25 Days Until Oscar...

Twenty-five days is not much. Are you ready? For today's special number, I thought we'd look back at the 25th annual Oscars, the first televised Academy Awards ever, but then I realized we'd already written a huge post about it with actresses falling on stairs and everything! So let's keep this simple. What's your choice for BEST of 1952 (beyond Singin' in the Rain)?

The nominees were:

• The Greatest Show on Earth
• High Noon
• Ivanhoe
• Moulin Rouge
• The Quiet Man

...and if there'd been three to five more nominees they would surely have included The Bad and the Beautiful which won 5 Oscars, the most ever won by a non Best Picture nominee), and Viva Zapata! which had 5 nominations, 3 of them major categories. If it had extended beyond 7 perhaps a combo of less loved or more divisive pictures like My Cousin Rachel (the remake is coming out this very year starring Rachel Weisz), Sudden Fear (4 noms and it's awesome), 5 Fingers (2 major nominations and British so prestige), or either of the traditional biopics like Hans Christian Anderson (6 nominations) or With a Song in My Heart (5 nominations). Famously they weren't into Singin' in the Rain at the time (2 nominations) which will always be a bonkers fact. 

January. It's a Wrap.

Busy month. As Januarys always are. Between the Oscar nominations, the Golden Globes, the SAG awards, the campaigns raging, and the world collapsing, it's been quite a month. In case your visits were spotty here are 15 highlights you might have missed...

What if Miranda Priestley styled the Vanity Fair covers?

8 Must Reads
Miss Orange County we pfinally started a Pfeiffer retrospective series. Have you been reading?
Interview: Denis Villeneuve the Oscar nominee talks about the shape of Arrival
Three Fittings: La La Land simplicity rules but the costume design isnt simplistic
Doc Corner Glenn on the Oscar nominated feature list
We Can't Wait our 17 most anticipated films of 2017
The Furniture tackled the tackiness of legendary bad movie The Oscar (1966)
Lunchtime Poll What cartoon should come with a trigger warning?
Film Bitch Awards I trust you've been following along?
Kissing Andrew Garfield would it make you feel better? 

7 Most Discussed
Devil Wears Prada musical? They're taking it to the stage
Vanity Fair Hollywood Cover -Annie Liebovitz attacks
Isabelle Huppert & Other French Icons - César vs. Oscar in the stats
Oscar Snubs This Season Annette Bening, Sing Street, Cameraperson, etc
8 Big Takeaway of Oscar Nominations - untrustworthy buzz, Michael Shannon, etc
Team Experience Awards - Moonlight, Zootopia, Jackie and more win prizes
Nathaniel's Top Ten List -20th Century Women, The Witch, Arrival and more...

Coming in February
The Supporting Actress Smackdown for 2016, a Laura Dern celebration for her 50th birthday, lots of Oscar madness, a look back at Grease 2, favorite kisses for Valentines Day, 50 Shades Darker, and more.

Toni Erdmann and The Longest Foreign Nominees

By Dancin Dan

If you've heard one thing about Germany's Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee Toni Erdmann, other than how great it is (and you can add me to the chorus of voices showering it with praise), it's probably been that Maren Ade's shaggy-dog comedy is LONG. So, trivia hound that I am, I was naturally curious to see just how long it was in the grand scheme of Oscar.

Toni Erdmann has either the 16th or 17th longest running time of all the films nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. That confusion comes from the weirdness of different versions of films and which ones the Academy actually saw when voting...

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There Will Be Link

Storify okay, this woman Nancy Wake needs a biopic. Amazing WW II story
Coming Soon production has started on Can You Ever Forgive Me, which sounds like an interesting vehicle for Melissa McCarthy to show her range. She'll play a celebrity biographer who made her name in the 70s and 80s but resorts to deception when her career tanks. It's directed by Marielle Heller who was behind Diary of a Teenage Girl
Vulture Which Sundance debuts will be Oscar contenders this time next year? 
Comics Alliance Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt have been cast in the TV adaptation of the superhero comic Cloak & Dagger

 

Cigarettes & Red Vines photos from the set of Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie which stars Daniel Day Lewis but has no title as of yet
Variety Remember when Viola Davis played best friend to Julia Roberts in a thankless part in Eat Pray Love? They'll co-star again in Small Great Things, a racially charged drama about a nurse who is sued by a white supremacist couple.
/Film James Cameron gets the rights to Terminator back soon and the franchise will be revived. AGAIN.
EW The Schuyler Sisters from Hamilton will perform at the Superbowl! 
Slate A tribute to Mary Tyler Moore's feminist influence
Vice So as it turns out the Kevin Costner character in Hidden Figures was made into more of a 'white savior' in the narrative then he was in the real life story. 
Playbill Clive Owen will return to Broadway in a revival of M. Butterfly - no word yet on who'll play the Chinese opera singer he doesn't realize is a man despite a long affair. B.D. Wong who works frequently on television these days instead of the stage won the Tony as the opera singer in the original production with John Lithgow originating the lead role that Clive Owen will now play
Jezebel on Ryan Gosling's cooking in La La Land
Interview has a gallery of the rising stars from Sundance 2017 
Towleroad new clip from Call Me By Your Name in which Armie Hammer tries to massage the tension out of Timothee Chalamet  

26 Days Until Oscar. Sing-along with Sammy Cahn

On this 26th day before Oscar, why not sing along to classic tunes co-written by Sam Cahn who received an incredible 26 Oscar nominations. He was so popular in his time that he even posed for pictures like this! Hee.

Yes, dear reader, there are people with more Oscar nominations than Meryl Streep.  Not many of them, mind you, and the bulk of them seem to be from the sound or music branches...

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