What if there had been a Best Casting Oscar this past decade?

Since we shared the news that Casting Director David Rubin had become the new president of the Academy, we've been thinking a lot about a potential Best Casting Oscar. The common 'they shouldn't do this' feeling in the comments and on twitter was based on the fact that the Academy would likely get it all wrong and only pick a random sampling of Best Picture nominees with starry casts. But that's never a reason not to have a category when there should be one. Lord knows they get a lot of things wrong and many of the branches are susceptible to strangely ignoring anything outside of the Best Picture race even if the film isn't strong in their particular field.

Here at TFE, in our Film Bitch Awards, we've had a Best Casting category since 2013 which makes it pretty much our newest category. Why did we wait so long? Who knows. But after the jump we thought we'd share our nominees each year and what we think Oscar would have nominated in those same time frames. Play along in the comments, won'cha?

2013
Film Bitch Nominees	What Would Oscar Have Chosen?

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International Cat Day ~ The Game.

Happy International Cat Day, one of the most essential holidays of all time.

Audrey Hepburn with "Cat" in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

After the jump we're playing a game. Can you guess which human actors these big screen cats are coupled with in these images? The answers are included under the photos but you'll have to highlight them to read them since they're in white type. Tell us how many you were able to figure out before looking at the answers!

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Intermission/Posterized: Dino De Laurentiis 100th

Today in showbiz history the famous and sometimes infamous producer Dino de Laurentiis was born in a province of Naples, Italy. We'll take an intermission on our five or six part celebration today but we hope you've enjoyed the write-ups on Bitter Rice (1949) and the Fellini years, the creation of Dinocitta and its famous high-grossing but also-flopping The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), and his early years in America with gritty dramas like Serpico (1973) and Death Wish (1974). We resume tomorrow evening with the much-derided but very successful King Kong (1976) which just so happened to be the film debut of Jessica Lange.

Until then which of these 18 early De Laurentiis' productions have you seen? Do you have a favourite?He produced hundreds of his films in his career, starting at the age of 20, so this is just a small sample of his work in the first 30+ decades of his career...

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No More Links (Enough is Enough)

• NYT a fascinating new interview with the always odd Nicolas Cage
• Cartoon Brew an indie animated short is getting a theatrical release! Hair Love will open for Angry Birds 2 in theaters. Should we watch out for it at the Oscars?
• Variety sad news for those who love Asian cinema and follow the Golden Horse Awards (which we've often covered here at TFE)... a political storm is brewing and mainland China and Hong Kong are looking to boycott the event given Chinese feeling that Taiwan (where the ceremony always takes place) is not an independent nation but part of China. Naturally Taiwan feels otherwise (as do the American Oscars which invite Taiwan to submit their own films and don't lump them in with China itself)

More after the jump including new showbiz books, odd news concerning The Little Mermaid, a Barbra Streisand and Ariane Grande duet and more...

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De Laurentiis pt 3: Starting over in America

This week at TFE we're celebrating the centennial of one of cinema’s most prolific and legendary producers, Dino De Laurentiis.  In part one we looked at his breakout Italian hit, in part two an expensive epic flop. Here's Mark Brinkerhoff as Dino crosses the Ocean... 

Dino in 1970, and Al Pacino in Serpico (1973)

Dino De Laurentiis stormed Hollywood in the early ‘70s, quickly on the heels of fantastic successes like 1968’s Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik, which essentially closed out his previous decade (“essentially” because, man oh man, was this man ever prolific). 

 

Having branched from Neo-Italian into more international, English-language cinema, De Laurentiis set his sights on riding the New Hollywood wave then cresting. While still making the occasional spaghetti western and period piece, his films began to dabble more in contemporary themes. In fact, aside from The Valachi Papers (1972), his The Godfather manqué, De Laurentiis’ initial forays into filming stateside resulted in his grittiest, most modern productions to date...

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