- 2 January, Los Angeles: Follow the lead-up awards, read quotes, see the critics' picks and get your opinions polled at the Internet Movie Database's Road to the Oscars07. We know it's not theOscarSite, but -- hey -- it's a lot flashier!
- 2 January, Beijing:
 It took Zhang Yimou's Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia (Curse of the Golden Flower) just two weekends to become the biggest box-office hit in China for 2006. Daily Variety reported that the film earned $6.4 million in its second weekend, about half the $12.5 million it earned in its premiere. Adding mid-week results, the film has thus far grossed a record $24.73 million, the trade publication said. China's Oscar® entry for best foreign-language movie also performed well in the US, where it debuted midweek and went on to earn $859,000 by Sunday. It is playing in just 60 theaters. Meanwhile, Jackie Chan said on his website today that he has launched a film company in China and intends to produce 10 films. -- IMDb
 - 3 January, New York: The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures announces their winners for 2006: Best Film -- Letters from Iwo Jima; Best Foreign Film: Volver (To Return); Best Documentary: An Inconvenient Truth; Best Actor: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland; Best Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen; Supporting Actor: Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond; Supporting Actress: Catherine O'Hara, For Your Consideration; Ensemble Acting: The Departed; Best Director: Martin Scorsese, The Departed; Adapted Screenplay: Ron Nyswaner, The Painted Veil; Original Screenplay: Zach Helm, Stranger Than Fiction; Animated Feature: Cars. Visit the NBR web site for the complete list of nominees and winners.
- 3 January, Los Angeles:
 The Producers Guild of America announces its nominees for best film of 2006: Babel, The Departed, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen. Nominated for best animated movie: Cars, Flushed Away, Happy Feet, Ice Age: The Meltdown and Monster House. Visit the PGA web site for a complete listing of all the nominees in all categories.
 - 3 January, San Francisco: News Corp.'s Fox Filmed Entertainment studio said on Wednesday it grossed $3.56 billion in box office receipts in 2006, helped by hits such as Borat, Ice Age: The Meltdown and X-Men: The Last Stand. The company said its global box office total was an industry record.
Los Angeles-based Fox said it took in more than $644 million in worldwide ticket sales from the animated feature Ice Age: The Meltdown. It raked in $456 million from X-Men: The Last Stand, the final chapter of the studio's "X-Men" trilogy. And, the hit comedy Borat: Cultural Learnings to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan has taken in more than $240 million so far.
Other Fox hits included Eragon, which grossed over $170 million so far, and Night at the Museum, featuring Ben Stiller, which has taken in more than $127 million to date in domestic box office revenue. -- Reuters
- 4 January, Los Angeles:
 The Screen Actors Guild announces its nominees for the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. For Theatrical Motion Pictures: Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role -- Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond; Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson; Peter O'Toole, Venus; Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness; and Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland.
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role -- Penélope Cruz, Volver (To Return); Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal; Helen Mirren, The Queen; Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada; and Kate Winslet, Little Children.
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role -- Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine; Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed; Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children; Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond; and Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls.
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role -- Adriana Barraza, Babel; Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal; Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine; Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls; and Rinko Kikuchi, Babel.
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (the Guild's top Award) -- Babel (Paramount Vantage), Bobby (The Weinstein Co.), The Departed (Warner Bros.), Dreamgirls (Paramount) and Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight).
The SAG Awards nominations are regarded as a good gauge for predicting the upcoming Academy Award® nominations, since members of the Academy's Actors Branch are also members of SAG. The SAG Awards will be broadcast live on TNT and TBS on Sunday, 28 January. Visit the SAG Awards Official Web Site for a complete list of the film and television nominees.
 - 4 January, Beverly Hills: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the winners of the latest Scientific and Technical Academy Awards, which will be presented at the Beverly Wilshire hotel on Saturday, 10 February.
Awards Administration Director Rich Miller said that unlike other Academy Awards, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards do not have to have been developed and introduced during 2006. "The achievement can be a device or a discovery, a formula or a method, but it must demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures," Miller said. Use this link to view theOscarSite's profile of this year's honorees. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 5 January, Los Angeles:
 Citing newly-adopted "Rule 16," the Songwriters Branch of the Academy has omitted Beyoncé Knowles' name from the credited writers of "Listen," one of the new songs written for Dreamgirls Under Rule 16, only two -- or, in excpetional cases of equal participation, three -- statuettes will be awarded for songwriting. The Academy's branch has decided to qualify only Henry Krieger, Anne Preven and Scott Cutler for writing "Listen."
As recently as 2005, no fewer than seven songwriters were nominated for the music and lyric of "Accidently in Love" from Shrek 2. And, in 2003, the four members of the band U2 were nominated for "The Hands That Built America" from Gangs of New York.
Here's what academy PR spokesman John Pavlik says on GoldDerby.com: "Various branch executive committees have to make this kind of a decision almost every year, and the decision always comes down to the same thing: who had the most to do with the achievement being considered. It was no different in this case."
Beyoncé's rep Alan Nierob says, "It's wrong to say that Beyoncé was disqualified because she never qualified. Beyoncé is aware of the Oscar rule that says only three songwriters can be nominated. It's all about percentages -- how much each person contributed to the song. Beyoncé contributed greatly to 'Listen,' but her percentage is lower, so she didn't expect to be eligible for nomination. She's very happy that her co-writers may be recognized." For more on this story, visit GoldDerby.
 - 5 January, Berlin:
 Even though it is not scheduled to be released in Germany until 11 January, Mein Führer - Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (My Führer - The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler) has already stirred up a controversy. Mein Führer by Swiss writer/director Dani Levy, who is Jewish, takes a tongue-in-cheek look at Hitler's final days and parodies both the dictator and recent portrayals of him such as the critically-acclaimed 2004 film Der Untergang (The Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich), which itself broke a taboo by attempting to show the Nazi leader's human side.
Levy has said he wants the film to be an "anti-signal" against films which he believes have put Hitler on too much of a pedestal. The film is being backed with €450,000 of public money from film development firm Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg which describes the plot as follows: "Hitler lives and tells the story of what he was really like -- a weakling who only made it to the top with the help of the Jew Grünbaum."
It remains to be seen whether the film can match the 1940 classic The Great Dictator in which Charlie Chaplin as "Adenoid Hynkel" dances around his office holding the earth in his hands in the shape of a big balloon and holds rabid speeches in gibberish German in which "Wienerschnitzel" seems to be the only recognizable word.
Is Germany ready for a comedy about Hitler? Levy's Hitler is portrayed by German comedian Helge Schneider -- who is perhaps best-known for his hit song "Katzeklo" about a cat litter box sung in a slightly disturbing nasal tone. Levy won acclaim for his 2004 comedy Alles auf Zucker! about an atheist sports journalist from eastern Germany forced to reconcile himself with his brother, an orthodox Jew from western Germany, to get hold of his mother's inheritance.
A German-made farce about Hitler would have been unthinkable until quite recently. But the gradual dying out of the Nazi era generation -- over 80 percent of Germans today were born after 1941 -- has given the country a more detached view of its past, even though politicians continue to acknowledge the country's deep moral responsibility for the Holocaust. -- Der Spiegel
- 9 January, Beverly Hills: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that seven films remain in competition for achievement in makeup for the 79th Academy Awards®. The films, in alphabetical order: Apocalypto, Click, El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Prestige, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause and X-Men The Last Stand.
On Saturday, January 20, the Academy's Makeup Award Nominating Committee will view ten minutes of excerpts from each of the seven shortlisted films. Following the screenings, members will vote to nominate three films for Oscar consideration. Nominations for the 79th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, 23 January 2007, at 5:30 a.m. PST in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 9 January, Los Angeles:
 Directors Guild of America president Michael Apted announced the nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2006. "Each of these five nominees has demonstrated a remarkable ability to blend craft and vision in the pursuit of masterful storytelling," Apted said. "What makes it truly meaningful to directors is that this award is decided solely by their peers -- the men and women who know first hand the passion, sweat and fear that goes into creating feature films. My congratulations to each of the nominees." The nominees include some veteran directors as well as some first-timers: Bill Condon for Dreamgirls; Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Feris for Little Miss Sunshine; Stephen Frears for The Queen; Alejandro González Iñ:árritu for Babel; and Martin Scorsese for The Departed. The winner will be named at the 59th Annual DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, 3 February 2007, at the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel Los Angeles. -- DGA
- 10 January, Beverly Hills:
 The 5,830 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are reminded that they must return their completed Oscar nominations ballots to PricewaterhouseCoopers no later than 5 p.m. on Saturday, January 13. Ballots received after that deadline will not be counted.
PricewaterhouseCoopers will tabulate the ballots using the preferential voting system. Nominations for the 79th Academy Awards® will be announced on Tuesday, 23 January, at 5:30 a.m. PST in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. -- A.M.P.A.S.
 - 11 January, Paris: British director Stephen Frears will head the jury at this year's Cannes Film Festival, the organizers said on Thursday. "Of course it's an honor, but it's also a treat to be able to watch terrific films from all over the world in such heady surroundings," Frears said in a statement. "God Save Cannes (as well as the Queen)." Frears, who will preside over the 60th Cannes Film Festival from 16-27 May, succeeds Wong Kar-Wai, the first Chinese national to chair the event's panel. -- Reuters
- 11 January, Los Angeles: New Line Co-chairman Bob Shaye has made it clear that his decision not to bring back Peter Jackson to direct the Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit is final and not just a negotiating ploy. In an interview with the online Sci-Fi Wire, Shaye said that hiring Jackson for The Hobbit "will never happen during my watch." He claimed that Jackson had received "a quarter of a billion dollars paid to him so far, justifiably, according to contract, completely right, and this guy...turns around without wanting to have a discussion with us and sues us and refused to discuss it unless we just give in to his plan... I don't want to work with that guy anymore." Shaye then emphasized: "He will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I'm still working at the company." Jackson quickly fired back that he had tried to discuss the issues with New Line "for over a year, but the studio was and continues to be completely uncooperative." -- IMDb
- 11 January, Berlin: La Vie en rose, a biopic of legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf, starring Marion Cotillard as Piaf, will open the Berlin Film Festival on 8 February and compete for the festival's Golden Bear award, the festival announced Wednesday. The film, by director Olivier Dahan, costars Gérard Depardieu, Sylvie Testud and Emmanuelle Seigner. -- IMDb
- 12 January, Granbury, TX: Well, I guess it's time for theOscarSite to wade into the sea of speculation about whom will get recognized come Oscar® nomination time on 25 January. So, here are our predictions:
· Best Picture: The Departed, Dreamgirls, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen. · Best Director: Bill Condon for Dreamgirls; Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima; Todd Field for Little Children; Stephen Frears for The Queen; and Martin Scorsese for The Departed. · Best Actor: Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat; Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson; Peter O'Toole, Venus; Ken Watanabe, Letters from Iwo Jima; and Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland. · Best Actress: Penélope Cruz, Volver (To Return); Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal; Helen Mirren, The Queen; Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada; and Kate Winslet, Little Children.· Supporting Actress: Adriana Barraza, Babel; Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine; Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls; Rinko Kikuchi, Babel; and Catherine O'Hara, For Your Consideration. · Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine; Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed; Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children; Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls; and Michael Sheen, The Queen. · Original Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar, Volver (To Return); Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine; Anne Boden & Ryan Fleck, Half Nelson; Peter Morgan, The Queen; Cristi Pulu & Razvan Rodulescu, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. · Adapted Screenplay: Alan Bennett, The History Boys; Todd Field & Tom Perrotta, Little Children; Richard Linklater & Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation; Ron Nyswaner, The Painted Veil; and Jason Reitman, Thank You for Smoking.
So, now it's in print... let's see how we do... -- Post-nomination update: Even though batting .600 will definitely get you into the Hall of Fame, it doesn't cut it when predicting nominees. I only got 24 out of 40. Well, maybe next year...
