By Daniel D'Addario 2/27/12 1:46pm

The Oscars

6 Photos

Jessica Chastain (Getty Images)

Here’s Who Was Best-Dressed At the Oscars

The year’s biggest night for fashion was an unusually metallic affair–with Best Actress Meryl Streep draped in gold, Best Supporting Actress Octavia Spencer in sparkly silver, Melissa Leo in a pile of sequins, and Jennifer Lopez in a significantly sparser pile of sequins. Aside from all the gold and silver, black and white seemed to rule the evening–the few well-executed bits of color, like Michelle Williams’s sweet red dress, came across beautifully. Here’s who we thought were the best dressed last night! Read More

By Daniel D'Addario 2/23/12 12:23pm

The Oscars

Jean DuJardin, your Best Actor winner (Getty Images)

Here’s Who Will Win the Oscars

The Academy Awards are this Sunday–and we’ll be liveblogging away at observer.com. So as to be optimally prepared for these mythical “Oscar pools” that exist only in the minds of entertainment writers, or at least to shout the winner a second before it happens, we’ve held the hive-mind of the Internet to our ear so Read More

By Daniel D'Addario 1/30/12 8:30am

The Oscars

Viola Davis at the SAG Awards (Getty Images)

SAG Awards–Clooney and Streep Look a Lot Less Secure

Last night’s Screen Actors Guild Awards shook up the Oscar race insofar as it was able to be shaken up. Sure bets in the supporting categories Octavia Spencer (The Help) and Christopher Plummer (Beginners) cleaned up again, while frontrunning lead actors George Clooney (The Descendants) and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) were dethroned.

The beneficiaries Read More

By Meghan Keane 8/09/11 8:05pm

movies

Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis in 'The Help.'

In The Help, Searching for Depth in the Deep South

If fried chicken were really as restorative as the new movie The Help seems to think, Jim Crow laws probably wouldn’t have originated in the South. But in the world of Kathryn Stockett’s novel (and now film), Southern stereotypes are given a retro, glossy sheen, and ingrained racial tension can be resolved by a plucky Read More