Academy Awards

'Fresh Off the Boat' Season Finale Alludes to Chris Rock's Academy Awards Joke

Michael Nordine — Thu, 26 May 2016 22:01:22 GMT

Chris Rock had to juggle a lot of competing interests as host of the Academy Awards earlier this year, with controversy erupting over the lack of a single black performer being nominated in any of the acting categories long before the ceremony actually took place. Nestled among the show's many timely jokes related to the Academy's lack of diversity was a seriously ill-advised skit involving Asian children dressed up as accountants. Ang Lee and George Takei were just two of the 25 Academy members of Asian descent who wrote a letter in protest, and they've now been joined a few months later by the TV show "Fresh Off the Boat."

READ MORE: Constance Wu: Asian Actors Must 'Train Like It's the Olympics' to Be Considered For Roles Against White Actor

The show, which takes place in the '90s, featured a scene in Tuesday's season finale in which a boy named Eddie watches one of Rock's HBO stand-up comedy specials. He and his brother Evan are enamored of the comic's humor, with the latter saying at one point that "I'm just glad he doesn't do lame Asian jokes." You may have spoken too soon, Evan.

READ MORE: #StarringConstanceWu Highlights Hollywood's Whitewashing With Posters of the 'Fresh Off The Boat' Actress

AMPAS eventually responded to the fallout from Rock's joke with a statement saying, "The Academy appreciates the concerns stated, and regrets that any aspect of the Oscar telecast was offensive. We are committed to doing our best to ensure that material in future shows be more culturally sensitive."

For more, watch a scene from "Fresh Off the Boat":

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2017 Oscar Predictions

Anne Thompson — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 20:07:09 GMT

I'm not in the speculation business. It may seem early for Oscar predictions, but distributors are already figuring out what they've got and how to sell it. And as studios reveal trailers and footage, they also show tell-tale signs of strength and weakness as they slot movies after Cannes, or before the fall festival circuit, or plunk their bets on expensive year-end dates.

Each year starts fresh with a few Oscar hopefuls emerging at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by studio intros of buzzworthy titles at CinemaCon and several high-profile Cannes Film Festival entries in May. So here's a breakdown of awards campaigns that have already begun. There's plenty of mystery waiting down the pike, from Clint Eastwood's "Sully" and Martin Scorsese's "Silence" to Warren Beatty's Howard Hughes movie, which has started the preview process heading toward a fall Fox release.

This year saw two memorably extended Eccles standing ovations for actor and rookie writer-director Nate Parker's decade-long passion project, "Birth of a Nation" (October 7), the rousing true story of rebel slave Nat Turner's uprising in antebellum Virginia. Stage-trained Parker ("The Debaters," "Arbitrage," "Beyond the Lights") is powerful as literate preacher Turner, whose master is well played by Armie Hammer. Count on Fox Searchlight ("12 Years a Slave") to push their $17.5 million acquisition (bidding against deep-pocketed Netflix), which won both the Sundance Grand Jury and Audience prizes, during the fall award season. With "Birdman" and "Brooklyn" over the past two years, industry Oscar leader Searchlight has notched 13 Best Picture nominations in the past 12 years, more than any other company.

Parker has already turned into a sought-after talent and was feted last week with CinemaCon's breakthrough director award in Las Vegas; the first view of the "Birth of a Nation" trailer duly wowed exhibitors there, where early footage of "Life of Pi" and "The Revenant" also launched their respective Oscar campaigns. "Birth of a Nation" will benefit from extra attention across the board as diversity issues continue to weigh on the industry and Academy.

Also well reviewed at Sundance was playwright Kenneth Lonergan's return to the big screen with heartrending family drama "Manchester By the Sea" (November 18), which Amazon Studios will reintroduce at fall festivals via theatrical distributor Roadside Attractions ("Biutiful," "Albert Nobbs," "Winter's Bone"). At CinemaCon, Amazon's Bob Berney showed a devastating clip of estranged one-time-lovers Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck meeting again. Acting, writing, and directing nominations look likely.

Ex-Focus Features chief and frequent Ang Lee screenwriter James Schamus' directing debut "Indignation" (Lionsgate/Summit, July 16), adapted from a Philip Roth novel and starring Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon and playwright-actor Tracy Letts, nabbed strong Sundance reviews.

With her fifth indie feature, New York writer-director Rebecca Miller's well-received Toronto comedy "Maggie's Plan" (Sony Pictures Classics, May 20) also played well at Sundance. The movie stars whip-smart Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore, and Ethan Hawke in a sophisticated relationship triangle not unlike Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," which won Best Picture in its day. This time, the brainy Arthur Miller scion delivers her most accessible movie to date. And, is likeliest to wind up with the same screenwriting Oscar as director nominees Sofia Coppola and Jane Campion.

As ever, Sundance breaks out any number of documentaries that wind up in the Oscar race. Last year "What Happened, Miss Simone?" and "Cartel Land" debuted there. This year's likely contenders include U.S. Grand Jury Prize winner "Weiner," U.S. Documentary Directing Award winner "Life, Animated" (July 8, The Orchard) and U.S. Documentary Award Audience Award winner "Jim: The James Foley Story" (HBO). Other possibilities include gun control doc "Under the Gun" (May 15, EPIX), an examination of the aftermath at Sandy Hook,"Newtown," and Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing's crowdpleaser, "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You" (Music Box Films, WNET).

Emerging from Venice 2015 was Luca Guadignino's sexy thriller "A Bigger Splash" (Fox Searchlight, May 4), which drew raves for silent Tilda Swinton as a rock star recovering from throat surgery on a Mediterranean vacation with hunky lover Matthew Schoenaerts and ex-husband Ralph Fiennes, in a deliciously showy supporting comedic role. Another fall festival favorite also played SXSW: "Born to Be Blue" (IFC, March 30) stars "Boyhood" nominee Ethan Hawke, who croons convincingly and digs deep into the psyche of legendary jazz trumpeter and junkie Chet Baker. Critics also lauded "Selma" star Carmen Ejogo as the woman who helps him to mount a comeback.

February's Berlin Film Festival last year broke out Andrew Haigh's two-hander "45 Years" (IFC), whose star Charlotte Rampling won Best Actress in Berlin and at the European Film Awards, and an eventual Best Actress Oscar nomination. This year's possible Berlin foreign nominees include Italian director Gianfrano Rosi's moving refugee documentary "Fire At Sea," which won the Golden Bear. The Grand Jury Prize went to 2001 foreign Oscar-winner Danis Tanovic's "Death In Sarajevo," while French auteur Mia Hansen-Love’s "Things To Come," starring Isabelle Huppert, earned the Best Director Silver Bear. Danish star Trine Dyrholm took Best Actress for Thomas Vinterberg’s relationship drama "The Commune," and Best Actor went to Majd Mastoura for Mohamed Ben Attia’s Tunisian marriage drama "Inhebbek Hedi."

At CinemaCon, Sony chief Tom Rothman wowed exhibitors and media with footage from "Life of Pi" Oscar-winner Ang Lee's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" (November 11), based on the bestselling book. The drama — enhanced by Lee's groundbreaking use of high frame rate— stars newcomer Joe Alwyn as an Iraq veteran with PTSD who returns to a glaring hero's welcome. Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund co-star. Sony also unveiled "Passengers" (December 21), a visually sumptuous space survival tale from "Imitation Game" director Morten Tyldum starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.

Universal debuted footage from "The Help" director Tate Taylor's adaptation of the bestselling mystery thriller "The Girl on the Train" (October 7) starring Emily Blunt in the starring role, which looks like it might strike that magic balance between commercial and awards-worthy, but critics and audiences will tell that tale.

Also breaking at CinemaCon was news that Denzel Washington will direct and star with his Broadway co-star Viola Davis in a film adaptation of the Tony-winning Broadway revival of August Wilson's 50s drama "Fences," which if it is complete by year's end, will make a strong contender for Paramount.

The studio offered severals awards possibilities. Also snagging buzz was the studio's November release from New Regency, Bob Zemeckis and writer Steven Knight, World War II spy drama "Allied," starring Brad Pitt as a spy who falls for a French woman (Marion Cotillard) who may be a Nazi. "The Queen" director Stephen Frears' "Florence Foster Jenkins" might land the usual acting nod for Meryl Streep's portrayal of the world's worst opera singer; Hugh Grant plays her supportive husband. And a long-shot awards possibility is Denis Villeneuve's alien-landing adventure "Story of Your Life," starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

Indie upstart STX showed strong footage from Matthew McConaughey Civil War vehicle "Free State of Jones," a passion project from writer-director and Oscar perennial Gary Ross ("Seabiscuit," "Pleasantville"). Longer awards shots include two Lionsgate films, "Whiplash" director Damien Chazelle's jazz musical "La La Land" (December 16), starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, and Peter Berg's true story "Deepwater Horizon" (September 30), starring Mark Wahlberg and Kate Hudson. Lionsgate and Berg have a second Wahlberg vehicle in the works for year-end, Boston marathon bomber drama "Patriot’s Day."

The next question: which Oscar contenders will launch at Cannes?

Last year at the May festival, George Miller's fourth "Mad Max" action adventure "Fury Road" was praised by critics — who later included it in year-end 10-best lists and awards. It scored a final 10 Oscar nominations and six wins. Devastating and aesthetically innovative Hungarian holocaust drama "Son of Saul" (Sony Pictures Classics) won a Cannes prize and went on to win Best Foreign Film, while Weinstein's Cannes debut "Carol" landed the Cannes Best Actress award for Rooney Mara as well as six Oscar nominations. Beloved Disney/Pixar Cannes entry "Inside Out" proved impossible to beat for the animation Oscar. And rising indie A24 pushed Asif Kapadia's well-received Cannes documentary "Amy" (July 3), about the downfall of the gifted and troubled singer Amy Winehouse, to an eventual Oscar win.

Breakout fest titles this year include Jeff Nichols' period racial drama "Loving" (Focus Features, November 4), starring Australian Joel Edgerton and British Ruth Negga, Jim Jarmusch's low-key meditation "Paterson," starring Adam Driver, Woody Allen's fest opener "Cafe Society" (August 24, Amazon Studios), starring Jesse Eisenberg and "Clouds of Sils Maria" Cesar-winner Kristen Stewart, along with a spate of likely foreign contenders such as Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's first French-language film "Elle," starring Isabelle Huppert, German director Maron Ade's generation-clash comedy "Toni Erdmann," and Pedro Almodovar's "Julieta," from Spain, all acquired by Sony Pictures Classics.

Early Oscar predictions below. Please note: For my contenders list, no movie — no matter how excellent its credentials — can get frontrunner status until I have seen it.

Best motion picture of the year

Frontrunners:

"The Birth of a Nation" (Fox Searchlight)
"Cafe Society" (Amazon, Lionsgate)
"Loving" (Focus Features)

"Maggie's Plan" (Sony Pictures Classics)

Contenders:

"Allied" (Paramount)

"Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" (Sony)

"Fences" (Paramount)

"The Free State of Jones" (STX)

"The Light Between Oceans" (DreamWorks/Disney)

"Manchester by the Sea" (Amazon, Roadside Attractions)

"Passengers" (Sony)
"Rules Don't Apply" ( New Regency/Fox)

"Silence" (Paramount)

"Sully" (Warner Bros.)

Long Shots:

"Bleed for This" (Open Road)
"Elle" (Sony Pictures Classics)

"Deepwater Horizon" (Lionsgate)

"The Girl on the Train" (Universal)

"La La Land" (Lionsgate)

"Lion" (Weinstein Co.)
"Paterson" (Amazon)

"Patriot's Day" (Lionsgate)

"Story of Your Life" (Paramount)

"War Machine" (Netflix)

"The Zookeeper's Wife" (Focus Features)

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Frontrunners:

Joel Edgerton ("Loving")
Ethan Hawke ("Born to Be Blue")

Nate Parker ("The Birth of a Nation")

Contenders:

Casey Affleck ("Manchester by the Sea")

Warren Beatty ("Rules Don't Apply")

Michael Fassbender ("The Light Between Oceans")
Andrew Garfield ("Silence")

Tom Hanks ("Sully")

Matthew McConaughey ("Free State of Jones")

Brad Pitt ("Allied")

Denzel Washington ("Fences")

Long Shots:

Chris Pratt ("Passengers")

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Frontrunners:

Ralph Fiennes ("A Bigger Splash")

Armie Hammer ("The Birth of a Nation")

Ethan Hawke ("Maggie's Plan")

Contenders:

Adam Driver ("Silence")
Lucas Hedges ("Manchester by the Sea")

Long Shots:
Tracy Letts ("Indignation")
Liam Neeson ("Silence")

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Frontrunners:
Ruth Negga ("Loving")

Contenders:

Marion Cotillard ("Allied")

Viola Davis ("Fences")

Jennifer Lawrence ("Passengers")

Meryl Streep ("Florence Foster Jenkins")

Alicia Vikander ("The Light Between Oceans")

Michelle Williams ("Manchester By the Sea")

Long Shots:

Amy Adams ("Story of Your Life")

Greta Gerwig ("Maggie's Plan")
Rebecca Hall ("Christine")
Helen Mirren ("Eye in the Sky")
Kristen Stewart ("Cafe Society")

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Frontrunners:

Aja Naomi King ("The Birth of a Nation")
Carmen Ejogo ("Born to Be Blue")

Julianne Moore ("Maggie's Plan")

Contenders:

Kristen Stewart ("Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk")

Best animated feature film of the year

Frontrunner:
"The Red Turtle" (Studio Ghibli/Sony Pictures Classics)

Contenders:

"Finding Dory" (Pixar/Disney/)

"Ice Age: Collision Course" (Blue Sky/Fox)
"Kubo and the Two Strings" (Laika/Focus Features,)
"Moana" (Disney)

"The Secret Life of Pets" (Illumination/Universal)

"Trolls" (DreamWorks/Fox)

"Zootopia" (Disney)

Achievement in directing

Frontrunners:

Rebecca Miller ("Maggie's Plan")
Jeff Nichols ("Loving")

Nate Parker ("The Birth of a Nation")

Contenders:

Warren Beatty ("Rules Don't Apply")

Derek Cianfrance ("The Light Between Oceans")

Clint Eastwood ("Sully")

Ang Lee ("Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk")

Kenneth Lonergan ("Manchester by the Sea")

Martin Scorsese ("Silence")

Morten Tyldum ("Passengers")

Denzel Washington ("Fences")

Bob Zemeckis ("Allied")

Long Shots:
Woody Allen ("Cafe Society")

Peter Berg ("Deepwater Horizon")

Peter Berg ("Patriot's Day")

Damien Chazelle ("La La Land")

Gary Ross ("Free State of Jones")

Tate Taylor ("The Girl on the Train")

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'The Martian' is Not a Comedy: Awards Groups Respond to Controversies with New Rules

Anne Thompson — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 20:30:26 GMT

The recent Motion Picture Academy and Golden Globes rule changes highlight a larger problem: relevancy.

It's not hard to notice the difference between the too-white Oscar show and its various rivals, from the Golden Globes, SAG and the Critics' Choice Awards to the recent (uber-promotional) MTV Movie Awards, all of which broaden their nomination categories to include a far more diverse selection of popular hits and television players.

Even if the Academy, in a memo to its members this week, backtracked on its hastily announced eligibility requirements —“despite what you may have heard, and despite the timing of our announcement, this proposal is actually not about diversity"—the larger question of staying relevant as the industry changes around them is vital.

To that end the Academy has opened up the process for being elected to the Board of Governors to all members, including publicist Bruce Feldman, who has been campaigning via social media. Before, members voted for an election committee that chose the candidates for the Board of Governors, often from the same limited pool.

And the Academy Governors sent a memo on Monday to its members to clarify the new rules announced in January on qualifying for Oscar voting on the basis of their active participation in moviemaking. The governors admitted that “in our initial resolution, we tried, but failed to come up with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ definition of activity.”

As AMPAS president Cheryl Boone Isaacs told me before the Oscars, the executive committee of each of the Academy's 17 branches will vet the eligibility and active status of their individual members, letting them know by the end of the July of their voting rights. The likelihood, assured the Academy, is that few members will be excised from voting rolls. Why put so many members through torture that they would be ignominiously deprived of their voting status?

Thus, the memo makes clear that measuring 10-year activity does not start with when someone joins the Academy (which is often late in their working life) or end when they retire, but rather covers their entire career. As many protesting members have made clear, producers and writers work differently than, say, craftspeople and actors. So each branch will figure out how to determine these calls for their members.

For his part, Feldman criticizes the Academy for the "hasty, ill-thought-out decision they made back in January to disenfranchise older voters," he wrote on Facebook. "They did it without acknowledging that it was a misguided move in the first place, one that never should have been enacted. But they did concede this: It was the wrath of members that compelled them to backpedal. The board abjectly failed to anticipate the ire of members, young and old.

"We can learn a few lessons from this episode. The first is that we cannot trust the current governors to act with forethought, to fully consider the consequences of their actions, however well meaning they might have been. It’s also very clear that our governors made no effort to invite commentary and advice from members before summarily acting on an issue as major as this one; they should have."

The larger issue for the Academy is how to continue forward in a digital world that includes many forms of "filmed entertainment" not projected in theaters. Many Academy members now routinely cross the line between films and television. The Academy's distinctions between TV and film documentaries stretch the reality of today's world (most are both), along with the so-called differences between digital VFX in live-action movies and animation — big spectacle movies today like "The Jungle Book" or "Captain America: Civil War" are mostly CG creations with live-action components—which are hidebound and antediluvian.

Many actors in the Academy are biased in favor of live-action movies, and against animation and actors like Andy Serkis, who work in motion-capture roles, or the designers on such movies as "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," who fashioned intricate miniature sets and costumes for Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated movie. Why should their work not get due consideration? While the so-white-male Academy does reflect the hideous imbalances in how women and minorities are hired before and behind the camera, there are myriad other ways that the Academy is not keeping up with the times.

Meanwhile, over at the Golden Globes, responding to the criticized and mocked 2016 Comedy inclusion of Ridley Scott's "The Martian"—studio Fox submitted the space epic in that category partly to be able to advertise star Matt Damon's inevitable win — the Hollywood Foreign Press has tweaked its rules to clarify what constitutes a comedy or drama. The release states:

“Motion pictures shall be entered in the category that best matches the overall tone and content of the motion picture. Thus, for example, dramas with comedic overtones should be entered as dramas. A musical is a comedy or a drama in which songs are used in addition to spoken dialogue to further the plot.”

The 93 L.A.-based HFPA voters, who the studios and networks wine and dine throughout the year in hopes of landing Globe nominations, will vote on whether or not to accept film and television category submissions. It will take 2/3s of HFPA voters to change the designation, and they will let submitters know of any change by August 1.

The HFPA journalists, according to new conflict of interest rules, may not consult or work on eligible TV and film projects. Perhaps most radical for this group, which has been defined how the studios routinely fly, junket, feed and fete its members, are the campaign rule changes. Between the Globe nominations and the final ballot deadline, HFPA members must now “not be invited to and must not attend events (including parties, receptions, lunches and dinners and similar events) at which Golden Globe award nominees are present.”

Quel horreur! Which of course does not change HFPA members' routines the rest of the time.

NBC will air the 74th annual Golden Globes on January 8, 2017.

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A Change of Culture Is Necessary for Hollywood Diversity Measures to Succeed

Diana Martinez — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 18:30:00 GMT

Yesterday, several prominent Asian-American Academy members, including Freida Lee Mock, Ang Lee, Sandra Oh and George Takei, sent a letter to the Academy's Board of Governors protesting the insensitive remarks targeted at Asian-Americans made by host Chris Rock during the Oscars Ceremony. The "tasteless and offensive skits," the letter cites, did not go unnoticed by media. Several media outlets made similar accusations in the days after the Oscars. The hashtag #OnlyOnePercent was created to shed light on the paltry number of Asian-Americans working in Hollywood. As Women and Hollywood noted in our post-Oscars wrap-up, not only were some of Rock's jokes at the expense of Asian-Americans, apart from these mentions, Rock's monologue and subsequent statements on diversity in Hollywood omitted non-black minorities. What the telecast and yesterday's events highlight is Hollywood's glaring need for greater cultural awareness, alongside expanded diversity initiatives.

Most affected by the bias of studio and network executives are minority women filmmakers who, in addition to women, cater to several other "niche" (ie: unprofitable) audiences: people of color, queer and trans audiences and differently-abled people. Though it's not surprising that Hollywood's PR speak reduces minorities to demographic segments, it is disheartening when conversations that try to be inclusive are also blind to the complex identities that make up the "diversity" category. For example, #OscarsSoWhite was initially a hashtag that intended to shed light on the lack of people representing marginalized communities in Hollywood. However as Lenika Cruz at The Atlantic pointed out, many of the think-pieces invoking the hashtag focus solely on the exclusion of black actors, actresses, writers, directors and below-the-line film crew. This does a great disservice to what #OscarsSoWhite creator April Reign intended.

