There are 4 ways an Oscar night can be memorable: A Great Host:  Seth MacFarlane was bad–maybe not James Franco bad, but bad.  The ways he was bad, though, weren’t in any way unexpected.  Meta-gags and courting offensiveness are the things that have made him very, very rich.  When you hire Seth MacFarlane, you’re […]

  Putting aside the question of whether the Golden Globes actually deserve to be considered important (hardly anyone not actively campaigning for their votes would know a Hollywood Foreign Press Association voter if they fell over one), the fact is that we collectively act as if they are, and that makes them so.  And to […]

  The Oscar nominations are here, and the biggest surprise is how few surprises they provide.  The closest thing to a shock was in the Best Actress category, where Ruth Negga and Isabelle Huppert were in, and that meant Amy Adams and Annette Bening–both of whom had been considered possible longshot winners–were out.  Otherwise, Michael […]

> Nobody remembers the comic strip “L’il Abner” anymore, but there used to be a character in it named Joe Btfspik, who was so unlucky that he walked around with a perpetual dark cloud hanging over his head.  this week, Brett Ratner may feel like he knows how Btfspik felt–but at least poor Joe didn’t […]

With the announcement of the Oscar nominations today, Lincoln only became more of a favorite by London oddsmakers (moving from a payout of about $1.80 on a $1 bet last week to about $1.40 today).   The odds got a bit longer for Les Miserables and Argo, but Zero Dark Thirty had the biggest swing (from a payout of about $5.50 last […]

  The National Board of Review is an organization whose members are largely unknown (and the opinions of whom are of zero interest), with an existence that gets noticed on exactly one day of the year, like that one groundhog whose shadow is checked each February.  (Put another way, it’s the Hollywood Foreign Press Association […]

  A unique year in the history of movies (not to mention the history of the world) will culminate in a unique ACADEMY AWARDS tonight.  Only a small fraction of audiences will have seen any of the nominees on a big screen, relying instead on their televisions for VOD presentations and as part of the […]

  The polls close for Oscar nomination votes at 5PM today LA time, amid anecdotal reports of many last-minute ballots being cast in a season crowded with contenders.  There is much last-minute maneuvering going on, from the movie ads unusually swelling the LA Times’s Calendar section this midweek, to an insta-controversy about Meryl Streep’s speech […]