- 12 January, London:
 The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) announces its nominess for outstanding achievement during 2006. Nominated for best film are Babel, The Departed, The Last King of Scotland, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen. For best director: Alejandro González Iñ:árritu for Babel, Martin Scorsese for The Departed, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris for Little Miss Sunshine, Stephen Frears for The Queen, and Paul Greengrass for United 93. For actress in a leading role: Penélope Cruz, Volver (To Return); Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal; Helen Mirren, The Queen; Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada; and Kate Winslet, Little Children. For actor in a leading role: Daniel Craig, Casino Royale; Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed; Richard Griffiths, The History Boys; Peter O'Toole, Venus; and Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland. For supporting acting, screenwriting and all the other nominations, visit the BAFTA web site.
- 13 January, Los Angeles: Martin Scorsese, regarded by many as a master of world cinema, was named best director by the Broadcast Film Critics Association while his new movie, gangster thriller The Departed, won for best film. Friday night's prizes, coming at the start of Hollywood's annual awards seasons, signaled that Scorsese might be headed for a career goal that has eluded him for decades: an Oscar® either for best picture or best director.
Although he has been given career achievement awards, he has never received an Academy Award for a single film, including for such revered works as Raging Bull and Taxi Driver.
"I am pleased by this award and surprised. Maybe it's because this is the first picture I made with a plot," he joked after receiving the best director's award at the 12th annual Critics Choice Awards, which are handed out by the 200-member Broadcast Film Critics group that prides itself as being an accurate predictor of Oscar nominees and winners.
Forest Whitaker beat out some better-known box office draws, including Will Smith and Leonardo DiCaprio, to win the best actor award for his portrayal of mercurial dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Helen Mirren was named best actress for her portrayal of the Queen in The Queen, a tale of how the Royal family almost lost the goodwill of the country after the death of Princess Diana.
Both Mirren and Whitaker are favourites going into the Oscars race and their next test comes Monday when the Golden Globe awards are handed out.
Michael Arndt was named best writer for his script for Little Miss Sunshine, one of four awards the quirky family comedy picked up during the evening. The film's cast also won for best acting ensemble and its juvenile stars walked off with prizes. Abigail Breslin was named best young actress and Paul Dano best young actor.
Dreamgirls, the film version of the hit Broadway musical, also won four awards. Newcomer Jennifer Hudson was named best supporting actress and Eddie Murphy was named best supporting actor. The film also picked up awards for best score and best song.
Former Vice President Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth won for best documentary and Sacha Baron Cohen's tale of a boorish Kazakh journalist Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was named best comedy. Cohen thanked all those Americans who haven't yet sued him -- a reference to the lawsuits filed against him by people who say they were duped into playing parts in the film.
The Broadcast Critics Association has an excellent track record in predicting Oscar nominees. Last year, it nominated 19 of the 20 actors who later won Oscar nominations. -- Arthur Spiegelman, Reuters
- 15 January, Los Angeles: Winners in the motion picture categories at this evening's Golden Globes, awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:
· Picture, Drama: Babel;
· Actress, Drama: Helen Mirren, The Queen;
· Actor, Drama: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland;
· Picture, Musical or Comedy: Dreamgirls;
· Actress, Musical or Comedy: Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada;
· Actor, Musical or Comedy: Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat;
· Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls;
· Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls;
· Director: Martin Scorsese, The Departed;
· Movie Screenplay: Peter Morgan, The Queen;
· Foreign Language: Letters from Iwo Jima, (USA/Japan);
· Original Score: Alexandre Desplat, The Painted Veil;
· Original Song: "The Song of the Heart" from Happy Feet;
· Animated Film: Cars.
- 16 January, Beverly Hills: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences releases the short list of 9 films that are being considered as nominees for the Foreign Language Film Award. In Phase I of the nomination process, a committee consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based members, screened the 61 eligible films and their ballots determined the shortlist.
A Phase II committee, made up of ten randomly selected members from the Phase I group, joined by additional ten-member contingents in New York and Los Angeles, will view the shortlisted films and select the five 2006 nominees for the category. These screenings will take place from Friday, 19 January, through Sunday, 21 January, in both Hollywood and New York City.
Here are the films being considered for the five Foreign Language Film nominations:
· Indigènes (Days of Glory) (Algeria), Rachid Bouchareb, director
· Water (Canada), Deepa Mehta, director
· Efter Brylluppet (After the Wedding) (Denmark), Susanne Bier, director
· Fauteuils d'orchestre (Avenue Monataigne) (France), Daniele Thompson, director
· Das Leben der Anderen (Germany), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, director
· El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) (Mexico), Guillermo del Toro, director
· Zwartboek (Black Book) (The Netherlands), Paul Verhoeven, director
· Volver (To Return) (Spain), Pedro Almodóvar, director
· Vitus (Switzerland), Fredi M. Murer, director
Nominations for the 79th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, 23 January, at 5:30 a.m. PST in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 17 January, Park City:
 The Sundance Film Festival kicks off tomorrow and runs through 28 January. Citing what he defines as "a new maturity" in the indie movement, a more complex way of looking at the world and a bracing fusion of the personal and the political in much of the work, Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore said that selecting the 64 entries in four competition categories for the 2007 fest was more difficult than ever.
"There were easily 40 or 50 films we could have programmed, ones I have regrets about not showing. That makes it really hard to hold the line and not expand the festival."
As it is, the upcoming festival will include 82 world premieres among its 122 feature titles culled from 25 countries. True to recent form, more submissions were received than ever, 3,287 this year -- 1,852 from the US and 1,435 from other countries, up from 1,764 and 1,384, respectively, the previous year.
With regard to the lineup, Gilmore enthused, "We're on the cusp of a new era of independent film. It's not so much about innovation, but a whole new horizon of what independent film engages with."
Use this link to visit the official Festival web site for details on all the films to be exhibited.
- 19 January, Berlin: Although a silent version of Hamlet seems like a contradiction in terms, the Berlin film festival said Thursday that it plans to present a "rediscovered" color version of a German film of Shakespeare's play produced in 1920/21 starring an actress, Asta Nielsen, in the title role. The film was originally presented in color (it was shot in black and white and colored in post-production), but the color version was lost until recently. In a news release the film festival noted that the film caused controversy when it was originally released because of an alteration in Shakespeare's tale, to wit: "To secure the succession to the throne, the Queen of Denmark disguises her daughter as a boy." -- IMDb
- 19 January, Los Angeles:
 AP entertainment writer Jack Coyle gives his picks for the best of the bunch who won't get anywhere near an award this year:
"When the Academy Awards nominations are announced on Tuesday, they will undoubtedly omit some of the year's most fun and lively movie performances. Among them:
Daniel Craig, Casino Royale: No performance was more anticipated last year than Craig's entry into the "007" canon, and the consensus was clear: the blond Bond more than met expectations. However, Craig's nuanced performance came in that dirty genre ("action movie") and therefore isn't suited for the Oscars, even though they share the same taste in attire (tuxedos). The question is, now that Craig has illuminated the backsotry of Bond's early agent days, can he find a character for a fully formed 007?
Jack Black, Nacho Libre: As a wannabe Mexican luchador wrestler, Black's insanity leaps off the screen in the sometimes too-precious Nacho Libre. Whether in his red and aqua suit or simply curly-haired and mustachioed, seldom has a movie character been so funny simply by appearance.
The kids,: Child actors are infrequently honored. But several young actors were every bit as good as their elders in 2006: Ivana Baquero in El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth), Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine and the teenage Shareeka Epps in Half Nelson. Ryan Gosling may be winning accolades for wearily rubbing his face throughout Half Nelson, but Epps is the film's conscience.
Dave Chappelle, Block Party: It's true that Block Party is a documentary, but don't let that fool you -- Chappelle is most certainly playing a part. As a mix of comedian, music-lover and social do-gooder, Chappelle hosts the concert he always wanted to see. He's at his best doing his James Brown impression, explaining the power of "Hit me!"
Aaron Eckhart, Thank You for Smoking: With a politician's smile, Eckhart impressively embodies tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor in this satire of political correctness. Naylor doesn't miss a beat when his son asks him why the U.S. government is best: "Because of our endless appeals system."
Mark Wahlberg, The Departed: Wahlberg is quietly putting together a solid resumé as a supporting player. Before his fiery, expletive-laced performance in The Departed, Wahlberg's existential motormouth was the best thing about I (Heart) Huckabees. As Dignam in The Departed, Walberg answers: "Who am I? I'm the guy that does his...job! You must be the other guy!"
Catherine O'Hara, For Your Consideration: As the fittingly named Marilyn Hack, O'Hara plays an over-the-hill actress nearly deformed by plastic surgery. She stands out in Christopher Guest's mockumentary of a small film (Home for Purim) that magically gathers wholly unwarranted Oscar buzz. If the academy had a better taste for irony, it would nominated O'Hara.
Kevin Kline, A Prairie Home Companion: Kline is clearly having fun in bringing to life Guy Noir, the recurring '40s-style private eye character in Garrison Keillor's beloved radio program. Maybe -- like Greg Kinnear in Little Miss Sunshine -- Kline gets overlooked for making it seem so effortless.
Rob Brydon, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story: If anyone pays attention to Michael Winterbottom's uneven film-within-a-film, it's clear the best parts feature Brydon -- especially his conversations with co-star Steve Coogan that bookend the movie. While the credits roll, he discusses the influences on his craft: "I look for truth, and that's why I go to Pacino. That's why I go to Hopkins...I go to Streisand."
Ken Davitian, Borat: Yes, he's actually an actor. Of all the things in Sacha Baron Cohen's film that one questions as real or fake, you don't for a minute doubt Davitian as Azamat Bagatov, Borat's (mostly) loyal sidekick and manager. Without speaking a word of English, Davitian transformed into Bagatov as much as Baron Cohen did Borat. After all, he did supply most of the humor in the famed naked wrestling scene. And people think Will Farrell is immodest."
Let's see how Coyle's predictions fare come Nomination Tuesday. -- Reprinted (without permission) from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 19 February 2007
- 20 January, Los Angeles: In a surprise move, the Producers Guild of America selected Little Miss Sunshine as the best picture for 2006. Made independently for $8 million, the film has grossed over $60 million so far. The PGA chose Cars as the best animated film of the year.
The PGA has predicted 11 of the Best Picture Oscar®-winners in the 17 years it has been choosing its own best picture. For the last two years, though, it has missed the mark, choosing The Aviator for 2004 and Brokeback Mountain for 2005. The Best Picture Award ended up going to Million Dollar Baby and Crash, respectively, on Oscar Night.
- 21 January, Los Angeles: In an on-line article, Steve Gorman of Reuters details the most likely nominees for the major Awards this year. Gorman draws heavily from Tom O'Neil of theenvelope.com. Current front runners for a Best Picture nomination are The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, Dreamgirls, Babel and The Queen.
In the contest for best director, Martin Scorsese is a shoo-in to be nominated for The Departed, a tale of double-dealing cops and gangsters. And he is favored to win, by virtue of an Oscar dynamic that O'Neil calls "the overdue director's syndrome." His most likely rivals include Bill Condon for Dreamgirls, British filmmaker Stephen Frears for The Queen, Mexican director Alejandro González Iñ:árritu for Babel and Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima.
Two performers are seen as sure bets to vie for best actor -- Forest Whitaker for his role as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, and veteran Peter O'Toole for playing an aging actor who falls for a young woman in Venus. The front-runners for an Oscar bid as best actress this year are Penélope Cruz for Volver (To Return), Judi Dench for Notes on a Scandal, Helen Mirren for The Queen, Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada and Kate Winslet for Little Children. -- Use this link to view Gorman's entire article.
- 22 January, Los Angeles:
 In his annual thunder-stealing move, Golden Raspberry Awards founder John Wilson announces the annual nominees for Worst-of-the-Year on the day before the Academy announces its nominations for the year's best. And the Razzie nominees for 2006 are:
· Worst Picture: Basic Instinct II, BloodRayne, Lady in the Water, Little Man and The Wicker Man.
· Worst Actress: Hilary & Hailie Duff for Material Girls, Lindsay Lohan for Just My Luck, Kristanna Loken for BloodRayne, Jessica Simpson for Employee of the Month, and Sharon Stone for Basic Instinct II.