Furthermore, though women of all races, ethnicities and ages have been calling for greater representation and opportunity in Hollywood, Rock also undercut efforts made by women to be taken more seriously by Hollywood and the media. The #AskHerMore campaign supported by Hollywood heavy-hitters like Reese Witherspoon and Shonda Rhimes encourages journalists to look beyond a woman's body, dress and image and engage female celebrities on deeper issues. Rock made light of this important campaign: "Another big thing tonight is, you're not allowed to ask women what they're wearing anymore. It's a whole thing, 'Ask her more.' You have to "ask her more." It's like, you ask the men more. Everything is not sexism, everything is not racism. They ask the men more because the men are wearing the same outfits. Every guy is wearing the exact same thing. If George Clooney showed up with a lime green tux and a swan coming out of his ass, someone would go, "Hey, what you wearing George?'" With remarks such as these delivered in an off-handed manner, as well as his seemingly tone-deaf skits, Rock revealed exactly why pushes for diversity in Hollywood have been so slow to create change: it still does not take seriously the cultural changes that need to take place to make Hollywood an inclusive place.

The issue with the Oscars demonstrates a point director Lexi Alexander made in a recent panel at 2016's Athena Film Festival. The panel, titled "Unconscious Bias," was composed of women filmmakers and executives. During the panel, the group discussed how "unconscious bias" manifests in the entertainment industry and provided ways women can combat it. Responding to fellow panelist Kelly Edwards' anecdote about a young executive at a network who once remarked to her that encouraging more writers of color to pitch was moot because they didn't "make shows about ghettos and drive-bys," Alexander took issue with the term "unconscious." She made the point that when anyone makes a derogatory statement towards a group that demeans them, questions their talent, or declares them unfit for a job based on their identity, it is not "unconscious" bias at all. Alexander argued overt bias is still alive and well -- and the recent complaints of Asian-American Academy members confirm this. Asian-American Academy members are right to take issue with the Academy, rather than with Rock. As a comedian for hire, Rock crafts his material, but it is mainly the job of the Academy to protect its image. Allowing Rock to keep material that mocked and excluded the very groups the Academy is supposedly eager to include is irresponsible on the part of the Academy, a point that actor George Takei also recently made.

The issue of accountability is an important one, especially given the various moves taken by actors, directors and media outlets to shed light on the diversity issues in Hollywood. Two particularly striking stories in The Huffington Post and The New York Times collected dozens of personal experiences of actors, writers, showrunners and directors facing discrimination in the industry at no small cost. A scroll through the most recent Reddit AskMeAnything with Hollywood's Original Six (the women directors who sued the studios in the 80s) is only a peek into the hostility women can incur when speaking about these issues and how this often discourages others from speaking out. And though diversity in Hollywood should be a collective effort, the onus of responsibility still lies with the institutions that produce and distribute films worldwide. Responsibility lies with the gatekeepers who manage unions and guilds as well as the Academy, networks and studio initiatives to ensure Hollywood becomes and remains inclusive. Though there are people happily speaking on behalf of women and people of color, this is a burden that remains led mostly by women and people of color.

During the Oscars broadcast, #NotYourMule began trending as a response to non-black people of color who suggested #OscarsSoWhite, as characterized by Chris Rock's performance, excluded non-black actors and directors from diversity discussions. Those tweeting during the broadcast were rightly upset that some of Rock's insightful, race-specific commentary was criticized as narrow, divisive and short-sighted. In a series of tweets after the show, which she boycotted, Reign expressed concern that her hashtag was mis-characterized, and that it was causing many people being unfairly asked to speak to a range of experience they never claimed to represent, despite her efforts to give all minorities a voice. Several actors, directors and producers have similarly attempted to create their own remedies to the diversity issue, all the while the Academy is rolling back the proposals they made in January that promised to ensure a more diverse membership. The relative silence of studio and network heads in light of #OscarsSoWhite, the recent Hollywood diversity report and the EEOC's investigation into the DGA's hiring practices says a lot about their willingness to publicly engage in these much-needed conversations.

By asking the Academy to take responsibility for the jokes made at others' expense, the Academy members' protest letter is an important, loud and clear plea for accountability. Their concerns get to the heart of the diversity issue: no amount of diversity initiatives will help minorities if their industry promotes stereotypical and offensive representations of them. True inclusion begins with treating minorities with respect and fairness. The Academy responded with an apology. They issued a statement calling the concerns "valid" and acknowledging their cultural insensitivity. Let's hope all of Hollywood chooses to do better in the future.

Academy, Under Fire Over Diversity, Backtracks on Voting Eligibility

Anne Thompson — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 04:25:53 GMT

As promised, the Academy Board of Governors voted—again— to put through changes intended to diversify the voting body.

They're adding three new members, who unlike the other 51 governors, are not elected by the individual branches. Director Reginald Hudlin, who co-produced this year's Oscars, writer Gregory Nava ("Frida") and animator Jennifer Yuh Nelson ("Kung Fu Panda 2") were confirmed by the current Board members for three-year terms, effective immediately.

On Tuesday the Academy also apologized, after receiving a protest letter from 25 members of Asian descent including Oscar-winning directors Frieda Lee Mock ("Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision") and director Ang Lee ("Life of Pi"), for Chris Rock's "tone-deaf," "tasteless and offensive" Asian joke on the February 28th Oscar telecast: “The Academy appreciates the concerns stated, and regrets that any aspect of the Oscar telecast was offensive. We are committed to doing our best to ensure that material in future shows be more culturally sensitive.”

Six members were also added to board oversight committees. Actor Gael García Bernal ("Y Tu Mama Tambien") will join the Awards and Events Committee, chaired by First Vice President Jeffrey Kurland. Cinematographer Amy Vincent ("Hustle & Flow") is on the Preservation and History Committee, chaired by Vice President John Bailey. Producer Effie Brown ("Project Greenlight") joins the Museum Committee, chaired by Vice President Kathleen Kennedy. Executives Marcus Hu (Strand Releasing) and animator Floyd Norman ("Monsters Inc.") join the Education and Outreach Committee, chaired by Vice President Bill Kroyer.

Executive Vanessa Morrison (Fox Animation Studios) joins the Finance Committee, chaired by Treasurer Jim Gianopulos. Producer ("Beyond the Lights") and Los Angeles Film Festival director Stephanie Allain joins the Membership and Administration Committee, chaired by Secretary Phil Robinson.

As for the thorny question of how to assess a member's voting rights, the Board reaffirmed its January 21 resolution to make sure Academy voters are active in the motion picture industry. As Boone Isaacs had suggested to me, the Board agreed to let each branch's executive committee determine specific criteria for active voters based on the guidelines established in January.

The Academy now defines active voters as:

1. Those who have worked in the motion picture industry in the last 10 years.

2. Those who have worked anytime during three 10-year periods whether consecutive or not— one thing the branches will decide is whether to measure those 30 years as before or after they joined the Academy, as the rules were first defined.
3. Members who have won or been nominated for an Oscar®.

Starting this spring, branch executive committees will meet every two years to review their members and determine any potential reclassifications. The committees also will adopt an appeals process for members who may lose their voting privileges. This gives a lot of power over who votes to the branch executive committee, who can be as tough or lenient as they choose in interpreting the rather vague guidelines.

READ MORE: The Academy Changes Membership Rules in Response to Oscar Nominations Controversy

Among many Academy members not happy with the idea that many colleagues are being stripped of their hard-earned voting rights is Steven Spielberg, who told The Hollywood Reporter: "I'm also not 100 percent sure that taking votes away from Academy members who have paid their dues and maybe are retired now and have done great service — maybe they've not won a nomination, which would have given them immunity to the new rules, but they have served proudly and this is their industry, too — to strip their votes? I'm not 100 percent behind that."

The Academy wants to make changes, and they have been aggressively inviting a younger, more diverse membership ever since CEO Dawn Hudson and president Cheryl Boone Isaacs have been in charge. They know the problem. They want to move the needle, but it has been going slowly. So now with this year's new member invites they will dramatically step up the pace.

“I’m proud of the steps we have taken to increase diversity,” said Boone Isaacs. "However, we know there is more to do as we move forward to make this a more inclusive organization.”

Documentarian Liz Garbus in Talks to Direct Her First Narrative Feature

Casey Cipriani — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 18:00:00 GMT

Fresh off of the Academy Awards, where she was nominated for Best Documentary Feature for "What Happened, Miss Simone?" director Liz Garbus may soon make the switch to narrative film making.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Garbus is in talks to direct the film adaptation of "Lost Girls" for Amazon Studios. With a number of documentaries under her belt, Garbus is greatly experienced, but "Lost Girls" would mark her first non-fiction film, even though, interestingly enough, it's based on non-fiction events.

The story is based on Robert Kolker's nonfiction book of the same name, which follows a mother searching for her missing daughter in Long Island. She makes a horrifying discovery in the woods, finding the dumped bodies of four murdered girls.

It's notoriously difficult for women to break into narrative film directing, but perhaps even more so when they are coming from the world of documentary, where women have been know to achieve greater success than their feature film counterparts. Back in October, a USC Annenberg study revealed that women fare far better in the doc realm.

But that's not to say it's impossible. Garbus can look to Debra Granik, whose "Winter's Bone" launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence. Granik started out on the documentary "Thunder in Guyana" before heading into the narrative world, and then transitioned back to docs with "Stray Dog." It seems more common, however, for women to go the opposite direction, making narrative features before diving into docs. Claire Denis made her first feature, 1988's "Chocolat," before releasing three documentaries, while Canadian actress Sarah Polley got behind the camera first with "Away From Her" before making the much-acclaimed doc "Stories We Tell."

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

Oscar Box Office Winners and Losers 2016

Tom Brueggemann — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 20:45:35 GMT

The reason studios and indies alike pursue Oscars — at considerable cost in time and money — is not only for prestige and bragging rights in Hollywood, but to get a box office boost from the drawn-out awards season. This year's results follow a similar pattern from recent years, as most distributors played from an established playbook. Industry experts could look at where nominees stood in mid-January when the Oscar nominees were revealed and given each release plan, project home viewing dates and final results.

But raw numbers never tell the full tale. Some Oscar pictures are out of theatrical release by awards time. Back in 2008-9, Summit's "The Hurt Locker" was a low-end best picture that could have tripled its $17 million total if it had opened in November. Other contenders open early enough so that they hit home viewing venues during the height of the campaign. This year both "Bridge of Spies" and "The Martian" benefited from ancillary play. And cable and international deals yield monetary bonuses payable with nominations and wins.

But the extra gross comes at a price: Marketing costs and other awards-related expenses can soar just as films being brought back for play get much better exhibitor terms than usual (often 30-36% for return engagements) rather than the more standard 45-50%. So each film has its own gauge for success.

Here's how this year's crop played the Oscar game:

"The Revenant" Scored Best

The frontier actioner grossed the most of the in-release contenders, because Fox gave it the widest initial general audience release among the nominees. Studio pictures "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "The Martian" opened much earlier in the summer and fall, respectively, and were already headed to home viewing. "The Revenant" had grossed $58 million through its first wide week (showing strength before the nomination with $1.5 million during its platform run). Then $113 million more was added between then and Oscar night ($170.7 million total).

That's a great haul. But how much of that was awards-generated business? Likely only a small portion. The film now stands at $176 million, and will end up around $190 million. That's a healthy 3.4 multiple of initial wide weekend. Very few studio films platform at Christmas and then go on to win top Oscars. The best comparison with a star-driven, upscale and general audience Leonardo DiCaprio film is"The Great Gatsby," which opened in May 2013 to $50 million and then amassed $145 million total. That was a 2.9 multiple. Apply the higher result for "The Revenant" and one can guess that its awards bump was about $28 million. And unlike some more domestic oriented specialized contenders, "The Revenant" has a built in international audience (already at $255 million with China and Japan still to open).

DiCaprio's win was considered a given, so much of its impact came early, and was a contributor to that $20 million post-Oscars haul, excellent these days for a film mostly played out (but also unusual since its Christmas release meant no home video until the end of March). So it's tough to argue, with the bonus of already being a mass market entry and the millions in extra awards marketing, that this made a huge Oscar win.

"Spotlight" vs. "Birdman"

This year's best picture winner played almost the same as last year's A.G. Inarritu entry, Birdman." Clearly, Open Road looked at Fox Searchlight's plan last year, a smart call given their stellar awards track record. The "Spotlight" results are eerily similar.

1. Both debuted at key late summer festivals (both Venice and Telluride, then splitting New York and Toronto).
2. Both had pre-Thanksgiving platform openings ("Birdman" did more than 50% better)
3. Both expanded incrementally to some 900 screens over Thanksgiving.
4. Both retreated to under 500 more prime screens through Christmas.
5. Both hit, then doubled their theaters after the nominations.
6. Both were made available to Video on Demand the weekend before the Oscars.
7. Though their gross patterns followed slightly different routes, both grossed or will end up somewhere between $40-45 million.

These aren't huge numbers for a Best Picture winners. In fact, the last three (throw in "12 Years a Slave") and four of the last five ("The Artist" added) grossed under $60 million domestically, below historical figures, particularly adjusted, when $100 million-plus, even for more specialized pedigree releases like "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The King's Speech" was the frequent result.

Why "The Big Short" Outgrossed "Spotlight"

The third entry in the closest Best Picture race in years earned equivalent rave reviews and current issues content to winner "Spotlight," yet even with a release date six weeks later, managed to gross more than $25 million more. But the distance between their theatrical returns after expenses are added in might make the margin smaller.

"The Big Short" was handled by studio Paramount, which scored wide-release success with Oscar contenders "The Fighter" and "True Grit." The early December initial dates of "The Big Short" were surprisingly strong (actually closer to "Birdman" than "Spotlight"). But in part because of the lateness of its release and the proximity to Christmas, Paramount in its third week jumped to over 1,500 theaters, more than its two prime awards rivals ever reached, and then added 1,000 more after the nominations, much more than "Spotlight."

That is the prime reason— as Christmas week is especially golden for upscale films—for the bigger performance. But wide releases require much greater marketing buys (including far more network TV), and at Christmas often even more because of the increased number of films fighting for attention. So this cost Paramount more than Open Road had to spend on "Spotlight."

There is no question the nominations helped to boost awareness, along with bigger name stars than "Spotlight." Even though the first wide weekend started with Christmas Day, "The Big Short"'s final $70 million total will be a strong seven times multiple of the initial one. By comparison "Concussion," which also had awards hopes, did almost the same opening gross and ended up with a 3.4 multiple, less than half (partly explained by its initial 1,000 more screens). So it is possible to suggest $30 million of its gross was a direct result of its award attention.

Is that a larger total than what "Spotlight" added? Post-nominations and wins, on paper, sure. But much of the $29 million "Spotlight" had amassed by nomination day came because of earlier awards notice and the assumption that it was the leading contender earlier. "The Big Short" was a late top contender, with its top attention coming more from the Academy than earlier critics' groups. But therein lies an interesting point. Did its late release date hurt its chances of winning the top award? In the last ten years, no December release has won best picture, with studios adjusting to the earlier awards ceremony schedule with more October and November than before. Thais has to be an "aha" moment for many Oscar strategists.

"Room" Had the Craftiest Oscar Play

Brie Larson's Oscar win, even with her acclaim, was not a sure thing, after she did not win anything from the top tier critics groups. And one thing that seemed to hurt her chances was the film's lackluster initial performance, particularly when compared to the later in the fall released "Spotlight" and "Brooklyn." "Room" actually had only grossed $5.3 million by the mid-January nominations.

But like so much else that A24 has achieved recently (including winning Oscars in the same year for three different films, an achievement only matched or passed among specialized companies by Miramax and Weinstein), their plans worked. They made sure it received maximum attention right when it mattered. With its bonus nominations including best picture and director, they were the freshest of the top nominees as they went over 200 screens for the first time in last January (896 to be exact). And they will end up adding more than $10 million to their total.

Last year's best actress winner "Still Alice" similarly made its push during the voting period, although with only one-week qualifying runs in New York and L.A. until its exact-timed reopening. Sony Pictures Classics, usually among the slower rollout companies, in its early weeks had more theaters than normal as they added runs, but still had reached only under $6 million by Oscar night.

In both cases, leading contenders did what all distributors try to do with top nominees. They created a sense of a film's presence and success, enough to warrant awards (few non-starters manage nominations, let alone wins). Larson's performance, other key Globe and Screen Actors Guild wins also helped to create the sense that this was a worthy contender. But all this could have been lost, with higher initial grosses still below other contenders, followed by a weak return engagement. And that route brought higher ad expenses and still more later costs. Oscars are often loss leaders even when they work out. We don't know A24's expenses or returns, but it is safe to say they maximized grosses while still getting their top Oscar. A24 spent heavily to get their win, but likely saw a better return even with possibly a lower gross.

To VOD or Not VOD?

Those films that opened by late October (thus by Oscar night passed the industry 90-day window for theatrical play) have increasingly taken the opportunity to push their home viewing purchases right before the awards. Several this year had that chance and followed what winning films "Dallas Buyers Club," "Birdman" and "The Theory of Everything" did in the last few years. Though unfortunately we have no access to these figures to fully judge, three of the strongest contenders for top wins — "Spotlight," "Room" and "The Danish Girl"— took this route, eschewing the possible additional revenues possible for being seen only on screen.

"Spotlight" made the most sense, after nearly four months in theaters and as an uncertain best picture winner. It will end up with about $5 million more in theaters post-Oscars, quite impressive since normally circuits avoid films on VOD (although its awards, length of play and its distributor owned by the two top exhibitors made it an easier choice). "The Danish Girl" was only really in contention for Supporting Actress, and though Alicia Vikander was a leading contender, she wasn't certain. But that film's disappointing performance — only about $11 million total despite broad play — and the lack of certainty that even with a win much more revenue was out their made Focus' decision an easy one. (They did the same thing with "Theory" last year, a much bigger success)

The proof that the VOD revenue is vital comes from "Room." Little doubt remained by Oscar night that Larson would win, and then if only in theaters would the film get a boost. But how much? Last year, "Still Alice" (well within the 90-day window) added $10 million to get its gross to over $18 million. But that came with higher ad buys and film rental likely around 35%, so likely not much more than a couple million profit for SPC for those weeks.

We don't know how "Room" fared on VOD (and of course "Alice" played on those venues in due time). But with studios retaining a high amount of VOD revenues (reported around 2/3s) and very little advertising spent, they could have had a strong return to immediately capitalize on the win. Clearly they thought Oscar meant more money for them this way than in theaters.

Premature Oscar Predictions: The 2017 Best Actor Academy Award Contenders

Oliver Lyttelton — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 19:06:48 GMT

By now, you’ve had enough of Oscar season. Besieged by For Your Consideration ads and awards pundits who throw objectivity to the wind, you can only hear about Leonardo DiCaprio eating bison liver so many times before you either rip your hair out or say "screw it" and give in and buy a bison liver burger for lunch and then rent the “The Revenant” on Blu-Ray.

The last thing you want to hear is anything about the Academy Awards, #OscarsSoWhite, or who wore the worst dress on the red carpet. Well, we’ve got you covered. Actually, not really. We realize it’s "Too soon!" but it’s become an admittedly-ridiculous tradition around The Playlist to reveal our ludicrously early premature Oscar predictions. Think of it as a foolish self-immolation and purging of all things Oscar into the toilet so we don’t have to ever speak of the Academy Awards again (well, until when we have to again).

READ MORE: 2016 Oscars: The Best And Worst Of The 2016 Academy Awards

So duh, it’s way too early, but the spirit of our premature predictions are mostly in fun —if you can describe awards punditry in that fashion. Earlier this week, we predicted 2017 Oscar wins for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress, and now, we’re finishing up with Best Actor.

2016 saw a rather less competitive Best Male Acting category than usual, with a slight lack of serious contenders beyond the actual nominees. And it didn’t help that DiCaprio had virtually sewn up his win as soon as anyone saw “The Revenant.” Things are much less certain at this early stage, obviously: will 2017 be the year that #OscarsSoWhite becomes unnecessary and allows a non-white winner for the first time in a decade? Take a look at our ten possibilities below, and let us know who you think might be in contention in the comments.

Casey Affleck - “Manchester By The Sea”
Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford” feels so much like the kind of movie that should be overlooked by the Oscars that it’s easy to forget that Casey Affleck received his sole Oscar nod to date for the film, albeit in Best Supporting Actor for what was clearly a lead role. Multiple fine performances since have seen the picky actor fail to repeat that feat with the Academy, but he might have his best chance yet this year with Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester By The Sea.” Playing a troubled man who returns to his hometown after his brother’s death, the film seems in many respects to be a follow-up to Lonergan’s “You Can Count On Me,” and with rave reviews and promises of an Oscar push from Amazon, it’s not difficult to imagine Affleck getting an invite to the Dolby Theater.

