Producers Guild and ACE Eddie Awards Crown "La La Land"

La La Land may officially be unbeatable, 28 days from now when the envelopes are opened on Hollywood's High Holy Night. It's currently the top grossing Best Picture nominee this year (though Hidden Figures is right on its tail) and last night it took the Producers Guild prize for feature film. That award doesn't always correlate to the Best Picture prize but it does more often than not. The musical also won the ACE Eddie Award. The momentum is there for La La Land to at least do a mini-sweep of the Oscars. The question is "how many trophies can it win?"

Full list of prizes from the Editors and Producers Guild as well as pretty gowns from the attending actresses after the jump...

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Best Pic Battles: Opening Lines

Here are the opening lines of each Best Picture nominee. Can you guess which one belongs to which film? 

A. "14....15...16... Prime."

B. "QUIET!"

C. "______ Come on, come on. Get up. Come on, quickly!"

D. "A lot of stuff he just doesn't understand about the world that I understand. That makes all my actions when I move through the world -- I do things better because I can see it all laid out like a map." 

E. "Can you help me out, man?"

F. "Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting god, creator of the ends of the Earth."

G. "It's another hot sunny day today here in Southern California, temperature is 84 for downtown Los Angeles"

H. "I used to think this was the beginning of your story."

I. "____, you ought'a stop that lying." 

Try to guess. Go ahead and tell us how you did once you check the answers after the jump / scroll down!

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32 Days til Oscar. Have you seen "Grand Hotel"?

How will you spend those days? Since 32 is the magic number today, please spare a thought for the wildly undervalued Best Picture winner of 1932, Grand Hotel.

It only won a single Oscar, but that's all it was nominated for. There were no supporting acting categories just yet, as honors were given only to stars (same as now, basically, only with category fraud as the cause instead of no category at all) but, had there been, Joan Crawford would have certainly been deserving. She gives an unusually warm performance (for her) in this picture. 

This is also the film that gave us the image of Greta Garbo that stuck, as a solemn "I want to be alone" diva. More gorgeousity and a few gifs after the jump if you're so inclined...

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Oscar Nomination Eve Jitters

It's almost Christmas! Our Christmas that is, when we open our beautiful presents and occassional lumps of coal from the Academy. What will go in the history books tomorrow as Oscar nominees? Here's a run down of my final predictions in case you missed them (with three alterations) since the charts are being pulled tonight for reconstruction tomorrow once we have the official nominations.

All predictions are after the jump...

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AMC Best Picture Marathon

Have you ever attended AMC's Best Picture Showcase? They've been doing this "see all the Best Picture nominees back to back" event since, I think, around 2008? I seem to remember a particularly hilarious writeup of The Reader at that event somewhere out there on the web back in the day. (2008 is now back in the day? Eep!). With the expansion of the Best Picture lineup, the event is now split into a two day event in dozens of cities and a marathon viewing in following seven: Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, DC . The screenings will be held on the two Saturdays preceding Hollywood's High Holy Night on Sunday February 26th. (I can't imagine that La La Land won't look even stronger in the middle of all that DDDRRRAAAMMMAAA just by virtue of being so different than the rest) 

Tickets go on sale on January 27th, three days after the Oscar nominations so at least you know what films you're signing up to see or see again if you choose to buy tickets.