The Oscars: 84th Academy Award Nominations

As you may already be well aware of, the Academy made some very significant changes to the format of this year's Oscars event. In addition to the usual attempts at cutting back on the "thank you" speeches and quickening up of the program, the ceremony this year completely removed the performances of the best song nominees. Yet it was curious (read: it didn't belong) to see interpretive dance routines in the presentations for Best Original Sc


The other issue that some will raise is the bloated nature of the telecast. Beginning at 8:30 p.m. EST, Sean Penn didn't announce that Birdman had won Best Picture until 11:48 p.m. In between all the awards being handed out, viewers were expected to slog their way through comedy bits that arguably fell flat, musical performances, and several commercial breaks. In this day and age, fans can find out who wins in real time via social media and see any speeches they're interested in watching online shortly after the original telecast. The need to see the show live has decrea


Hounddog takes place some time in the late 50's or early 60's in the rural south. Dakota Fanning plays Lewellen, a very precocious 12 year old. It seems that right from the start the goal of the film is to make viewers uncomfortable as it opens with a scene between her and a boy that looks a bit younger that is her best friend. They're in the woods and she wants him to drop his pants and underwear for a peek in exchange for a kiss. She talks about wanting to kill her father, which led me to believe that there may have been some sexual abuse going on, but it's never alluded to ag


Surprisingly, neither Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin nor Disney's 2D animated critical darling, Winnie the Pooh , is a contender for Best Animated Feature. However, despite Stephen Daldry's critic-dividing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close landing a Best Pic nod over a more universally-beloved title like, say, Warrior , that selection was (unfortunately) expec


Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak and Oscar-nominated actress Jennifer Lawrence ( Winter's Bone , The Hunger Games ) jointly announced the nominations for the 84th Academy Awards this morning, on Tuesday January 24th. The actual 2012 Oscar ceremony will take place next month, on February 26th at the Kodak theater - with Billy Crystal serving as host, for the ninth time in his car


King already took home an Emmy for her role in American Crime (and she deserves another for The Leftovers ), so seeing her win a Golden Globe wouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Her role wasn't as showy as the others, but it demonstrated what a terrific actress King is and why she's one of those performers who makes things better just by being in t


I'm not a fan of the desperate attempts at bringing out celebrities like Taylor Lautner and Miley Cyrus for the sole reason of bringing their fanbases in for ratings rather than their accomplishments. There were quite a few shots of Lautner sitting near the front when he wasn't nominated for anything (like we saw with Rob Pattinson last year). He has a better seat than those who were nominated or even winners of other categor


The likeliest culprits most people will point to are the Best Picture nominees themselves. Ever since expanding their top category to include a maximum of 10 films back in 2009, the Academy has done a solid job at ensuring that commercially successful works are recognized. Over the past couple of years, big box office hits like Avatar , Inception , Django Unchained , and Gravity were putting together Oscar campaigns in addition to drawing in large cro


Is the director saying Lewellan was inadvertantly asking for it through her behavior? I doubt that. Is she saying Lewellen should be allowed to act seductively without fear of being attacked? I don't know. My answer is obviously that there can be no justification for taking advantage of a child, but that she should be told that certain ways of acting are inappropriate and there are people out there who will respond to that behavior without giving thought to what is right and what is wr



Hounddog is a drama film directed by Deborah Kampmeier, starring Dakota Fanning as a young girl named Lewellen who finds solace in Elvis Presley's music while growing up in the rural South. The film delves into themes of trauma, resilience, and the transformative power of music. David Morse and Robin Wright Penn play pivotal supporting roles, contributing to the film festival games patch notes|https://Moviefestivalhub.com/'s exploration of complicated family dynamics and personal stren


Steven Spielberg's War Horse managed to land six nods, but the bulk of its nominations were for technical achievements; by comparison, Alexander Payne's The Descendants raked in five, including (as expected) one for George Clooney as an actor, and others in areas like adapted screenplay and direction. Similar to War Horse , David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo landed mostly technical category nods - though, Rooney Mara was recognized for her performance in the f