· Worst Actor: Tim Allen for The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, The Shaggy Dog & Zoom, Nicolas Cage for The Wicker Man, Larry the Cable Guy for Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, Rob Schneider for Little Man, and Shawn & Marlon Wayans for Little Man.
· Worst Excuse for Family Entertainment (a new category): Deck the Halls, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, RV, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause and The Shaggy Dog.
The 2006 Razzies will be handed out on Saturday, 24 February (the day before this year's Oscar Ceremony), in Los Angeles. Past Worst Picture Razzie "winners" include Dirty Love (2005), Catwoman (2004) and Gigli (2003). Visit the Razzies' official web site for a complete list of this year's nominees.
- 23 January, Beverly Hills: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces the nominees for the Academy Awards for 2006. Visit our web page for complete listings.
- 28 January, Los Angeles: Little Miss Sunshine was increasingly looking like the "little film that could" Sunday as it received the Screen Actors Guild's top trophy at the union's awards ceremonies in Los Angeles. The independent film, snatched up by Fox Searchlight at last year's Sundance Film Festival for $10 million, won the award for best ensemble performance, SAG's equivalent to the best film prize, beating out rival nominees Babel, Bobby, The Departed and Dreamgirls. Since SAG members make up the largest group of voters for the Oscars, their selection puts Sunshine in the pole position for best-picture honors at the 25 February awards ceremony. A week earlier it received the best picture award from the Producers Guild of America. Forest Whitaker was honored by his peers as best leading actor for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, sharing honors with Helen Mirren, who was voted best leading actress for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. (Mirren also won the leading actress award in the TV movie or miniseries category for playing the first Queen Elizabeth in the HBO drama "Elizabeth I".) Supporting actor/actress trophies went to Dreamgirls' Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson. -- IMDb
- 30 January, Berlin: The Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday revealed the titles of the 22 movies that will compete for this year's top Golden Bear award. They include Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd, starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie; Steven Soderbergh's The Good German with George Clooney; and Gregory Nava's Bordertown, starring Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas. The festival opens on 8 February with a screening of Olivier Dahan's La Môme about the life of singer Edith Piaf and concludes on 18 February. Among films that will be screening out of competition will be Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal, and Paul Schrader's The Walker. -- IMDb
- 8 February, Beverly Hills:
 Film historian, television host and Hollywood Reporter columnist Robert Osborne will once again serve as the Academy's red carpet celebrity greeter at the Oscar Ceremonies on 25 February, Academy President Sid Ganis announced today.
As Osborne greets celebrities arriving at the 79th Annual Academy Awards®, his chats with them will be audible to the other arriving guests as well as to the fans in the bleachers on the opposite side of the carpet. It will be his second stint on the red carpet for the Academy.
In addition to writing a column for The Hollywood Reporter, Osborne is the prime-time host of Turner Classic Movies and a frequent host of Academy events in New York and Los Angeles. He also is the author of the Academy's official history, 75 Years of the Oscar and hosts Robert Osborne's Classic Film Festival in Athens, GA. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 9 February, Berlin: The Berlin Film Festival -- the Berlinale -- opened Thursday night with a biopic of French singer Edith Piaf, La Vie en rose, starring Marion Cotillard as Piaf, who died in 1963 at the age of 47. It is one of 22 films entered in competition for the festival's top award, the Golden Bear. Among the others are Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd, Steven Soderbergh's The Good German, and Gregory Nava's Bordertown.The winner will be announced on 17 February by a jury headed by screenwriter Paul Schrader. -- IMDb
- 12 February, London: In the latest awards ceremonies prior to the Oscars, the Orange British Academy Film Awards (the BAFTAs) crowned The Queen best film of the year and its star, Helen Mirren, best actress. Forest Whitaker won the best actor trophy for his portrayal of Uganda's Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. British director Paul Greengrass took the director prize for United 93. Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America agreed with most critics groups as it presented its top screenplay honors Sunday to Michael Arndt for Little Miss Sunshine in the original category and to William Monahan for The Departed in the adapted category. The decision lifts each film into frontrunner position for this year's Oscars competition. Finally, Pixar's Cars sped away with the top prize Sunday at the annual Annies animation awards. -- IMDb
- 12 February, Berlin: During a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival today (Monday) a reporter asked Dame Judi Dench whether she will be taking any show-biz superstitions to the Oscars with her this year. Dench, who has been nominated four times for best actress, but has never won (she won for best supporting actress for 1998's Shakespeare in Love), said that she sometimes thinks of the "break a leg" superstition when she considers her own situation: she'll be undergoing a knee operation and won't be attending the Oscars this year, she said. Dench is nominated for the drama Notes on a Scandal. -- IMDb
- 14 February, Berlin:
 Lauren Bacall, who made her starring debut in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not 63 years ago, said Tuesday that movies have fallen victim to "mediocrity" over those years, "and I think it's too bad that's happened." Appearing at a news conference at the Berlin Film Festival, where her latest film, Paul Schrader's The Walker, is being screened out of competition, Bacall, 82, blamed television for the decline of quality filmmaking. "I think there are still good people who want to do good work and think that's all that matters," she said, "and I think unfortunately in television sometimes they want to do good work, but a lot of the time they're doing terrible work and I think that has affected movie making badly. ... It's all about ratings now and everything. It should be about the work, and it's not." As for herself, she said, "what [appearing in films] means to me mostly is staying alive. I have too much energy to stop working. I don't believe in retirement. I love working." -- IMDb
- 15 February, Beverly Hills: Voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must return their completed final Oscar ballots to PricewaterhouseCoopers by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, 20 February. Ballots received after the 5 p.m. deadline will not be counted.
Final ballots, 5,830 of them, were mailed to voting members of the Academy on Wednesday, 31 January. Once PricewaterhouseCoopers has tabulated the votes, the winners' names will be placed in sealed, foil-lined envelopes. Brad Oltmanns and Rick Rosas, the lead balloting partners, will be the only two people to know the results prior to the envelopes being opened on Oscar Night®, Sunday, 25 February. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 19 February, Berlin: Tuya de hun shi (Tuya's Marriage) was the surprise winner of the top Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival Saturday. The Chinese film, about a herdswoman in Mongolia who seeks a new husband when her existing one becomes ill, had not been among the favorites mentioned earlier by most journalists and critics attending the festival. Israeli director Joseph Cedar, who was born in the U.S., won the best director award for his anti-war film Beaufort. The Silver Bear prize for best actress went to Nina Hoss for the German film Yella, about a woman who flees the depressed conditions in the former East Germany -- and her stalking ex-husband -- for the West. The Silver Bear for best actor went to Julio Chavez for the Argentinian film, El Otro (The Other), about a man who takes on the identity of a dead man in order to start a new life. The Berlinale jury, headed by Paul Schrader, also awarded a trophy to Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd for outstanding artistic contribution. -- IMDb
- 26 February, Los Angeles:
 After being nominated six times for a best director Oscar®, Martin Scorsese finally held the award in his hands Sunday night. Moreover, The Departed, the film that he won it for, also was awarded the top prize as best picture, which was accepted by producer Graham King. "So many people have been wishing this for me and my family," Scorsese told the audience at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood and a worldwide TV audience. "People walking down the street, every time I go to the doctor's office, when I go in for an X-ray, everyone has been telling me I deserve it and they want me to win it." The movie also won for best adapted screenplay (William Monahan) and for best editing (Thelma Schoonmaker). There were no surprises among the other major awards. Helen Mirren received the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen; Forest Whitaker, the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland; Jennifer Hudson, the best supporting actress Oscar for Dreamgirls; and Alan Arkin, the best supporting actor Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine. -- IMDb
Use this link to view all the winners and nominees. And, use this link for theOscarSite's coverage of Sunday night's ceremonies.
- 26 February, Paris: In a rush of other awards over the weekend, Lady Chatterley drew the best film trophy at France's César Awards Saturday night, while Little Miss Sunshine won for best foreign film. The film also won best picture at the Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, CA, which honors independent films. At the annual Razzies Awards in Hollywood, the sequel Basic Instinct 2, starring Sharon Stone, was (dis)honored as the year's worst picture. And at the GAYVN Awards in San Francisco, Michael Lucas's La Dolce Vita took top prize. (According to the San Francisco Chronicle, host Kathy Griffin remarked at one point during the awards program, "No one has thanked Jesus yet. That's bullshit.") -- IMDb
- 27 February, Los Angeles: Tom Cruise is reportedly close to raising the money needed to bring United Artists, the studio founded 86 years ago by Charlie Charles Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, back to life. According to today's Los Angeles Times, Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner, have raised the nearly $500 million that it will take to finance a slate of films for the now dormant UA, 65 percent of which is owned by MGM and the remainder, by Cruise and Wagner. The money is reportedly coming from a group of Wall Street investors led by Merrill Lynch. According to the Times, UA's first production under the deal with Cruise and Wagner is the Robert Redford-directed political drama Lions for Lambs, starring Cruise and Meryl Streep. The director and two stars agreed to defer most of their upfront fees -- the entire movie is budgeted at just $35 million -- in return for a cut of the gross less production and marketing costs. -- IMDb
 - 12 March, Hollywood:
 The Curse of Quon Gwon, the first known feature made by Chinese-Americans, and Her Wild Oat, starring the quintessential 1920s flapper Colleen Moore, will unspool as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' "Lost and Found" film series on Thursday, 29 March, at 7:30 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater at the Academy's Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood. Both films will be accompanied by live music performed by Michael Mortilla.
The Curse of Quon Gwon, directed by Marion Wong, is one of the few American silent feature films directed by a woman. It was thought to be lost until filmmaker Arthur Dong discovered two surviving reels in the possession of the lead actress's daughters. Dong brought the nitrate 35mm negative reels, as well as ten minutes of additional 16mm footage, to the Academy Film Archive for preservation. In December 2006 the Library of Congress selected Quon Gwon to be added to the National Film Registry.
