Wednesday, August 12, 2020 at 10:45PM 
Our look back at the cinematic year of 2005 and its Academy Awards continues. This time, we're examining the work of two titanic talents who battled for the Oscar in the Best Costume Design category as they were prone to do. We're talking about the magnificent Colleen Atwood and the sublime Sandy Powell…
Wednesday, August 12, 2020 at 10:00AM The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 2005 is just a week away so get your votes in! Before we get there it's time for more context of that year in showbiz history. Ready?
Great Big Box Office Hits:
Franchises of multiple kinds dominated the box office with Harry Potter 4, Star Wars Episode 3, and the launches of Chronicles of Narnia and Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy as half of the top ten list that year. Other huge hits were the romantic comedy Hitch, the Brangelina pairing of Mr & Mrs Smith, the remakes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, War of the Worlds, and King Kong, and the comedies Wedding Crashers and Meet the Fockers.
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees:
In the mid-Aughts the Oscars were veering away from big hits in their Best Picture lineups (to eventually rule-changing results) but Brokeback Mountain was the most successful of the lot with $178 million globally...
Thursday, August 6, 2020 at 3:00PM 
Despite some dubious victors, the 78th Academy Awards honoring the films of 2005 had many great lineups filled with splendorous movies. Later this month, Nathaniel and his guest panelists will take a look at the Best Supporting Actress category. Before that, however, I invite you to bask in the beauty of that year's Cinematography nominees. Specifically, we'll be taking a look at each of the five nominated cinematographers, their filmographies, and characteristic style. First up, we have that year's winner, Dion Beebe (Memoirs of a Geisha). The Australian filmmaker is a master of color, always up to play with wild palettes and shadow games which make bright pigments look even bolder. His best achievements tend to avoid naturalism in search of something more unreal, be it the metallic sharpness of a Californian thriller or the spectacle of Cinecittá.
Here are ten highlights from his filmography…
Thursday, August 6, 2020 at 9:46AM by Nick Taylor
The five nominees of the 2005 Supporting Actress lineup represent some of the best performances of an exceptional year for adult drama. Their films range from intimate character studies to politically and morally charged biopics, some with considerable studio backing and some running hot on the indie circuit. Each performer wrangles memorably with their roles, and provide their own distinct examples of what great screen acting looks like. You might pine for some generic diversity between Oscar’s selections (or, y’know, actual diversity), but each of them represents entirely different notions of how an actress and their character can properly support a film. To push against such a lineup seems almost churlish, and yet, we must. For all the credible sixth spots in this category, from Maria Bello in A History of Violence to Shirley MacLaine in In Her Shoes (both of whom you can still vote for on Cláudio's "Almost There: Reader' Choice" poll!), I'm kicking this cycle off with an actress who never quite made the headway they did but, for my money, is equally deserving of the attention they earned.
Let's talk about Taraji P. Henson's radiant breakthrough performance in Hustle & Flow...
Monday, August 3, 2020 at 1:00PM Please welcome back former contributor Sean Donovan who returns to the fold...
With the 2005 Supporting Actress Smackdown quickly approaching TFE, let’s take a moment to think about a future Best Supporting Actress winner who was just then gathering her strength, summoning her powers of fierce alien glamour, and dipping a toe into Hollywood. 2005 was a pivotal year for Tilda Swinton in that it was her first engagement with big budget genre filmmaking. Tilda had found her way onto some Hollywood projects prior to this -- The Beach (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio, Vanilla Sky (2001) with Tom Cruise, Jonze and Kaufman’s contemporary classic Adaptation (where she briefly shares the screen with Meryl Streep and my little gay heart explodes) -- but 2005 brought bombast, costuming, and blockbuster genre storytelling to her body of work...
