Last year’s piece about diversity and the Academy Awards contained some cold hard facts from the LA Times about the break of the gender, race and age of Oscar voters. Over the past couple years the Academy has been attempting to stay relevant, and clean up their bad press with regard with these statistics, they […]

 

I started this last year, keeping a list of every movie I see all year (just the new releases) in order to form a definitive set of personal rankings come the following January. My 2014 list started on February 9th when I saw That Awkward Moment starring Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B Jordan […]

 

Well that happened! To say that this year’s Oscar nominees are a disappointment is a bit of an understatement. Let’s start with the first announcement, which was done by J.J. Abrams and Alfonse Cuaron. Two of the biggest locks for nominations were shut out, The Lego Movie in Best Animated Feature, and Life Itself in […]

There are a few obvious trends in the stories that dominated (and continue to dominate as the awards roll in) the 2014 cinematic season. Sociopaths had a big year (Gone Girl, Nightcrawler), as did women who walked really far (Tracks, Wild) and people who found healing through music (Rudderless, Begin Again, Frank). There was also a […]

 

Now that most of the critics groups have had their say, through awards and top ten lists, and the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG), and Golden Globe Nominations have been announced, its time to get in some updated Oscar predictions before the end of the year. I’m working off a moderately outdated list, because the last […]

A cast of some of TV’s most wonderful people populates About Alex, the debut feature from Parenthood writer Jesse Zwick. A dramedy about college friends reunited by tragic, awkward circumstances, this ensemble dramedy dives into everything- listlessness, love (requited, unrequited, unspoken, overwrought), depression, anxiety, jealousy, pretension, ambition- only rarely losing its honesty and light touch. […]

It was the snub heard round the world. Angelina Jolie was not nominated for a single Golden Globe yesterday. Jolie was a contender for Producer/ Director on Unbroken, and in the Lead Actress in Comedy/Musical for Maleficent; she did not reap a single nomination. It will be hard for this film to rebound from this, […]

Somewhere in a high tower I imagine Harvey Weinstein is looking into a cauldron, and cackling. The Weinstein Company did exceptionally well today, their film The Imitation Game has 3, including Best Ensemble, Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), and Supporting Actress (Keira Knightly). I make this joke because Harvey just has a way of making these types […]