VistaVision @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

With The Brutalist, Brady Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley revived VistaVision for a 21st century cinema. In the process, they also brought the format back to the Oscar stage, becoming the first film since Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief to win the Best Cinematography Oscar for a VistaVision lensing. If you've read my reviews over the years, you might have noticed I have a passion for film form. This fascination encompasses the innovations that took over the medium in the midcentury, with the introduction of new aspect ratios, processes, and techniques after decades under the 4:3 Academy ratio hegemony. 

I really love VistaVision, a happy medium between more extreme widescreen propositions and the classical square-ish proportions that dominated pre-1950s cinema. It's quite beautiful, harmonious and the technique itself lends itself to rich images, full of detail, crisp yet not in the sometimes bloodless way of digital filmmaking. But what is VistaVision exactly? And how have films shot in this widescreen variant performed at the Oscars? Let's find out…

Click to read more ...

Reader Poll: Which acting nominee will be back again quickly?

by Nathaniel R

One of our recent traditions here at TFE is to guess which of the season's most celebrated actors will be the quickets to be enmeshed in Oscar battles again before you know it? VOTE DAILY (for the next week) on who you think it will be:

online polls

Some history of how well your votes have fared over the last two seasons follow...

Click to read more ...

A History of Sex Workers and Oscar Wins

by Nathaniel R

Mikey Madison, Best Actress winner for "ANORA"With Mikey Madison's much buzzed about semi-surprising Best Actress win for Anora (2024) and Madison and her writer/director Sean Baker both paying tribute to sex workers in their speeches, let's talk sexworkers and the Oscars. It is a myth that playing a sex worker will get you an Oscar but it is also not wholly false that these roles are of great interest to Hollywood. Many actresses have been celebrated for playing women of ill repute whether they're traditional prostitutes, strippers, sex therapists, or it happens to be a character detail that they used to trade sex for money, or whatnot. What this says about Hollywood and the public's taste in entertainment is... well, it says many things... but they do call it 'the oldest profession' for a reason.

Male actors are not nominated for this sort of role (which also says a lot about society and Hollywood) even when they deserve to be...

Click to read more ...

New Oscar Trivia / Stats for 2025

by Nathaniel R

FLOW is first in two different ways!

UPDATED WITH MORE STATS (03/06/25 1:30 PM EST)

With another year ending we can now look at new stats and trivia from the year that was and acknowledge records that weren't broken, too, but are of note. If you have anything to add to the list share it in the comments, please. Herewith some things to ponder in regards to Oscar trivia...

Click to read more ...

Oh, the long-windedness of Best Pictures!

by Nathaniel R

If THE BRUTALIST wins it will become the third longest Best Picture winner of all time.

Each Oscar chart is now up though details are not yet ironed out on some of them. We've talked about Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor as the charts went up, so now let's talk Best Picture. On the chart you can vote on your favourite daily and you can see the films ranked by all sorts of silly criteria (you're welcome to suggest other criteria) such as MPAA ratings, death count, horniness, release dates, the Bechdel Test, reviews, box office, my personal preference, and of course their running times. 

Oh the longwindedness of our current times! The average length of the Best Picture nominees this year is an astonishing 149 (2 hours and 29 minutes) which is not quite a record but close to it...

Click to read more ...