Christian Bale or Oscar Isaac - “The Promise”
Right now, “The Promise,” from “Hotel Rwanda” director Terry George, is a little under the radar, but we don’t expect that to last. Firstly, it’s a lavish period love triangle set against the Armenian genocide in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, a subject matter rarely examined on film but is long overdue for the big-budget treatment. Secondly, it has a heavyweight cast, particularly when it comes to its two male leads Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, and we think either one could end up registering with the Academy. It’ll depend on which actor ends up campaigning for lead (assuming it’s picked up in time for an awards season release), but both are deserving: Bale earned his third nomination last year for “The Big Short” (having won for “The Fighter,” his first nod), while Isaac has never been recognized but is much more familiar to voters now after “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and likely stands his best chance yet. Either could follow in the footsteps of George’s “Hotel Rwanda” star Don Cheadle for a nod.

Michael Keaton - “The Founder”
Earlier this week, we included “The Founder,” John Lee Hancock’s biopic of Ray Kroc, the man who took McDonald’s worldwide and made it one of America’s most iconic corporations, in our Best Picture hopefuls, but the landscape has since changed. Having been originally set by The Weinstein Company for a prime November release, Harvey Weinstein moved it forward to August. Some would argue that it’s an attempt to put the movie in for a slot that has proved profitable for adult dramas like “Straight Outta Compton,” “The Butler” and “The Help.” But it’s worth noting that only one of those movies made much impact with the Academy. That said, while we’re more skeptical than we were (TWC tend to give its biggest prospect a Thanksgiving opening), we still wouldn’t count the film out yet, and particularly the lead turn by Michael Keaton. The actor was in the last two Best Picture winners but didn’t win for “Birdman” and wasn’t nominated for “Spotlight” —a feeling that he’s due might well help push him in even if the movie has faded as a whole by awards time.

Dev Patel - “Lion”
When “The Founder” got moved up by the Weinstein Company to August, the film to benefit was “Lion,” which will now open in the same November Thanksgiving slot that Harvey Weinstein found so useful for “The Imitation Game,” “Philomena,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “The Artist” and “The King’s Speech.” That’s an impressive run, and it means that all eyes are now on this film by Garth Davis (Jane Campion’s co-director on “Top Of The Lake”), and its star Dev Patel. Patel, who wasn’t even nominated for Oscar juggernaut “Slumdog Millionaire,” will play a young Indian boy who has been separated from his family, thrown into a juvenile home and eventually adopted by an Australian couple, only to later track down his family using Google Earth. Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman will also star, but it’s Patel who’ll have to carry the film, and you can read in this Vanity Fair account of the true story on which the film is based that he clearly has an incredibly emotionally potent part to play. Weinstein's been wrong before, but not often, and this kind of bullish confidence suggests test screenings have been going well —we wouldn’t want to bet against him.

Colin Firth - “Deep Water”
It hasn't been that long since Colin Firth was a bit of a punchline, having been reduced to bill-paying fare like “St. Trinian’s” and “Mamma Mia.” But the last few years have seen him undergo an extraordinary credibility makeover, thanks to an Oscar nod and then an Oscar win for “A Single Man” and “The King’s Speech” respectively, followed by a reinvention as an action star with “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” And a return to the awards season looks absolutely viable this year, as he’s teamed with “The Theory Of Everything” director James Marsh for “Deep Water.” Based on a documentary of the same name and telling the troubling and fascinating story of round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, falling somewhere between “All Is Lost” and “A Beautiful Mind,” it should let Firth show further range. If this film can find a U.S. distributor in time, it could well be in the conversation.

Andrew Garfield - “Silence”
Some actors break out, and keen to strike while the iron’s hot, immediately take every job they’re offered. Others are more meditative, and it’s been fascinating to see the way Andrew Garfield has approached his career: since making a big impression in “Never Let Me Go” and “The Social Network,” he’s made just three movies, two of which were “Spider-Man” films. Now free of that ill-advised franchise reboot, he looks to be gearing up his workload with two new movies hitting this year. And while we’re not sure that people have yet forgiven Mel Gibson enough for “Hacksaw Ridge,” which he directs and Garfield stars in, to be an Oscar player, Garfield’s likely to be very much in the Best Actor mix for Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” in which he plays a conscience-stricken priest forced to choose between his faith and his life. Garfield’s more than talented enough to make it sing, and assuming Scorsese delivers, the actor could easily pick up his first nod (For the record, Liam Neeson’s role in the picture like more of a supporting one, but we suppose there could still be some category skulduggery).

Tom Hanks - “Sully”
Only two men have won back-to-back Best Actor trophies: Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks. The latter has only grown as a performer, and yet in the 21 years that have passed since he won for “Forrest Gump,” he’s only been nominated twice and has not won. And the last nomination was fifteen years ago, for “Cast Away.” It’s surely only a matter of time before Hanks is nominated again (he was sorely unlucky not to get one for “Captain Phillips”), and it could come as soon as this year, with Clint Eastwood’s “Sully.” It’s the first collaboration between the two Hollywood fixtures, with some powerful material centering on Chesley Sullenberger, the airline captain who in 2009 safely piloted a plane into a safe crash landing in the Hudson River with no casualties. Eastwood’s films don’t always perform with the Academy, and Hanks is sometimes taken for granted, but this could be his best bet in a while.

Woody Harrelson - “Wilson”/“LBJ”
On any list of "great actors who’ve never won an Oscar," Woody Harrelson must be near the top. In fact, he’s only been nominated twice, for “The People Vs. Larry Flynt” in 1997 and then for ‘The Messenger” thirteen years later. But he has a handful of movies coming this year, and at least two of them could see him return to the Oscars. You’ll forgive us if we’re a little skeptical right now of “LBJ,” in which Harrelson has an impressive physical transformation as the 36th President of the United States: though the cast is good, it’s from the long-off-form Rob Reiner, and could be overshadowed by Bryan Cranston playing the same role in HBO movie “All The Way.” But the dark horse might be “Wilson” —an adaptation of Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel about a middle-aged misanthrope. It’s produced by Alexander Payne, who's been something of an awards magnet of late, and directed by Craig Johnson, who produced revelatory turns from Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig in “The Skeleton Twins,” plus the always awards-friendly Fox Searchlight are distributing. Could it finally be Woody’s year?

David Oyelowo - “A United Kingdom”
Speaking of being overdue, there were few Oscar snubs that were more baffling in recent years, or that spoke to the overwhelming whiteness of the Academy, than the case of David Oyelowo missing a nomination for “Selma.” It was an extraordinary performance that saw the actor transformed, capturing Martin Luther King not just as an icon but as a man, yet voters decided they’d rather honor Benedict Cumberbatch’s prickly genius in "The Imitation Game." Fortunately, they have more than one chance to make it up to Oyelowo, and while he could definitely turn up for Mira Nair’s “Queen Of Katwe,” our money’s on Amma Asante’s “A United Kingdom,” which Oyelowo both stars and produces, as Seretse Khama, the ruler of Botswana who gave up his throne for the woman he loved, only to win it back. Comparisons to “The King’s Speech” are obvious, but assuming Oyelowo’s up to his usual standards, he’s unlikely to be snubbed again.

Nate Parker - “Birth Of A Nation”
In terms of actors-turned-directors whose films have won big with the Academy, it still seems to be a hurdle to be nominated for a starring performance in your own film. Neither Mel Gibson or Ben Affleck were nominated for acting in their Best Picture winners "Braveheart" and "Argo," while Kevin Costner ("Dances With Wolves"), Clint Eastwood ("Million Dollar Baby") and Warren Beatty ("Reds") won Best Director but lost in Best Actor. Could Nate Parker be the guy to break this particular record? He became a sensation when his “Birth Of A Nation” blew up at Sundance, and while the film has a scattering of naysayers, it got mostly glowing notices, and with the Academy still reeling from #OscarsSoWhite, it could sweep its way through the nominations in a way that few films, especially indies, do. It’ll depend on the eventual strength of the category (Parker has less name recognition than some of his potential rivals), but we think he’ll be talked about all the way through to January.

Honorable mentions: Obviously, there are plenty more performances that could and will feature in. Among them, we’ll see the omnipresent Jim Broadbent get one of the best roles of his career in the adaptation of Julian Barnes’ “Sense Of An Ending.” Ryan Gosling and Joel Edgerton could figure in for “La La Land” and “Loving,” and newcomer Joe Alwyn has the lead in Ang Lee’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.”

Matthew McConaughey has two contenders with “Free State Of Jones” and “Gold,” while Mark Wahlberg has “Deepwater Horizon,” Brad Pitt has Robert Zemeckis’ WWII movie and “War Machine,” Mark Rylance could break performance-capture ground with “The BFG,” Andre Holland leads Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight,” Liam Neeson gets to punch things less in Scorsese’s “Silence,” Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals” and Chris Pratt returns to space for “Passengers.” Don’t discount Michael Fassbender in “Light Between Oceans” or Joseph Gordon-Levitt in “Snowden” either.

And as far as Supporting performances go, we’d keep an eye on Tadanobu Asano in “Silence,” Peter Sarsgaard in “Jackie,” Michael Shannon in one of the literally nine movies he’s in this year (maybe “Loving” or “Nocturnal Animals”), Mahershala Ali in “Free State Of Jones” or “Moonlight,” Lucas Hedges in “Manchester By The Sea,” Bill Nighy in “Their Finest Hour And A Half,” or John Boyega in “The Circle.” Let us know who you’re backing in the comments.

Oscar-Winning Doc 'A Girl in the River' Shines a Light on Honor Killing

Sara Stewart — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 16:00:00 GMT

When Louis C.K. flawlessly introduced the Best Documentary, Short Subject category at the Oscars, he said it's his favorite because "this is the one Academy Award that has the opportunity to change a life." He was talking about the filmmakers -- "these people will not be rich as long as they live. All they do is tell stories that are important" -- but in the case of the winner this year, it has the potential to change a great many lives. "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness," premiering on HBO on March 7, tells the story of Saba, an attempted honor killing victim in Pakistan who survived.

There are many remarkable things about this: that the young woman is still alive, primarily. That she agreed to be the focus of this short film, which almost certainly put her in a kind of local spotlight that further endangered her safety. And that the Pakistani prime minister has vowed to change honor killing laws in the wake of seeing the film, as second-time Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy noted at the end of her speech (a piece of information the Academy classily began drowning out with the "wrap it up" music).

Honor killing is a tradition -- often falsely linked with the tenets of Islam, though it takes place in other cultures and religions as well -- in which usually-male relatives of a woman will murder her for a perceived transgression against the reputation of the family (or as a window-dressing reason used to cover up a more baldly financial or real estate-related dispute between families).

Obaid-Chinoy notes at the start of her film that the number of honor killing victims in Pakistan alone is more than 1,000 a year. The stories behind that statistic are horrifying on a level that is barely believable (but, then again, right here in the U.S. the Supreme Court is today considering a case about whether women should be allowed to make decisions about their own bodies. Misogyny: it's everywhere).

"A Girl in the River" brings the shocking Pakistan statistic to life with the tale of Saba, who for the crime of eloping was shot by her father and uncle, stuffed into a bag and thrown into a river to die. Obaid-Chinoy begins with graphic photographic evidence from that night, when Saba climbed out of the water, made her way to a gas station and found help getting to a hospital. Although her father had meant to shoot her in the head, she turned at the last second, so the bullet merely ripped through the side of her face, as we see in the photos and in the footage of doctors doing work on the scar. "I have never heard of a girl who has been thrown in the river and lived to tell the tale," says Saba, who in a just world would be destined for bigger things than spending the rest of her life in fear of her family.

This is just one of the (deliberately) infuriating aspects of Obaid-Chinoy's film, in which this young woman is stuck in a culture where her wish for her attackers to spend the rest of their lives in jail -- which she expressly says is what she wants -- isn't supported by anyone, with the exception of her husband, who is essentially powerless due to family hierarchy, and her lawyer, who is eventually replaced with one more sympathetic to the men.

Obaid-Chinoy gets remarkable access to a wide range of the people perpetrating honor killing culture. Is this in spite of her being a woman? Or is it simply that, by virtue of being female, she's not taken seriously? In any case, her interview with Saba's father and uncle, in their jail cell, is deeply chilling: Both are unrepentant, professing pride in their actions. When he talks about telling Saba's mother what he did, her father says, "She cried. What else could she do? I am her husband. She is just my wife." Saba's mother, meanwhile, supports her husband's actions, saying that her other daughters would be punished if they strayed as Saba had (though she stops short of endorsing murder, saying they would be beaten).

The director also does a tremendous job of honing in on the terrible Catch-22 that befalls the few women who, like Saba, survive an honor killing attempt: They are pressured by family and society to formally forgive their attackers, who sign a dubious "compromise" agreeing not to try to kill her again (though, in Saba's case, her relatives initially swore on the Koran that they would not harm her, right before shooting her). If the women refuse and press charges, the men will likely be sent to jail for a handful of years and emerge more bent on revenge than they were in the first place. As Saba's (first) lawyer says, "If they are sentenced to five years and then come out and try to kill her again, who is going to protect her?" There is no good solution here. Meanwhile, the vast majority of forgiveness agreements don't involve the woman in question -- because she is dead (in an interview with NPR, the director puts that figure at 99 percent). Instead, her relatives forgive the attacker or attackers, which frees them from further prosecution.

It is very, very tempting to watch "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" and throw your hands up in anger and frustration. But the fact of its being given the Oscar, and aired on HBO, means Saba's story will be seen by countless more people than would have known about it -- or honor killings in general -- otherwise. As she says in the film, "The world needs to see this." Thanks to the brave work of Obaid-Chinoy, it will.

Premature Oscar Predictions: The 2017 Best Actress Academy Award Contenders

Oliver Lyttelton — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 19:49:45 GMT

Two down, one to go with our run down of some of the potentials for next year’s Academy Awards, in our attempt to not have to type the word "Oscar" until at least September. We’ve already looked at some of the Best Picture possibilities, and the ten men and women who could be in the Best Director mix in the months ahead, and now it’s time to turn our attention to Best Actress.

READ MORE: Check Out All Of Our Premature Oscar Predictions For 2017 Here

This year saw Brie Larson dominate the race from the premiere of “Room” at Telluride to Oscar night, just as recent winners Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep were presumptive frontrunners all the way through their own seasons. But this year looks, at a distance at least, to be a mite more unpredictable. (Yes, a feeling made more palpable as we're eleven months away from the Oscar nominations, and twelve from the trophies being handed out). Take a look below for the ten women who seem most likely to be up for Best Actress in 2017, and let us know who you’re tipping at long range in the comments.

Amy Adams - “Nocturnal Animals”/“The Story Of Your Life”
Now that Leonado DiCaprio’s got his, there are few actors who have missed out just as many times, who are just as deserving, and who will be surely the subject of "it’s time" chatter before too long. Glenn Close has six nominations without a win, Albert Finney five, but the youngest, and likely the next to be rewarded, is Amy Adams, who’s racked up an impressive five nominations in less than a decade. Adams has two possible contenders coming this year: Tom Ford’s return with literary adaptation “Nocturnal Animals,” and Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi movie “Story Of Your Life.” Both are fascinating projects, though neither seem like immediate and obvious awards home runs from what we know about them. But Adams is well liked, and even if the movies don’t prove awards players elsewhere, she could very well still be in the conversation.

Emily Blunt - “The Girl On The Train”
Given that even “Gone Girl” struggled to make much impact on the awards race, we’re not totally convinced that “The Help” director Tate Taylor’s adaptation of classy-airport-thriller-du-jour “The Girl On The Train” will be a Best Picture contender. But we think it’s entirely possible that it follows the David Fincher movie and lands a Best Actress nomination for its star, in this case Emily Blunt. Despite making a huge impression in everything from “My Summer Of Love” to “Edge Of Tomorrow” to last year's "Sicario," Blunt’s never been nominated, but her role here, an alcoholic divorcée who stumbles into a murder, is a meaty one that should be her best ever chance at landing a nod. Given Taylor’s record at aiding his actresses to nominations (“The Help” saw three of its stars nominated, with Octavia Spencer winning), she’s probably in safe hands too.

Jessica Chastain - “Miss Sloane”/“Zookeeper’s Wife”
She’s been so omnipresent that you might not have noticed, but Jessica Chastain hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar since her lead turn in “Zero Dark Thirty” nearly four years ago. But a drought for one of our finest talents is likely to come to an end this year, as Chastain has two very serious prospects in the race. The first is “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” Niki Caro’s film that tells the true story of the life-saving role the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo played during the Second World War. The second, which just started filming, is John Madden’s “Miss Sloane,” a hot-button drama which sees Chastain play a political strategist working on gun control legislation. Currently the latter’s planned for a 2017 release, but we’re sure it’ll get moved up if it has the right stuff, though the best bet is likely “The Zookeeper’s Wife.” Either way, Chastain looks to be returning to the Oscars.

Marion Cotillard - Untitled Robert Zemeckis WW2 Project
Robert Zemeckis’ return to live-action the past few years has had mixed results: “Flight” was a flawed film anchored by a great, Oscar-nominated performance by Denzel Washington, while “The Walk” was a pretty good picture that ultimately felt too familiar to connect with a wider audience. As such, we’re not yet convinced that his latest, an untitled WW2-set spy romance about an agent who discovers that his wife may have been a Nazi traitor, is going to be up for the big show. That isn’t to say that Marion Cotillard, who stars opposite Brad Pitt, won’t be in the conversation. Cotillard’s become something of an Oscar favorite over the years, winning for "La Vie En Rose" and being nominated for "Two Days, One Night," and if she can get into the Academy consciousness for her foreign roles, she'll certain be a player for a Hollywood production.

Taraji P. Henson - “Hidden Figures”
It’s almost easy to forget that, before she went to new heights as the unforgettable Cookie on TV mega-hit “Empire,” Taraji P. Henson had already picked up an Oscar nomination for her supporting turn in David Fincher’s “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.” Now she’s a household name, and could well convert the attention into another nod, as a lead this time, in “Hidden Figures.” From “St. Vincent” director Theodore Melfi, it’s the story of three female African-American mathematicians who played a crucial role in the mission to launch John Glenn into space. Henson plays Katherine Johnson, the lead, with Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner in the cast too, and it’s clearly got an awards-y subject matter. It’s currently set to open in January 13, 2017, but if 20th Century Fox thinks it has the juice, it could sneak it in with a qualifying run in December.

Jennifer Lawrence - “Passengers”
We’ll be honest here: we’ve read an early draft of “Passengers,” directed by Morten Tyldum ("The Imitation Game") and starring the red hot duo of Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, and it doesn’t strike us as particularly awards-friendly — it’s a harder kind of sci-fi than “Gravity” or “The Martian,” and we think it's likely a commercial play first and foremost. But J-Law gonna J-Law and, like Meryl Streep, should never be counted out, given her record of four nominations in six years, including most recently for the mostly unloved “Joy,” a film that failed to get a nod otherwise. The movie might prove to be a crossover hit like "The Martian," but even if not, J-Law will probably be in the conversation.

Lupita Nyong’o - “Queen Of Katwe”
Since winning her Oscar for “12 Years A Slave” at the start of 2014, Lupita Nyong’o has sadly really only been in movies voicing CGI characters, in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and the upcoming “The Jungle Book.” But she’s back on screen in Disney and Mira Nair’s upcoming “The Queen Of Katwe,” in which she plays the mother of a young Ugandan girl who became a chess prodigy. This has been something of a passion project for Nyong’o and co-star David Oyelowo, so assuming that the film works (and that Nyong’o goes lead rather than supporting: it’s unclear where the emphasis of William Wheeler’s script lies), this could see her return to the Dolby Theater.

Rosamund Pike - “A United Kingdom”
From Bond girl to Oscar nominee, Rosamund Pike’s had one of the more interesting career trajectories of any working actress right now, and she’s got a promising picture on the way that could return her to the awards conversation. She’s starring with David Oyelowo in Amma Asante’s “A United Kingdom,” about the love story between a British woman and the ruler of Botswana in the 1940s. Both of Asante’s films so far have shown her to be a terrific director of women, and while this is likely to be predominately Oyolewo’s films, PIke shouldn’t be counted out: she’s in the club now, and the movie is likely to show a more sympathetic side than her sociopathic “Gone Girl” lead.

Natalie Portman - “Jackie”
It feels like we haven’t glimpsed all that much of Natalie Portman since she won her Oscar for “Black Swan” — “Thor: The Dark World” was really her only major movie, with “Jane Got A Gun” flopping hard, her directorial debut “A Tale Of Love And Darkness” playing to muted response on the festival circuit, followed by the briefest of appearances in Terrence Malick’s “Knight Of Cups.” But “Jackie” will potentially see her back in the awards conversation in a very big way. Once intended for Darren Aronofsky to direct, with Rachel Weisz to star, it’s a biopic of Jackie Kennedy set entirely in the few days after the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, and told entirely through her eyes. It has every possibility of being another tour-de-force for Portman, and if director Pablo Larrain can pull it off, could not just see Portman nominated, but maybe even winning her second.

