In terms of the awards themselves, the biggest change came with the number of nominees for the most important category, Best Picture. Instead of the usual 5 nominees which always ended in negative feedback due to the non-inclusion of major hits such as The Dark Knight at last year's presentation, the academy saw fit to bump the number of nominees up to 10 rather than improve the selection process. So now, we're left with a few legitimate contenders and a bunch of filler movies that would never have been nominated in previous ye

In 2014, however, the Academy seemed to slip back to their more obscure choices. Clint Eastwood's American Sniper was the only Best Picture nominee to gross over $100 million by the night of the ceremony and had made more than its seven competitors combined. The average domestic total for a nominee this year was just $77.6 million: an average which is respectable, but a far cry from the averages of the past two years, where multiple blockbusters contended for Best Pict

If you missed our live-chat for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards this evening, don’t fret, we have the winners and a brief recap of the ceremony for you. In short, Inception took home the technical categories, The Social Network took a few, notably for its score and The King's Speech was the big winner, coming in with 12 nominations and walking out with four big wins, including best pict

There are several noteworthy performances in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight , but the film once again demonstrates that there are few actors who know how to deliver Tarantino dialogue just right like Samuel L. Jackson does (for more proof of that, see that SLJ monologue from The Hateful Eigh

The documentary has an interview with a New York Times art critic who discusses modern (or abstract) art and the reasons behind the sometimes apparently insane valuations for what looks like some paint splashed on a canvas. Part of his explanation is that the story behind the artwork contributes to the value. What has the artist gone through, for example? In Marlas's case part of the value is due to the fact of her young age and the apparent sophistication of the w

If you missed our live-chat for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards this evening, don't fret, we have the winners and a brief recap of the ceremony for you. In short, The Hurt Locker took home the big categories, beating out Avatar and the predictable choices won for the four acting categor

The Best Comedy contender that does have a chance of sneaking in and taking the prize away from The Martian is The Big Short , Adam McKay's inventive comical take on author Michael Phillips' decidedly complicated non-fiction book about those who foresaw the 2007 housing market collapse. It's perhaps a long shot but then again, so was the idea that the director of Anchorman would deliver a film that will likely end up being nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, for that mat

Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) won Best Director at the 2015 Academy Awards, but Iñárritu was only recognized for his contributions to the Film Festival Games Collectibles|Https://Moviefestivalhub.Com/'s script, not his direction, at the Golden Globes that year. The Revenant was in many ways an equally ambitious undertaking by the filmmaker, but because the western revenge thriller isn't generating the same buzz as Birdman , Iñárritu's winning for The Revenant would be somewhat unexpected - even after the HFPA didn't recognized his directorial work on Birdman last y

The viewer is left to draw their own conclusion and although I liked that the film did that, another part of me would have liked a definitive conclusion. Having said that, it's probably better that it was left open-ended because too many documentaries have an obvious agenda meant to convince the viewer of some particular point of v

I'm not a fan of the desperate attempts at bringing out celebrities like Taylor Lautner and Miley Cyrus for the sole reason of bringing their fanbases in for ratings rather than their accomplishments. There were quite a few shots of Lautner sitting near the front when he wasn't nominated for anything (like we saw with Rob Pattinson last year). He has a better seat than those who were nominated or even winners of other categor

Redmayne won both a Golden Globe and Oscar in 2015 for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything , but he could sneak in and take home another globe for his turn as transgender pioneer Lili Elbe in 2016 too. After all, Jennifer Lawrence won Golden Globes back to back in 2013 and 2014 (for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, admittedly), and there has been similar cases of back to back winners before. Nevertheless, at this stage Redmayne winning over DiCaprio would be an up

Some interesting notes: True Grit didn't get a single award despite ten (10!) nominations; Christopher Nolan didn't receive any awards despite Inception being entirely original and praised for its design, winning 4 other awards no less; Anne Hathaway, poking fun at the Academy's attempt at appealing to a younger demographic is the presentation's youngest host ever at 28 and last but not least, 8-time Oscars host Billy Crystal made a friendly and fun appearance making some wish he was back to host ag