In Her Wild Oat, Moore, with her signature flapper haircut, stars as a woman who owns a small lunch wagon and falls for a duke's son who is pretending to be his own chauffeur. Many of Moore's films have been lost to nitrate decomposition. This print, newly restored by the Archive, provides the public a rare opportunity to rediscover Moore's work. Her filmography includes both silent and sound films; her final film role was Hester Prynne in the 1934 version of The Scarlet Letter. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 29 March, Los Angeles: Jane Fonda, a firebrand anti-Vietnam War activist in the 1960s and early '70s, has revealed that her father, the legendary actor Henry Fonda, advised her against making any political comment when she accepted her best actress award for Klute in 1971. She took his advice. In an interview with Robert Osborne on the TCM channel scheduled to air tonight, Fonda said that she had her father very much in mind when she accepted the award. "I realized that I had just won an Oscar® and my dad never had," she tells Osborne. "I cried and cried. It just seemed so wrong." -- IMDb
- 11 April, Paris:
 La Môme, the Edith Piaf biopic that opened this year's Berlin Film Festival, has grossed a whopping $40 million in France since its opening on 14 February, Daily Variety reported today. The trade publication indicated that the success of the film, along with Luc Besson's action-comedy Taxi 4, is responsible for boosting French cinema's share of the local market to 58.4 percent. US films are far down the list with Night at the Museum turning in the best performance of the year with $17.6 million, followed by Blood Diamond with $10.4 million. The Piaf movie is due to be released in the US on June 8 retitled La Vie en Rose. -- IMDb
- 18 April, Singapore: An independent film festival in Singapore is contending not only with censorship within the island city-state itself, but with government crackdowns on films in the countries where they were produced, Daily Variety observed today. The trade publication noted that the Singapore censorship board refused to allow the screening of an animated Danish film, Princess, about the decline of a porn star, unless the festival removed three scenes. The festival refused. Singapore censors have also demanded cuts in a locally produced gay film, Solos. However, the festival is expected to screen the Thai film Syndromes and a Century, which was banned by the current Thai military government last week, and the Malaysian film, Village People Radio Show, about exiled former Communists living in Thailand, which has been banned by the Malaysian government. -- IMDb
 - 18 April, London: Al Gore's Oscar®-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth has touched off a political uproar in Britain where the government had planned to distribute it to every secondary school in order to provoke student discussion about global warming. On Monday, British Education Secretary Alan Johnson said that he wanted children to see the film because they "are the key to changing society's long-term attitudes to the environment" and "have a big influence over their own families' lifestyles and behavior." However, the following day, a group of parents living in the New Forest, in the South of England, vowed to challenge the government's plans. Derek Tipp, their spokesman, told the London Daily Telegraph that the film amounts to political indoctrination and "is not therefore suitable material to present to children who need to be given clear and balanced, factually accurate information." -- IMDb
- 19 April, Cannes:
 The Cannes Film Festival confirmed today that Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights, starring Jude Law, Ed Harris, Norah Jones and Natalie Portman, will open the 60th annual festival on May 16. In something of a surprise, the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez "double bill" Grindhouse, which was expected to compete for the top Palme d'Or prize, will only be represented by the Tarantino half of the feature, Death Proof, which is being expanded to one hour and 50 minutes. Among the other 21 films selected for the competition are the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, starring Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, and Javier Bardem; David Fincher's Zodiac, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr.; James Gray's We Own the Night, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg; and Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, starring mostly first-time actors. Serbian director Emir Kusturica, a two-time winner at Cannes and the chairman of the jury in 2005, will again be represented in the competition with the comedy Promise Me This. Among films screening out of competition will be Michael Moore's documentary Sicko (about the U.S. health system); Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Thirteen; Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart, starring Angelina Jolie as the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's wife Mariane; and Ken Burns's The War. The latter film will presumably be compiled from Burns's upcoming documentary series about World War II for PBS. It is the only film on the Cannes list whose length is not indicated. -- IMDb
- 19 April, Bangkok: The Bangkok Film Festival, thrown into confusion and then postponed in the wake of last September's military coup, is set to reemerge on July 19 in a drastically pared-down form. Daily Variety said today (Thursday) that the budget of the 10-day festival had been slashed by two thirds, to just $2.4 million, and that the festival will now be organized into three competitions: one for movies from countries comprising the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN); another for films outside the area; and short films. A concurrent film market will also be held. -- IMDb
- 19 April, Moscow:
 In what was regarded as a first at a movie-awards ceremony, the presenter of the best film at the MTV Russia Movie Awards Thursday night refused to announce the winner. Director Vladimir Menshov, a onetime winner of the Oscar® for best foreign film, opened the envelope with the name of the film, gasped, then declared, "I'm not going to hand over an award to a film that discredits my country. Let Pamela Anderson do it instead." (Anderson had also participated in the awards show.) The winning film, the World War II drama Svolochi (Bastards), directed by Alexander Atanesyan, had set off a national controversy when it was released last year. The film tells of a group of teenage prisoners who are sent on a suicide mission behind German lines. The director had initially claimed that the film was based on actual events but was later forced to admit it was invented after critics demanded that he produce evidence that the Soviet Union willingly sacrificed children in order to win the war. -- IMDb
- 2 May, Tokyo: Setting the stage for what almost certainly will be an auspicious bow in the US on Friday, Spider-Man 3 debuted in about a dozen countries Tuesday and set opening-day records in virtually all of them. (Ticket sales in some countries were not immediately reported.) In Japan, the film took in $3.46 million, beating the previous record holder, Spider-Man 2, which opened with $3.42 million. Sony distribution chief Jeff Blake said that the movie also bested opening day records in Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. The film -- starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace and Bryce Dallas Howard -- is due to launch at 4,253 theaters on Friday, the widest domestic release ever. -- IMDb
- 3 May, Beverly Hills:
 More than 70 original movie posters and lobby cards from such classic Barbara Stanwyck films as Stella Dallas, Double Indemnity and Baby Face will be showcased in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' new exhibition, "Presenting Miss Barbara Stanwyck: Film Posters of the Indomitable Lady, from the Mike Kaplan Collection," opening on Thursday, 17 May, in the Academy's Grand Lobby Gallery in Beverly Hills. Admission is free.
The exhibition, which is presented in conjunction with the Academy's "Centennial Tribute to Barbara Stanwyck" on 16 May, will feature rare copies of American one-sheets as well as numerous international posters. It includes the only known surviving three-sheets for the The Locked Door (1929), Stanwyck's first talking picture, and Annie Oakley (1935), her first Western. Also featured are the only known copies of the posters for Gambling Lady (1934), a stylistically daring poster for The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), and a one-of-a-kind, handpainted wooden panel for Internes Can't Take Money (1937). -- A.M.P.A.S.
 - 4 May, San Francisco: The San Francisco Film Society honored George Lucas, creator of the "Star Wars" films, with an award on Thursday to mark the 50th anniversary of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Lucas ushered in a new era of special-effects and visual wizardry with his "Star Wars" films and launched the Indiana Jones film franchise with director Steven Spielberg.
At a black-tie dinner in San Francisco, Lucas received the Irving "Bud" Levin Award, named after the founder of the film festival who 50 years ago sought to create an event to compete with the European festivals in Venice, Cannes, and Berlin. Those festivals still overshadow the San Francisco festival, but the San Francisco Bay area has long been home to some film's top names. Lucas lives in Marin County, north of San Francisco, and has his production facilities Industrial Light and Magic and Lucasfilm in San Francisco.
"I'm out of the mainstream," Lucas said as he received the award. "I can do things that are not considered to be too logical or too smart. But those are the things that pay off." "We make films outside the normal corporate influence," he said. "But it's a little bit harder up here than it is there, (Hollywood)" he said.
Lucas said he is ready to begin work as a producer next month on the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones film franchise. In a brief interview, he said veteran actor Sean Connery had yet to agree to reprise his role as Indiana Jones' father. "We have a script with him in it," he said. "If he doesn't do it, we'll do a quick rewrite."
Actor-comedian Robin Williams, another local resident, was presented the Peter Owens award for "brilliance, independence and integrity." Since becoming a television star in the 1970s, he has appeared in films including Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society and Mrs. Doubtfire. He won an Oscar® for his performance in Good Will Hunting.
Spike Lee, best known for his exploration of the black experience and U.S. race relations in films such as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, won the Film Society Directing Award. -- Adam Tanner, Reuters
- 4 May, New York: Israeli director David Volach's Hofshat Kaits (My Father Was Lord) received the top feature-film prize at the sixth annual Tribeca Film Festival Thursday night. Volach received a $50,000 cash award. Taxi to the Darkside, directed by Alex Gibney, received the $25,000 for top documentary. (The film describes the fatal beating of an Afghan taxi driver by U.S. guards in 2002 and other alleged cases of abuse in Guantánamo, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq.) Taking note of the fact that the Tribeca Film Festival was founded out of a sense of purpose following the 9/11 attack, Gibney said in accepting the award: "I fear that along the way that sense of purpose and hope for a better world was hijacked by some people who played on our fears and in a way took us on a journey to the dark side." -- IMDb
- 15 May, New York City: After years of seeing Broadway productions based on movies dominating the annual Tony® Awards nominations, original content stood out today as it was announced that the rock musical Spring Awakening had nabbed 11 nods and Grey Gardens 10. (Editor's note: It should be pointed out that Grey Gardens was brought to the public's attention with Ellen Hovde and Albert Maysles' 1975 documentary of the same name.) The only two films-to-musicals making the major categories were Mary Poppins and Legally Blonde, neither of which came close to garnering the overflow of nominations that, say, The Lion King, The Producers or Spamalot had amassed in previous years. The straight-play categories were led by Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia, which picked up 10 nominations. Winners will be announced on June 10. -- IMDb
- 16 May, Cannes: The Cannes Film Festival opens today with a mix of arthouse movie making and raw star power fitting for cinema's greatest showcase, which turns 60 this year.
Chinese director Wong Kar Wai, best known in the West for In The Mood For Love, brings My Blueberry Nights to the palm-lined Riviera resort, an English language film starring singer Norah Jones in her screen debut alongside Jude Law. The opening movie kicks off 11 hectic days of networking, deal making and partying among thousands of people from across the industry who descend on Cannes each year. It is one of 22 competition films, but hundreds more, including major Hollywood productions, are screened and touted, luring the likes of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese and Sharon Stone to France's southern coast.
Selectors chose no less than five US productions in the main competition, although two have already been released in their home country to a cool reception. Quentin Tarantino, adored by the Cannes faithful for his subversive style, presents Death Proof, part of a double bill Groundhouse that flopped at the box office. And David Fincher was included for Zodiac, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. in a drama based on a real-life serial killer. Like Tarantino, the Coen Brothers and Gus Van Sant are US directors who have won the coveted Palme d'Or before and are in contention to repeat that success. They are likely to face stiff competition from two highly regarded Russian film makers -- Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Banishment) and Alexander Sokurov, whose Alexandra is set in Chechnya.
Portraits of life in Iran, Romania, Ukraine, Austria, Mexico, Turkey and Israel also feature in what critics expect to be a vintage lineup. As ever, out-of-competition films threaten to steal the limelight, with Hollywood sequel Ocean's 13, starring Clooney and Pitt, premiering in Cannes, and Jolie promoting A Mighty Heart based on the story of slain reporter Daniel Pearl.
But there are no genuine blockbusters launching at the festival this year, unlike 2005's "Star Wars" sequel and 2006's The Da Vinci Code, which went on to gross $758 million at the worldwide box office despite a critical mauling in Cannes. There are also fewer political films, although Michael Moore's documentary SiCKO about the US healthcare system is likely to cause a stir, just as his anti-Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9/11 did when it won the 2004 Palme d'Or. Heartthrob DiCaprio is in town with 11th Hour, an environmental documentary that is the latest product of Hollywood's growing concern over global warming.
And although no British films appear in the main competition this year, some of its biggest music acts are set to light up the silver screen. Control looks at the life and premature death of Joy Division star Ian Curtis, while The Future Is Unwritten examines the Clash's Joe Strummer. -- Mike Collett-White, Reuters
- 20 May, Cannes:
 Director Roman Polanski walked out of a news conference at the Cannes Film Festival today after berating journalists for asking "empty" questions. Polanski, whose film The Pianist won the top prize at Cannes in 2002, was onstage with nearly 30 major directors -- including Mexico's Alejandro González Iñárritu, Germany's Wim Wenders, China's Wong Kar-wai, Canada's Atom Egoyan, New Zealand's Jane Campion and Gus Van Sant and the Coen Brothers from the US -- who were showing short films in homage to cinema. The shorts were packaged as a feature called "To Each His Own Cinema."
Several questions at the news conference focused on the future of cinema in the digital age. Polanski's walkout did not seem to be a response to any single question. When the moderator announced that journalists had just two minutes left, Polanski, 73, took the microphone. "It's a shame to have such poor questions, such empty questions," Polanski said. "And I think that it's really the computer which has brought you down to this level. You're no longer interested in what's going on in the cinema. Frankly, let's all go and have lunch," he suggested, before walking out.
None of the other directors followed. -- Associated Press
- 27 May, Cannes:
 A hard-hitting Romanian movie set towards the end of the communist era won the Cannes Film Festival's top honor on Sunday. 4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), directed by Cristian Mungiu, was the critics' favorite to win the Palme d'Or in the build-up to a glittering red-carpet ceremony that ended the 12-day movie marathon on the French Riviera. The film tells the grim story of young student friends Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) who are ruthlessly exploited when one goes to have an illegal abortion. But despite being set in the pitiless and colorless landscape of socialist Romania, the story underlines the lengths to which friends go to save each other.
Mungiu welcomed the international attention the award would bring to his and other small-scale productions. "I ... hope that this award that I am getting tonight is going to be good news for small film makers from small countries because it looks like you don't necessarily need a big budget and a lot of stars," he said.
4 luni was one of 22 films in competition, and beat a series of highly acclaimed pictures for the top prize as the world's biggest film festival celebrated its 60th birthday. They included Alexandra, by Russian art house director Alexander Sokurov, and three U.S. entries -- No Country For Old Men by the Coen Brothers, Zodiac by David Fincher and Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park. Critics praised the Cannes selectors for a competition line-up they said was one of the strongest in recent years. There were few outright duds, and, while many stories were dark, if not depressing, they also portrayed great humanity.