Emma Stone - “La La Land”
Though we’d probably argue that she should have been nominated for her unbelievably delightful lead turn in “Easy A,” Emma Stone finally got her first Oscar nod for “Birdman.” Could she follow it up shortly with a leading nomination too? Joining Ryan Gosling, the duo front Damien Chazelle’s original musical, “La La Land,” and it has the potential to both play to her ever-charming strengths, and to show a new side of her star talents. As we said in discussing the film’s Best Picture prospects, the film is a risk, given the number of similar musicals that skewered themselves on their own ambition. But if it works, and “Whiplash” suggests it really will, Stone will probably be a good bet to go along with it to the Academy.

Honorable Mention: Of course, there are plenty more contenders that could make their way into the race. Among the more notable are the leads of Pedro Almodovar's new one, “Julieta,” Ruth Negga in Jeff Nichols’ “Loving,” Alicia Vikander with either “Light Between Oceans” or “Tulip Fever,” Naomie Harris could pick up a first nod for Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight,” and Emma Watson has a good role in James Ponsoldt’s “The Circle.” Then there’s the cast of Mike Mills’ “20th Century Women” (Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning), Rooney Mara in the “Brooklyn”-esque “The Secret Scripture,” Kristen Stewart in Woody Allen’s new one, Charlotte Rampling in “Sense Of An Ending," and, perhaps inevitably, Meryl Streep in “Florence Foster Jenkins” (though it seems more “Ricki & The Flash” than “The Iron Lady” at first glance).

We’re not fully focusing on the Supporting races this year, which are too unpredictable and oblique right now for it to be anything more than stabbing in the dark. But look in particular for Aja Naomi King in “Birth Of A Nation,” Laura Dern, who has strong possibilities in “The Founder” and “Wilson,” Rachel Weisz in “Deep Water” or “The Light Between Oceans,” Octavia Spencer in “Hidden Figures,” Greta Gerwig in “Jackie,” Kristen Stewart in “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” and Janelle Monae in “Moonlight” to be potentials. Anyone else we should be paying attention to? Let us know in the comments.

Premature Oscar Predictions: The 2017 Best Picture Academy Award Contenders

Oliver Lyttelton — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 19:59:35 GMT

You’re weary. You’ve suffered through months of campaigning, backbiting, frustration, joy, tears, and maybe depression. And then, just like that, it’s all finally over. The Oscars obviously took place this past Sunday, with investigative thriller “Spotlight” the surprise and well-deserved Best Picture winner. It was a bit of a shock that the Academy would award a film this deserving, but one also as mannered, subdued and a bit unsexy. But…. at this point you really don’t want to talk about it. You’re just relieved the season is over and you’d like to move on and maybe sleep for a few months.

READ MORE: 2016 Oscars: The Best And Worst Of The 88th Academy Awards

Surprise! We have a great “recovery” feature just for you. Too soon! Yes, we know it’s ridiculous to be thinking about the next Oscar season just a couple of days after the previous one ended. It’s also a little masochistic and sadomasochistic, but being that it’s become something of a warped tradition here at the Playlist, we always take what should be our switching-off coma week to look forward to the movies we might be talking about over the next twelve months as having awards potential. Yes, we are highly aware these are very early, very premature predictions and that anything can happen.

READ MORE: The 6 Biggest Surprises Of the 2016 Oscars

But when you think about it, the 2016/2017 awards season has already been underway for a couple of months. As its wont to do in recent years, the Sundance Film Festival has already unveiled some potent titles that could be very viable back in January and which have already began bubbling in the awards-season narrative (like it or not).

READ MORE: Analyze This: Why 'Spotlight' Beat 'The Revenant' And 'The Big Short' To Win Best Picture

It should be an interesting year ahead, particularly after the most closely contested Best Picture race in years and following the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Plus, it’s a bit of a nice head cleanser to talk about some different movies for a bit. So with all that mind, below you’ll find our eleven Best Picture picks, mostly sight unseen. And be forewarned: we’ll be making premature predictions all week, though remember, they’re all in loose, good fun, and nothing you should take too seriously. Let us know your own long-range predictions and stay tuned for more.

Best Picture

“Birth Of A Nation”
A Sundance sensation the likes of which has rarely ever been seen, the directorial debut of actor Nate Parker regarding the slave rebellion of Nat Turner blew the roof off Park City in January and was immediately snapped up by Fox Searchlight for $17.5 million, the biggest deal in Sundance history (or of any festival). Clearly the Oscars fit into the plan for the studio —which had success with “12 Years A Slave” in 2013— and with Parker’s film drawing comparisons to both that film and “Braveheart,” and with a prime October release date, the studio is not messing about with it. With the #OscarsSoWhite controversy dominating proceedings this past season, Parker’s film (read our review) seems primed to redress the balance. Expect to see it pop up at other festivals like Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival to keep its momentum up through the fall, but this is as close to a lock as you can get with 363 days to go.

“The BFG”
Steven Spielberg is always a force to be reckoned with —even his less-loved prestige pictures like “War Horse” or even last year’s “Bridge Of Spies” still manage to rack up multiple nominations and Best Picture nods, with only the occasional “Amistad” or “The Terminal” left entirely out in the cold. His summer releases tend to fare less well —in the last thirty years of his Best Picture nominees, only “Saving Private Ryan” had a summer date— but “The BFG” could well have the right stuff. This adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved classic reunites Spielberg with this year’s Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as the titular Big Friendly Giant, with the director working from a script from Melissa Mathison (who sadly passed away last year) for the first time since “E.T.” It looks to be true Spielberg awe-and-wonder territory, and in a year with few awards-friendly blockbuster prospects, few would bet against it. That said, there is a potential spoiler lurking, with Focus’s similarly-themed “A Monster Calls,” which has a prize-winning, emotionally potent and much-lauded source material, and an Oscar-friendly cast including Felicity Jones and Liam Neeson.

“Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk”
Though he’s a two-time Best Director winner, Ang Lee’s never had one of his films win Best Picture —“Brokeback Mountain” was beaten by “Crash,” and “Life Of Pi” by “Argo.” Could “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” be the one to break the curse? Based on Ben Fountain’s award-winning novel, it’s a story about a group of soldiers from the Iraq war set during a salute to the soldiers during a football game, a sort of mix of “The Hurt Locker” and “Flags Of Our Fathers,” but with a lightly satirical tone. Lee’s pushing things forward technically with the film —shooting in 120 FPS 3D—and has attracted A-list collaborators with a script from “Slumdog Millionaire” scribe Simon Beaufoy. His usual against-the-grain casting is in full force too: only Lee could bring together Kristen Stewart, Steve Martin, Vin Diesel, Chris Tucker and Garret Hedlund in a cast led by a complete newcomer, Joe Alwyn. Lee’s not above the occasional “Taking Woodstock”-style misfire, but if this works, expect it to be a big player.

“The Founder”
The last two Best Picture winners starred Michael Keaton, which means that all eyes are on “The Founder” this year, which stars the “Birdman” and “Spotlight” actor in the lead role. The film’s a biopic of Ray Kroc, the man responsible for transforming McDonald’s from a handful of California restaurants to a world-beating exponent of American-style capitalism, while screwing over the McDonald brothers in the process. Laura Dern, Patrick Wilson and Nick Offerman also star in the film, and though it comes from “The Blind Side” helmer John Lee Hancock, expect something a little more “The Social Network” than “Saving Mr. Banks,” if reports of the script from Onion veteran and “The Wrestler” writer Robert D. Siegel are anything to go by. After a couple of disappointing years and with rumors of difficulties, The Weinstein Company will be looking to make a splash in the coming year, and “The Founder” definitely looks like their best prospect, especially with Keaton as its lucky charm .

“Jackie”
The busiest filmmaker around right now might be the Chilean helmer Pablo Larrain, who has three movies due for release in 2017. “The Club” and his poetry biopic “Neruda” are probably unlikely to register in a big way on the awards circuit, but his English-language debut “Jackie” could well follow his Foreign Language nominee “No” to the Oscar party. The project, which follows Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) in the days following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, has been kicking around for a few years, with names like Steven Spielberg and Darren Aronofsky attached, but it’s Larrain who got it over the line, and he’s a perfect fit for the material. We looked at the script by Noah Oppenheim way back in the day, and it was a very strong piece of work even then, and Larrain’s cast it with ringers like Portman, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Peter Sarsgaard and John Hurt. The movie wraps shortly, and should be ready for the fall festivals: it doesn’t have a distributor yet, but assuming this lives up to expectations, it’ll be a contender.

“La La Land”
Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash” was the little film that could: a brilliantly executed yet modest little drama about a jazz drummer and his teacher that swept Sundance and Cannes before resonating at the Oscars, at which it won three awards, more than heavy hitters like “American Sniper,” “Boyhood,” “The Imitation Game” and “The Theory Of Everything.” Chazelle is back this year with an ambitious third feature: an original Hollywood-set musical about the romance between a jazz pianist and an aspiring actress, with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in lead roles. It could turn out to be an enormous folly in the tradition of “At Long Last Love” or “One From The Heart,” but Chazelle has talent to burn, and the cast he’s assembled (with Oscar winner J.K. Simmons reuniting with him, and Rosemarie DeWitt and “The Big Short” breakout Finn Wittrock as well) suggests he’s got something here. The film’s currently set for a summer release, which won’t help its Oscar chances, but if it turns out to be a successful Hollywood-set musical, it could go the distance.

“Manchester By The Sea”
The other big Sundance success of this year, “Manchester By The Sea” sees writer-director Kenneth Lonergan rise from the ashes of “Margaret” (a great film that sat on a shelf for years before being buried by its distributor) with arguably the best-reviewed movie of the festival. That doesn’t always necessarily lead to Oscar glory, but reaction to the film, which involves Casey Affleck as a man who returns to his hometown after his brother’s death to take care of his nephew, suggests that it packs the kind of serious emotional punch that should make it an awards favorite. Lonergan’s a critic’s favorite, but he’s also not a complete stranger to the Oscars —“You Can Count On Me” earned two nominations a decade ago— and should get some additional star power thanks to producer Matt Damon. Perhaps this film will prove to be too modest and actor-driven to register for Best Picture, but this is looking good for now.

“Silence”
Before 2000, Martin Scorsese had never won an Oscar, and only three of his movies had been nominated for Best Picture. In the sixteen years since, five of his six pictures earned Best Picture and Best Director nods (only “Shutter Island,” a genre-y picture released in February, missed out), and he finally has a statuette of his own for "The Departed." As such, it means that even when he’s working out of his traditional comfort zone to the extent that he is with his much-anticipated “Silence,” it would be foolish to count Scorsese out. A far cry from the excess and materialism of “The Wolf Of Wall Street,” this film, based on Shüsaku Endō’s novel, promises to be a sober look at faith and martyrdom involving two Portuguese priests who risk persecution when they travel to Japan. It’s an unfamiliar setting for Scorsese to some extent, but promises plenty of blood and Catholic contemplation —given his current run, it’d have to be truly inaccessible not to grab the Academy’s attention, especially with Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson leading the cast.

“A United Kingdom”
“Belle” seemed in many ways to have the right stuff for awards consideration —it's a lush period piece that stealthily used its corset-y trappings to make fascinating points about race, gender and identity. But Fox Searchlight released the film in May, and despite good reviews, that studio was too distracted with “Birdman” and “Grand Budapest Hotel” to give it an Oscar push. Don’t expect that to happen this time with director Amma Asante’s follow-up “A United Kingdom,” which recently wrapped its shoot. Coming from “The King’s Speech” and “Selma” backers Pathe, the film tells the story of Seretse Khama, the king of the country that would become Botswana who was forced to renounce the throne after marrying a white English woman, causing uproar at home in the U.K. and in neighboring apartheid-era South Africa, only for Khama to return, become the new nation’s first democratic leader and help make the nation’s economy the fastest growing in the world. It’s an extraordinary story, one well-suited to Asante’s skill set, and she’s got an awards-friendly cast on board, with recent nominee Rosamund Pike and should-have-been-a-nominee David Oyelowo as the leads. There’s no U.S. distributor yet, but expect it to land one quickly.

“The Zookeeper’s Wife”
There was a time when a World War II-era movie was virtually guaranteed an Oscar nomination, but they’ve been thinner on the ground recently —of late, only “The Imitation Game,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Atonement” and “The Reader” have really grappled with the subject matter with any real awards success. 2017 will bring Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” movie, but we could see a return to the era before that with “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” an unusually female-driven WWII pic. Based on Diane Ackerman’s best selling novel, it tells the true story of Antonina Żabińska and her husband Jan, the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo in the late 1930s who saved the lives of Jews fleeing the Nazis by hiding them in animal cages. Jessica Chastain and “Broken Circle Breakdown” star Johan Heldenbergh have the lead roles, with Daniel Brühl as their Nazi adversary from the Berlin Zoo, while Angela Workman wrote the script, and Niki Caro (“Whale Rider”) directs. The latter can be hit and miss, but when she’s on form she’s hard to beat, and with Chastain leading, this should be much more than “We Bought A Zoo: WWII Edition,” and looks to be Focus Features’ big hope for the season.

“Sully”
While quality control can be an issue with the fast-working Clint Eastwood (see recent efforts "Jersey Boys" or "Trouble With The Curve"), when he's firing on all cylinders, he's a tough to beat. His last picture "American Sniper" is the biggest hit of the 85 year-old director's career by a huge margin, the second highest grossing R-rated movie of all time domestically, and it earned six Oscar nominations, winning for Sound Mixing. So pay close attention to "Sully," because it pairs Eastwood with unshakably reliable Tom Hanks, telling the ripped from the headlines story about Chesley Sullenberger, the airline captain who in 2009 safely piloted a plane into a safe crash landing in the Hudson River with no casualties. You can practically hear the audience cheering for this one already, and if the picture onscreen is as rousing as it was in real life, "Sully" could well be in the race.

Honorable Mentions: We’re not going to list every movie that could figure in during the year, but there are some others worth paying attention to. Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals” with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal will attract heat, and Robert Zemeckis’ as-yet-untitled WWII spy romance with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard already has a fall release date set.

Jeff Nichols’ civil rights marriage drama “Loving” could chime nicely with the diversity narrative. If Warren Beatty will finally be done with his Howard Hughes movie this year, it'll be a major event. With the backing of Brad Pitt’s Plan B and A24, Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” could be a surprise in waiting. Oil rig disaster drama “Deepwater Horizon” with Mark Wahlberg seems more “Everest” than “Gravity” at a distance but could figure in, while Matthew McConaughey has a couple of potentials with “Free State Of Jones” and “Gold.” Meanwhile, “The Girl On The Train” could fill the “Gone Girl” slot of genre-y awards fare, while “Passengers” with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence and Denis Villeneuve’s “Story Of Your Life” with Amy Adams are looking to make the jump beyond their sci-fi trappings.

Derek Cianfrance’s “The Light Between Oceans” looks potent in its trailer, but we worry that DreamWorks are dooming it with a Labor Day release. Mike Mills could step up a gear with his “20th Century Women,” while James Gray’s “The Lost City Of Z” could see him crack into the awards conversation if enough people like it. Brad Pitt and Netflix will unveil their “War Machine,” Will Smith has an all-star cast joining him for “Collateral Beauty,” Woody Harrelson stars in the Alexander Payne-produced Daniel Clowes adaptation “Wilson,” Jessica Chastain goes to Washington for “Miss Sloane,” and Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac have "The Promise."

Who do you think are the strongest contenders? Let us know in the comments section.

'Amy': Anatomy of an Oscar-Winning Documentary

Anne Thompson — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 19:55:37 GMT

Finally, now that the Academy delivers screeners of the five documentary nominees to all the voters, the winner is often the most high-profile winner. Last year it went to Laura Poitras for "Citizenfour," and three out of the last four winners have been music docs: "20 Feet from Stardom," "Searching for Sugar Man" and now "Amy."

"Amy," which debuted at Cannes, beat out an amazing list of must-sees for the Oscar: Matthew Heinemann's lauded Mexican border doc "Cartel Land," Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Look Of Silence," the sequel to his Oscar-nominated Indonesian genocide expose "The Act of Killing," which won the Spirit Award, and two Netflix docs, "What Happened, Miss Simone?", in which Liz Garbus shows us the darkness gleaming off the edges of soul's high priestess, Nina Simone, and "Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom," Evgeny Afineevsky's large-scale narrative of a revolution.

At first blush “Amy” is a searingly depressing documentary. Something about the way London filmmaker Asif Kapadia edits his multi-media portrait of Amy Winehouse is profoundly disturbing. We know going in that we’re going to see a train wreck, and maybe we feel a tad guilty about wanting to look at it. We all carry media images, clips, moments that we have witnessed online that form our own image of the gifted but troubled singer.

WATCH: "'Amy' Director Asif Kapadia on How He Resurrected Winehouse"

And we also are all-too familiar with the trope of the talent who heads down the wrong path, unsupported by family and loved ones, distracted and destroyed by drugs, exploited by the people who want to make money off them. Again, Kapadia (“Senna”) skirts these shoals and digs deeper to deliver more.

READ MORE: "How 'Amy' Shows Winehouse as You've Never Seen Before"

Watch: What If Leonardo DiCaprio Refused to Leave the Stage After His Oscar Win?

Riyad Mamedyarov — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 17:16:30 GMT

So it's finally happened: Leonardo DiCaprio has finally won his much-deserved Oscar. The acclaimed actor had been chasing the elusive award for more than 20 years, casting amazing performance after amazing performance. It was finally thanks to Alejandro González Iñárritu's "The Revenant" that the Los Angeles native was able to nab the prestigious prize.

READ MORE: Win Leonardo DiCaprio His Overdue Oscar in the Most Addictive Video Game of the Year

While most other winners that night were given a curt acceptance speech time, the revered actor was bestowed with special treatment, speaking for nearly three minutes on global warming, an important humanitarian cause that he had been supporting for the better part of a decade. But many thought he would hog the mike for as long as he could, which is the alternate reality proposed by the people over at Record Fun.

In the re-edit above, the actor accepts his award with a big smile, before launching into a speech you might remember from "The Wolf of Wall Street" -- because given how long it took him to get there, DiCaprio doesn't seem to want to leave the stage.

READ MORE: 10 Greatest Leonardo DiCaprio Performances

Oscar Winners 2016: How 'Spotlight,' 'The Revenant,' and 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Dominated the Academy Awards

Anne Thompson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 22:25:28 GMT

While the 2016 Oscars were dominated by big-scale studio vehicles "The Revenant" and "Mad Max: Fury Road," two little-indies-that-could with gravitas, "Spotlight" and "Room," which launched like rockets out of the Telluride Film Festival, took Best Picture and Original Screenplay, and Best Actress, respectively, after taking the same wins at the Spirit Awards the day before. Finally, the preferential ballot helped a movie with only two Oscar wins make the big score, as many voters placed it at number two. "We made this film for all the journalists who held the powerful accountable," said "Spotlight" writer-director Tom McCarthy, who protested against the Catholic Church downtown on Oscar morning. "We have to make sure this never happens again." Finally, anyone who's angry about pedophile priests and sexual abuse responded strongly to "Spotlight."

With momentum from Golden Globe and Guild wins and a strong surge at the post-holiday box office, gorgeously mounted frontier epic "The Revenant" (Fox/New Regency), directed by last year's Oscar-winner Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu ("Birdman"), was expected to take home a raft of Oscars. They had to settle for Iñárritu's second Director win in a row (joining John Ford and Joseph Mankiewicz), cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's third consecutive win (after "Birdman" and "Gravity"), and Leonardo DiCaprio, to the delight of the roaring crowd at the Dolby Theatre, winning Best Actor at last, after five nominations. "Finally!" cried the woman sitting next to me in the Mezzanine, jumping to her feet.

DiCaprio wasn't the only one to use his platform to make a political statement (on behalf of the environment) after an evening which functioned as a long mea culpa from the Academy, via host Chris Rock and president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, for its Oscars So White. As ABC had feared, the telecast was down in the ratings from last year's awful numbers by 6% for an eight-year low. (The Reverend Al Sharpton credited a boycott by non-white viewers for the decline.) The show launched with a clip reel that included not only the year's nominated films but many films not on the Academy roster, from Will Smith-starrer "Concussion" to Netflix's Spirit Awards-winner "Beasts of No Nation." The "Creed" clips showcased Michael B. Jordan, while "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" promoted John Boyega.

