Awards season just shifted from winter to spring, and the Oscars will essentially kick off the summer movie season. For most of its history, the Academy Awards were held primarily between late-March and mid-April. As the culture sped up in the social media age, so did the awards calendar; in 2004, the Oscars moved to [...]
Chalk one up for Netflix. At least for now. Kind of. The mega-streamer has long been frustrated by one of the Academy's requirements for Oscar eligibility. To compete for Oscar gold, a film must debut in theaters and play exclusively on that platform (in New York or LA) for at least one week. In other [...]
We may not have witnessed the biggest upset in Oscar history (that still goes to 2016’s Moonlight), but the 92nd annual ceremony ended with what was arguably the Academy Awards' biggest breakthrough. Right there with Kathryn Bigelow’s glass-ceiling shattering first female win for Best Director with The Hurt Locker, Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean thriller Parasite became the [...]
Here are my predictions for who will win at The 92nd Annual Academy Awards, along with my "Who Should Win" preferences. I also provide my thinking behind each prediction, while also offering what I think are the other strong contenders in each category (if there are any). The ceremony will take place on Sunday night February [...]
When it comes to Oscar pools, the make-or-break categories are the three for short films: Animated, Documentary, and Live Action. Below are links to my reviews for those three separate categories. These short film packages are playing in theaters nationwide in two different ways: As three separate feature length collections, one for each category (you're [...]
Yes, I'm a Top 10 straggler, but I'd rather be sure about my choices than second-guess them down the road. Rushing out a list during the onslaught of screening season, simply to meet the obligatory date of December 31st, doesn't allow for proper consideration, especially with so many contenders dumped out en masse at year's [...]
Released: January 31, 2020 Runtime: 101 minutes (5 short films) Program: Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts for 2019 (Parental Discretion advised; strong language and occasional instances of sexuality -- some including violence -- would put this slate in Rated R territory) There’s a stretch of categories during every Oscar telecast that virtually no one has ever even heard of, [...]
Parasite maintained its status as a big Oscar contender while Jojo Rabbit positioned itself as an Oscar spoiler as each were the big winners at the annual Writers Guild Awards, honoring the best scriptwriting of 2019. Writer / Director Bong Joon-ho and his co-writer Han Jin-won won the Best Original Screenplay award from the WGA, becoming the [...]
Released: January 31, 2020 Runtime: 83 minutes (5 short films) Program: Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts for 2019 There’s a stretch of categories during every Oscar telecast that virtually no one has ever even heard of, let alone seen: the shorts. Divided into three competitive groups – Animated, Live Action, and Documentary – the Academy Award nominated shorts can make-or-break [...]
Released: January 31, 2020 in select theaters Runtime: 160 Minutes (5 short films) Program: Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts for 2019 (Parental Discretion advised; the final documentary short film "St. Louis Superman" has strong adult language) There’s a stretch of categories during every Oscar telecast that virtually no one has ever even heard of, let alone seen: the shorts. [...]