...
