Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 1:00PM Final Predictions Pt 1: Picture, Director, Screenplays, Actor, Supporting Actress
Final Predictions Pt 2: Animation, Documentary, Score, Song, Sound
Part 3: We have to wrap up final predictions tomorrow! So here's another round of last minute parsing in five categories...
Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 9:31AM Fresh off its big win for Best Unreleased Film from the prestigious Team Experience Awards, Olivier Assayas and Kristen Stewart’s Personal Shopper keeps racking gasps this week with the release of its official (mesmerizing! gorgeous! strangely reminiscent of Hou Hsaiao-hsein's The Assassin!) poster below. The Cannes-stamped film will finally hit theaters in March and for fans of Clouds of Sils Maria, the duo's inaugural joint endeavor, spring can't come soon enough. If you stare at the poster and repeat the title five times at the stroke of midnight, rumor has it that Kristen Stewart will climb out of your computer screen in a shimmery metallic frock!
Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 8:00AM 
Damien and Emma in Venice, Fall 2016Happy birthday to Damien Chazelle, who turns 32 today! He's already an Oscar nominee for writing Whiplash (2014) and he will easily boost his tally this coming Tuesday when he may well nab two nominations for writing and directing La La Land. If he wins Best Director he'll become the youngest person to ever win, beating a record set way back in 1931 by Norman Taurog for Skippy... who was 32½ when he won.
If you aren't dancing for joy at La La Land's success (and you should be... an original musical heading towards a blockbuster gross is great for the future of the genre!) here are other people and things you can celebrate today. Celebrate something since life isn't worth living otherwise in this brink of the apocalypse world.
Other Things To Celebrate...
1809 Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston and life was harsh from the get go - before he was two he was an orphan but his tales of the macabre will live forever in print and in their film and TV adaptations
1839 Post impressionist giant Paul Cezanne is born in France. The recent French film Cezanne et moi (2013) is about his friendship with writer Emile Zola
Biopic Suggestions and Golden Globe memories after the jump...
Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 10:00PM Last year's Supporting Actress Smackdown season was way too short with only two episodes so we're starting much earlier this year and aiming for at least 5 or 6 from spring to summer.
Stitch & Bitch with Supporting Actress Shortlists February through August!
Friday February 17th - Best Supporting Actress 2016
Nominees TBA. Since the smackdown is normally a retrospective we will probably approach this 'in-the-moment' event differently but we're still brainstorming.
Friday March 31st - Best Supporting Actress 1963
We've been promising this year forever so we are going to force ourselves through it which should be easier than its been since its only three films! The nominees: Margaret Rutherford in The VIPs, Lilia Skalia in Lilies of the Field and three of Albert Finney's co-stars in Tom Jones: Diane Cilento, Joyce Redman, and '60s Oscar fixture Dame Edith Evans
But what shall we do for April through August (finale)? You get four choices come after the jump...
Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 8:00PM 
Another day another dizzying array of last minute nerves over this confusing Oscar race. We've already talked Picture, Director, Actor, and the Screenplay categories right here. Now several more categories...
Animated Feature
A couple of months ago The Red Turtle looked like the sure thing "art" entry in the this category but it doesn't appear to have gathered much momentum and I worry it may be omitted. Working the opposite trajectory is Kubo and the Two Strings (more and more popular... could it even give Zootopia a run for the win?) and My Life as a Courgette which could pick up nominations in both animated feature and foreign language feature, something that has never happened before.
Documentary Feature
The only question that seems relevant at this point is "can anything beat O.J.: Made in America?"...