The nine-member jury also awarded the Grand Prix runner-up prize to Mogari no mori (The Mourning Forest), a lyrical Japanese movie about mourning and grief directed by Naomi Kawase. Best director was Julian Schnabel for Le Scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), based on the true story of French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed yet managed to write a book using one eyelid to communicate. Best screenplay was awarded to German-Turkish director and writer Fatih Akin for Yasamin kiyisinda (The Edge of Heaven), a cross-border story of love and reconciliation. Best actor was Konstantin Lavronenko, who played the male lead in Russian film maker Andrei Zvyagintsev's Izgnanie (The Banishment), another gloomy film that features an abortion. Best actress was Jeon Do-yeon for South Korean competition entry Milyang (Secret Sunshine), an emotional drama about a woman overwhelmed by loss. The Camera d'Or for first film went to Meduzot (Jellyfish), an Israeli-French production by Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen. -- Mike Collett-White and James Mackenzie, Reuters
 - 31 May, Traverse City:
 Michael Moore will reopen a 58-year-old theater in Traverse City, MI that has been closed for more than a decade, refurbish it with new screen and projection equipment and use the theater as the site for his Traverse City Film Festival, which he founded two years ago. The controversial documentary maker said that in order to take over the theater he had to promise Carmike Cinemas, which owns two multiplexes in Traverse City, that he would only show films that open on 200 or fewer screens nationwide. The theater will operate on weekends only during the winter and daily during the rest of the year, Moore said. Residents of the town, he added, will now "be able to see great films the way they were intended to be seen: projected on a big screen with great sound in an atmosphere where going to the movies can be an exhilarating experience." -- IMDb
- 13 June, Beverly Hills: After controversies the last two years because of a limit on how many producers may be nominated for a best picture Oscar®, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Wednesday that it had modified the rules to allow for more than three nominees. The academy said that in most cases it would continue to enforce the rule that no more than three producers of a film may qualify as nominees if the movie is selected as a finalist for best picture of the year.
The limitation had been set after complaints that producer credits were mushrooming, with six or eight or more on a film, often given to people who didn't truly perform "producing functions." The rule came under fire last year when the producers of Crash feuded over who would get to accept the Academy Award if it won as best picture (which it did), and again this year when the five producers of the nominated Little Miss Sunshine were all deemed to be qualified for the award by the Producers Guild of America. Only three were listed as nominees, however (and the film didn't win).
But now the rule has been amended so that the executive committee of the academy's producers branch can, in "rare and extraordinary circumstances," nominate as many additional producers as it deems qualified. -- Lee Margulies, Los Angelest Times
In other rule changes, the definition of an animated feature film was altered to further clarify the requirements for that category, in light of the emerging technologies now being used in the production of some movies. An animated feature film is now defined as a motion picture of at least 70 minutes in running time, in which movement and characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture's running time.
In the Art Direction category, a rule adjustment now allows for the possibility, again only in unusual circumstances, of two production designers or two set decorators receiving nominations for their work on a given film, but not both. In the past, the rule allowed for only one production designer, though two set decorators could be nominated in rare cases.
- 18 June, Beverly Hills: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science has extended invitations for new membership to 115 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures. Those who accept the invitation will be the only additions in 2007 to the Academy's roster of voting members. "These individuals are all exceptionally accomplished in their respective fields," said Academy President Sid Ganis. "We're looking forward to having them join the Academy's ranks."
The membership policies that the Academy adopted four years ago in order to slow the growth of the organization would have allowed a maximum of nearly 150 new members in 2007, but as in the previous three years, the various branch committees endorsed far fewer candidates than were proposed to them. Voting membership in the organization has now held steady at just under 6,000 members for four years.
"The numbers are stabilizing nicely," said Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis, "but at the same time some interesting changes are occurring. Like the recent lists of Oscar® nominees, our last few membership invitation lists have been increasingly international." New members will be welcomed into the Academy at an invitation-only reception at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills in September. -- A.M.P.A.S. Use this link for a list of this year's invitees.
 - 2 July, Beverly Hills:
 Showcasing more than 150 rarely seen original movie poster paintings, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' new book, Now Playing: Hand-Painted Poster Art from the 1910s through the 1950s, offers a glimpse into a world of cinema art that until recently was mostly forgotten. Now Playing is available at theOscarSite's aStore.
Published in cooperation with Angel City Press, Now Playing highlights one-of-a-kind poster art commissioned by theater owners in communities across the U.S. to advertise their movie attractions. The full-color and black-and-white posters featured in the book include Edward Augustus Armstrong's rendition of KING KONG (1933), Batiste Madalena's interpretation of Douglas Fairbanks' THE BLACK PIRATE (1926), R.J. (Renfred) Rogers' representation of Laurel and Hardy's THE DEVIL'S BROTHER (1933) and O.M. (Otto) Wise's composition for Harold Lloyd's GIRL SHY (1924).
"This book documents the unrecorded and uncelebrated work of movie poster artists whose unique illustrations graced the lobbies and façades of both movie palaces and neighborhood theaters," said Anthony Slide, Hollywood film historian and author of Now Playing.
Working both for individual movie houses and for major chains, the artists created posters for specific audiences, "selling" a film through advertising that emphasized elements that would appeal to the local market. Because the posters were thought of as disposable signs, they were often destroyed, painted over, or adapted for new films. As a result, few original examples have survived, although a number of the rare original works featured in the book are now part of the permanent collection of the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills.
Now Playing is based on original research by Jane Burman Powell and Lori Goldman Berthelsen. Slide joined the project to write the untold story. To preview several of the posters featured in Now Playing, visit www.oscars.org. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 10 July, Beverly Hills: Eight new governors, four of them serving for the first time, have been elected to represent their branches on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Six incumbent governors were reelected.
Newcomers to the board are Henry Winkler, Actors Branch; Vilmos Zsigmond, Cinematographers; Richard Pearce, Documentary; and Charles Fox, Music. Returning to the Board after a hiatus are Dede Allen, Film Editors; Curt Behlmer, Sound; Richard Edlund, Visual Effects; and Frank Pierson, Writers.
Incumbent governors reelected to another term are Rosemary Brandenburg, Art Directors branch; Curtis Hanson, Directors; Jim Gianopulos, Executives; Hawk Koch, Producers; Marvin Levy, Public Relations Branch; and Carl Bell, Short Films and Feature Animation.
Fourteen of the Academy's 15 branches are each represented by three governors, who may serve up to three consecutive three-year terms. Terms are staggered so that each branch elects or reelects one governor each year. The recently created Makeup Branch is represented by a single governor, Leonard Engelman, whose seat was not part of this election cycle.
Governors who were not up for reelection and who continue on the Board are Ed Begley Jr. and Tom Hanks, Actors Branch; Jeannine Oppewall and Albert Wolsky, Art Directors; Caleb Deschanel and Owen Roizman, Cinematographers; Paul Mazursky and Alexander Payne, Directors; Michael Apted and Robert Epstein, Documentary; Robert Rehme and Tom Sherak, Executives; Donn Cambern and Mark Goldblatt, Film Editors; Charles Bernstein and Bruce Broughton, Music; Mark Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy, Producers; Sid Ganis and Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Public Relations; Jon Bloom and John Lasseter, Short Films and Feature Animation; J. Paul Huntsman and Kevin O'Connell, Sound; Craig Barron and Bill Taylor, Visual Effects; and James L. Brooks and Fay Kanin, Writers. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 19 July, Bangkok:
 The Bangkok Film Festival was scheduled to open tonight (Thursday) with the screening of the Hungarian drama Szabadság, szerelem (Children of Glory), produced by veteran film mogul Andrew Vajna. Vajna was expected to attend the opening ceremonies. His film replaced the Cannes Jury Award-winner Persepolis, which the festival removed at the behest of the Iranian embassy. (The animated film, a smash hit in France, where it has taken in $5.1 million after three weekends, concerns an Iranian girl growing up at the time of the Islamic revolution.) In an interview on the eve of the festival Chattan Kunara na Ayudhya, the public relations chief of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) who oversees the festival, said that he decided to withdraw the film "in order to avoid an international incident." Chattan acknowledged that he had received numerous complaints about his decision from filmmakers and found himself caught "between a rock and a hard place -- very upsetting." He maintained that the Iranians made no threats ("We had a good talk over tea and bisquits"), but that since the festival was not run by an independent film body but by a government entity, he risked upsetting Thailand's relations with Iran if he did not comply with the Iranian request. -- IMDb
- 30 July, Fårö Island: Ingmar Bergman, one of the world's most influential -- and revered -- directors of the century died today (Monday) on Fårö Island, Sweden at the age of 89. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed. Woody Allen once called him "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera." In its obituary, the New York Times took note of the fact that critics regarded Bergman as "one of the directors -- the others being Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa -- who dominated the world of serious film making in the second half of the 20th century." -- IMDb
- 31 July, Rome: Just one day after the announcement of the death of Ingmar Bergman, officials in Rome announced the death at age 94 of another legendary director, Michelangelo Antonioni. "With Antonioni dies not only one of the greatest directors but also a master of modernity," Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome, said in the announcement. Antonioni directed both Italian- and English-language features, including the 1960 classic L'Avventura and the 1966 Oscar®-nominated Blowup. Despite being largely incapacitated by a stroke in 1983, he continued directing films. In 1994, barely able to speak and appearing frail, he directed John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons, Irene Jacob and Fanny Ardant in Beyond the Clouds, often using a note pad to communicate with the cast and crew. In 1995, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an Oscar® for lifetime achievement. -- IMDb
- 2 August, Paris: France, which hosts a slew of annual film festivals, including the most prestigious of them all, at Cannes each year, may issue regulations that would require films shown at the festivals to be submitted first to the French Commission for Film Classification (Commission de Classification Cinématographique) to be rated. The Commission asked the culture ministry to end the ratings certificate exemption that applies to film festivals. The request came as part of the commission's annual report, which observed that of 1,087 films submitted during the past year, all but 56 were categorized as suitable for all audiences [Tous Publics (Universal)]. Thirty-nine films were categorized as forbidden to minors under 12 (Interdit Aux Moins de 12 Ans) and 16 to those under 16. Only one film (Saw III) was forbidden to those under 18. -- IMDb
- 10 August, Rome:
 Rome burned again Thursday night -- that is, many of the sets used for the production of the HBO series "Rome". Fire -- always a plague of movie studios -- struck Rome's famed Cinecittà studios around 10:00 p.m., starting in an area used to warehouse old film, Reuters reported. Old film stock is regarded as highly inflammable and is usually kept in cold storage. Cinecittà officials speculated, however, that the fire was started by a short circuit. Although at one point flames were seen rising more than 100 feet into the air, firefighters were able to limit the damage to the sprawling -- and costly -- "Rome" set, which Cinecittà officials said they hoped to use for future production. -- IMDb
- 20 August, Beijing: One day after Jet Li, one of China's most successful film stars, called for a relaxation of censorship in his country, the chairman of China Film Group called for greater emphasis on patriotism in Chinese movies. In an interview appearing on the Chinese website Sina.com, Han Saping urged colleagues to extol China's economic progress. "There can't be anyone who makes fun of it. People who do either have ulterior motives or they're mentally challenged." Over the weekend, Jet Li said that his 2000 hit film Romeo Must Die was banned by Chinese censors because the characters included Chinese gangsters. If such characters were to be banned, he said, "It leaves only the ancient Chinese stories to be produced." -- IMDb
- 29 August, Venice:
 The 75th annual Venice Film Festival is scheduled to open today (Wednesday) with a screening of Atonement, starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. Reporters attending the festival have expressed high regard for the festival's selections this year. They include the controversial Ang Lee drama, Lust, Caution, which was slapped with an NC-17 rating by the MPAA last week because of its sexual content. Focus Features, which is releasing the movie on September 28, has said that it will not contest the rating -- often regarded as a mark of death, since many newspapers refuse to carry ads for films bearing the rating and many theater chains and individual theaters refuse to show them. However, raising a bigger to-do in Venice has been the decision of the festival organizers to note that the film was made in "Taiwan, China." The government of Taiwan -- often referred to as Nationalist China -- has complained that the designation makes it appear as if Taiwan is ruled by the mainland government -- often referred to as Communist China. -- IMDb
- 6 September, Toronto: The Toronto International Film Festival is set to open tonight (Thursday) with the screening of Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa's Fugitive Pieces. It will usher in 348 additional films that will screen at the festival over the next ten days, including major studio films featuring such stars as George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Jude Law, and Keira Knightley, as well as low-budget indies. In an interview with the Associated Press, Clooney, who is promoting his film Michael Clayton in Toronto, said, "If you get a good bunch of reviews out there, it's an automatic international wake-up call for your film. It forces the studio or whoever makes them to have to spend more money on marketing or theaters, because if they don't, they're dead." -- IMDb
- 10 September, Venice: For the second time in three years, a film by Taiwanese director Ang Lee has won the top Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. His controversial Chinese-language drama Lust, Caution, which drew an NC-17 rating from the MPAA for its upcoming U.S. release, was regarded as a surprise winner. Critics had greeted it with vastly divergent reviews. Lee's victory comes two years after accepting the Golden Lion for his equally controversial Brokeback Mountain. Other winners included Brad Pitt, who received a best actor award for his performance as the famed outlaw in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and Cate Blanchett, who was voted best actress for her role as the young Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There. (The film also tied for the Special Jury Prize with the French film The Secret of the Grain.) Brian De Palma received the runner-up Silver Lion award for his Iraq war drama, Redacted. Pitt received news of his surprise win at Venice while attending the Toronto Film Festival. He told the online Hollywood Today: "The nicest thing is how excited my friends are for me and ... to be amongst the lineage of people that have also been bestowed this honor. It's a really nice honor. I could try to play it down, but it's great fun." -- IMDb
- 11 September, Los Angeles: The five Harry Potter films together have now out-grossed all 22 James Bond films to become the top-grossing franchise worldwide in history, Warner Bros announced Monday. The Potter films have now earned $4.47 billion, topping the combined Bond flicks by $30 million, the studio said. (The six Star Wars movies are in third place with $4.23 billion.) The latest Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix, is continuing to play in several countries abroad, and two more are in the works, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which is due to open in 2008 and the final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, set to open in 2010. -- IMDb
- 11 September, Beverly Hills: Producer-director Gil Cates is becoming as closely associated with the Academy Awards telecast as the Oscar® itself. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced yesterday that Cates will produce his 14th Oscars show on February 24 from the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. In a statement, Cates said, "I love the Oscars, and it's a great treat to be asked back for the 80th presentation." Academy President Sid Ganis said, "He's so talented ... so creative and inventive, and so enormously passionate about the Oscars." Cates's brother, the late Joseph Cates, was a three-time producer of the Tony® Awards. -- IMDb
- 12 September, Beverly Hills: Jon Stewart has been set to host the 80th Academy Awards telecast, producer Gil Cates announced today. This will mark Stewart's second stint as Oscar® host. "Jon was a terrific host for the 78th Awards," said Cates. "He is smart, quick, funny, loves movies and is a great guy. What else could one ask for?"