"I counted at least 15 black people in the montage," quipped Rock, resplendent in a white tux, at what he called "The White People's Choice Awards. If they nominated hosts I wouldn't get this job." Rock managed no small feat: walking the line between making the Academy folks in the room laugh at themselves, entertaining the audience around the world, and not offending anyone. (An obscure joke featuring "Clueless" actress Stacey Dash did not play.) "We want opportunity," Rock pointed out, citing great Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx. "Leo gets a great part every year, all the time."

When I caught a relaxed Rock at Friday's pre-Oscar UTA bash, he admitted that he was hocking the likes of party guests Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow for jokes (he had notes in his back pocket), and that a part of him was dying with pre-show jitters. But that did not show on the big day, as early in the afternoon he slipped through the Academy Awards cocktails hour in a baseball cap with a backpack and security entourage, heading backstage.

At the Governor's Ball, Boone Isaacs was palpably relieved, and denied the rumors that the co-producers, movie producer Reginald Hudlin and TV veteran David Hill, did not get along, although she admitted they had some inevitable disagreements along the way. The show itself moved right along, and featured handsome vertical images of the nominees and mobile cameras (Cate Blanchett walked and talked at the camera, announcing the costume nominees), but the music cues were mystifying, and The Weeknd's S & M themed choreography for his "50 Shades of Grey" song "Earned It" was unintentionally hilarious. Lady Gaga's moving performance of her song from "The Hunting Ground" played well in the Dolby, complete with fellow sexual assault victims. And continuing its woeful music choices over the years, the Academy embarrassed itself by awarding Sam Smith's "Writing's On the Wall" James Bond song.

Why didn't "The Revenant" do better? Finally, it was a violent actioner. Even as its awards campaigners positioned the film as Art, overcoming the initial negative publicity about arduous and abusive conditions, the movie lost the PGA to "The Big Short," which suggested that the producers were horrified by its nightmare eight-month exterior shooting schedule. "The Revenant" took home three big wins—but "Spotlight" grabbed Best Picture.

At the Governor's Ball, DiCaprio stuffed down some pizza, asking photographers to let him eat, and asked his proud mother, "Shall we go?" He repaired to the corner where the Oscars were being engraved, happy to have one at last. I first met him as a teenager in 1994, standing at the valet line after he lost his first Oscar for "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?"

Credit Open Road's Tom Ortenberg for the "Spotlight" Best Picture win. (Indie Open Road has landed that milestone earlier than both DreamWorks and Orion.) He shepherded "Crash" to the Picture Oscar when he was at Lionsgate, and this time steadily stuck to his guns, spending like the old Harvey Weinstein (who trained him at Miramax). Open Road did everything right, peaking a tad early but nabbing the SAG Ensemble Award, which told Ortenberg, he admitted at the raucous Participant/Open Road Oscar after-party, that they could take the Oscar win. Ultimately, "Spotlight" made Oscar voters feel good about themselves. They wanted to see a movie that celebrated American journalism in pursuit of justice represent the best of Hollywood.

George Miller's fourth "Mad Max" action adventure "Fury Road" snatched Oscars from "The Revenant." Launched at Cannes, the Warner Bros. release was praised by critics — who included it in year-end ten-best lists and awards — and was so well-made that it rose above the fray despite its genre pedigree and scored ten nominations and a remarkable six wins, including Best Editing for Miller's wife Margaret Sixel. Was Miller close to stealing Director from Iñárritu, who had won the BAFTA and DGA? We will never know.

A big surprise was the Supporting Actor win for BAFTA-winner Mark Rylance for Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies" (Disney/Dreamworks). Launched at the New York Film Festival, the '50s spy thriller played well with critics, audiences, and went on to land nine BAFTA and six Oscar nominations. From the start the Brit thespian seemed like an Oscar lock, even though he was working in the theater and couldn't campaign much. But while "Rocky" creator Sylvester Stallone stole some thunder with his "Creed" comeback narrative, the Academy took the high road in the end.

Shut out of the Oscar wins was Fox's impeccably made "The Martian." As well as "The Revenant" awards campaigners managed to turn the early production nightmare publicity into the triumph of a visionary artist over impossible odds, "The Martian" was saddled with a director who liked to talk about how much he loved making commercials; sure enough Ridley Scott did not land a directing slot, and the positioning of the film as a comedy at the Golden Globes did not add the necessary gravitas for "The Martian" to be perceived as more than an entertaining space adventure. With the right handling "The Martian" could have become 2016's "Argo," the mainstream crowdpleaser that celebrates American ingenuity.

This was not Harvey Weinstein's year. While he expertly pushed Todd Haynes' Cannes Competition romance "Carol," starring "The Aviator" and "Blue Jasmine" Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, to nine BAFTA and six Oscar nominations, when it failed to land a Best Picture nomination he pulled back on the reins. "Carol" faced the same issues that "Brokeback Mountain" did: a male-dominated Academy full of what Oscar campaigners call Steak Eaters. It's a new penny-pinching era for the Weinsteins, as the company did not send "Carol" producer Christine Vachon to the Oscars, and declined to pitch in to send "The Hateful Eight" Supporting Actress nominee Jennifer Jason Leigh to the BAFTAs.

Weinstein knew which Oscar they were going to get: Best Score for "The Hateful Eight," composed by 87-year-old Ennio Morricone, who with six nominations had never won a competitive Oscar (he has an honorary one). At Saturday's music-themed pre-Oscar fete (one of three), Weinstein promoted Broadway's "Finding Neverland" and upcoming "Singin' in the Rain," as well as RadiusTWC's Diane Warren/Lady Gaga "The Hunting Ground" song — and proclaimed that Morricone would win the Oscar, adding that "Carol" composer Carter Burwell was lucky to earn his first nomination. (He was not amused.)

One-Oscar wonders.

After playing well at Telluride and Toronto, "Frank" director Lenny Abrahamson's "Room" (A24) won the coveted TIFF Audience Award. Brie Larson ("Short Term 12") scored SAG, Indie Spirit, BAFTA, and Golden Globe Drama wins before snagging the Oscar as a kidnapped and abused young woman who raises her young son (Jacob Tremblay) for five years in a locked room. Throughout the campaign Larson kept Tremblay close, which proved an endearing strategy as they high-fived each other on Oscar night.

Losing out on their bids for Best Actress were four-time nominee Jennifer Lawrence, star of Fox 2000's David O. Russell comedy-drama "Joy," which didn't measure up to Russell's three prior Academy-friendly outings, including the movie that Lawrence won the Oscar for, "Silver Linings Playbook," and first-timer Charlotte Rampling, whose unfortunate racial gaffe hurt her chances for "45 Years" (IFC).

Oscar perennial Tom Hooper's visually sumptuous period transgender drama "The Danish Girl" (Focus/Working Title) drew more raves for Swedish import Alicia Vikander than last year's Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne at Venice and Toronto. The Golden Globes placed the in-demand Vikander in Best Actress for "The Danish Girl" and supporting for critics' fave "Ex Machina," even though Focus campaigned her in supporting, where she did score SAG, BFCA, and her inevitable Oscar win. It was her year. In her acceptance speech she called Redmayne "the best acting partner you could ever have." "I could not have done it without you and you raised my game." Next year she may be back: she stars with her boyfriend Michael Fassbender, who lost his "Steve Jobs" Best Actor bid to DiCaprio, in Derek Cianfrance's tearjerker "The Light Between Oceans."

Finally, despite expert promotion from Paramount, comedy writer-director Adam McKay's brainy Michael Lewis adaptation "The Big Short," starring Oscar nominee Christian Bale and Steve Carell, had to settle for its PGA, WGA and BAFTA wins and the Adapted Screenplay Oscar. The entertaining yet nourishing political movie remained a scruffy comedy.

Beloved Disney/Pixar Cannes entry "Inside Out" was impossible to beat in the animation category, and marked writer-director Pete Docter's second Oscar (after "Up"). Unable to catch up was Paramount's Toronto pickup, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's R-rated stop-motion animated feature "Anomalisa," featuring David Thewlis and Leigh.

Sony Pictures Classics' devastating and aesthetically innovative Cannes award-winner and Oscar submission from Hungary, Laszlo Nemes' Holocaust drama "Son of Saul," came out on top in the Best Foreign-Language race after having been favored for the win.

The usual crop of Sundance hot docs included Matthew Heineman's jury-winner "Cartel Land" and Liz Garbus's "What Happened Miss Simone?" which competed with Asif Kapadia's well-received Cannes documentary "Amy" (A24), about the downfall of the gifted and troubled singer Amy Winehouse. The most mainstream of the doc contenders nabbed the most acclaim on the road to its inevitable Oscar win. Young distributor A24 delivered a rare indie feat: Oscars in three categories for "Room," "Amy," and "Ex Machina," which arguably contributed to Vikander's win.

Notable Shutouts

Emerging at Sundance and playing later fall fests was John Crowley's period romance "Brooklyn" (Fox Searchlight), elegantly adapted from the Colm Toibin novel by Nick Hornby, and starring glowing Saoirse Ronan as an Irish immigrant juggling two swains. But the film's old-fashioned pleasures proved both an asset and a liability during an especially noisy season.

Many thought popular late entry "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (Disney/Lucasfilm), which the producers managed to wedge into the telecast with appearances for R2D2, C3PO and BB-8 as well as J.J. Abrams, would score the visual effects award, but "Ex Machina" (A24) took it home.

Debuting well at Telluride, Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin's audacious biopic "Steve Jobs" (Universal) continued on to New York and London festivals, where Sorkin, Fassbender and Winslet scored praise from critics and early awards noms, despite the dialogue-heavy drama's lackluster box office performance. As Sony's Amy Pascal suspected, the movie turned out to be an expensive art film— and did not play well with mainstream Academy voters. While Winslet and Sorkin both scored unexpected Golden Globe wins and Winslet won the BAFTA, Sorkin failed to land an Oscar nomination, and "It Girl" Vikander took Supporting Actress. Winslet, finally, had already won an Oscar, for "The Reader."

Universal opened F. Gary Gray's hip-hop origin myth "Straight Outta Compton" on August 14 to superb reviews and strong box office; the entertaining period picture landed a SAG Ensemble nod as well as inclusion on the PGA and AFI Top Ten, but lost its one chance at an Oscar, Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman's original screenplay, to "Spotlight." This was not for lack of trying by Universal, which went all out to push the film with Oscar voters.

Playing well to audiences and critics over Thanksgiving and swiftly passing $100 million, Ryan Coogler's update of the Rocky saga "Creed" nabbed a nomination for Sylvester Stallone, who movingly reinhabited the character he created 40 years ago, and scored standing ovations at the Critics Choice and Golden Globe awards. But Stallone is what he is — an aging genre star — and the Academy did not vote him into the Oscar winners' club.

Full List of Oscar Winners below.

Best motion picture of the year
"Spotlight"

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Leonardo DiCaprio ("The Revenant")

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Mark Rylance ("Bridge of Spies")

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Brie Larson ("Room")

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Alicia Vikander ("The Danish Girl")

Best animated feature film of the year
"Inside Out"

Achievement in cinematography
"The Revenant" (Emmanuel Lubezki)

Achievement in costume design
"Mad Max: Fury Road" (Jenny Beavan)

Achievement in directing
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu ("The Revenant")

Best documentary feature
"Amy" (Asif Kapadia)

Achievement in film editing

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

Best foreign language film of the year

"Son of Saul" (Hungary)

Achievement in makeup and hairstyling
"Mad Max: Fury Road"

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
"Writing's on the Wall" ("Spectre")

Achievement in production design
"Mad Max: Fury Road"

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
"The Hateful Eight" (Ennio Morricone)

Adapted screenplay
Adam McKay and Charles Randolph ("The Big Short")

Original screenplay
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer ("Spotlight")

Achievement in sound editing

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

Achievement in sound mixing

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

Best animated short film

“Bear Story (Historia De Un Oso)" (Gabriel Osorio, director, and Pato Escala, producer, Punkrobot Animation Studio)

Best live action short film

“Stutterer" (Benjamin Cleary, director, Bare Golly Films)

Achievement in visual effects

"Ex Machina"

The 2016 Academy Award Winners, Ranked From Most to Least Unjust

Sam Adams — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 21:58:53 GMT

Anyone who's watched the Oscars knows the most deserving nominees don't always win, but some injustices are graver than others. So we've ranked the winners of the 2016 Academy Awards, from least to most deserving. Enjoy.

Best Animated Short: "Bear Story"

Don Hertzfeldt's "World of Tomorrow" is a work of crazy genius, and it's the only short film in this category that people will still be watching years from now. An unsettling exploration of memory and identity told though with time-traveling stick figures, it's hardly the warm tongue bath the Academy usually awards in this category, but a win for anything else is just wrong.

Best Documentary: "Amy"

Asif Kapadia's chronicle of Amy Winehouse's spiral into self-destruction is a gripping assemblage, but this makes two times now that "The Look of Silence's" Joshua Oppenheimer, whose "The Act of Killing" lost to "20 Feet From Stardom" in 2014, has fallen to a music-driven documentary about the vicissitudes of fame. "Act" and "Look" are landmarks in the history of the form: challenging, groundbreaking works that use the medium to its fullest potential for illuminating historical and personal truth and confronting the ways that truth is constructed, but Oscars voters apparently find pop stars and working artists more relatable than the perpetrators and victims of Indonesian genocide.

Best Original Song: "Writing's on the Wall"

Sam Smith's lugubrious, histrionic Bond theme is the worst Oscar winner of 2016, but it also triumphed in a category with no good choices. Smith compounded the error in his acceptance speech by falsely taking credit for being the first openly gay Oscar winner, apparently because of Ian McKellen's observation that no openly gay actor had ever won an Oscar.

Best Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, "The Revenant"

Give Iñárritu credit: By playing up the riskiness and difficulty of "The Revenant" and "Birdman," he's swayed the Academy to think about directors the way they usually do about actors. If this were an award for Most Directing, he'd win it hands down. But if Iñárritu talks a good game, seducing Academy voters by painting the filmmaking process as a crazy, madcap adventure, he's also responsible for his movies' failure to follow through on their grand pronouncements, and the conceptual hollowness at their core. His mouth writes checks his films only pretend to cash.

Best Adapted Screenplay: "The Big Short"

Charles Randolph and Adam McKay's illustrated lecture on the subprime mortgage crisis is funny and sharp, and never lets you forget it. But in a category that also included Phyllis Nagy's diamond-cut "Carol" and the economical sentiment of Nick Hornby's "Brooklyn," picking "The Big Short" is rewarding flash over substance.

Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, "The Revenant"

And speaking of flash over substance... I've said my piece on why Leonardo DiCaprio's win — deserved, but not for this movie — underlines the Academy's narrow, dully predictable taste in performances. But Best Actor was a weak category all around this year, which makes it difficult to point to a fellow nominee and say he was robbed. (Actually robbed: "Creed's" Michael B. Jordan, who wasn't even nominated.) At least winning his long sought-after Oscar will free Leo up to make a nice comedy or two.

Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, "The Revenant"

There's no question that Lubezki is one of the greats, but his work in "The Revenant" was so heavily reminiscent of the movies he's shot with Terrence Malick that it sometimes felt like he was plagiarizing himself. Much of the blame lies at the feet of his director: There are only so many ways you can shoot a symbolic female figure with arms outstretched against a backdrop of untamed nature. But given the chance to recognize Ed Lachman's sublimely nuanced work on "Carol" or John Seale's "Mad Max: Fury Road" innovations or even Robert Richardson's masterful use of the unforgiving 70mm format on "The Hateful Eight," the Academy chose to honor Lubezki for the third year running.

Best Foreign-Language Film: "Son of Saul"

László Nemes' debut is kind of a one-idea movie, but it's a pretty good idea: representing a member of the Sonderkommando's survival instinct through extreme shallow focus that literally blots out the horrors around him. (Memo to the Academy: Don't play off the director of the Holocaust movie with Wagner.)

Best Actress: Brie Larson, "Room"

In a supremely strong year for Best Actress, there were no wrong answers, and though I would have picked Charlotte Rampling's bone-deep performance in "45 Years" or Saoirse Ronan's luminous work in "Brooklyn" first, Larson found levels within her character's anguish rather than pushing it all to the surface like DiCaprio. May you love anything in your life as much as she loves Jacob Tremblay.

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance, "Bridge of Spies"

Frank Stallone may disagree, but even if you were pulling for Sly, Rylance — a theatre legend who gave his Soviet spy the puckish bearing of an inventor in a children's story — was so adorable on stage you had to open your heart.

Best Picture: "Spotlight"

Perhaps not the best Best Picture, but the most desirable by far of the three pundits favored for the top spot. "The Revenant" and "The Big Short" got love elsewhere on the ballot, but "Spotlight" walked away with the big prize, a tribute to old-fashioned craft and stellar ensemble who worked together too well for any single performance to stand out.

Best Visual Effects: "Ex Machina"

It wasn't exactly lo-fi, but Alex Garland's sci-fi fable featured more discreet work than any of its competitors, blurring the line between practical and CGI effects just as its story probes the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence. The technical categories often go to the biggest and loudest movies, but for once the Academy chose finesse over flash.

Best Original Score: Ennio Morricone, "The Hateful Eight"

87-year-old Morricone had never won an Oscar, but this wasn't just the Academy playing catch-up: "The Hateful Eight" is one of his finest scores, equal parts lyricism and menace. Speaking through a translator, the maestro let his acceptance speech run long, but no way was the orchestra going to play him off.

Best Original Screenplay: "Spotlight"

Tom McCarthy's direction was solid and unselfish — a virtue easily overlooked by those who compared "Spotlight" to a TV movie. But its script, co-written by McCarthy and Josh Singer, had what a real estate agent would call "beautiful bones": an immaculate structure that resisted the temptation to let its crusading journalists overshadow the story they pursued, and made Excel spreadsheets and archival research the stuff of engrossing drama.

Best Editing/Production Design/Costume Design/Makeup/Sound Editing/Sound Mixing: "Mad Max: Fury Road"

No Best Picture or Best Director, but George Miller's action opus swept nearly every other category in was nominated in. Winning six Oscars — the most of any film — without taking Best Picture is a distinction it now shares with "Cabaret," "A Place in the Sun," "Gravity" and the original "Star Wars." Not a bad group to be in.

Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander, "The Danish Girl"

True, Vikander's performance in "The Danish Girl" should probably have been slotted as a lead, but category fraud aside, she infused an otherwise dour movie with the freewheeling spirit of an early Verhoeven heroine — a practically heroic act, given how hard her director and co-star were working to drag it down. Supporting Actress often goes to ingénues, many of whom rarely do noteworthy work again, but the four other 2015 releases Vikander starred in are a strong indication she won't be another flash in the pan.

By The Numbers: The Winners Of The 2016 Oscars

Oliver Lyttelton — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 20:59:05 GMT

We’re just about to ready to say goodbye to this year’s Oscar season. Best Picture went to a worthy winner in “Spotlight,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” won the most awards, Leonardo DiCaprio is finally happy, and Sam Smith broke new ground for people who write really, really boring songs.

But before we move on from the 88th Academy Awards, we wanted to wrap up with one last thing: some cold, hard numbers. Below you’ll find some facts, stats and trivia relating to some of the big winners from last night. Take a look, and feel free to let us know any Oscar trivia you might have beyond that.

2: Number of Oscars won by Best Picture victor “Spotlight”

63: Years since a movie before “Spotlight” won Best Picture with only one other Oscar — “The Greatest Show On Earth” took both the top prize and Best Story, losing in three other categories.

$39,173,609 - Total domestic box office to date of “Spotlight.” It’s the second-lowest box office haul for a Best Picture winner in recent memory, ahead of “The Hurt Locker” which took just $17 million, but it’s likely to overtake at “Birdman” ($42 million) and “The Artist” ($44 million) off the back of its victory.

86 - gap between the Rotten Tomatoes score for “Spotlight” (96%) and for Tom McCarthy’s previous movie, “The Cobbler” (10%).

70 - gap between the Metacritic score for “Spotlight” (93) and for “The Cobbler” (23)

4 - number of one-star reviews of “Spotlight” on IMDB (out of 272 in total). “Don’t quit your day job Mr. Keaton, that’s all I can really say about you,” wrote "Juan Baca," apparently believing that acting is something the “Birdman” star does part time, while "abisio" from Miami writes that the film is “basically a bad propaganda movie with the intention on dividing Catholic church and diminishing its power. Do not forget religion is the most powerful institution and governments (and other people) do not like that power.”

READ MORE: The 6 Biggest Surprises Of The 2016 Oscars

3 - Total number of directors who’ve won back-to-back Best Director Oscars: John Ford, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and now Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

65 - years since someone last achieved this feat (Mankiewicz won for “A Letter To Three Wives” in 1949, and “All About Eve” in 1950).

