As the last notes of the not-remotely-accidentally-chosen “Fight the Power” fade from the closing credits of the 88th ACADEMY AWARDS telecast, 10 quick thoughts on the show and awards. 1.  Sometimes smart is all but indistinguishable from lucky, and that was the case for the Academy this year, which had chosen Chris Rock to […]

  Provocative, almost existential questions have circled this year’s Oscars since seconds after the nominations were announced.  Should the awards, and the Motion Picture Academy’s voting membership, mirror the actual state of the film industry, which is overwhelmingly dominated by older white men, or a Platonic ideal embodying a more diverse vision of what the […]

  It was a bad morning for some veterans (Harvey Weinstein, Ridley Scott), and a good one for others (George Miller), as well as for quite a few newcomers.  Let’s dig in: BEST PICTURE The Big Short Bridge Of Spies Brooklyn Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Room Spotlight Neither of the Weinstein […]

The EMMY AWARDS could hardly have gone more emphatically HBO’s way, with wins for Best Drama, Comedy, Limited Series and Made-For-TV Movie, not to mention many of the acting, writing and directing awards that went with them.  It was a night with a lot of exciting new winners, but the show itself was very much […]

  With the overwhelming amount of quality television these days available on various platforms, the Emmy nominators (of which I’m one, in certain categories) weren’t going to get it all right.  (A full list of nominees is here.)   There were omissions aplenty–The Americans and The Knick on the drama side, to name just two, and […]

  Here’s a factoid:  during the 1970s, that halcyon decade when the rebel filmmaker inmates finally, if briefly. took over the Hollywood studio asylum, viewed by movie history ever since with wistful nostalgia, every single winner of the Best Picture Oscar was one of the Top 10 box-office grossers of its year.  This includes big-budget productions like […]

  There were no surprises of any scale at tonight’s ACADEMY AWARDS (a full list of winners is here) , and that went for the telecast, too.  Neil Patrick Harris was as personable a host as anticipated, and he/his writers were sometimes quick on their feet, as when he had a gag ready about a Documentary […]

In case you are staring at an Oscar ballot this afternoon or this evening and have no idea what to select, especially in the “down ballot” categories such as documentaries, foreign language film, or the technical awards, never fear.  Lean on the professional oddsmakers to help to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Instead of […]