Stewart has been host and executive producer of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," winner of four consecutive Emmy® Awards for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series, since 1999. The show has also been bestowed with two Peabody Awards. In 2004 Stewart and the writers of "The Daily Show" also authored America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, which was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and was a staple on The New York Times best seller list for 46 consecutive weeks. "I'm thrilled to be asked to host the Academy Awards for the second time because, as they say, the third time's a charm," said Stewart. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 18 September, Paris:
 The award-winning animated film Persepolis, which tells the story of an Iranian girl growing up at the time of the Islamic revolution, has been selected as France's entry in the 2008 Oscars® for best foreign-language film. The film took the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year and has been selected to close the New York Film Festival next month. Nevertheless, it has been denounced by Iranian officials, who demanded that it be yanked from the state-sponsored Bangkok International Film Festival, where it had been selected as the opening film. The decision of the BIFF to agree to the Iranian demands raised questions about the artistic integrity of film festivals that depend on government -- and hence, political -- funding. -- IMDb
- 20 September, Los Angeles: DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg registered shock and anger Wednesday at news reports quoting Viacom chief Philippe Dauman as saying that it "would be completely immaterial" to his company if Steven Spielberg decides to leave DreamWorks when his contract expires next year. Speaking at an investors' conference in New York, Katzenberg, who co-founded DreamWorks with Spielberg and David Geffen, said: "Steven Spielberg is nothing short of a national treasure. ... To suggest that not having Steven Spielberg is completely immaterial seems ill-advised. I think calmer heads need to prevail here." Reporting on Katzenberg's remarks, Daily Variety noted Spielberg's "creative clout" was cited to justify the $1.6-billion price Viacom paid for DreamWorks in 2005 to beat out Universal. But now, the trade paper commented, "Dauman's comments have created additional fences to mend should he endeavor to keep the troika in the fold." -- IMDb
 - 20 September, Beverly Hills:
 A melodrama about a backstage love triangle and a tale of kidnapping and shanghaied sailors will both unfold during the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' "Lost and Found" screenings of Triumph (1917) and The Blood Ship (1927) on Thursday, 11 October, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy's Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. The program will feature live piano accompaniment by Michael Mortilla.
Triumph and The Blood Ship are recently rediscovered silent films that were once thought to be lost. The screenings are a result of the latest preservation efforts by the Academy Film Archive.
Starring Lon Chaney and Dorothy Phillips, Triumph is the story of an actress who is in love with a playwright, but who is also the target of a stage manager blackmailing her for her affections. With the loss of many of Chaney's earliest films, the rediscovery of the first three reels of Triumph sheds welcome light on the actor's early career. Photographs and title cards have been added to complete the story.
With the recent discovery of the film's final reel, The Blood Ship will be screening in its entirety for the first time since its original release 80 years ago. The story takes viewers on a sea adventure filled with intrigue and skullduggery as a man searches for his kidnapped child after serving time in prison for a crime he did not commit. Based on a novel by Norman Springer, The Blood Ship stars Hobart Bosworth, Jacqueline Logan and Richard Arlen.
"Lost and Found" is a periodic screening series designed to showcase archival prints that have been recently rediscovered, or films that have been restored from new materials that improve the presentational quality of previous available versions. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 20 September, Berlin:
 Faith Akin's Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven) will be the German entry in the foreign language film Oscar® category this year. A jury appointed by German Films, an organization that represents the country's movie interests overseas, made the selection.
Heaven premiered earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival where it won the prize for best screenplay and the Ecumenical Jury award. It also screened earlier this month at the Toronto Film Festival. The film is the second in a "Love, Death and the Devil" trilogy planned by writer-director Akin. Gegen die Wand (Head-On), the first installment, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004.
Other recent international entries in this category include Persepolis (France), Miehen työ (A Man's Job) (Finland), Soredemo boku wa yattenai (I Just Didn't Do It) (Japan), Milyang (Secret Sunshine) (Korea), Kings (Ireland) and Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters) (Austria). -- The Envelope
- 26 September, Boston: Boston-based Brigham's Ice Cream Co. has announced the results of a survey it conducted over the summer to create a top-ten list of one-liners in movies. From what it said were thousands of entries, it narrowed the list to these: 1. "Are you talkin' to ME?," Taxi Driver; 2. "Go ahead. "Make my day," Dirty Harry; 3. "Here's lookin' at you, kid," Casablanca; 4. "I'll be back," The Terminator; 5. "I'll have what she's having," When Harry Met Sally; 6. "Life is like a box of chocolates," Forrest Gump; 7. "May the force be with you," Star Wars; 8. "You can't handle the truth!," A Few Good Men; 9. "You had me at hello," Jerry McGuire; 10. "You're gonna need a bigger boat!," Jaws. Conspicuously missing from the list was perhaps the most famous movie line of all: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," from Gone with the Wind, and the historic, "You ain't heard nothin' yet," from The Jazz Singer, the first sound movie. (And some may wonder about the non-inclusion of Garbo's "I vant to be alone" from Grand Hotel and the single word "Rosebud" from Citizen Kane. -- IMDb
- 4 October, New York: The music publishing house Bourne Co. has sued 20th Century Fox, Fox Broadcasting, the Cartoon Network and others over a parody of "When You Wish Upon a Star" from Disney's Pinocchio, which won the Oscar® for Best Original Song of 1940. Bourne claims that the parody, sung for a 2000 episode of Fox's "Family Guy", included anti-Semitic phrases that led to the episode's being yanked from the air. However, according to the lawsuit, more than 1 million copies of the show have been sold in various formats. -- IMDb
- 9 October, Beverly Hills:
 Curt Behlmer, a Sound Branch governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has accepted the invitation to join the Academy's Science and Technology Council.
Behlmer, the chief operating officer of Technicolor Digital Cinema and executive vice president of theatrical services, was awarded the Academy's John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation in 2002 for his outstanding service and dedication in upholding the high standards of the organization. Behlmer was elected to the Academy's Board of Governors in July.
The 2007-2008 Council is co-chaired by Academy governor Bill Taylor and Ray Feeney. Established in 2003 by the Academy's Board of Governors, the Science and Technology Council provides a forum for the exchange of information, promotes cooperation among diverse technological interests within the industry, sponsors publications, fosters educational activities and preserves the history of science and technology of motion pictures. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 9 October, Beverly Hills: The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has approved rule changes for the 81st Academy Awards that eliminate the multi-city theatrical rollout requirements for feature and short documentaries. These and other changes were recommended to the Board by the Documentary Branch Executive Committee, chaired by Michael Apted.
To qualify for the 81st Awards, documentary features must run for a minimum of seven days in both Los Angeles County and the Borough of Manhattan, and documentary short subjects must run for a minimum of seven days in either Los Angeles County or the Borough of Manhattan. The seven-day runs must include at least two screenings per day and those screenings must begin between noon and 10 p.m. The picture must be exhibited for paid admission and the film must be advertised and listed during its run in local newspapers and/or magazines.
For the Oscar® competition currently in progress (the 80th Awards), documentary features were required to be screened in theaters for a minimum of 14 exhibitions in 10 states, and documentary short subjects for single exhibitions in at least four cities. Those rollouts were in addition to seven-day qualifying runs in either Los Angeles County or the Borough of Manhattan.
Another change in the documentary rules will result in financial savings for certain contenders. Those whose films reach the semifinal round of voting will no longer be required to provide two film prints to the Academy for use if they are subsequently selected as nominees. The 81st Awards rules will allow the two copies to be submitted either on film or in digital format. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 11 October, Beverly Hills: The Academy today announced that the field of Documentary Short Subject entries for the 80th Academy Awards® has narrowed to eight films, from which three to five will earn Oscar® nominations.
Voters from the Academy's Documentary Branch viewed this year's 23 eligible contenders and submitted their ballots to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The eight films are listed in alphabetical order: Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy, Cynthia Wade's Freeheld, If It Happens, La Corona (The Crown), Jon Blair's Ochberg's Orphans, Portraits of a Lady, Salim Baba and James Longley's Sari's Mother.
The 80th Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, 22 January, 2008, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 12 October, Stockholm: Two significant verdicts on Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth have been delivered within 24 hours of one another. On Wednesday, a British judge ruled that the documentary on global warming, although "broadly accurate," contained errors and exaggerations that violated British laws intended to bar the promotion of political views in schools. On Thursday, Gore was announced as the co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, largely for his efforts to focus the world's attention on global warming with the film. In a statement today (Friday), Gore said, "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level." -- IMDb
 - 15 October, Mumbai:
 India's Oscar® selectors accused Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of "disparaging" comments on Monday after it questioned the country's official award entry this year. The Oscar authorities have asked India to reconfirm by Wednesday its official entry in the best foreign film category after they raised doubts in a letter about the fairness in the selection.
"It was a little disparaging the way things were put in that letter," Vinod Pande, chairman of the India's Oscar selection committee, told Reuters on Monday.