10 - number of cinematographers with three or more Cinematography Oscars: Leon Shamroy and Joseph Ruttenberg, who have four, and Robert L. Surtees, Conrad Hall, Robert Richardson, Arthur C. Miller, Freddie Young, Vittorio Storaro, Winton Hoch and now Emmanuel Lubezki, who have three.

0 - number of cinematographers to win three Oscars in consecutive years before Emmanuel Lubezki achieved the feat this year.

22 - Years since Leonardo DiCaprio’s first Oscar nomination, for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” in 1994.

5 - number of acting nominations it took for Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio to take his Oscar. After ‘Gilbert Grape’ he was up for “The Aviator” (2004), “Blood Diamond” (2006) and “The Wolf Of Wall Street” (2013), which also earned him a Best Picture nod as a producer.

26 - number of big-screen roles it took DiCaprio before winning his Oscar, starting with “Critters 3” in 1991.

3 - living, working actors with five or more Oscar nominations who have yet to win one. Glenn Close has six, Amy Adams and Albert Finney both have five.

5 - living, working actors with four Oscar nominations who have yet to win one: Warren Beatty, Jane Alexander, Annette Bening, Ed Harris and Marsha Mason.

$13,538,053 - gross to date of “Room,” featuring Best Actress winner Brie Larson. It’s the lowest of the Best Picture nominees by some margin.

9 - Brie Larson’s age when she made her screen debut, on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

2 - TV shows Larson has been a regular on: the one-season “Raising Dad” (where Larson and Kat Dennings played sisters raised by widower Bob Saget), and three seasons of Diablo Cody’s “The United States Of Tara,” where she played Toni Colette’s daughter.

3 - Episodes of beloved cult sitcom “Community” Larson has appeared in.

27 - number of big-screen roles Larson has shot, including the still-in-progress “Kong: Skull Island.” That’s one more than Leo DiCaprio.

4000 - copies sold of Larson’s sole pop album to date, 2005’s Finally Out Of P.E. (released when she was 16).

READ MORE: Watch: Chris Rock's Opening Monologue From The 2016 Oscars, The Year-In-Film Montage, Plus More Host Highlights

3 - number of Tony Awards won by Mark Rylance, for “Boeing Boeing” in 2008, “Jerusalem” in 2011 and “Twelfth Night” in 2013. He was also nominated for “Richard III” in the same year as the latter.

12 - number of movie roles Mark Rylance had before winning an Oscar for “Bridge Of Spies.” These include “Intimacy” (in which he receives a for-real blowjob on screen), Jason Statham vehicle “Blitz,” Roland Emmerich’s “Anonymous” and Sean Penn actioner “The Gunman.”

13 - total number of actors to be nominated for appearing in Steven Spielberg movies.

2 - actors to win Oscars for roles in Steven Spielberg movies: Rylance and Daniel Day-Lewis for “Lincoln.”

17 - movies that Alicia Vikander made before winning the Oscar for “The Danish Girl.”

7 - number of those movies that were released in the U.S. in 2015.

5 - number of those movies that are better than “The Danish Girl” (in order: “Ex Machina,” “Testament Of Youth,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E,” “Son Of A Gun” and “Burnt.” “Seventh Son” is worse.)

26 - number of “West Wing” episodes written by “Spotlight” co-writer Josh Singer across the last three seasons of the show. He also went on to write for “Lie To Me” and “Fringe.”

4 - Number of times “Spotlight” Oscar winner Tom McCarthy has played a character called Bob: he played Dr. Bob Banks in “Meet The Parents” and “Little Fockers,” Bob in Lukas Moodysson’s “Mammoth,” and Dr. Bob in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s “Jack Goes Boating.”

1 - Number of Oscar winners this year who appeared in Adam Sandler flop “Pixels” (Tom McCarthy, as Michael The Robot).

$107.833 million - average box office for a movie directed by “The Big Short” screenplay winner Adam McKay, a batting average that few filmmakers can compete with.

3 - Theatrical features written by “The Big Short” screenplay winner Charles Randolph before “The Big Short” — “The Life Of David Gale,” “The Interpreter,” “Love & Other Drugs.”

2 - Total number of James Bond movie themes to have won Best Original Song Oscars, now that Sam Smith’s “The Writing’s On The Wall” has followed the win for Adele's “Skyfall.”

23 - rough estimate for number of James Bond themes better than “The Writing’s On The Wall” (of 24 Bond themes)

$608 million - total budget of the Visual Effects nominees.

2% - percentage of that total made up by the budget of “Ex Machina,” the winning film in that category. It cost $15 million, making it the cheapest film since “Alien” in 1979 to win the prize.

6 - number of Oscars won by "Mad Max: Fury Road." It ties the original "Star Wars" as the film to win most Oscars without winning Best Picture or Best Director.

5 - Oscars Ennio Morricone was nominated for before he won this year. The most recent was for “Malena” in 2001.

13 - Number of times Thomas Newman, a nominee this year for “Bridge Of Spies,” has been nominated and not taken home an Oscar.

13 - Number of times Roger Deakins, a nominee this year for “Sicario,” has been nominated and not taken home an Oscar.

212 - Minutes last night’s Oscar broadcast lasted. That’s the exact same length as “Ben Hur,” the winner of the 1960 Oscars.

How the 2016 Oscars Weekend Revealed The Real Problem With the Film Industry (Analysis)

Eric Kohn — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 20:15:04 GMT

READ MORE: Oscars 2016 Review: They Might Have Dragged, But Didn't Stop Being Funny About Race

An hour after the Oscars ended, I stood next to a man who wouldn't have won an award even the movie he worked on did. One of the anonymous Indonesian collaborators on "The Look of Silence," which finds a young man confronting perpetrators of his country's genocide, he worked closely with the Copenhagen-based director Joshua Oppenheimer. His colleague would face blowback from his government if he were associated with the film, and so he wasn't credited by name.

We were standing outside Los Angeles restaurant, near the valet and a nest of post-Oscars paparazzi; the man committed to exposing his country's sins through cinema looked distinctly out of place. But he also seemed happy to be there. He beamed about the popularity of his work throughout Indonesia. Although police found ways to cancel some 10% of the screenings throughout the country, plenty of people still got to see it. "That's still pretty good," he said.

Complaints about Hollywood's diversity problems are valid, but they're a superficial look at a broader challenge: Since the Oscars represent Hollywood's attempt to present an ideal version of itself, it can never offer a complete picture of the movies, or the people who battle to make something different.

To the extent that the Oscars reward creative ambition, they remain within a familiar playing field. Alejandro G. Iñarritu's second win in a row, for the reckless abandon he brought to making "The Revenant," spoke to the effectiveness of publicizing a difficult shoot. That said, the Oscars couldn't find room for Jacques Rivette in the Academy's "In Memoriam" tribute — a filmmaker whose entire career was built around fresh narrative experimentation. (Mercifully, the late Chantal Ackerman was acknowledged.)

The Oscars tell a flimsy story of global cinema, and by extension, the world. #OscarsSoWhite, meet #OscarsSoNarrow.

Issues of diversity dominated the scene leading up to the ceremony. At a pre-Oscar cocktail party hosted by the nonprofit Women in Film, nominees such as Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jennifer Lawrence rubbed shoulders with last year's supporting actress winner Patricia Arquette, who delivered an impassioned speech about equal pay for women that included a savvy jab at Antonin Scalia. Women in Film executive director Kirsten Schaffer spoke forcefully about their drive to fix the industry, noting that only 11% of movies produced in 2015 were made by women.

"We can do better," she said. "We are going to work with our partners throughout Hollywood and rid ourselves of biases… Finally, once and for all, we'll make a change forever."

Elsewhere in the room, a more complicated picture came together, one in which diverse filmmakers either toiled within limited options or worked steadily beyond the industry's constraints.

In one corner was Kimberly Pierce, the "Boys Don't Cry" director who hasn't made a movie since a poorly received "Carrie" remake in 2013. Nearby, Plan B executive Jeremy Kleiner spoke excitedly about his company's upcoming collaboration with Barry Jenkins, the African-American director of "Medicine for Melancholy," who hasn't completed a movie in eight years. Veteran producer Christine Vachon expressed her enthusiasm for Janicza Bravo, a young black woman whose short film "Woman in Deep" will soon premiere at the SXSW Film Festival; Vachon planned to produce Bravo's next feature. Outside was Mira Nair, in postproduction on the Ugandan chess competition drama "Queen of Katwe."

But one of the two woman filmmakers nominated for an Oscar in the feature film race this year — along with "What Happened, Miss Simone?" documentarian Liz Garbus — the Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, wasn't even there. Still in France for the Cesar awards, Ergüven represents a much larger arena for filmmaking than anything squeezed into a single speech about Hollywood. Her nomination this year never led the headlines about the Oscars' diversity problem, not because she didn't provide an alternative but because she wasn't part of the club.

The Oscars' narrative speaks to a restricted mindset. Rock's best segment during Sunday night's telecast, in which he interviewed black moviegoers in Compton who had never heard of "Spotlight" or "Bridge of Spies," spoke directly to the industry's inward-looking tendencies. No matter their dominance on the global stage, the Oscars represent just one insular slice of the cultural equation.

That narrow perspective extends to the Hollywood scene itself. A Friday night Oscar party hosted by United Talent Agency chairman Jim Berkus felt like a self-contained universe. Channing Tatum stood near the door and showed off the tap-dance moves he learned while shooting "Hail, Caesar!"; outside, hotshot producers ranging from Joel Silver to Judd Apatow mingled on a makeshift deck built on top of Berkus' pool. But then I ran into someone who looked a little out of place.

Two years ago, German director Anja Marquardt made her debut with the perceptive drama "She's Lost Control," an eerie look at the experiences of a sex surrogate who gets too invested in her work. Both perceptive and viscerally unnerving, "She's Lost Control" showcased Marquardt's unique ability to convey otherworldly qualities without negating her character's intimate struggle. Having signed with UTA, Marquardt has yet to announce her next project. So there she was at the UTA party, possibly on the hunt for some future collaborators. Spending a few months in Los Angeles developing her project, Marquardt wasn't looking for a big opportunity to sell out, no matter how much the industry clamored for it. She shrugged off the pressure to tackle some franchise simply for the sake of rising through the ranks. "You don't have to take that crap," she said. "You can just walk away."

Later, she clarified. "I do have mixed feelings about the pursuit in general," she said, but wouldn't be averse to juggling a massive commercial property, should someone see her as the right fit. "I would absolutely take the bull by the horns if the stars aligned," she said.

A few feet away, a grinning Seth Rogen embraced Chris Rock, who steadily made his way through the party while remaining low key. Rogen had no plans to attend the Oscars. "I just don't give a shit," he chuckled after Rock walked away. On his way out the door, Rock briefly crossed paths with Laszlo Nemes, the Hungarian director of "Son of Saul," which would eventually win best foreign-language film. "Uh, your movie's great," Rock said as he headed to his car.

Nemes, like Marquart, wants to stick to his own material. Even as he's signed with UTA, he plans to shoot another movie in Hungary soon. Nevertheless, the agency fires off scripts to him at a constant rate. "I don't read the things they send me," he said. "I don't need to."

Even in the lobby of the Dolby Theatre on Sunday, nominees grappled with the distinction between the awards' allure and their own priorities. On the smoking deck, I ran into veteran publicist Jeff Hill and "Carol" screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, who struck a sensible note. The exhausting trail of Oscar campaigning, she said, "is just part of all this. You either work with it or you're miserable."

READ MORE: Full List of All 2016 Oscar Winners

Then there was Duke Johnson, the young animator who co-directed the stop-motion marvel "Anomalisa" with Charlie Kaufman. Nominated for best animated feature in a category pre-ordained for "Inside Out," Johnson was still wrapping his head around the universe of possibilities thrust in front of him since his movie surfaced on the festival circuit last fall. "There is so much nonsense in this industry," he said. "And yet, I still want an Oscar. I do." (It was a familiar sentiment. Last year, I spent the whole evening hanging out with the losers.)

Inside the theater, my colleague Anne Thompson and I took our seats in the second mezzanine, where we ran into Vachon. "This is what six nominations get you," she said, before heading to the bar at the first commercial break, never to return. Yet while "Carol" was shut out Sunday, there was a significant bright spot in the large volume of wins by "Mad Max" in below-the-line categories, including many roles that went to women (one of which was best editing, by director George Miller's wife, Margaret Sixel).

Best actress winner Brie Larson's acceptance speech for her ferocious turn as a committed mother in "Room" hinted at a broader world, opening with an acknowledgement of film festivals and distributor A24. One floor down, I ran into A24 executive Heath Shapiro, who said his highlight from the past year had less to do with the company's first set of Oscar nominations than the successful wider release of the audacious horror movie "The Witch."

Then, the A24-released British sci-fi thriller "Ex Machina" surprised everyone with a win for Best Visual Effects, and Shapiro beamed at his company's first mention at the Academy Awards. A few minutes later, A24's"Amy" won best documentary. The Oscars provided a reason to celebrate for the people who fought their way in.

Nobody felt more vindicated by that battle than the team behind "Spotlight," a best picture winner that most pundits assumed to be an also-ran. At a boisterous after party hosted by distributor Open Road, a crowd cheered each of the movie's big winners as they made their way through the door. For that smartly written drama about a team of Boston journalists exposing sexual abuse in the Catholic church, the Oscar game was well worth the months of investment.

A few miles away, documentarian Matthew Heineman came down to earth. Swept up in campaign whirlwind for his engrossing Mexican drug cartel portrait "Cartel Land," Heineman still carried around a laminated acceptance speech he never got the chance to deliver. It included his galvanizing call for further awareness of the drug war's violent reverberations. But he admitted that, moments before he lost to "Amy," his mind went elsewhere. Watching the clips from his fellow nominees, he said he found himself only thinking, "Man, I really want to watch all of these movies."

Oppenheimer found his own method of dealing with loss. Riding to his film's dinner party, he spoke with Adi Rukun, the subject of his film who suffered through the reverberations of the Indonesian genocide. "Adi said, 'My brother was killed and I had to eat wood chips as a child to survive,'" Oppenheimer recalled. "That put things in perspective."

Oppenheimer's collaborator looked particularly content as he hinted at the possibility of a third installment in the duo's reckoning with his country's long-suppressed history. But he had no plans to publicly reveal his identity. "They won't kill me, but I might get a stone through my window," he said.

Losing an Oscar was the least of his concerns. "It's a show," he said. "The kind of movies we make…" He trailed off, as the flash of photographers by the entrance lit up the night. Finally, he collected himself. "The kind of movies we make," he said, "aren't for shows like this."

READ MORE: The Best Things Phyllis Nagy, Laszlo Nemes and More Said on the Red Carpet at the 2016 Academy Awards

Oscar Highlights: 'Spotlight' Surprises, DiCaprio (Finally) Wins, and Louis C.K. Proves He'd Be a Great Host

Matt Brennan — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 18:55:28 GMT

Though the Oscars telecast fell to an eight-year low in Nielsen's overnight ratings — not surprising given that three of 2015's most popular films ("Creed," "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," and "Straight Outta Compton") were largely absent from the major categories — host Chris Rock and a number of unpredictable categories made the ceremony one of the most memorable since "Crash" beat "BrokeBack Mountain." We round up our favorite moments of the night, in no particular order.

READ MORE: Top 10 Oscar Surprises

"Spotlight" Wins Best Picture
The showdown between "Mad Max: Fury Road" (six wins) "The Revenant" (three, including Best Director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Best Actor Leonardo DiCaprio) might have signaled a path to victory for Tom McCarthy's kitchen-sink journalism drama — but, as evidenced by Michael Keaton's fist-pumping "Fuck yeah!" at Morgan Freeman's announcement, "Spotlight" nabbing the top prize still came as a bit of a shock. Variety's Guy Lodge noted on Twitter that it gave the Oscars an "elegant" symmetry: "Spotlight" won the night's first award (Original Screenplay), the night's final award (Best Picture), and nothing in between.

Tracy Morgan Loves These Danishes, Gurl
Chris Rock's strong opening monologue, which wasted no time in taking the Academy to task for yet another year of #OscarsSoWhite, set the table for this even funnier pre-taped gag, with Rock and other black performers assuming roles in lily-white nominated movies — Whoopi Goldberg in "Joy," Leslie Jones in "The Revenant." But it was Tracy Morgan, on the comeback trail after being critically injured in a 2014 car accident, who landed the night's biggest laugh. Reprising his daffy "30 Rock" persona, he ribbed Tom Hooper's period drama with a perfectly placed pastry: "These Danishes is good, gurl!" has us chuckling even now.

READ MORE: "Oscars So White: 8 Ways to Fix the Academy Diversity Problem"

Leo's Long Wait Pays Off
Speaking of "The Revenant," star Leonardo DiCaprio ended his "always a bridesmaid" Oscar losing streak by winning Best Actor (his sixth Oscar nomination overall) — and then marked the occasion in style. In his acceptance speech, he made a classy, impassioned plea for politicians to accept the science behind climate change, watched as his statuette was engraved at the Governor's Ball, and welcomed a string of well-wishers at the swanky Vanity Fair party. Plus, his victory — the most predictable of the night — gave us this brilliant bit of flipbook art.

Louis C.K. Celebrates Civic-Driving Documentarians
It will come as no shock to anyone familiar with his stand-up, but Louis C.K. turned in the most clever awards presentation of the night (sorry, Sarah Silverman) by refusing to sugar-coat the cold, hard facts of the category. As he said of the nominees for Best Documentary Short — which went to "A Girl in the River" (HBO, March 7) — "these people will never be rich as long as they live." Paying tribute to the evening's unsung filmmakers while needling the mansion-dwelling glitterati, the comedian achieved in short order the balance of warm feeling and sharp humor that Ricky Gervais has been trying (and failing) to strike at the Golden Globes for years. C.K. is smart enough to know that hosting the Oscars is a thankless task, so don't expect him to take the reins anytime soon. But it's still nice to dream, right?

Mark Rylance Wins with Grace
Upsetting sentimental favorite Sylvester Stallone ("Creed"), Rylance accepted his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor with an eloquent paean to storytellers — including his "Bridge of Spies" director Steven Spielberg — and a nod to his fellow nominees. Stallone's loss, 39 years after he fell short in the Best Actor race (playing the same character, Rocky Balboa) may be heartbreaking, but it's hard not be pleased to see perhaps our greatest living stage actor receive kudos for his on-screen work, especially after the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild all whiffed when it came to his brilliant turn in "Wolf Hall."

Brie Larson Is Actually the Sweetest
Before winning the Best Actress prize for her performance in "Room," in which she plays a rape survivor, rising star Brie Larson showed why she's been such a popular presence on the awards circuit this year. After Lady Gaga — whose "Til It Happens to You" lost out, shockingly, to Sam Smith's Bond theme in the Best Original Song category — performed her number from "The Hunting Ground," backed by dozens of sexual assualt survivors, Larson hugged every last one as they left the stage, a real-life example of the strength and humanity she brought to one of 2015's toughest roles. (Watch video of the hug line, tweeted by The Hollywood Reporter's Chris Gardner, below.)

Then best actress fave Brie Larson gets up, hugs each, every one. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/OI3cFZaLtl

— Chris Gardner (@chrissgardner) February 29, 2016

2016 Oscars: 5 Snubs That Rocked The Academy Awards

Rodrigo Perez — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 18:00:43 GMT

Oscar season is finally over. The 88th Academy Awards took place last night, but the post-mortem continues. Yes, there were surprises last night, the biggest being “Spotlight” taking Best Picture (nearly every Oscar pundit had either picked “The Big Short” or “The Revenant”), but there were also snubs. Of course any such snubs were relative, and they’re not as egregious as no actor of color being represented in the actor race, a lack of minorities in general or a lack of females in the big categories (though it's nice to see Margaret Sixel win Best Editing for “Mad Max: Fury Road”) or certain deserving films being mostly shut out of the ceremony completely (“Creed” and “Straight Outta Compton” come to mind). But there were certain people and films that were expected to land a big prize but walked away empty-handed. Let's take a look at six of them and why they were shut out.

