Tag: Best Picture Oscar (21-30 of 142)

Jan 30 2012 04:58 PM ET

Oscar predictions: Can Jean Dujardin beat George Clooney?

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DUJARDIN-CLOONEY

Image Credit: Jason Merritt/Joe Klamar/Getty Images

Last night’s Screen Actors Guild Award results certainly made at least one Oscar category a lot more interesting. Jean Dujardin’s win changed Best Actor from a race between George Clooney and Brad Pitt to a fight between Clooney and Dujardin. And as we’ve seen over the years (The King’s Speech, Gladiator, American Beauty), the Academy often likes to pair up Best Picture and Best Actor. I’m not quite ready to predict Dujardin as the Oscar winner just yet, but after I talk to some more voters, I may change my mind in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, The Help‘s Best Cast win (one of three victories for the film last night) was a wonderful moment for that group of actors, but history is not on its side when it comes to its Oscar chances next month. The last time a film won Best Picture without writing or directing nominations was all the way back in 1932. In my mind, The Artist—which has won the Producers Guild and Directors Guild awards—is still the clear favorite. Even though there are several films that lost Best Picture after winning the PGA and DGA (among them Brokeback Mountain and Saving Private Ryan), I don’t sense another film with enough overall support to unseat it. So here are my current rankings in the top 8 categories.

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Jan 24 2012 07:47 PM ET

Best Picture Oscar: So why are there nine nominees?

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Jennifer-Lawrence

Image Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

For those of you who haven’t been following the Oscar race like a college scout at a high-school football game, you might have some questions about this year’s slate of Best Picture nominees. First and foremost, why are there nine of them? Couldn’t the Academy have found one more film and made it a nice, round group of ten? And how did small-ish movies like The Tree of Life and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close get in over crowd-pleasers like Bridesmaids and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? The answer, to your algebra teacher’s delight, involves some math. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 22 2012 01:01 AM ET

'The Artist,' 'Tintin' win Producers Guild Awards

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The Artist continued its march to the Oscars by winning the Producers Guild of America award for Best Picture of the Year, emerging victorious over top contenders like Hugo, The Help, The Descendants, Midnight in Paris, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The last four years, the PGA winner has gone on to win the Academy Award as well. In the animated category, The Adventures of Tintin topped Rango, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, and Cars 2. The complete list of winners is below.

Picture The Artist
Animated Feature The Adventures of Tintin
Documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest
TV Drama Boardwalk Empire
TV Comedy Modern Family
TV Longform Downton Abbey
Live Entertainment & Talk The Colbert Report
TV News 60 Minutes
Competition The Amazing Race
TV Sports ESPN’s 30 for 30
Non-fiction TV American Masters
Childrens Sesame Street
Web Series 30 Rock Presents 

Dave on Twitter: @davekarger

Jan 3 2012 05:40 PM ET

For your consideration: 'Harry Potter' for Best Picture. But is it too late?

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With the nominations for the Producers Guild Awards announced today, the field of Oscar contenders for Best Picture is getting clearer. While some Oscar prognosticators are noting the absence of the critically-acclaimed film The Tree of Life, another movie filled with eye-popping visual effects and that addresses profound questions about life and death was also left off the PGA’s short list: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2.

The Harry Potter franchise has had a surprisingly paltry haul when it comes to Oscar gold: No wins, and only nine nominations across the first seven films (and none at all for Chamber of Secrets and The Order of the Phoenix). But despite the Academy’s Muggle-like attitude towards the highest-grossing film franchise of all time — and the final film’s inability to break into the main pack of awards season contenders — Warner Bros. is still putting some serious marketing muscle into a campaign to win Harry his first Best Picture nod. Artful billboards with laudatory film critic quotes have been popping up all over Los Angeles for months now, and the studio has also been releasing a series of TV ads to the same purpose (which you can watch, embedded below). These ads are ostensibly to promote the film’s DVD and Blu-ray discs — which hit stores way back on Nov. 11, whereas Oscar ballots are due Jan. 13. Check them out below. Do you think the campaign is enough to convince Academy voters to give Harry Potter his due at the Kodak?  READ FULL STORY »

Jan 3 2012 12:27 PM ET

Producers Guild Top 10: 'Dragon Tattoo,' 'Ides of March' in; 'Tree of Life' out

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The Producers Guild of America has announced its 10 nominees for Best Picture of the Year, and along with expected contenders like The Artist, War Horse, The Descendants, The Help, and Hugo were two minor surprises: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Ides of March. Left off the list, meanwhile, were Drive, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and most interestingly, The Tree of Life. That polarizing film, which has done well in the critics awards so far, clearly takes the biggest hit in the overall Oscar race and is no longer a sure thing for a Best Picture nomination.

Last year, the PGA honorees matched the eventual Best Picture nominees nine for 10, but this year it may not be as easy to compare the two — the Academy’s new voting rules dictate that there will be somewhere between five and 10 Best Picture nominees this go-round, depending on how many films receive at least 5 percent of the overall No. 1 votes. The PGA awards will take place on Jan. 21; all the nominees are listed below.