Eklavya: The Royal Guard, a film about palace intrigues and starring one of Bollywood's biggest stars Amitabh Bachchan, was selected from among five films. It was a commercial flop and received mediocre reviews. That led Bhavna Talwar, director of the critically-acclaimed Dharm (Religion), which came a close second, to take the selectors to court. She said her film, which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, lost out because some members of the jury were known to the director and producer of Eklavya.
A.M.P.A.S. then wrote to the Indian selection committee expressing surprise that courts were adjudicating decisions like nominating a film. It also said the Film Federation of India, which appointed the selection committee that nominates India's official entry to the Oscars, should have better judging standards.
"But I have told them we have strong democratic values and that an aggrieved person had every right to seek justice in court," said Pande.
Dharm is the story of a staunch Hindu priest who adopts an abandoned child but later discovers the baby had Muslim parents. Pande said they would meet this week to make a decision on whether Eklavya will remain India's official entry.
India has never won the Oscar for best foreign film despite having the world's biggest cinema industry in terms of ticket sales. -- Reuters
- 16 October, New York:
 Sotheby's auction house said Monday that it has been authorized to auction one of the two Oscars® won for Orson Welles's 1941 film Citizen Kane. The Oscar, which Welles won for co-writing the screenplay with Herman J. Mankieicz, is due to go on the auction block on December 11. It is presently owned by the Dax Foundation, which describes itself as a private philanthropic foundation. Oscar statuettes are rarely sold. Since 1950 winners have had to sign agreements with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards them, granting the academy the right of first refusal to buy the statuette back for $1.00. On Monday Sotheby's estimated that the statue could be worth between $800,000 and $1.2 million. -- IMDbUse this link to view a 2003 article from the New York Times about previous attempts to sell Welles' statuette.
- 17 October, Beverly Hills: A record 63 countries, including new entrants Azerbaijan and Ireland, have submitted films for consideration in the Foreign Language Film category for the 80th Academy Awards®, Academy President Sid Ganis announced today.
Nominations for the 80th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, 22 January, 2008, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2007 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2008, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live by the ABC Television Network. -- A.M.P.A.S.
Use this link to view the full list of foreign language films under consideration.
- 18 October, Los Angeles: Director Francis Ford Coppola has unaccountably castigated three of Hollywood's top stars, whom he has directed in the past, accusing Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson of "living off the fat of the land" and doing little that is challenging or ambitious. In an interview with GQ magazine, Coppola noted that "Pacino is very rich, maybe because he never spends any money. ... [De Niro] created an empire and is wealthy and powerful. ... [Nicholson] is always wired in with the big guys and the big bosses of the studios." Coppola added, "You know, even in those days after The Godfather, I didn't feel that those actors were ready to say, 'Let's do something else really ambitious." Commenting on Coppola's remarks, the New York Daily News's "Rush and Molloy" column observed, "Some might ask Coppola how he has challenged himself lately. He admits he has been focused on his vineyard and on his resorts in Belize and Guatemala." And L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke remarked, "Is there anything more hypocritical than a judgmental Francis Ford Coppola?" -- IMDb
- 18 October, London:
 The 51st annual Times BFI London Film Festival got underway Wednesday night with the screening of David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises at the 1,900-seat Odeon Leicester Square theater, Europe's largest. The film, set in London, concerns a young midwife played by Naomi Watts, who becomes involved with a Russian mafia family when she accidentally discovers incriminating evidence against them. Wednesday night's audience gave the film a warm reception, applauding after one especially tense sequence. However, the film, which reportedly cost $50 million to make, flopped at the U.S. box office last month. -- IMDb
- 22 October, Rome: Youth Without Youth, which marks Francis Ford Coppola's return to filmmaking after 10 years, received mixed critical reaction at the Rome Film Festival following its screening on Saturday. To those critics who urged Coppola to stick with doing what he does best, the director said at a news conference, "I think we should be tolerant of artists who want to break new ground, and not require them to make gangster films all their lives." Coppola also told reporters that his recent remarks about Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson were quoted out of context. (GQ magazine had published excerpts from an interview in which Coppola had reportedly said in effect that the three actors had become content to rake in riches and rest on their laurels.) "I have nothing but respect and admiration for them," he said at the Rome news conference. "These are the three greatest actors in the world today and they are my friends. So I have nothing but affection for them." -- IMDb
- 25 October, Beverly Hills: The Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has awarded $450,000 to 20 U.S. film festivals for the 2008 calendar year, Festival Grants Committee Chair Gale Anne Hurd announced today.
Two festivals, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the Virginia Film Festival, will each receive a total of $75,000 over a three-year period to help develop long-term projects. The Los Angeles Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival will each receive $50,000 this year as part of multi-year grants awarded in 2006 and 2007, respectively.
Other organizations receiving Academy grants this year include the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, Virginia Film Festival, Ashland Independent Film Festival, Chicago Latino Film Festival, Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital, Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, St. Louis International Film Festival, Rochester/High Falls International Film Festival, African Diaspora Film Festival, Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, Reel Affirmations, Binational Independent Film Festival, and the Anchorage International Film Festival.
Since its establishment in 1999, the Academy's Festival Grants Program has distributed 143 grants totaling more than $2.85 million in funding. For more information on the program, visit the Academy's festival grant web page. -- A.M.P.A.S.
 - 28 October, London:
 And the winners are ... Poppy, Anna, Oliver and Megan. Actress Helen Mirren has been garlanded with awards for her portrayal of Britain's Queen Elizabeth in the film The Queen and now her corgi co-stars have won two awards at the Fidos -- www.thefidos.com.
At the world's first international awards for canine film stars, given out at a ceremony at the London Film Festival on Sunday, the four corgis were named as the Best Historical Hounds as well as picking up a Best in the World prize. "I know one should avoid acting with animals and children, but these little chaps were a pleasure to work with and deserve all the plaudits for their fine performances," Mirren, who is currently filming in the United States, said in a statement.
The corgis are owned by retired caterer Liz Smith -- dubbed Corgi Liz on the film set of The Queen -- who lives near Ipswich in east England. Their success at the Fidos takes to 59 the tally of Oscars®, Baftas and other major awards received by The Queen. The corgi breed completed an impressive hat-trick at the Fidos when American Travis -- a Welsh cardigan corgi -- was named Best Comedy Canine for Year of the Dog.
The awards were presented by Oscar-nominated Chariots of Fire director Hugh Hudson, James Bond co-star Maryam D'Abo, journalist Carol Thatcher, actor Christopher Biggins and designer Lulu Guinness. The Fidos are the brainchild of journalist Toby Rose, who awards the Palme Dog at the Cannes Film festival to the year's finest canine performance on screen. "Dogs have truly come in from the cold for this first event of its kind in what has been a hotly contested contest," said Rose.
Queen Elizabeth has owned more than 30 corgis during her 55-year reign. -- Reuters
- 29 October, Tokyo:
 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may have ruled that Eran Kolirin's Bikur Ha-Tizmoret (The Band's Visit) is ineligible for Oscar® consideration since more than half its dialogue is in English, but that didn't prevent the film from winning the top Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix at the 29th Tokyo Film Festival on Sunday. Producers of the film, about a group of Egyptian police stranded in Israel, and produced by the Israeli studio July August Productions, will also receive a $50,000 cash award. The festival also awarded Singapore Dreaming, a film about how a family is affected when the patriarch wins the national lottery, its Asian-Middle Eastern film award. Meanwhile, the Jason Reitman comedy Juno won the top prize at the Rome Film Festival on Saturday. -- IMDb
 - 7 November, Beverly Hills: French architect Christian de Portzamparc has been named to design the world's largest and most ambitious museum dedicated to the history of film and the Oscars®, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Thursday. Sid Ganis, the president of the group ... says he hopes to see ground broken on the eight-acre (3.24-hectare) site in the heart of Hollywood in 2009 and have the museum completed by 2012.
But there are a few problems readily admitted by Ganis and de Portzamparc: the museum still has to be designed and a budget still has to be arranged. Ganis called the Thursday announcement a major step forward to give Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, its first major film museum. The museum will face north toward the city's iconic HOLLYWOOD sign.
Ganis said that it was important for the Academy "to select a firm with a track record of true collaboration with clients and fiscal responsibility, as well as impressive design work."
De Portzamparc, who in 1994 was awarded architecture's highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, designed the Cité de la Musique and Cafe Beaubourg, both in Paris, and the French Embassy in Berlin. In the United States, he has been lauded for his design of the LVMH Tower (Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton headquarters) in New York City.
"I have a true passion for cinema and often link this art to architecture: the art of motion, art of light, editing, sequencing of the time and the life, celebration of the living," said de Portzamparc. "The Academy Museum will play a unique role in transporting visitors into the universe of movies," he said.
Ganis sad he saw the museum becoming a major tourist attraction in Los Angeles, which has seen some notable buildings built in recent decades, including the Getty Center and Disney Hall to house the Los Angeles Philharmonic. -- Arthur Spiegelman, Reuters
- 8 November, Beverly Hills: Twelve features have been submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category for the 80TH Academy Awards®. The 12 submitted features are: Alvin and the Chipmunks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, Bee Movie, Beowulf, Meet the Robinsons, Persepolis, Ratatouille, Shrek the Third, The Simpsons Movie, Surf's Up, Tekkonkinkreet and TMNT.
Alvin and the Chipmunks, Beowulf and Persepolis have not yet had their required Los Angeles qualifying run. The submitted features must fulfill the general release requirements and meet all of the category's other qualifying rules before they can advance in the voting process. Under the rules for this category, a maximum of 3 films can be nominated in a year in which the field of eligible entries numbers at least 8 but fewer than 16.
Films submitted in the Animated Feature Film category also may qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including Best Picture, provided they meet the requirements for those categories.
The 80TH Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, 22 January, 2008, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 15 November, Los Angeles:
 Results of voting by the members of the International Documentary Association on the top 25 documentaries of all time have been announced announced in celebration of the IDA's 25TH anniversary. Heading the list -- which was selected from over 700 titles -- was Steve James's Hoop Dreams (1994), followed by Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line (1988), Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, Jeffrey Blitz's Spellbound (2002), and Barbara Kopple's Harlan County U.S.A. (1976). To view the rest of the best, visit the IDA web site.
- 19 November, Beverly Hills: A.M.P.A.S. announced today that 15 films in the Documentary Feature category will advance in the voting process for the 80TH Academy Awards®. Seventy pictures had originally qualified in the category. The 15 films are listed below in alphabetical order:
Autism: The Musical: Tricia Regan's film follows eleven autistic children as they work together to create and perform a live musical production.
Body of War: Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's film tells the story of an injured American veteran returning home from the war in Iraq; it is set against the backdrop of a critical indictment of the government's handling of the U.S.-led invasion.
For the Bible Tells Me So: Daniel G. Karlake explores the intersection between religion and homosexuality in the U.S. and how the religious right has used its interpretation of the Bible to stigmatize the gay community.
Lake of Fire: Filmmaker Tony Kaye presents a graphic documentary on both sides of the abortion debate.
Nanking: Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's film tells the story of the 1937 invasion of Nanking, China, by the Japanese army during which over 200,000 civilians were killed.
No End in Sight: Charles Ferguson presents a comprehensive look at the Bush Administration's conduct of the Iraq war and its occupation of the country.
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience: Director Richard E. Robbins presents a film about troops' experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan based on writings by soldiers.
Please Vote for Me: Director Weijun Chen chronicles an election in a Chinese elementary school to illustrate 'Democracy in Action' in the contemporary People's Republic.
The Price of Sugar: Narrated by Paul Newman, Bill Haney's film examines how tourists flock to pristine beaches in the Domincan Republic, with little knowledge that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are under armed guard on plantations harvesting sugar cane, most of which ends up in US kitchens.
A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman: Peter Raymont's film is an exploration of exile, memory, longing and democracy through the words and memories of playwright/author/activist Ariel Dorfman.
The Rape of Europa: Adapted from the book by Lynn Nicholas, writer-directors Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham present a film that chronicles the destruction and looting of European art by the Nazis during World War II. Joan Allen narrates.
