Academy Awards Week: Best Actress (and the runner-up is Meryl)

This year marks Meryl Streep's 14th nominations in the Best Actress category, and 17th overall nomination.  The woman is widely regarded as the best living actress, and by some the best actress of all time.  Throughout the years this woman has given some amazing performances.  Her career as a perennial Oscar nominee began in 1978, with her nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the film The Deer Hunter.  One year later she earned her second nomination and her first win in the Supporting Actress category for her role in the 1979 film Kramer vs. Kramer.  Two years later in 1981 she received her first nomination in the Best Actress category for The French Lieutenant's Woman.  In 1982 she was honored with her second...

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Academy Awards Week: Best Original Score-Time for a Change Again!

Picking my favorite technical category is a Sophie's Choice for me. I love the imagery captured by the cinematography, the way the editing cuts to capture things at the right moment or helps narrate the focus of the story, and then there is always the visual effects and how they can create a brand new world.  There is one more category I left out, and it may be my favorite, but it depends on the day, and that is the original score.Throughout the years the music or score for a film tends to be the glue to that holds the film together, or launches memories of film experience.  There are many films scores that are infamous, and have not only left an indelible mark on my film experience, but even fans who are not fans of these films can recognize the scores from certain films.  Here...

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Academy Awards Week: Best Visual Effects-from Star Wars to Present

Today there is one thing that bring audiences to the movies more than famous actors, and that is the visual effects.  From the creation of new lands like in Avatar to giant robots trying to save the world in the Transformers series, movie goers are drawn into films because of amazing visual effects.A long time ago in a galaxy far far away this category had a different name at the Academy Awards.  From 1939 to 1962 the award was called Best Special Effects and was shared with the Sound Effects nominations.  This may explain why the famous burning scene did not clinch this award for Gone with the Wind in 1939, but I still am baffled as to how this film lost this award.  I digress.  In 1963 the award was called Best Special...

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Academy Awards Week: Best Cinematography

One of my favorite parts of a film is the cinematography.  Many people do not know what cinematography is, or how it is one of the most essential parts to a film.  Cinematography is the creation of film images.  The cinematographer will of use a movie camera with film or digital imagery to capture what they want to show the audience.The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) define cinematography as "a creative and interpretive process that culminates in the authorship of an original work of art rather than the simple recording of a physical event. Cinematography is not a subcategory of photography. Rather, photography is but one craft that the cinematographer uses in addition to other physical, organizational, managerial,...

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Academy Awards Week: Best Adapted Screenplay

Welcome to Academy Award week!  I will be taking an in depth look at some of the categories that make the Academy Awards tick.  The first category is Best Adapted Screenplay. The Adapted Screenplay prize is one of the most coveted awards of the night.  This award honors films who have adapted source material from books, plays, television shows, short plays, and even other films. If an original film has a sequel good enough to make it in the screenplay category (I do not think it has ever happened) they would have to be nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category because the film would be based on the first film.Throughout the years this award has become incredibly competitive as more and more films seem to be...

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The Writer's Guild and Scripter Awards pick The Descendants

This weekend was a big weekend for the writing contingency of both film and television.  The Scripter Awards were held this past Saturday night.  The Scripter Awards were established by USC in 1988in order  to honor the preservation of the written word on film.  The Scripter's honor screenplays that have been adapted from pre-existing works.  The nominees this year were:A Dangerous MethodThe DescendantsJane EyreMoneyballTinker Tailor Soldier SpyThe winner of this award was Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash for writing The Descendants.The Writer's Guild of America picked their winners in both the film and television categories.  Several films were not eligible because their authors were not a members of the union, like The Artist, which has a chance of spoiling...

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Academy Awards Best Picture Revisited: Erin Brockovich (2000)

Well just a few short days after I wrote about a Best Picture nominee 2001, it's time to write about theyear 2000 the week before the Academy Awards take place. While I did not go as far back as I wanted, it was fun to re-visit the 2000s and the films that were nominated for Best Picture, and the films that should have been nominated for the prize, or won. There were years when I would say the Academy did pretty well like 2007, 2009, 2010.  Ironically two of those years there were more than 5 nominees so it makes sense that most of the quality films were included.  There were also years the Academy just had brain farts and left off brilliant films like in 2008 when they nominated the boring film The Reader over The Dark Knight, or...

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