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Nov 14 2011 03:04 PM ET

'Dragon Tattoo' director David Fincher talks Oscar campaigning and his new film's chances

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Image Credit: Baldur Bragason

Nobody has seen David Fincher’s much-anticipated film version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (in theaters Dec. 21), but there’s already Oscar buzz building for Rooney Mara (Lisbeth Salander) and director David Fincher, who’s been nominated twice before (for The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). So what does Fincher think about Dragon Tattoo‘s Oscar chances? “There’s too much anal rape in this movie” to get nominated, he says, half-jokingly. “I think we’re very safe.”

Fincher says he isn’t preparing for the Oscar process, but he points out that “we didn’t gear up for it last time, either” (2010′s Social Network scored eight nominations). And he’s not opposed to campaigning, especially if it helps out his collaborators. READ FULL STORY »

Oct 4 2011 01:04 PM ET

'Battle of Britain' movie in the works from 'The Departed' producer

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Anthony Potter Collection/Getty Images

“The battle of France is over. The battle of Britain is about to begin.”

With those words, spoken in June 1940, newly elected Prime Minister Winston Churchill prepared his country for the Nazi air assault aimed at decimating the flying forces of the United Kingdom. Now two Oscar winners are joining forces to announce the battle is beginning again.

Producer Graham King, who won the Best Picture Academy Award for The Departed, has hired Robert Towne, who claimed the original screenplay prize for Chinatown, to pen a new script about the attacks.

The battled lasted from July until October of 1940, with spectacular aerial battles unfolding over the cities, and later citizens huddled in basements and subway tunnels (as seen in the photo) during The Blitz. British resilience ultimately gave Hitler one of his first major losses.

Had he succeeded in decimating the British military and populace, the Nazis might have launched a land invasion of England, occupying the country as they did France. It would have later deprived the United States and Soviet Union of an important base of operations and a key ally in the war.

King (The Town, The Aviator) described the film as a kind of personal passion project. READ FULL STORY »

Aug 19 2011 09:00 AM ET

OscarWatch: What are the fall's Best Picture contenders?

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Saeed Adyani

If there’s one thing I dislike the most about the Oscar prediction game, it’s having to make guesses months before the movies in question are even seen. But people have come to expect some kind of Academy Award prognosticating in our annual Fall Movie Preview issue (on stands now), so I recently compiled a list of a dozen possible Best Picture contenders from the last four months of the year. I made a similar list last year and managed to include all six of the season’s eventual Best Picture nominees: The King’s Speech, The Social Network, The Fighter, 127 Hours, Black Swan, and True Grit. (Of course I also had How Do You Know, Love and Other Drugs, and The Tempest on there, so clearly you can’t win ‘em all.) It wasn’t easy to narrow it down to 12 this time, but here’s what I went with: READ FULL STORY »

Jul 18 2011 02:34 PM ET

'Harry Potter': Can 'Deathly Hallows -- Part 2' snag a Best Picture nomination?

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 is the talk of Hollywood right now. But will Oscar voters remember it in six months when they’re filling out their nomination ballots? The seven previous Potter films earned a total of only nine Oscar nods — four fewer than the first Lord of the Rings movie scored all on its own. My hunch is that’s because in the eyes of the Academy, Potter has mostly been seen as a kids’ franchise. But that could certainly change with the final film, which has earned fantastic reviews. It had its official Academy screening yesterday, and one voter who was in attendance tells me, “They loved it, as did I. Almost everyone stayed until the end of the credits. I do think it has a shot. How high on the ballot will depend on what else is out there, but it’s a really good movie.” How high are the operative words here — the Academy’s new rules dictate that a film must receive five percent of the overall No. 1 votes in order to qualify for a Best Picture nod. The cast does boast seven previous acting winners or nominees, and although Alan Rickman and Ralph Fiennes were impressive as always, I’m not sure either one has that undeniable “Oscar scene” here. While nominations for visual effects and art direction seem likely, in the Best Picture race, it may be tough for Deathly Hallows to compete with the onslaught of Oscar bait coming at the end of the year. But if there ever was a Potter film that could make the cut, it’s this one.

Follow Dave on Twitter @davekarger.

Read more:
‘Harry Potter’ Central
How many times did ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2′: Did you cry?
Photo Gallery: ‘Harry Potter’ stars share their memories

Jun 15 2011 01:11 PM ET

The Academy's new Best Picture rule: How it will change the prediction period

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Osacr-mini-statues

Image Credit: Todd Wawrychuk/©A.M.P.A.S.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ surprising decision to allow for anywhere between five and 10 Best Picture nominees next year strikes me as a clear-headed response to some of the criticism surrounding the recent supersizing of the category. It seems to me that, had the newly announced system been in place over the last few years, a film like The Dark Knight would have made it into the race, while a questionable nominee like The Blind Side wouldn’t have made the cut. So they’re on the right track.

But as someone who spends months analyzing the Oscar race and predicting the nominees every year, I have one remaining question: READ FULL STORY »

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