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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Happy Endings is More Than Friends for a New Generation

So no one told you life was gonna...wait no different show.  Wait, no that was Friends.  Friends is of course the popular NBC sitcom from 1994-2004 that centered around a group of friends who frequent a coffee shop.  The gang consisted of 6 different people, 3 men 3 women. Throughout the years after Friends went off the air there have been several films that used this concept to make several different pilots.  There have only been two successful shows that have felt similar to Friends in prior to the show leaving the airwaves, and they are How I Met Your Mother, and Happy Endings.ABC started airing Happy Endings on April 13th 2011.   While the show got off to a slow start, ABC wisely placed Happy Endings behind Modern...

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Academy Awards Best Picture Revisited: Moulin Rouge (2001)

In honor of Valentine's Day I decided to hold off on re-visiting the 2001 Best Picture Oscar discussion until today.  Today is the day people set aside to celebrate their love for others, why we need a specific day is beyond me, but that's my cynic speaking.  Moulin Rouge was one of my favorite films of the 2000s.The movie speaks to the definition of love and I am honored to talk about one of the best modem love stories on this day.Moulin Rouge was the brainchild of famed Australian director/writer Baz Lurhmann.  Luhrmann career as a director started in 1992 with the film Strictly Ballroom, which is a film about a ballroom dancer who risks everything changing partners to do a new unique routine.  In 1996 Lurhmann...

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Grammy Awards: Adele Sweeps while Most of the Performances Made Me Sleep

The Grammy Awards focus more on the performances than the actual awards presented.  I will however cover the big winners of the night, and those were Adele and The Foo Fighters.  Adele is the second female performing artist to win 6 Grammy Awards, the other artist was Beyonce.  Adele won the three top prizes Album, Song and Record of the Year; she also won Pop Vocal Performance, Pop Vocal Album, and Short Form Video.  The Foo Fighters won five Grammy Awards all in the rock genre category.  Bon Iver took home the other major award Best New Artist.Best Performances of the NightBeach Boys TributeMaroon 5 and Foster the People captured the the essence of the Beach Boys.  I was pleased with both of their renditions...

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Grammy Predictions: Adele is Queen of the Night!

Tonight Adele could make history being one of the few artists to sweep the general field categories, but I think she is up to the challenge and will win a lot of awards tonight! Here is an analysis of the four major categories, and my predictions in the other categories.Album of the yearAdele-21Bruno Mars-Doo Wops and HooligansFoo Fighters-Wasting LightLady Gaga-Born This WayRihanna-LoudBruno and Rihanna are out, this is not their category to win, and I think the Grammy's would be eternally mocked is Rihanna beat Adele or Lady Gaga.  This is Gaga's third nomination in 3 years, a great accomplishment, and she could steal this prize away, but I can't think this album will help her, it was so divisive.  Then there is the pop factor.  4 of the five of these albums are all pop albums...

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