READ MORE: Analyze This: Why 'Spotlight' Beat 'The Revenant' And 'The Big Short' To Win Best Picture Oscars

Sylvester Stallone For “Creed”
The biggest snub, and possibly the biggest surprise of the night, was Sylvester Stallone losing the Best Supporting Actor award. Traditionally, the Oscars love a good comeback story (think Martin Landau in “Ed Wood,” James Coburn in “Affliction,” etc.). But in recent years, the idea of the “sentimental favorite” has certainly lost its power (see just last year when veteran Michael Keaton lost Best Actor to newcomer Eddie Redmayne). But Stallone had a good narrative: he hadn’t been nominated for an Oscar in 39 years — for 1977's “Rocky” for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay— and the momentum and popularity appeared to be there. Stallone won the Golden Globe and while Idris Elba won the SAG award for Best Supporting Actor, Elba was not nominated for an Oscar, so this seemed to only help Stallone. Plus in “Creed,” Stallone was part of a terrific diversity pick that was otherwise ignored at the Oscars, and he was ostensibly representing the picture. He seemed ripe for the win. But apparently there were other factors at play that made him lose to Mark Rylance for “Bridge of Spies.” In those ensuing 39 years, Stallone had made a lot of terrible movies that perhaps the Academy could not forgive, and there was a perhaps-not-untruthful narrative that he was disliked by his peers. In fact, with Rylance as a total newcomer to Hollywood, one can posit that it wasn’t so much support for Rylance that earned him the prize, but resentment towards Stallone that prevented a win. Presuming this is his last shot at an Academy Award, you’ve got to imagine Big Sly is heartbroken and you’ll never see him up on that stage again unless he’s given an honorary Oscar.

READ MORE: The 6 Biggest Surprises Of The 2016 Oscars

“The Martian” Getting Zilch
The narrative for Ridley Scott’s “The Martian” over the awards season was interesting. The film went from being a fan favorite that's “never getting nominated,” to becoming a huge hit (over $600 million worldwide), with support mounting for the movie through the fall. The outer space survival film did well at the Golden Globes (in part because they have a Musical/Comedy category) and eventually was nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor (Matt Damon) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Drew Goddard). Perhaps the writing was on the wall early on, when “sentimental favorite” director Ridley Scott wasn’t nominated for Best Director (despite earning a DGA nom), and when it came to the big show, “The Martian” took home absolutely zero awards.

“Carol” Gets Shut Out As Well
I turned out to be exactly right in September after I saw “Carol” at Telluride, unfortunately. Todd Haynes' sumptuous, exquisite “Carol” is easy to adore on a aesthetic level, but I felt it was slightly dispassionate, and more importantly, I thought it would prove to be much too cold and aloof for the Academy. This proved to be correct in several ways. First off, “Carol” failed to earn a Best Picture or Best Director nod, but the film did score six nominations overall, including two for leads Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett. But even in would-be shoo-in categories like Costume Design, Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay, “Carol” was cast aside. Eventually, the film, which was also shunned by the Spirit Awards, came up empty handed.

“The Revenant” Missing Below The Line
Yes, “The Revenant” was well-respected and won three key awards: Best Director, Best Actor and Best Cinematography, but with twelve nominations, the harrowing wilderness tale went into the evening with the most nods. Outside of the big categories, many believed “The Revenant” would dig deep into the technical awards as well. And most people started to go astray in their Oscar pool when they picked “The Revenant” for both sound categories. Instead “Mad Max: Fury Road” kicked it to the curb for the tech categories and dominated there across the board.

“Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens” Given No Tech Love
J.J. Abrams’ ‘The Force Awakens’ might have smashed the record for the highest-grossing film of all time this year (domestically, anyhow), but it received no love at the Oscars. Some over-enthusiastic pundits had believed it might score a Best Picture nod in December, but that did not come to pass. ‘Force Awakens’ was however nominated for five technical categories, including the prestigious Best Editing award, but walked away empty-handed.

“The Big Short” Only Winning One Award
Adam McKay’s housing collapse/economic crisis tragicomedy was the Best Picture frontrunner at one point and was nominated for five awards including Best Picture, Director, Editing and Best Supporting Actor. "The Big Short" had won both the PGA award (usually the best augur for Best Picture) and the National Board of Review Awards Best Ensemble, and had generally scored lots of accolades throughout the season. But it was a divisive film (I thought it was a mess) and that could have affected its chances. In the end, “The Big Short” was relegated to the sidelines, taking only one award for Best Adapted Screenplay, which makes sense given no one thought a movie could be made about the complex financial minutia of collateralized debt obligations and similarly abstruse market collapse issues.

That’s really it. Any other films nominated but shut out that you feel deserve a mention? Sound off below.

Oscars: The Morning After

Leonard Maltin — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 17:47:01 GMT

I've always looked forward to the Academy Awards, so I don't want to sound jaded in discussing this year's seemingly endless road to the Dolby Theatre. But here is how I feel, the morning after:

   If just one person sees Spotlight who hadn't been interested before (even in Compton)...

                If only one moviegoer seeks out the gripping Foreign Language Film winner Son of Saul...

                If just a handful of viewers are now aware of such bright young talents as Brie Larson (check out Short Term 12) and Alicia Vikander (don't miss Ex Machina)...

                If more people recognize one of the finest actors of our time, Mark Rylance (primarily a stage actor who made such a strong impression in Bridge of Spies and the recent miniseries Wolf Hall)...

                If the impassioned speeches about rape on campus and the urgent need to address climate change have an effect on anyone in the worldwide Oscar audience...

                And if the Hollywood film industry realizes that it needs to be more inclusive, not as a sign of tokenism but as a reflection of contemporary society...

                ...then all the hoopla, campaigning, controversy, and attendant blather has been worthwhile. The Academy Awards don't, and can't, exist in a vacuum...but good work and good movies were honored last night, and that's what the Oscars are supposed to do.

Daily Reads: The Story of Hollywood's Forgotten Feminist Crusaders, Bette Davis and the Feminine Grotesque, and More

Vikram Murthi — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 17:45:09 GMT

Criticwire's Daily Reads brings today's essential news stories and critical pieces to you.

1. The Original Six: The Story of Hollywood's Forgotten Feminist Crusaders. Though it may seem like the fight against gender discrimination in Hollywood has only just begun, there have been crusaders in the past who have desperately tried to change the tide. For Private Standard, Rachel Syme profiles The Original Six, a group of six female directors who tried to challenge the Hollywood machine only for the industry to try to erase them.

Nell Cox lives on the Upper West Side in one of those kooky apartments you see only in Nora Ephron movies — quaint with a certain country flair (her living room furniture includes a daybed topped with a vintage quilt), filled with precarious stacks of books and papers and knicknacks and the odd glass trophy commemorating a long creative life, the kind of perfectly charming mess that indicates an artist is in residence. When I arrive, on a freezing afternoon in early February, her radiator is hissing like a threatened snake. Cox, who is in her "seventies and happy with my age," doesn't seem to mind; we have a mission to complete. I am at her apartment to talk about her experiences as part of "The Original Six," a group of women directors who spoke out against gender discrimination in Hollywood in 1979, and who formed the Women’s Steering Committee, a branch of the Director’s Guild of America that advocates for female employment on film and television sets at the directing level. Cox and I are speaking on camera — her daughter, Rebecca, who is also a filmmaker and lives in Brooklyn, has never before heard her mother sit down and speak about her activism, and she wants to capture the interview for the family archives. "She never talks about this," Rebecca says to me, handing me a glass of water and adjusting her camcorder (her father, who also works in the industry, handles a second camera nearby; no home movie made by a triad of filmmakers could ever just have one angle). "When we heard she was going to speak about this time in her life again, I knew I had to be here." And so here we all are: me, Cox, who wears bookish glasses and speaks in a lilting Kentucky drawl, and two family documentarians, gathered to talk about how it was that Cox never got to direct a feature film, her one, big, glimmering dream. She came close — she came close so many times — but now she considers the dream to have been more of a mirage. Cox directed several episodes of TV ("M.A.S.H," "The Waltons," "Ghostwriter," "L.A. Law") and even a made-for-PBS "women's western" called "Liza's Pioneer Diary" in 1976, but no longform treatment she wrote for a big studio film ever made it past the development stage. At one point during our talk, Cox slides a sheet of paper across the table to me, filled with ideas for films that she had over the years. "Here are 10 full scripts I wrote," she says, "and there are probably 25 more treatments. God, this is depressing. I have pages and pages and pages of these things." Many of the ideas are solid: a buddy road-trip comedy called "Bad Girls," a biopic of the revolutionary Emma Goldman, an adaptation of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," a Masterpiece Theater biography about the famous British actress and outspoken abolitionist Fanny Kemble. But, as Cox admits, they are all women's films. They tell women's stories. And in the 1970s and '80s, when she lived and worked in Hollywood, those stories were not on most studios' wish lists (they still aren't, but more on that to come). "With the Emma Goldman film, Harold Ramis co-wrote it and wanted to produce it," she says, sighing, looking a little misty and far-off. "He was at the height of his career! And we got Bette Midler, who would have been great. But...it was a period piece. And it would have been a big, expensive film. And I was attached to direct. Harold, to his credit, never said he should direct it, which would have gotten the thing made. No, he was wonderful that way. But we worked on that for years, and nothing came of it."Cox’s vision, when she moved to Los Angeles from New York in the mid-'70s, was to make an entire series of genre films, all from a woman's point of view: a gender-bending sci-fi, a war story with a female hero at the center. She only got as far as making the Western. "I thought, they're making all the genre movies where the men are the heroes and I want to flip this concept on its ear," she says. "Looking back, this seems naïve. What was I thinking? But the fact that this seems naïve perhaps says something important about our industry. At any rate, this vision was rejected." At that point, Cox's voice trails off and she decides that she needs to take a little break, that she is growing weary of talking about herself. But before I pause the tape, I ask why she thinks more people don't come and find her, ask her to tell her true Hollywood war stories. "I just think our experience was so long ago, and it was kind of sad," she says. "So younger women may think, 'Let's not talk to them. Let's just move forward.'"

2. The Oscars: A Role of a Lifetime for Rehearsal Actors. The 2016 Academy Awards aired last night, and the ceremony fulfilled its promise of featuring glamorous celebrities pat themselves on the back for their tireless efforts to make motion pictures. But awards shows aren't just for A-list actors; they're also for rehearsal actors, those who stand in for the nominees while producers plan the event. The L.A. Times' Amy Kaufman explores the work of rehearsal actors during the Oscar season.

Growing up in South Central, Joanne Tomita often dreamed of being a star. As a young girl, she was once cast on "Kids Say the Darndest Things," and a limousine came to whisk her away from the home she shared with six siblings to the glitzy CBS studio lot. The experience made her feel special, and she started imagining what it would be like to be famous. Four decades later, her fantasy has become reality — well, in a way. This week, Tomita will stand onstage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and accept an Academy Award. Except the actress has never appeared in an Oscar-nominated film. For more than 20 years, she's worked as a professional rehearsal actor, standing in for awards show presenters and nominees as the program's producers plot out the telecast. "There's no other situation where you could be this close to A-list actors. I feel so lucky to have this job," said Tomita, who on Wednesday portrayed Kate Winslet, Jennifer Lawrence, a sound mixer on "The Martian" and a "Star Wars" android. Tomita is part of a community of a few dozen working actors who make their living as stand-ins, partaking in rehearsals for everything from the Emmys to the Grammy's to "American Idol." On Tuesday, she and four of her colleagues gathered at Hollywood & Highland — where Oscar preparations are well underway for Sunday's big event — to share war stories and behind-the-scenes tidbits from their years in the business. Veteran stage managers and awards show producers like Debbie Williams, Gary Natoli and Louis J. Horvitz know which stand-ins they like, and they'll give a list of names to a show's script department for hiring purposes. Typically, awards show gigs last three days, except for the Oscars, which rehearse for five days. (And come Oscar night, the stand-ins watch just like the rest of us plebes: At home, on the couch, with a big bowl o' popcorn).

3. The Oscars Before the Oscars: A History of the Photoplay Magazine Medal of Honor. The Oscars have frequently been criticized for awarding movies that many people don't actually see, charged with favoriting movies that bait awards than actual crowd-pleasers. Well, ten years before the first Oscars, a magazine gave out awards for motion pictures as voted on by fans. Slate's Aisha Harris examines the Photoplay Magazine Medal of Honor, the Oscars before the Oscars.

From the contest's inception in May 1921, the "Photoplay" Medal of Honor oozed lofty ambition: "PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE has determined to permanently establish an award of merit," said one of the magazine's earliest full-page announcements, "a figurative winning post comparable to the dignified and greatly coveted prizes of war and art." The Medal of Honor would be crafted of solid gold by the illustrious Tiffany and Co., and presented only to the producer (not, to be clear, the director or the distributor) "whose vision, faith, and organization made the Best Photoplay a possibility." At the bottom of the page, loyal readers were provided with a handy short list of suggested Best Pictures of 1920 — which included such frothy titles as "Suds" and "Remodeling a Husband" — and a ballot with which to cast their vote. And thus was born the precursor to the Academy Awards, a distinction that, "like Abraham Lincoln's ideal government," was "by, of, and for the people." Such florid language was par for the course in the magazine, which was first published in 1911 and in its earliest days focused on story adaptations of popular movies. Starting in 1915, James R. Quirk became the editor and oversaw the magazine in its most influential period through 1932. The magazine featured full-page portraits of glamorous movie stars, such as Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks, and John Gilbert, interspersed with industry gossip; brief, to-the-point moving picture reviews; puffy interviews; and the occasional reader contest. As overblown and laughably self-serious as "Photoplay's" award pronouncement may read now, its intensity and vigor is an oddly charming glimpse into movie fandom and criticism from when cinema was still in its relative infancy. Like the magazine overall, the Medal of Honor presented to readers a fascinating combination of populism and slight, subtle paternalism by ostensibly entrusting them with the power to choose the best of the best while nudging them to make the "right" choices. A typical Medal of Honor ad in the lead-up to the results would include something along the lines of this advice: "Choose your picture because of merits of theme, direction, action, continuity, setting, and photography, for these are the qualities which, in combined excellence, make great photoplays." The very first award, for the year 1920, was awarded to William Randolph Hearst, the producer of "Humoresque." The viewing public ultimately knew better than the critics, and even the studios themselves, what made cinema "art." "Photoplay" made that clear in what appears to be a general press release sent out to newspapers across the country during that initial contest. ("Experts don’t always hold the same belief as the average motion picture theater goer," it read. "This is attested by the great number of pictures adjudged 'knockouts' in the projection rooms, that result in flivvers in the theater, and vice versa.") And with this coronation by the public, "Photoplay" envisioned its honor as contributing to the improvement of the moving picture as an art form, fostering a healthy competition among producers and filmmakers to create their best work. (The magazine claimed that the Medal of Honor made some producers excited to "overcome the purely mercenary side of the art of picture production.") The Academy Awards, as they were conceived by MGM head honcho Louis B. Mayer, were a decidedly more exclusive affair from the beginning, with an emphasis on self-preservation. As Jim Piazza and Gail Kinn recount in their "complete unofficial" history of the Academy Awards, the very first ceremony, held in 1929, was organized as a "public relations coup" to add some esteem to the industry and distract "concerned mothers and clergymen" who were beginning to call for on-screen censorship. The following year, at the second ceremony, scandal was afoot, as all of the winners that night were either on the Board of Judges or had close ties to it; Mary Pickford’s surprise win for her "stiff" role in "Coquette" in particular led many to believe that the whole affair was rigged. It's safe to say that "artistry" wasn't at the forefront of the Academy Awards in those early days.

4. How SyFy's "The Expanse" Cast Its Multiracial Future. Set in a colonized Solar System in the near-future, the SyFy original series "The Expanse" follows a detective, a ship captain, and a United Nations execute as they uncover a vast conspiracy that threatens to destabilize peace across the system. The Verge's Tasha Robinson examines how the series presents its egalitarian future by having a multiracial cast.

There's something's visibly missing in the first season of Syfy's space-opera series "The Expanse." When a catastrophe strands a handful of working-class ice miners in a treacherous situation, most of them immediately look to their black female engineer for guidance, rather than to the ranking white male officer. When those miners are taken aboard an immense Martian warship, the captain is a no-nonsense Asian woman. One of the series' primary protagonists is a septuagenarian Indian woman in a crucial executive role in the United Nations. There's no glass ceiling in "The Expanse," either for women or for characters of color. There's also no reason to assume, sight unseen, that any given referenced characters, regardless of their position in the world, will be white men. The show, which wrapped its first season earlier this month (and which can be streamed in its entirety on SyFy's website,) takes place in our universe, around 200 years from now, in a future in which humanity has spread throughout the solar system. It's also a future where racism and sexism have become obsolete. Without fanfare, the creators behind the show have created one of the most egalitarian futures on television. "It was one of the things we talked about early on," says executive producer Naren Shankar, one of three showrunners on "The Expanse." He credits authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (who write together under the pseudonym James S. A. Corey) with the show's broad ethnic mix, because it's such a significant part of their books. "They always said, 'The people who make it out into space, it's not just going to be Neil Armstrong, clean-cut, classically white Americans. It's going to be Indian, Chinese, Russian [people], a mix of everybody, every ethnicity. And that's just going to melt and mingle.' We really wanted to reflect that, and retain that in the show, because it does say something about humanity, and that movement out into space." Shankar has plenty of experience with science-fiction shows and diversity agendas. After getting a PhD in electrical engineering, he became a science consultant on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and a story editor on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." He served as a writer on both shows, and as a producer on "Farscape" and "Almost Human." But "The Expanse" has a take on multiculturalism that he hadn't seen before. "I started my career on 'Star Trek,' and for its time, it was a diverse cast," he says. "But it was very different. The knock against 'Star Trek,' rightly or wrongly, was that the cast felt very hand-picked, trying to have every color of the rainbow. It was the best of intentions, but it didn't really deal with humanity. It was a cross-section of perfect humans on ships meeting aliens who had problems. 'Star Trek' did many, many good things, but this is pretty different. We're trying to really represent human beings, and to extrapolate, to the extent it's possible with this kind of drama, where humanity might go, how ethnicities might mix, how people might look."

5. Elephants in the Auditorium: "A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery," or Slow Cinema Revisited. Filipino independent filmmaker Lav Diaz has a new film entitled "A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery," which, among many things, is eight hours long. For BFI, Jonathan Romney examines the film, the concept of slow cinema, and what it means to watch an eight-hour movie.

Here’s the question it's hard to get around when discussing Lav Diaz's latest film "A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery." What does it actually mean to watch an eight-hour movie? In the context of any film festival, it means blocking out a stretch of time in the schedule, making a decision to watch this film rather than three or possibly four others, and reprogramming your receptivity – which in festivals, is attuned to a rhythm of high-intensity omnivorousness – to a different pitch and very different demands. It may be something to do with general fatigue at the end of the Berlinale (Diaz's film played on the final Thursday), or it may be a side-effect of the dressing on the salad I grabbed in the hour-long halfway intermission; the fact is that, dozing off somewhere in the film's fifth hour, I actually started to hallucinate, or at least to wildly misread the images on screen. And I can't believe that the already hypnotic nature of the no doubt aptly named "Lullaby" doesn't have something to do with that. The Filipino director himself commented at his Berlin press conference that it was misleading to dwell on the lengths of his films. "We're labeled 'the slow cinema.' But it's not slow cinema, it's cinema. I don't know why…every time we discourse on cinema we always focus on the length. It's cinema, it's just like poetry, just like music, just like painting where it's free, whether it's a small canvas or it's a big canvas, it's the same…So cinema shouldn't be imposed on." But not to talk about the length of Diaz's films would be like pretending that the size of Anselm Kiefer's paintings was of no consequence: when an artist chooses a canvas, whether it's to be covered in paint or flickering shadows, its expanse is part of the means of expression. Besides, Diaz chooses to make very long films not as exceptions, but as his standard practice: duration, and his way of engaging the viewer's floating attention over long stretches of often confusingly complex narrative, are central components of his artistic arsenal.

6. The Feminine Grotesque: On Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" Over at Vague Visages, Angelica Jade Bastién pens a column entitled The Feminine Grotesque that focuses on female madness, how it's framed in cinema, and its development from 1940's women's pictures to the present day. For her latest entry, Bastién examines Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

Have you ever wondered what Medusa's voice sounds like? Was it soft like a kitten's purr? Did it buzz like pink champagne? Did it crackle like fresh fire? I have been thinking about Medusa a lot. Perhaps because she is the foremost story of female anger and madness told. You probably know the shape of her myth if not the particulars. The head of snakes. The ability to turn men into stone just by one look. Ovid complicates her further by introducing rape into her backstory before being turned into the monster we know her as. But I'm not interested in Perseus cutting her head, destroying her vocal cords, scrubbing out what humanity she could have had. I'm more interested in what Medusa has to say for herself and if there is a way to rewrite her story and those of her spiritual descendants. Cinema is full of Medusa figures. But it's when I watch Bette Davis that I feel Medusa regains her voice. And that voice is never more frightening than in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962) which pairs her with her longtime rival, Joan Crawford. Crawford and Davis were dramatically different actresses and women. Joan knew how to play the game and played it well. She was perhaps one of the most intelligent studio system actresses in terms of understanding the desires of the audience and the expectations that come with being a star of her magnitude. Which makes the fact that her legacy has been warped by "Mommie Dearest" such a tragedy. While Bette, in her active pursuit of artistry, would gladly lock horns with directors, producers and even Jack Warner himself (if she felt she could make the films she starred in better). Edmund Goulding, who directed her in "Dark Victory" (1939), warned Joseph L. Mankiewicz before he directed "All About Eve" (1950), "That woman will destroy you. She will grind you down to a fine powder and blow you away. She will come to the stage with a thick pad of long yellow paper. And pencils. She will write. And she, not you, will direct. Mark my words." Although both actresses shared an immense drive, passion for film and incredible work ethic, I doubt they'd admit they had anything in common. Despite these differences, they found themselves in the same space in 1962. As the 1960s rolled around, and the studio system was all but over, actresses that came up its ranks like Bette and Joan struggled to find footing. They were still dynamic, enchanting and powerhouse performers. But when has Hollywood ever been interested in the power of older women? Many of the grand dames of the studio system found a home in the horror films that traded on their legacies. In the minds of some viewers (and the system that was evolving around them), Bette and Joan became monsters, but they never played their madwomen as such. It's easy to look at the late-era work of the mothers of this genre as camp punchlines. As the wounded and wounding sisters in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?," it is also easy to pity them, and at times it feels the film does. Both actresses have different techniques and strengths and weaknesses and legacies. But my love for them is rooted in how they articulated the humanity in complicated women that society often doesn't know what to do with.

