A Foreign Language Actress So Nice, She's Been Nominated Twice: Sophia Loren

abstew here. Only 15 women in the 87 year history of the Academy have scored a Best Actress nomination for a foreign language performance. In contrast, British actresses have won Best Actress 14 times. While the Academy has always warmed to Brits, their European neighbors have had to struggle to breakthrough with recognition in the acting races. (There has still never been a Best Actress nominee for a performance in any language outside of a European origin.) The first actress to even score a nomination for a foreign language performance was Melina Mercouri for Never on a Sunday in 1960, over 30 years into the Academy's history. Only two women have actually won Best Actress for a foreign language performance and both those women have the even rarer distinction of being honored twice with nominations for foreign language performances. The first was Sophia Loren who won for 1961's Two Women and was nominated again for Marriage Italian Style (1964). The other is this year's nominee for Two Days, One Night, Marion Cotillard, who won Best Actress for La Vie en Rose (2007).

With her second nomination, Cotillard joins a small but prestigious group of actresses that in addition to Loren includes Liv Ullmann and Isabelle Adjani. Three actresses in three separate languages (Italian, Swedish, and French) that proved their talent was able to transcend language barriers not once, but twice with the Academy. To receive an Oscar nomination is an honor, to do so a second time shows that you've earned the respect of the Academy, and to do it both times for performances not even in English, well, that's a feat reserved only for iconic women like these.

To celebrate Cotillard's place alongside these international legends, for the next few days we'll look back at the three previous foreign language, double-nominated Best Actress contenders. First up, the beauty from Italy that made Oscar history with her first nomination... 

Sophia Loren
after the jump 

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Best Cinematography: Can Chivo Do a Back-to-Back?

If Oscar were a beauty pageant (we know it feels like that sometimes but it's not) the previous winner in each category would have to hand over their tiara Oscar to the next winner. In that case let's hope the world's favorite DP is ambidextrous since he is probably passing the statue to... himself.  After years of worthy nominations without winning, the genius DP Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki, who won last year for Gravity, could well win again for another virtuoso turn that's also an aesthetic triumph. But how common are back-to-back wins exactly in the cinematography categories? It used to happen on occasion when there were two cinematography categories (black & white, and color) and thus twice the number of winners but once the category was fused in 1967, it's only ever happened once: John Toll did it in the 1990s with Legends of the Fall and Braveheart.

Still it's hard to imagine Lubezki losing on the 22nd. Budapest surely won't sweep and it's the only other Best Picture nominee in the category. Mr Turner and Ida would make very worthy winners but they seem unlikely for reasons of size, popularity, mood, country of origin. As for Roger Deakins. His nominations each year are becoming Streep-esque. It's not that Unbroken isn't handsome looking but it's hardly one of his tiptop achievements. Deakins still trails the late George J Folsey (Meet Me In St Louis) for most nominations without a win in this category (13/0) but he'll tie him the very next time he's up to bat. If Unbroken had been better loved he could have made a run for it.

The Nominees:

Birdman - Emmanuel Lubezki
Grand Budapest Hotel - Robert Yeoman
Ida - Ryszard Lenczewski & Lukasz Zal
Mr Turner - Dick Pope
Unbroken - Roger Deakins

Will Win: Birdman
Could Win: Grand Budapest Hotel
Should Win: Birdman or Mr Turner

My ballot for this category 

Bad Movie-thon

Jose here. Ah, it’s Oscar season and all movie lovers can talk about is who was snubbed or who will and should win. While basking in the glow of acclaimed movies and conversations about the merits of sound editing and screenwriting is nothing to frown upon, most people forget that new movies are released each week, yes, even during Oscar season. And yes, most of these releases are of dubious quality, but sometimes you can only watch your favorite Best Foreign Language Film nominee so many times before you want to go see something new, right?

But what to choose among the pile of critically lambasted offerings that 2015 has brought us so far? I saw a bunch of them, to bring you this concise report.

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"a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it"

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Best Visual Effects: "Will it be Apes or Aliens, Murph?"

It's not my imagination. I swear it's not. This year's Oscar competition is unusually tough to predict in quite a few categories . That's a refreshing change of pace. You might think this one is easy "Best Visual Effects" since it usually is (well, apart from the Golden Compass year. That was a shocker).

You might think that since Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) didn't win the prize so they kinda owe this series. Indeed, everyone seems to be in awe of the advances in motion capture technology that come with the series, particularly the way it's served as a new medium for the art of acting. But not so fast. The Apes series which dates back to 1968 and is composed of 8 films, has typically been an underperfomer with Oscars. To date the series has won only 4 nominations and 1 honorary Oscar (for makeup before the category existed) in its entire history. This despite starting as a mammoth zeitgeist hit and winning very strong reviews twice over during its rebirth this decade.

This one requires some extra thoughts and video so let's investigate after the jump...

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