oscars

26 Apr

Oscars 2021: Anthony Hopkins Win Shows Danger of Relying on Predictions

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It was supposed to end like a movie. That was certainly one of the buzzwords used by producers of 2021’s Oscars telecast in the run-up to tonight’s Academy Awards. Other terms included “cinematic” and “joyful.” The broadcast began like an Ocean’s 11 movie, with producer Steven Soderbergh’s camera following Regina King to the Oscar stage. Yet if this was a movie, it’s probable even Soderbergh didn’t expect the twist ending when Anthony Hopkins beat Chadwick Boseman for Best Actor. Yet that is how the final award of the night played out. Because despite nearly every Academy Awards since 1948 ending…

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26 Apr

Oscars 2021: Chloé Zhao Becomes First Asian-American Woman to Win Best Director

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Chloé Zhao made history tonight by becoming the first woman of color to win a Best Director Oscar, as well as only the second female filmmaker to take that prize. Recognized for her work writing and directing Nomadland, a meditative drama about an older woman named Fern (Frances McDormand) who travels the American West in a van she also lives in, Zhao made history when she took the stage. And, fittingly, Zhao used her acceptance speech to talk about a shared goodness she’s seen from people in all walks of life and in all corners of the earth. “Even though…

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25 Apr

Oscars 2021: Complete List of Academy Award Winners and Nominees (Updating Live)

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That was a bit of a long engagement wasn’t it? In most years, the Oscars are a distant memory by mid-March, but here we are approaching the end of April and we still don’t (technically) know who the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences anointed as Best Picture of the Year. That’s about to change tonight. Oscars 2021 are here, and with them we realize the strange year that was 2020 might finally be in the rearview. Still, it doesn’t mean we cannot celebrate some of the best cinematic escapes and distractions we had recently. While this year’s nominees…

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23 Apr

Oscars 2021: Ignore the Cynics, the Ceremony is Already a Win

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There was a time when folks wondered if there even would be an Oscars in 2021. It’s easy to forget this now. After all, 12 months suddenly feels like several lifetimes, and the anxiety which accompanied theaters going dark in March 2020 was replaced by abject schadenfreude when one studio tried to open a blockbuster six months later. But the state of the industry—from theatrical releases to streaming, to, yes, awards shows—was shrouded in uncertainty for what seemed like an eternity. Apprehension even seemed to reach the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when they announced last June that…

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13 Apr

How Saving Private Ryan’s Best Picture Loss Changed the Oscars Forever

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Saving Private Ryan’s loss of the Best Picture Oscar in 1999 still hurts. It’s a sentiment shared by many, and not just because of the disappointment they experienced when Shakespeare in Love took home that night’s top prize. After all, there have been plenty of upsets before and since. Just ask Brokeback Mountain’s producers about Crash, or La La Land’s about Moonlight. If Orson Welles was still alive, the stories he’d surely have to tell about How Green is My Valley. Yet when it comes to Steven Spielberg’s seminal World War II epic losing to an amusing (if somewhat lightweight)…

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15 Mar

Oscars 2021 Predictions and Analysis of Frontrunners

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Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Oscars 2021 nominations is how unsurprising they were. There were course a handful of snubs, from One Night in Miami and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom being left out of the Best Picture category to LaKeith Stanfield surprising awards watchers with a Best Supporting Actor nod thanks to Judas and the Black Messiah (displacing Chadwick Boseman from Da 5 Bloods). But by and large? Things proceeded the way prognosticators pretty much expected. With the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences picks in, we can see that David Fincher’s Mank is the technical favorite…

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15 Mar

Oscars 2021: Women Directors Make History, Even as Regina King is Snubbed

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It’s never happened before in the previous 92 years. Not since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began handing out little gold men has more than one woman been nominated in the Best Director category. So judging by that unfortunate precedent alone, the Oscars 2021nominations provided more good news than bad, even with a reliable list of snubs this year. Indeed, the most remarkable moment was when Chloé Zhao and Emerald Fennell were both nominated for Best Director due to their work on Nomadland and Promising Young Woman, respectively. As directors of two of the most talked about…

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15 Mar

Oscars 2021: Complete List of Nominees

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At last the Academy Awards are here. For a brief time–like about a year ago when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pushed the Oscars into April–there was apprehension about whether there would even be enough films in 2020 to qualify as a competitive year. And yet, 2020 (as well as the early months of 2021) has turned out to be a boon for quality, memorable cinema that has been both a cathartic respite and release from the year that was. The obvious frontrunners are still running in front in the below nominations list. Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland remains…

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12 Mar

Oscars 2021: Frontrunners and Predictions

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This is weird, right? In a normal year this kind of article would have been written closer to New Year’s Day, and the awards season red carpets would’ve been rolled up weeks ago. But 2020 really was a weird experience, to put it mildly. And among other problems, it caused the Oscars race to bleed all the way into April. Indeed, it’s mid-March and the weekly Sunday night ceremonies have barely begun. Nevertheless, and despite hand-wringing from this time last year about whether there would even be anything worthy of nomination in 2020, we’ve just come through a resilient and…

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02 Oct

Link Tank: Early Predictions for Oscars 2021

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2021 is going to be a strange year for the Oscars. Check out some early predictions for next year’s Academy Awards. “If this were a normal year — LOL — at this point, we’d actually have a pretty good sense of what the Oscar race would look like. There might even be some sure things in some categories. But this is not a normal year and that makes for an awfully weird, but very interesting awards season to come.” Read more at Thrillist. Five parrots at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park have been removed from the main park after they learned…

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09 Sep

Oscars Reveal Standards for Inclusion and Diversity for Best Picture Nominees

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Five years. That’s how long it’s been since the social media hashtag “#OscarsSoWhite” was created. Coined by April Reign in response to all 20 of the slots available to actors and actresses going to white performers, the phrase encapsulated a basic question about our culture that has come to challenge the status quo of the entertainment industry and beyond: Who determines excellence and why do their choices look so homogenous? The Oscars have fitfully begun addressing these issues over the last few years—particularly after in 2016 all 20 acting nominations were held by white thespians again—but now for the first…

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15 Jun

Oscars 2021 Officially Delayed, New Rules in Place

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The annual Academy Awards have not skipped a year once during the past nine decades… and they’re not about to start now. At least not yet. Confirming a report from earlier this morning in Variety, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirmed this afternoon that the Oscars will be delayed in 2021 from February to April, which comes on the heels of new rules also being put in place by the Academy. In a new announcement, it was confirmed that next year’s Oscars will now be held on April 25, 2021, as opposed to Feb. 28. Almost two…

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