By Drew Grant 2/25 12:39pm

About last night

macfarlane

Rex Reed Got a Shout-Out in Last Night’s Oscar Telecast [Video]

Maybe it’s because he called Ted “creative, adorable, ingenious and devilishly, thigh-slappingly hilarious,” but our own Rex Reed made one for the history books last night by getting his own joke during the Oscar telecast. Host Seth MacFarlane, referencing Mr. Reed’s recent controversial review of Melissa McCarthy Identity Thief, told the audiences that “Rex Reed will be out here to review Adele’s performance of ‘Skyfall.’” Read More

By Drew Grant 2/24 6:56pm

The 85th Academy Awards

The Best Picture category isn't the only thing that bulked up.

The 85th Annual Academy Awards Live Chat, Hosted by the Dog From Family Guy

Update: Well, now we have an extra hour and a half of the red carpet! Talk amongst yourselves!

What is it about the Academy Awards? Intellectually, it’s hard to muster up that much enthusiasm about who “wore it best” (Ang Lee) or how modest Katniss will be in her acceptance speech, hopefully avoiding a First Wives’ Club reference that sounded like she was hating on Meryl Streep this time. And yet … we still feel compelled to watch. Maybe it’s because secretly, deep down, we still find it fascinating that the guy who does the voice of Stewie looks like the host of a reality game show about finding true love by having a dance-off on a stripper pole.

Or maybe it’s because we’re just suckers, who deep down believe that Beasts of the Southern Wild might still possibly have a chance against Argo or Lincoln.

Come join us, will you, on this the most magical of evenings for producers, people who are married to movie stars, and dress designers? We’ll be hosting a live chat below. Just click the big countdown button and you’re all set. Got it?

Great. Read More

By Drew Grant 2/21 8:22am

Academy Awards

Video

West Side Story won Best Picture. Remember??

How Many of These Best Picture Oscar Winners Can You Name? (Video)

With the Academy Awards looming in front of us this weekend like some long-awaited episode of Family Guy, it’s difficult to figure out what movie should win Best Picture. Will it be Lincoln, which is very long and serious and obviously a top contender for those very reasons? Or Silver Linings Playbook, which has Bradley Cooper (People‘s Sexiest Man, 2012) falling in love with Katniss? How about Argo, which is Affleck’s second best directorial effort of all time? Or Zero Dark Thirty? Life of Pi? Amour? (Follow-up question: Did anyone see Amour?) It’d be awesome if Best Picture went to Beasts of the Southern Wild, but can it win the Academy’s love over Django Unchained? (Please do not let it go to Django Unchained.)

When putting down money for your Oscar predictions, it’s always good to look at the past history of winners to see how the vote-makers will lean. Luckily, Nelson Carvajal has made a supercut of 84 years of Best Picture Winners. From Wings to On the Waterfront to The English Patient all the way up to last year’s winner, The Artist, see how many of these brilliant films you can name. Read More

By Drew Grant 2/11 3:11pm

Oscar Season

Christoph Waltz on Between Two Ferns

Zach Galifianakis Gets Oscar-Excited With Nominees in Between Two Ferns (Video)

We’re sure that Seth MacFarlane will do a serviceable job hosting the 85th Academy Awards in two weeks, but come on. Wouldn’t you much rather watch comedian Zach Galifianakis put his faux-awkward interview technique to good use and grill Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams for two hours instead? We don’t even need to root for winners when watching the latest installment of Between Two Ferns…the losers are a funnier lot anyway. Read More

By Drew Grant 1/10 11:40am

Academy Awards

Lincoln leads the pack for the Oscars with 12 nominations

2012′s Academy Award Nominees: Yep, Django Unchained Is Up for Best Picture

There are a lot firsts in the nominations for the 85th annual Academy Award nominations. They include the youngest AND oldest Best Actress nominees (Emmanuelle Riva, 85, and Quvenzhané Wallis, 9), no trace of former dream team member Ben Affleck, and the first snub for Kathryn Bigelow.

On the other hand, there is no way Anne Hathaway is NOT singing this year, so get ready for some Franco-style flashbacks. And with 12 nominations for Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis will (unsurprisingly) definitely be going home with something gold this year.

A partial list below: Read More

By The Editors 2/29/12 8:37am

Opening Shot

Plummer with his contemporary.

Oscars, Schmoscars

As we were otherwise unoccupied on Sunday night, we turned on the television to watch the 84th Academy Awards. “You’re only two years older than me,” Christopher Plummer crooned to his newly acquired gold statue, “Where have you been all my life?” Mr. Plummer won Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Beginners, giving him the distinction of being the oldest actor to ever win an Oscar. But by the end of the telecast, we’d all aged at least a couple of decades, as did Billy Crystal, who seemed to have peeked inside the Ark of the Covenant right before the broadcast.

The whole night was full of non-surprises. Read More

By Chris Lehmann 2/28/12 9:49am

Horse races

Republican Candidates Campaign In Iowa Ahead Of Debate And Straw Poll

Twilight of the Moneyballers! The Oscar Viewer’s Guide to the Primaries

As painful and alienating spectacles go, this year’s Academy Awards ceremony at least had the virtue of a certain grim efficiency. Billy Crystal, hosting the awards for the ninth time, desperately reprised his never-funny opening montage bit, where he’s cut into scenes from the year’s marquee films; when he launched into his still less-funny medley Read More

By Drew Grant 2/24/12 2:14pm

The dictator

Admiral Gen. Shabazz Aladeen (NBC)

Hype Job of the Century?: Sacha Baron Cohen’s Character From The Dictator Responds to Oscar Ban (Video)

Proving that they take themselves way more seriously than the MTV Movie Awards, the Academy of Motion Pictures warned prankster Sasha Baron Cohen this week that he could not attend the Oscars in character from his latest film. According to an official statement from an Academy spokesperson, “The red carpet is not about stunting.” As everyone knows, the red carpet is only to reinforce our country’s love of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and our annual token African-American newcomer, up for a statue for their supporting role in a film starring much bigger celebrities.

Was Mr. Baron Cohen, who co-starred in Hugo, even planning on attending as Admiral Gen. Shabazz Aladeen from  The Dictator, a mockumentary about a Middle Eastern tyrant from the fictional Republic of Wadiya?

Well, now that the powers of be say that he can’t do it, the British comedian is going to milk all the publicity from this non-scandal as possible. And he’s going to do it in character. On the Today show. Poor Ann Curry. Read More

By Rex Reed 2/14/12 8:02pm

movies

Schoenaerts, juiced up on his (and his cattle’s) own supply.

Bullhead Offers Belgian Bovine Brawn

Competing for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar, the Belgian entry Bullhead is pretty much what experience has taught me is a characteristic example of filmmaking from Belgium—a dark, gruesome, sickening but extremely original work that is both repellent and fascinating. It’s about a vicious, bullying cattle farmer named Jacky who swings a shady deal with a Mafia meat trader that results in the murder of a federal cop investigating the use of illegal hormones in meat-packing plants. Jacky is played with ferocious power by coarse, craggy newcomer Matthias Schoenaerts, whose brawny, menacing swagger masks a sad, desperate emptiness that reminds me of the first time the screen unveiled the terrifying impact of Ralph Fiennes’s Nazi camp commander in Schindler’s List. Read More