Sicko: Michael Moore's documentary take a look at health care in the United States as provided by profit-oriented health maintenance organizations (HMOs) compared to free, universal care in Canada, the UK, and France.
Taxi to the Dark Side: Alex Gibney takes an in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.
War/Dance: This film, by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix, tells the story of three children living in a displacement camp in northern Uganda who compete in their country's national music and dance festival.
White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Filmmaker Steven Okazaki looks at the reality of nuclear warfare with first-hand accounts from those who survived and whose lives were forever changed by the atomic bomb.
The Documentary Branch screening committee viewed all the eligible documentaries for the preliminary round of votings. Documentary Branch members will now select the five nominees from among the 15 titles on the shortlist. The 80TH Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, 22 January, 2008, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. -- A.M.P.A.S.
 - 20 November, Beverly Hills:
 Le Cochon danseur (The Dancing Pig), J. Stuart Blackton's The Haunted Hotel and Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson's An Awful Skate; or, the Hobo on Rollers will be among over a dozen primitive short films to screen at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' presentation of A Century Ago: The Films of 1907, on Monday, December 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. The program will repeat on Thursday, December 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, California.
The program will present a partial survey of turn-of-the-20th-century international filmmaking with trick films, actualities, primitive dramas and gag films. In 1907 the continuing expansion of local storefront nickelodeons attracted new entrepreneurs to the industry, and producers began to deliver more films with higher production values.
A Century Ago will feature such popular box office hits as The Eclipse, from Méliès's Star Films; The Little Girl Who Did Not Believe in Santa Claus, from Edison; the first film version of Ben Hur, from the Kalem Company; a hand-tinted print of The Red Spectre, from the Pathé Studios in France; and fragments of The Bandit King and The Girl from Montana, both shot in the wilds of Colorado by the Selig company.
Both venues will feature live musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla. Most prints are in 35mm and are drawn from the collections of the Academy Film Archive, the Library of Congress, George Eastman House, the Museum of Modern Art, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 30 November, New York: For the latest on the studios' campaigns for Oscar® recognition for 2007, read Steven Zeitchik's article from The Hollywood Reporter on Yahoo.
- 6 December, New York: The National Board of Review kicks off the awards season with its picks for the Best of 2007 -- Best Film: No Country for Old Men; Top Ten Films (in alphabetical order): The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bucket List, Into the Wild, Juno, The Kite Runner, Lars and the Real Girl, Michael Clayton and Sweeney Todd; Best Foreign Film: Le Scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly); Top Five Foreign Films (in alphabetical order): 4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Bikur Ha-Tizmoret (The Band's Visit), The Counterfeiters, La Môme (La Vie en rose) and Sie, jie (Lust, Caution); Best Documentary: Body of War; Top Five Documentaries (in alphabetical order): Darfur Now, In the Shadow of the Moon, Nanking, Taxi to the Darkside and Toots; Top Independent Films (in alphabetical order): Away from Her, Great World of Sound, Honeydrippers, In the Valley of Elah, A Mighty Heart, The Namesake, Once, The Savages, Starting Out in the Evening and Waitress; Best Actor: George Clooney, Michael Clayton; Best Actress: Julie Christie, Away from Her; Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone; Best Ensemble Cast: No Country for Old Men; Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild; Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Ellen Page, Juno; Best Director: Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd; Best Directorial Debut: Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone; Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men; Best Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, Juno, and Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl; Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille; Career Achievement Award: Michael Douglas; William K. Everson Award for Film History: Roger Osborne; Career Achievement Award in Cinematography: Roger Deakins; The Bvlgari Award for NBR Freedom of Expression: The Great Debaters and Persepolis. -- National Board of Review
- Awards Tracker - Here's where to keep track of who picked what or whom as the best of 2007...
| Organization | Best Picture | Best Director | Best Actor | Best Actress | Supporting Actor | Supporting Actress | Foreign Film |
| Nat'l Board of Review | No Country for Old Men | Tim Burton | George Clooney | Julie Christie | Casey Affleck | Amy Ryan | Le Scaphandre et le papillon |
| | LA Film Critics | There Will Be Blood | Paul Thomas Anderson | Daniel Day-Lewis | Marion Cotillard | Vlad Ivanov | Amy Ryan | 4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile |
| | Washington DC Film Critics | No Country for Old Men | Joel & Ethan Coen | George Clooney | Julie Christie | Javier Bardem | Amy Ryan | Le Scaphandre et le papillon |
| | Boston Film Critics | No Country for Old Men | Julian Schnabel | Frank Langella | Marion Cotillard | Javier Bardem | Amy Ryan | Le Scaphandre et le papillon |
| | Toronto Film Critics | No Country for Old Men | Joel & Ethan Coen | Viggo Mortensen | Julie Christie & Ellen Page | --- | --- | --- |
| | St. Louis Gateway Film Critics | No Country for Old Men | Joel & Ethan Coen | Daniel Day-Lewis | Ellen Page | Casey Affleck | Amy Ryan | Le Scaphandre et le papillon |
| | Florida Film Critics Circle | No Country for Old Men | Joel & Ethan Coen | Daniel Day-Lewis | Ellen Page | Javier Bardem | Amy Ryan | Le Scaphandre et le papillon |
| | Utah Film Critics Ass'n | No Country for Old Men | Joel & Ethan Coen | Daniel Day-Lewis | Ellen Page | Javier Bardem | Amy Ryan | Gwoemul (The Host) |
- 11 December, New York: Orson Welles's personal working script of Citizen Kane sold for almost $100,000 Tuesday, but his Oscar® for the 1941 film was withdrawn after bidding failed to rise above the seller's minimum price. Sotheby's auction house said it immediately received inquiries about the Oscar and may consider selling it privately. The Academy Award for best screenplay had been estimated to fetch $800,000 to $1.2 million.
The Oscar for Citizen Kane, considered one of the greatest movies of all time, was believed to have been lost by Welles himself. It resurfaced in 1994 and was eventually acquired by the Dax Foundation, a Los Angeles-based charity. Proceeds from Tuesday's sale had been earmarked for the organization.
Welles' 156-page script, the last revised draft before the final shooting script, was sold for $97,000 to an anonymous buyer bidding on the telephone. Its pre-sale estimate was $80,000 to $120,000. The 1940 mimeographed manuscript is stamped "second revised final," and "Mr. Welles" is written on it in large lettering and circled in pink crayon. It contains numerous annotations, revisions and deletions.
Citizen Kane, the story of a power-hungry publishing magnate played by Welles, is widely believed to be based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had said it didn't plan to block the sale. -- Associated Press
- 12 December, Beverly Hills:
 Legendary production designer Robert Boyle has been voted an Honorary Academy Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The award, an Oscar® statuette, will be given to Boyle at the 80th Academy Awards® presentation on 24 February, 2008, "in recognition of one of cinema's great careers in art direction."
Boyle has earned four Academy Award nominations in the art direction category for his work on North by Northwest (1959), Gaily, Gaily (1969), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and The Shootist (1976).
"Robert Boyle's career is truly worthy of this honor," said Academy President Sid Ganis. "From his multiple collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock to his top-quality work on so many other films, this is a master film artist and I couldn't be happier that an Oscar statuette will be presented to him." -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 12 December, Beverly Hills: Fifty-nine songs from eligible feature-length motion pictures are being considered in the Original Song category for the 80th Academy Awards®, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today. On Tuesday, 15 January, the Academy will screen clips featuring each song, in random order, for voting members of the Music Branch in both Beverly Hills and New York City. Following the screenings, members will vote to determine which three, four or five songs become nominees in the category.
For a listing of the songs under consideration, visit the Academy's web site.
To be eligible, a song must consist of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the film. A clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition of both lyric and melody must be used in the body of the film or as the first music cue in the end credits. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 26 December, Beverly Hills: Nomination ballots for the 80th Academy Awards® were mailed today to the 5,829 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Completed ballots must be returned to PricewaterhouseCoopers by 5 p.m. on Saturday, 12 January 2008. Ballots received after the deadline will not be counted.
Nomination and final award ballots are tabulated by PricewaterhouseCoopers to ensure that all aspects of the balloting process are conducted with fairness and accuracy. Prior to mailing, the PricewaterhouseCoopers staff verifies that there are no duplicate ballots and that none are missing. In addition to being counted and sorted, the ballots are numbered to guarantee that each is addressed to the appropriate Academy voter. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 27 December, Washington, DC:
 From The Naked City to In a Lonely Place and Oklahoma! the Library of Congress is adding 25 more classic American films to its national registry. There are 12 Angry Men to be heard, The Strong Man to be viewed and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to be dealt with.
"Even as Americans fill the movie theaters to see the latest releases, few are aware that up to half the films produced in this country before 1950 - and as much as 90 percent of those made before 1920 - are lost forever," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in announcing the selections. "The National Film Registry seeks not only to honor these films, but to ensure that they are preserved for future generations to enjoy," he said in a statement.
The 25 chosen this year bring the registry total to 475. Both recent and early films are eligible for inclusion, and hundreds are nominated by the public each year. The films are chosen because they are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant. Among those selected this year:
· The Naked City (1948), filmed on actual locations in New York; this movie won Oscars® for best photography and editing. It was a gritty crime film combining slices of several stories.
· Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), an intelligent sci-fi film in which the climactic scene is set at Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming.
· In a Lonely Place (1950), a scathing Hollywood satire with Humphrey Bogart playing a screenwriter, brilliant at his craft yet prone to living with his fists.
· Oklahoma! (1955), brought the fun and famous musical to the screen.
· Back to the Future (1985) explored the possibilities of special effects when a man stranded in 1955 by a time machine must not only find a way home, but also teach his father how to become a man, repair the space/time continuum and save his family from being erased from existence. All while fighting off the advances of his then-teenage mother.
· 12 Angry Men (1957), a classic filmed in a spare, claustrophobic style - largely set in one jury room - relating a single juror's refusal to conform to peer pressure in a murder trial.
· The Strong Man (1926) features Harry Langdon, widely considered one of the great silent comedians, as a meek man in love with a blind woman.
· The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), director John Ford's last great Western. The film shows that the conquest of the West meant the triumph of civilization, embodied in Jimmy Stewart, over wild innocence - John Wayne - and evil - Lee Marvin.
Also being added to the registry: Bullitt (1968), Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), Dances With Wolves (1990), Days of Heaven (1978), Glimpse of the Garden (1957), Grand Hotel (1932), The House I Live In (1945), Mighty Like a Moose (1926), Now, Voyager (1942), Our Day (1938), Peege (1972), The Sex Life of the Polyp (1928), Three Little Pigs (1933), Tol'able David (1921), Tom, Tom the Piper's Son (1969-71), The Women (1939), and Wuthering Heights (1939).
-- Randolph E. Schmid, AP
- 27 December, Beverly Hills: Three hundred six feature films are eligible for the Academy Award® for Best Picture of 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today. To be eligible for 80th Academy Awards consideration, feature films have until midnight, 31 December, to open in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County and begin a minimum run of seven consecutive days.
Under Academy rules, a feature-length motion picture must have a running time of more than 40 minutes and must have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or in a qualifying digital format. Feature films that receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release are not eligible for Academy Awards in any category. -- A.M.P.A.S.
- 31 December, Beverly Hills: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is attempting to prevent the sale of three Oscars® that were awarded to Mary Pickford and her husband Charles "Buddy" Rogers, the Associated Press reported Sunday. Rogers's second wife Beverly had indicated that she intends to sell the statuettes, but the Academy claims that under its rules it has the right to buy them back for $10 each. A judge on Friday ordered mediation of the lawsuit. In 2004 another judge ruled that the academy had no right to the Oscar that Orson Welles received for Citizen Kane, thereby allowing his daughter to proceed with a sale of the statuette. Pickford won a best actress Oscar in 1930 for Coquette and an honorary Oscar in 1976. Rogers received an Oscar for humanitarian work in 1986. -- IMDb
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14 January, Athens -- Vassilis Fotopoulos
9 May, Los Angeles, CA -- John M. Eargle - natural causes
