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THE BIJOU AWARDS BAIT REPORT: Ugh-scar

Posted August 5, 2011 by Mitch Salem

> It may not literally be true that if you look up “hack” in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of Brett Ratner.  In fact, not all his movies are terrible:  there’s Family Man, and… well, Family Man really wasn’t bad at all.  But did we need the director of Money Talks, Rush Hour, Rush […]

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OSCARLAND: Post-Mortem on Hollywood’s Yearly Selfie

Posted March 3, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  The only thing more boring than a typical Oscars is one without surprises, and the closest thing to a major upset this year turned out to be Disney’s loss in the Best Animated Short category.  (The studio almost instantly rebounded with the much more important Animated Feature prize for Frozen.)  All the conventional wisdom […]

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SHOWBUZZDAILY Oscars Live-Blog

Posted February 9, 2020 by Mitch Salem

  It’s time to gather for the 2020 Academy Awards, which… may be the most boring in recent memory.  The favorites currently seem to be overwhelming, and with no host to carry us through the proceedings, if 1917, Sam Mendes, Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger, Brad Pitt and Laura Dern win, it’s going to be a […]

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OSCARLAND: Producers Guild Nominations

Posted January 2, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  The calendar has turned to 2014, and the critics, for the most part, have spoken.  Now Oscar season is moving into the Guild part of its schedule, and today the Producers Guild announced its Best Picture nominees.  The PGAs have been a fairly accurate precursor of Oscar nominees, with 8 of its picks last […]

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THE SKED MOVIE PROMO WATCH: OSCAR NIGHT EDITION

Posted February 27, 2012 by Mitch Salem

> The Academy limits the number of movie ads that can be aired on the Oscar telecast (until recent years, they didn’t allow any), so as not to make the night look like the awards are shilling for the studios.  (God forbid!)  It’s not clear whether that’s the reason only 2 movie promos made it […]

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The Weekend in Critics Awards

Posted December 10, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  The big prizes this weekend were the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards, LAFCA has a habit of showcasing its iconoclasm (the organization has only given its Best Picture prize to the eventual Oscar winner once in the past 18 years, for The Hurt Locker), and this year was no exception. Best Picture went […]

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OSCARLAND: The Nominees

Posted January 15, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  The race is officially on, with Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel (both from Fox Searchlight) tied for the lead with 9 nominations (The Imitation Game has 8, while Boyhood, not so much a technical showcase, has 6), and although with just a couple of exceptions (not even an Animated Film nomination for The […]

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SHOWBUZZDAILY AWARDSWATCH: Oscar Guy

Posted October 1, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  The success of TED having made Seth MacFarlane a legitimate name in the movie universe, the Academy and ABC have decided to make him an unexpected choice to host nest year’s Academy Awards telecast.  This isn’t a crazy idea, although MacFarlane has never done anything like it.  He’s obviously funny, he reaches that elusive […]

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