Tweet of the Day:

We could use more moderates in film criticism. Most movies are not total disasters or staggering triumphs, but somewhere in between.

— AADowd (@AADowd) February 26, 2016

How Did Independent Films Fare at the 2016 Oscars?

Kate Erbland — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 17:43:44 GMT

READ MORE: Full List of All 2016 Oscar Winners

And, with the final round of applause and one last shot of a beaming Leonardo DiCaprio, awards season has come to a close. A wild ride from start to finish, punctuated by early contenders ("Steve Jobs," anyone?), unexpected dark horses (looking at you, "Ex Machina") and all sorts of insane stories (see: "The Revenant"), the 2015-2016 season is one that will be hard to shake. But while the season was marked by its unpredictability, one trend did emerge early on and stick around to see it through: Independent films made outside the studio system that got their big awards push care of smaller, boutique outfits that seemed bent on giving them not just a glitzy campaign, but ones crafted with real affection for the final product.

From major wins for "Spotlight" to genuine shocks for critical favorites like "Ex Machina," indie film had a big, big night on Oscar Sunday. Here are some of the highlights.

"Spotlight"

There's simply no bigger indie success story than that of last night's best picture winner, the Tom McCarthy-directed "Spotlight." The Black Listed screenplay from McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer was originally partially financed and supported by Participant Media, who then brought in Open Road Films (who have previously had some near-misses with awards possibles, most recently with "Nightcrawler") to fill the financing gap. The indie outfit closed the financing gap, and the film — which boasts a lot of star power both in front of and behind the camera — was made for the slim price of $20 million. It's the first best picture win for the Open Road team, but if this deep dive that our own Anne Thompson did with CEO Tom Ortenberg last year is to be believed, it will likely not be the last.

"The Revenant"

Although "The Revenant," which picked up major wins for best actor, best director and best cinematography, was distributed by 20th Century Fox (who also gave it a massive awards push that paid out both in terms of hardware and box office returns), the film's road to the big screen was very much indie-infused. Originally set to be produced by Akiva Goldsman in the early aughts, the film cycled through directors and stars (and producers!) before finally ending up with its final lineup in 2014. The film was funded by cabal of companies, including New Regency, RatPac-Dune Entertainment and the China-based Guangdong Alpha Animation and Culture Company. Fox reportedly declined to fork over additional funds when they were asked for, and as such, the film does not include a Fox production credit, and producers like Arnon Milchan and Steve Golin have been hailed as its true financial forces.

"Room"

It's only fitting that lauded indie it girl Brie Larson would win her first best actress Oscar for an truly indie film. Financed by a collective of various outfits, including funds from both Ireland and Canada, the film was made outside the studio system for about $13 million. A24 picked up the rights to the feature before it even started shooting, and the boutique distributor seemed bent on pushing the Lenny Abrahamson-directed feature, based on Emma Donoghue's bestselling novel of the same name for a big awards campaign. That paid off, and Larson collected a series of wins throughout the season, ultimately ending up on the Oscars red carpet as the odd-on winner.

"The Danish Girl"

Best supporting actress winner Alicia Vikander had a huge year in film, thanks to not only her work in the Tom Hooper feature, but also her star turns in "Ex Machina," "Testament of Youth" and even the derided "Seventh Son" (she was a lone bright spot in the beleaguered film). Like winner "The Revenant" and nominee "Carol," "The Danish Girl" had a long, winding road to the big screen, thanks to years of development, a number of cast changes and even some directorial switcheroos. When the film was finally made in 2015, it was financed by a number of producers, including Hooper himself, Pretty Pictures, Harrison Productions and Working Title, all for an estimated $15 million budget. Released domestically by Focus Features, it's yet another big Oscar winner from an smaller distributor made on an ever-rare mid-sized budget.

"Amy"

Although Asif Kapadia's best documentary winner, the heart-stopping "Amy," was originally shepherded to the big screen by Universal Music, the film was released by boutique indie outfit A24, which picked the film as its first documentary offering (and didn't that work out nicely?).

"Ex Machina"

Another big success for A24 on Oscar night? Alex Garland's "Ex Machina," which pulled off a huge surprise win for best special effects, beating out such heavyweights as "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," "The Martian" and "The Revenant." Although the film was released in the UK by Universal, who had the option to release it in the U.S. through their Focus Features, the studio balked, allowing A24 to sweep in to grab the domestic rights to the film, which went on to become a critical and commercial hit and, oh yeah, an Oscar winner to boot.

"Son of Saul"

The Cannes Grand Prix-winning feature has been a critical darling for months now, but its back-to-back best foreign language film wins at both the Indie Spirits and the Oscars seemed to genuinely shock director and co-writer Laszlo Nemes. Perhaps he's still reeling from its long road to the big screen? Despite dedicating years of his life to making the feature, Nemes struggled to find financiers for his vision, and many reportedly balked at the film's tough subject matter and unique approach to portraying the Holocaust. The film was eventually paid for by the Hungarian National Film Fund, and was picked up for domestic release by Sony Pictures Classics, who set it out on a very successful festival tour, before grabbing the gold.

"The Hateful Eight"

Although the Quentin Tarantino Western, made by indie mainstay The Weinstein Company, didn't pull out a best supporting actress win for star Jennifer Jason Leigh, it did propel beloved composer Ennio Morricone to his very first Oscar win. Morricone had previously been nominated five other times (first starting back in 1979, with his score for "Days of Heaven") and picked up an Honorary Oscar in 2007.

Shorts

It should come as little surprise that two of the three winning shorts — including live action and animation — were made independently, as few studios beyond Pixar actively participate in the creation and production of shorts. "Stutterer," the live action winner, was the only Irish film to take home an Oscar, despite a field crowded with other nominees from the emerald isle. Over on the animated side, "Bear Story" beat out the Pixar-made "Sanjay's Super Team" to become the first ever Chilean winner at the awards show.

And, although the night's biggest winner (in terms of both quantity of awards and sheer "wow" factor), George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road," was made within the studio system, the six-time Oscar winner did slog through development hell for nearly two decades before it finally came together under the umbrella of Warner Bros. Although the film was not independently made, it was certainly independently minded.

READ MORE: The Best Things Winners Leonardo DiCaprio, Brie Larson and More Said Backstage at the 2016 Academy Awards

The 6 Biggest Surprises Of The 2016 Oscars

Oliver Lyttelton — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 16:58:19 GMT

Another year, another Oscars, and while in the early goings of the evening it felt like everything was about to play out as predicted (starting with the Screenplay prizes, which were arguably the most locked down of anything not won by Leonardo DiCaprio), some curveballs were thrown by the end of the night, not least with the final and biggest prize.

As part of our ongoing post-mortem of the 88th Academy Awards, we’ve picked out the six biggest surprises, from the unlikely strength of the evening’s biggest winners, to the behind-the-scenes players who outdid titans like Harvey Weinstein. Take a look below.

READ MORE: 2016 Oscars: 5 Snubs That Rocked The Academy Awards

1. "Mad Max: Fury Road" was the biggest winner
Even when the film got rave reviews when it opened last May, few would have predicted “Mad Max: Fury Road” would, nine months later, be the biggest winner at the 2016 Oscars. And yet here we are. It became clearer over the season that George Miller’s instant action classic would be a viable awards player, and it seemed to have a few categories sewn up going into the ceremony, most notably production design. But in most of the technical categories, it was thought that the film would be grappling with “The Revenant,” and given that Alejandro González iñárritu's film was the Best Picture front-runner, many assumed it would come out victorious in categories like Makeup, and Sound. In the end, though, it was only Cinematography that “The Revenant” won of the below the line prizes, with 'Fury Road' near-sweeping the technical categories, and racking up six wins in total, more than any other film this year (in fact, in the last decade, only “Gravity” and “Slumdog Millionaire” have taken more prizes home). It was an early sign that things weren’t going to go the way of “The Revenant” in Best Picture, and more importantly, a chance to honor the amazing achievement of Miller’s team, even if the film didn’t win any big awards.

READ MORE: Watch: All The 2016 Oscar Acceptance Speeches, Plus Appearances By Ali G, Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, And BB-8

2. Spotlight won Best Picture
We’ve already discussed the reasons behind the Best Picture win for "Spotlight," so we’ll keep this brief, but the fact that it won at all was certainly a surprise. This was clearly a three-way race with "The Revenant" and "The Big Short," even more so than two years back when “Gravity” and “12 Years A Slave” were front-runners with “American Hustle” acting as the dark horse behind them. But most seemed to consider “Spotlight” the longer shot — it had opened before either contender, it was the least obviously sexy, it didn’t have A-list stars or astounding production value. Even Morgan Freeman seemed a little surprised when he announced it. It’s been a while since we had a real Best Picture upset. “Crash” was probably the last real shock, and fortunately, this one was a much more welcome surprise.

3. The Soviet Union finally beat Rocky
We’d written in advance that if it felt like any of the acting categories were primed for a departure from the predestined, it was Supporting Actor. Sylvester Stallone was predicted by most to win for “Creed,” but he wasn’t nominated for BAFTA and SAG, which suggested that he was vulnerable, while certain people had suggested that Stallone’s less-than-glowing reputation might have been a hurdle. The latter probably wasn’t a factor so much (everyone that’s ever won an Oscar has someone that doesn’t like them, and Stallone probably has as many supporters as enemies), but it may have been that not enough Academy voters saw “Creed,” which with only a single nomination, and coming from a dusty old franchise, probably wasn’t a priority to many even. Almost anyone in the category could have been surprised beating him, but in the end it was Mark Rylance, a beloved stage actor who stands out in Steven Spielberg’s "Bridge Of Spies," likely aided by the large British contingent and by New York voters. His speech, the best of the night, more than vindicated his win.

4. Sam Smith winning Best Original Song for "Spectre"
Best Original Song is almost always a shit-show of a category at the best of times, but it really outdid itself this year. We’ll concede that, on the night, Lady Gaga’s “’Til It Happens To You” wasn’t her best performance of not her strongest song, but complete with introduction from the Vice President and the appearance of real-life sexual assault victims, it proved to be a powerful, tear-jerking moment nonetheless, and in a weak year for the category, felt like the obvious winner. Instead, voters gave it to the song they were most familiar with, Sam Smith’s “Spectre” theme “Writing’s On The Wall,” a song best described as "if Macklemore covered 'Skyfall' badly and then you accidentally played it at the wrong speed." It was something that we feared might happen, but had hoped wouldn’t: it was only made worse when Smith exacerbated things by claiming to be the first openly gay man to win an Oscar (many, many others have, including Elton John and Stephen Sondheim).

READ MORE: Watch: 2016 Oscar Musical Performances By Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, The Weeknd, And Dave Grohl

5. The cheapest movie won Visual Effects.
The Visual Effects Oscar is most often won by a Best Picture nominee. When it isn’t, it’s because no Best Picture nominee was up for the effects category, and it goes for some hugely expensive blockbuster instead. That’s what made the victory of “Ex Machina” this year such an air-punchingly happy surprise. The film was up against three expensive Best Picture nominees in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Martian” and “The Revenant,’ as well as the biggest domestic grosser of all time in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” It opened last April, and was at best a modest sleeper success. It had no exploding airships, CGI bears, hellish dust-storms, spaceships or tiny digital smugglers. It is, in fact, with $15 million in budget, the cheapest movie nominated for Best Visual Effects since “Alien,” which cost $11 million in 1979: it’d be considerably more when adjusted for the inflation. So it was thrilling to see Double Negative’s seamless work on the film triumph... a true, and deserved, underdog success in a category where it rarely happens.

6. The strength of the new distributors
The last decade or two have seen, largely, three companies dominate Oscar season: The Weinstein Company (and before that, Miramax), Focus Features and Fox Searchlight, with the latter company in particular winning big the last two years, and picking up a huge majority of Oscar wins last year thanks to “Birdman” and “Grand Budapest Hotel.” But this year marked, if not a changing of the guard, then maybe some new players getting in the mix. Warner Brothers won the most awards of any company thanks to the six of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and 20th Century Fox took three for “The Revenant.” But Best Picture was won by Open Road Films, a company who've existed for less than five years and who received their first Best Picture nomination this year, while A24, an even newer distributor who’ve been developing a well-deserved cult reputation for their innovative marketing and excellent taste, picked up three Oscars, as many as Fox, thanks to Brie Larson’s Best Actress win for "Room," the documentary prize for “Amy” and the VFX win for "Ex Machina." Meanwhile, The Weinstein Company took only a single prize (for Ennio Morricone’s “The Hateful Eight” score), Focus won only Best Supporting Actress for Alicia Vikander's turn in “The Danish Girl,” and Fox Searchlight went home empty handed. It’s too much to say that this is a permanent shift — we’re sure the old hands will be bouncing back — but it’s impressive to see the some newcomers make their mark on the Oscars, given how hard it can be to get a foothold.

Watching the Oscars at The Weinstein Company Viewing Party

Steve Greene — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 16:12:05 GMT

When Chris Rock speaks, people listen. Especially inside the Beverly Hills Montage's Marchesa Ballroom at The Weinstein Company's official Oscars viewing party (presented in part by Indiewire). Even though some guests were still assembling their dinner plates, by the end of his opening salvo, the gathered audience was clapping along, ready for the rest of the evening.

READ MORE: Inside The Weinstein Company's Pre-Oscar Dinner

Though not a Weinstein offering, the early onslaught of wins for "Mad Max: Fury Road" generated some big buzz, particularly whenever the film was listed among the nominees. Whether people were cheering associates or personal Oscar pool victories, there was an overall positivity to the entire evening. Even in the best supporting actress category, where two TWC hopefuls (Jennifer Jason Leigh for "The Hateful Eight" and Rooney Mara for "Carol") had a chance, Alicia Vikander's win was met with people audibly pleased with the result.

The evening remained social as the ceremony progressed, so much so that when Rock mentioned Harvey Weinstein by name, it caught much of the crowd by surprise. But the party crowd snapped to attention with the entrance of Vice President Joe Biden as he introduced TWC beset song nominee "Til It Happens to You."

READ MORE: The 2016 Oscars Might Have Dragged, But Didn't Stop Being Funny About Race

Up next: Unexpected outcomes, but some strong consolations.

During commercial breaks, the audio from ads went away in favor of a playlist of best original song winners, going in reverse chronological order. The room was subdued when "Til It Happens to You" did not join those ranks. But the chorus of cheers following Lady Gaga's performance of the song minutes earlier matched the approval inside the Dolby Theatre, apparent from the telecast.

READ MORE: The Best Things Winners Leonardo DiCaprio, Brie Larson and More Said Backstage at the 2016 Academy Awards

The night was not without its winners, though. A strong, victorious cheer went up through the room when the legendary Ennio Morricone was announced as the winner in the best original score category. And perhaps releasing the pent-up joy not afforded by less-than-expected outcomes in the best song and best supporting actor categories, the night's most vocal approval came for Leonardo DiCaprio's much-predicted win.

As the ceremony came to a close, DJ Michelle Pesce (fresh off spinning at the TWC pre-Oscars party the night before), kicked off the post-show music with David Bowie's "Golden Years," a fitting tribute and the ideal way to cap off the industry's biggest night.

READ MORE: Indiewire's 2016 Oscars Bible: Every Interview and Review From This Year's Nominees

Analyze This: Why 'Spotlight' Beat 'The Revenant' And 'The Big Short' To Win Best Picture

Oliver Lyttelton — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 14:00:00 GMT

Well, that was exciting. Going into yesterday’s Oscars, most prognosticators were predicting and expecting “The Revenant” to win Best Picture — it was a huge hit, took the BAFTA and the DGA (the guild that most often lines up with Best Picture), and was widely expected to win Best Actor and Best Director, which it did. Those that weren’t backing Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s film tended, like ourselves, to predict that “The Big Short” was best placed for the big prize, having taken the PGA Award.

But instead, in one of the more pleasing curveballs in recent Oscar memory, the Best Picture trophy went home to the makers of “Spotlight,” Tom McCarthy’s sober, understated drama about the Boston Globe reporters who helped reveal systematic cover-ups of child abuse in the Catholic Church in the city (and elsewhere). A few astute prognosticators had backed it (aided by its wins with the SAG), but not many, and given that before it won Best Picture last night, the film had only won one other award, even they must have been feeling shaky. So what happened? How did the dark horse triumph over its bigger competitors?

READ MORE: Oscars 2016: 'Spotlight' Wins Best Picture, 'The Revenant' Takes Best Director & Actor, 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Wins 6

It’s a complicated question, but the simplest answer is: the preferential ballot. Introduced in 2009, the new system asked voters not just to pick their favorites, but to rank all of the Best Picture nominees (this year, from 1-8). If a movie gets over half of the first-choice votes, it wins, simply enough. But if no film has a majority, the movie with the least number of first choice picks (let’s say for sake of argument this year that it was “Bridge Of Spies”) is eliminated.

The accountants then take all the ballots that had “Bridge Of Spies” in first, and redistribute them according to the second-place votes. Assuming no movie is now over the 50% barrier, the movie with the next fewest votes (“Brooklyn,” say) is eliminated, and their votes redistributed (If a “Brooklyn” ballot had “Bridge Of Spies” in second, they go by their third place vote). And so on and so forth. This video by The Wrap’s Steve Pond probably helps explain things better with some visual aids.

In general, it means that unless there’s a runaway favorite — and that’s increasingly unlikely in an extended Best Picture field — the system is skewed against divisive fare, and favors those that are consensus favorites, movies that might not have got the most first place votes, but stacked up plenty of second and third place ones as well.

READ MORE: Interview: Tom McCarthy Talks 'Spotlight,' State Of Journalism, 'The Wire' & More

It was the logic that saw me predicting “The Big Short” — the PGA are the only guilds who use the preferential ballot system — but in the end it was “Spotlight” that benefited. And it’s not difficult to wonder why. “The Revenant” turned off as many as it turned on: for every person that found it bravura and powerful, there was another that saw empty showboating and bloody violence. Some loved flippant, fleet-footed take on a dense subject presented in "The Big Short," while others found it labored and uneven. But “Spotlight” felt widely loved, or at least widely liked: even those who didn’t find it the best of the year respected the film’s understated tone and quiet emotion.

There were likely other things that helped it build up the broadest group of support. Actors are the largest branch of the Academy, and “Spotlight” is a movie with a large ensemble cast full of actor’s actors, long-serving, oft-undervalued character actor types. That factor also helped win it the SAG ensemble prize, and likely this that helped it vault over “The Revenant” (mostly a one-man show), and “The Big Short,” which also deploys a large cast, but one arguably more driven by big-name movie stars.

Oscar voters also often like a subject that makes them feel good for voting about it, and “Spotlight” tackles an important one. Whereas “Room” might have felt too bleak for some voters, for instance, McCarthy’s film has the right amount of uplift at the end, showing a shocking conspiracy but ultimately seeing it bested, and demonstrating the change that came from it. Like “Schindler’s List” or “12 Years A Slave,” which also grapple with difficult subject matter, they’re also stories of hope amidst inhumanity, and that plays well with voters. And thus, the quiet triumph of "Spotlight" resonated more than the revenge driven narrative of “The Revenant” (however much its filmmakers talk about climate change and highlighting indigenous peoples, they felt attached to the story rather than inherently part of it), or the more ambivalent conclusion of “The Big Short,” which ends with the corrupt institution essentially prevailing, and our "heroes" getting very rich off the misery of others.

All this presumably saw “Spotlight” topping plenty of ballots, but also crucially coming second, third or fourth on those that preferred other nominees. It’s the same thing that ultimately benefited “Argo,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Artist” and more: the important thing to remember is that the Best Picture winner isn’t the most liked film, but the film that’s liked the most.