Ariana DeBose, Saturday Night Live, and Oscar Campaigns

by Nathaniel R

As you may have heard Best Supporting Actress Oscar hopeful Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) will be hosting Saturday Night Live when the show returns tomorrow, January 15th. That's just 12 days before the Academy starts voting on nominations. Which got us to thinking: How often is Saturday Night Live used as a campaign stop for Oscar hopefuls and is it successful? Let's do a little research. We're only going back five years for time constraint reasons but we do wonder when this became a thing or if it's always been thus? I have only ever been a casual SNL viewer but perhaps there are Saturday Night Live experts reading who could shed some light...

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Critics Choice Awards will now be held on... the same day as BAFTA

After attempting to steal what little Golden Globes thunder remained by scheduling themselves on the exact same date, the Critics Choice Awards were delayed (understandably) by Omicron variant fears. A new date has been announced: March 13th, 2022. That's well timed in terms of Oscar (two weeks prior) but poorly timed in terms of celebrity strategy as it's the exact same day as the BAFTA ceremony!

Now it's possible things will work out for both shows as some celebrities will not want to cross the ocean (in either direction) due to COVID but it's still a worrisome choice; Celebrity presence is crucial to the success of live awards ceremonies. On the other hand, the calendar was filling up so the show had to go somewhere. If Sunday was the only day of the week to do it (why is that the only day of the week? the Oscar were on Mondays for decades!)  there were very few options remaining. February 20th was the Olympics closing ceremony. February 27th was already claimed for SAG Awards. March 6th belongs to the Film Independent Spirit Awards. But what was wrong with, say, March 20th, the week before the Oscars? What do you make of the move? 

"Movies for Grownups" Awards - 20th Anniversary

by Nathaniel R

Dame Judi Dench as "Granny" in Belfast

The AARP 'Movies For Grownups' Awards is now 20 years old. They'll be airing a PBS special on March 18th to celebrate their 20th anniversary. This year their favourites were Belfast with 8 nominations and West Side Story with 6. Their awards specifically honor filmmakers and actors over 50 which is why their acting lineups are generally a combination of actors with genuine Oscar buzz paired with random celebrity fillers. Though let's just say in their supporting categories they largely have no excuse for their lapses of taste since plenty of great roles / performances come from the over 50 set each year...

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Oscar Punditry: Who Will Be Our Surprise Acting Nominee and Who Could Still Be Snubbed?

By: Christopher James

Kristen Stewart looking for where her SAG nomination went.The SAG Nominations sure threw a lot of people’s Oscar predictions upside down. One can always expect SAG to throw in a major curveball or two (call it the Sarah Silverman in I Smile Back effect). However, few could’ve predicted that former frontrunner Kristen Stewart would be snubbed for her role as Princess Diana in Spencer. It was almost as surprising to see Aunjanue Ellis miss for King Richard, especially when the movie made it into Outstanding Cast!

As surprising as it all was, we now have a lot of answers (rather than guesswork) as to who the major players are in Oscar's acting races since the Globes have already announced their winners, the Critics Choice nominations have long been out, and we've also seen the BAFTA longlist. We can use math and past Oscar patterns with these precursors to determine who the acting nominees might be this year...

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One For Them, One For Me: M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" and "Stuart Little"

A New Series by Christopher James

Take bets: Who did M. Night Shyamalan find it was easier to write for - a human child or a mouse child voiced by a 38-year-old man?

Do one for them; do one for you. If you can still do projects for yourself, you can keep your soul.
— Martin Scorsese: A Journey

Even from the get go, M. Night Shyamalan’s career was idiosyncratic. He went from Oscar nominated wunderkind to punchline all within the span of less than ten years. With his most recent movie, Old, Shyamalan seems to have figured out a way to own his poor reviews. At a time where the definition of “camp” is constantly argued, Old feels like pure, grade A camp. He’s also regained a lot of his box office cred with Split and Glass, which connected to one of his earliest films, Unbreakable. 

In 1999, Shyamalan earned tons of accolades, including Best Director and Original Screenplay Oscar nominations, for his smash hit, The Sixth Sense. At that point, Shyamalan had only directed two movies, a personal indie called Praying with Anger that he starred in and a movie called Wide Awake that stars Rosie O’Donnell as a baseball fanatic nun. Few things could’ve prepared people for The Sixth Sense’s level of success. However, it wasn’t the only financial hit of the year for Shyamalan. He had done uncredited rewrites on movies like She’s All That, so he wasn’t above doing “one for them” to earn some money. However, he was credited as the writer of the Visual Effects nominated children’s film Stuart Little.

Is there anything that connects The Sixth Sense and Stuart Little together, other than coming from the mind of the same writer? Let’s take a look (age old spoilers ahead)...

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