The best part about the 81st annual Academy Awards on Sunday night—y’know, besides Zac Efron, OMG!—is that once it’s over, we’ll never have to think about Slumdog Millionaire again. Not to join the obvious chorus of backlashers, but a warmed-over Dickensian fable dressed up to look like a prestige version of a Tony Scott Read More
BEST PICTURE
The Reader
My choice for Best Picture would be The Reader. I think it’s a magnificent film about little people with big experiences. It’s a movie that, at a time when movies are not about much of anything, is a very important Read More
If you’re a movie studio looking to get into the David Fincher business, now’s your chance! Paramount Pictures, the studio behind Mr. Fincher’s 13-Oscar nominee The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, has allowed the rights to what could have been his next film, Torso, to lapse. So if you’re looking for a serial Read More
While receiving a nomination from the Producers Guild of America is a very good sign for a film hoping to land in one of the five Best Picture slots at the Academy Awards, it doesn’t necessarily mean all of the nominees announced yesterday should get too comfortable. The last time the PGA nailed Read More
Our biggest pet peeve of the awards season is the platform release. Sure, we understand the theory behind the strategy: studios build buzz by releasing their prestige films into as few theaters as possible, whetting the appetites of every filmgoer with a pulse. Problem is, this year all the films seem destined to be hits, Read More
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Running time 159 minutes
Written by Eric Roth
Directed by David Fincher
Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson
They saved the best for last. Sure, the end of 2008 produced its share of animated kid stuff. Read More
It’s the end of the year as we know it, which can only mean one thing: top 10 lists! Now, we can’t lie—we haven’t seen absolutely everything. (We’re still waiting on Gran Torino, Seven Pounds, and a few others. Also, we will never watch Wall-E. Never!) But we did see an awful (awful) lot in Read More
We always consider the Golden Globe awards ceremony to be a silly/fun excuse for the Hollywood elite to celebrate themselves and get drunk. Who knew that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association treats the nominating process the same way? As the motley crew of Rainn Wilson, Brooke Shields, Terrence Howard (still looking pissed at being left Read More
One of the coolest wrinkles in this seemingly endless (although it’s barely begun!) awards season is that film studios are putting previously unavailable content out to the masses. For instance, the scripts for two of summer’s biggest hits, potential Oscar contenders Wall-E and The Dark Knight, can be officially downloaded right now. Read More
Milk
We only needed to see the kick-ass trailer for Milk to slot this Gus Van Sant film straight into Best Picture contention. After all, it has all of those gold statuette elements: a true story—of California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, who was murdered alongside San Francisco Read More
