Jennifer Lawrence and the Youngest To...

With her nomination for American Hustle this morning, Jennifer Lawrence has become the youngest actor of either gender to receive her third Oscar nomination. She is only 23. Or, if you'd like to get technical about it, 23 years 5 months and 2 days. Whether you think her work in American Hustle is great or terrible (and factions have formed on both sides) or you have a more nuanced perspective on what does and doesn't work about it, there is just no denying her screen dynamism. That's what they use to call "It".  

Here's how the stats break down and which legends Jennifer is toppling. Did the performers with similar records flame out early? Read on...

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Oscar Nominations. They're Finally Here!

Refresh your screens for periodic updates. Some of the type if funky on this page but I copied and pasted from Oscar's site so whatever they had in their coding travelled. 

And the nominees are...

BEST PICTURE

• American Hustle
  Charles Roven, Richard Suckle, Megan Ellison and Jonathan Gordon, Producers
• Captain Phillips
  Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca, Producers
• Dallas Buyers club
  Robbie Brenner and Rachel Winter, Producers
• Gravity
  Alfonso Cuarón and David Heyman, Producers
• Her
  Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze and Vincent Landay, Producers
• Nebraska
  Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, Producers
• Philomena
  Gabrielle Tana, Steve Coogan and Tracey Seaward, Producers
• 12 Years a Slave
  Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen and Anthony Katagas, Producers
• The Wolf of Wall street
  Nominees to be determined

Instant Reaction: a perfect score for me again in terms of predictions (I thought they might end with Philomena but if 9 then Her) but I really wish they'd just go back to 10 or, even better, 5. 9 is a stupid number. As per usual the Best Picture nominees really dominated all awardage with a total of 61 nominations between them.

More...

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A Year With Kate: Morning Glory (1933)

Episode 3 of 52  Anne Marie is screening all of Katharine Hepburn's films in chronological order. On the eve of the Oscar nominations, Morning Glory (1933)

In which the seeds of Oscar history are sown...

Sometimes, Katharine Hepburn’s career seems too charmed to be real. At the 6th Academy Awards, Kate won her first Oscar. For her third movie. In her second year. To put that in perspective, it took Bette Davis 23 movies and 4 years to get a nomination alone (on a controversial write-in ballot). Ingrid Bergman: 6 movies and 5 years to be nominated. Olivia de Havilland: 29 movies and 10 years to win. The other record-holding actresses of the Studio System had to slog through bad scripts and bit parts to get their golden statues, but young Kate practically waltzed into the Academy and casually picked one up (figuratively speaking, since she didn’t actually show up)

Morning Glory is the by-now cliché story of a naive actress making it big in New York. 1933's model was Eva Lovelace. [more...]

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Interviews, Travel

As you read this I've just arrived in LA. After settling in at the brand new hotel The Line (it's so industrial chic inside), dinner with friends and then surely a fitful night of sleep given what happens in the morning: CHRISTMAS PRESENTS (by which I mean "Oscar Nominations!")  After that blessed event, I shall strap a tux on for the first time since my high school prom (!!!) for the Critics Choice Awards. Then jet off to meet up with Glenn and Michael at Sundance where I'll try to shift focus a bit from Oscar mania to snowbank-climbing film-festing. All of this while still wrapping 2013 up with my own awards ballots and continuing to process those Oscar nominations. I'm exhausted thinking about all this but I share it with you to lean on your collective strength.  Give it to me!

My point is this: it's a good time to take stock before the next wave of excitement. Here are a dozen plus talented showbiz beauties we talked to for the 2013 film year here at The Film Experience in case you missed any. With more to come both Oscar related and non

Actors
Brie Larson (Short Term 12)
Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)
Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
Joanna Scanlan (The Invisible Woman)
Jonathan Groff (Frozen)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said)
Julie Delpy (Before Midnight)
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)
Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Sarah Paulson (12 Years a Slave) 
Joanna Scanlan (The Invisible Woman) 
Alfre Woodard (12 Years a Slave) 

Behind the Camera
Director Asghar Farhadi (The Past)
Costume Design Michael O'Connor (Invisible Woman)
Costume Design Patricia Norris (12 Years a Slave) 

Quick Chat
Colin Farrell & Emma Thompson (Saving Mr Banks)

Way Off Oscar's Path (But There's More To Film Than Shiny Gold)
Blood Brother, Five Dances, Club Sandwich, Pit Stop, Vivien Leigh Bio

Have you been enjoying the interviews? Who would you love to talk to or read about?

Final Oscar Nom Predictions: Part 1

The time has come! 

I'm never sure I should say this out loud as an Oscar pundit of some degree of reknown but I love being wrong. That generally means the film year is still chalk full of films and performances people are still considering. As well they should. It also means that, try as they might to game the system, the distributors who shove everything into a three week window of releasing and the abundant precursor bodies that aim to predict future Oscar nominations rather than really thinking about what they loved most in an entire film year, can't really control it. The Academy will do as the Academy does. And thank god lest all joy be stamped out of the process through ruthless homogeny (Jared Leto again? Must we?! And I like Jared Leto in that movie, despite that tone deaf Globe acceptance speech) 

So herewith my best guesses as to what the shortlists will look like come Thursday morning... and my apologies for the late at night no sleep train of thought messiness to follow... I'm working through the night before my plane to Los Angeles...

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