Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 8:10AM The Oscar nominations for the 89th annual Academy Awards are announced within the hour (eep). But if you'd rather think about something else (you may have your reasons, crazy person) here are other things you could celebrate today...
Monday, January 23, 2017 at 5:51PM And so it's come to this, the finale of the traditional Oscar-like categories in our own annual Film Bitch Awards. All the nominations have been announced in the first round ("special" non-Oscar related categories still to come). It's years like this when I wish YOU wish 5 were a much larger number in so many fields. There were seven leading ladies I really wanted to honor and six leading men but five does not equal six or seven. Alas. It's also strange when films you really love are denied any nominations in your own prizes. Such was the fate of one film from my top ten list (Embrace of the Serpent). Fences and Lion, two Oscar hopefuls I'm quite fond of, also look deceptively unloved with only two nominations each though with both Best Actor and Best Actress citations, Fences can't complain.
tfw when you realize you're nominated for a Film Bitch Award. (Huppert plays it cool)
In the final nomination tally, 35 movies received at least one nomination, with Arrival and La La Land leading the pack with 8 nominations each (will they also lead the Oscar nods?). The Handmaiden, Moonlight, 20th Century Women, and Jackie trailed not so far behind. The rest of the films weren't as lucky but perhaps they'll rise in the "special" categories to come.
Page 1 Picture, Director, Screenplay, Animation
Page 2 Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress
Page 3 Visual Categories: Cinematography, Costume Design, etcetera...
Page 4 Aural Categories: Song, Score, etcetera
Monday, January 23, 2017 at 5:16PM "The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...
Tomorrow is twice blessed. You’re probably already excited for the first reason, the Oscar nominations announcement. It’s also the centennial of Ernest Borgnine, an actor I have never particularly liked. But this coincidence makes today a perfect opportunity to talk about one of the worst movies ever produced by a Hollywood studio: 1966’s The Oscar.
The film begins and ends at the Academy Awards, where fictional Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd) is as Best Actor nominee for Breakthrough, perhaps the most on-the-nose fictional title of all time. His newly estranged best friend Hymie Kelly (Tony Bennett, in his film debut), glares at him from the next row. Bennett would retire from acting immediately after The Oscar, for reasons that are obvious from the moment he starts talking...
Monday, January 23, 2017 at 5:00PM 
It's almost Christmas! Our Christmas that is, when we open our beautiful presents and occassional lumps of coal from the Academy. What will go in the history books tomorrow as Oscar nominees? Here's a run down of my final predictions in case you missed them (with three alterations) since the charts are being pulled tonight for reconstruction tomorrow once we have the official nominations.
All predictions are after the jump...
Monday, January 23, 2017 at 3:20PM Jason from MNPP here on the eve of Oscar nominations wishing you all a good night's rest tonight - I know how you'll all be tossing and turning with visions of little golden sugar-plum statues dancing in your heads. Until then let's use this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to tackle one of the greatest movies of 2016 which may or may not get a single nomination tomorrow but if you ask me it'd be up for La La level awardage - Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster. And I want to further tune in one two of its finest yet totally unsung turns, both of which I maintain are as fine as any in the conversation for Supporting Actor - Ben Whishaw as John the Limping Man, and John C Reilly as Robert the Lisping Man.
PREVIOUSLY Last week it was John Carpenter's birthday so we looked through our x-ray goggles at his 1988 anti-consumerist actioner They Live, and once again it was "Rowdy" Roddy Piper's chance to pound some alien butt. Said Steven:
"I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum and I'm all out of bubblegum. For the Hot Rod. Still miss that man."
