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?

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Academy Awards

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oscar predictions

Leo and Tigers and Ben Affleck, (Arg)O My!: Who Will Be the Sorest Loser at Tonight’s Academy Awards?

Tonight is the 85th Academy Awards, and for all intents and purposes it should be a good one. Look at all those serious films, and the one movie by Quentin Tarantino! And with big snubs for Best Director for both Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, does that mean one of them will be be sweeping up the Best Picture Award as a consolation prize? And most importantly, is it too late to write in a ballot for Javier Bardem in Skyfall? Because he was great. Read More

movies

Huppert.

The Comforts of Home: Amour Boasts No Melodrama

It’s always reassuring to see a nutty director go straight. Austria’s Michael Haneke is famous for his lurid, violent and thoroughly sick exercises in torture and sexual depravity. Wait a sec. Did I say famous? Only to the occasional film festival audience. The public has avoided him like a dose of swine flu. Who sat Read More

The Underappreciated Giant of the French New Wave

Jean-Pierre Melville’s (1933-1973) Léon Morin, Prêtre (Léon Morin, priest) (1961), from his own screenplay, based on Béatrix’ Beck’s (1914-2008) autobiographical novel, will be revived at Film Forum from April 17 to April 23. Both the book and the film are constructed as a dialectical confrontation between a skeptical communist woman and an intellectual Catholic priest, Read More