Borrowing a page from Siskel and Ebert back in the good ol' days, Movie Dearest's very own Men on Film — Chris Carpenter, Neil Cohen and yours truly — are presenting our own version of "If We Picked the Oscars"! These aren't predictions (we'll get to those next week), but what movies, actors, directors, et al that we would vote for if we were members of the Academy.So without further ado, the envelope please ...The nominees for Best Picture are: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the ...

Imagine spending three nights in the presence of an attractive, up-and-coming star of stage and screen. I was fortunate this past week to do so … albeit only one of them literally and none of them privately. The rising star in question is Brian Geraghty. The 25-year old plays Specialist Owen Eldridge in the acclaimed Best Picture-hopeful The Hurt Locker, which I finally had the chance to watch.Perhaps inevitably when it comes to catching such a critically hyped film late in the game, I was a bit under-whelmed by The Hurt Locker. While Kathryn Bigelow’s taut direction ...

No, I'm not referring to Precious star Gabourey Sidibe or the title characters in Disney's The Princess and the Frog. I'm talking about the ten films nominated this year for Best Live Action and Animated Short Film Academy Awards. I was surprised to discover that the majority of them traffic in borderline-horrific subject matter including child slavery, the deadly effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a gunman on a rampage, and murder and mayhem in general. Even the beloved, G-rated Wallace and Gromit face off against a serial killer!Still, all of them are worth seeing despite — and some ...

It's Oscar trivia time, 2009 edition!:- If either Best Picture front-runners Avatar or The Hurt Locker win, they would either be the highest or lowest grossing winners, respectively, in Academy Award history.- The last time that there were 10 nominees for Best Picture was 1944, when the winner was a little film called Casablanca.- Two Best Picture nominees — An Education and The Hurt Locker — were directed by women (Lone Scherfig and Kathryn Bigelow, respectively).- Bigelow is only the fourth woman to be nominated for Best Director, joining Lina Wertmüller (Seven Beauties), Jane Campion (The Piano) and Sofia ...

Four years ago, the biopic Capote was belle of the awards-season ball. This no doubt pleased the film's subject, the late writer and sometime-actor Truman Capote, to no end. While Truman loved his fame, he loved other people's scandals and infamy even more.Phillip Seymour Hoffman racked up a number of statuettes, including the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor, for his spot-on impersonation of Capote. Even if Hoffman was notably taller than the diminutive author was, he got Truman's unique voice, cadence and mannerisms down pat. Capote also received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay ...

There is absolutely no reason The Wolfman should be any good – it’s been delayed since 2008, had massive reshoots, a new score, and had more bad word of mouth in development than, well, Titanic (well, that didn’t turn out so badly). Amazingly enough, though, The Wolfman is kooky, bloody, gothic fun that looks gorgeous.Benecio Del Toro is an unusual choice to step into Lon Chaney Jr.’s wolf suit as Lawrence Talbot, but he gives the role surprising gravity. Anthony Hopkins plays Sir John Talbot, Lawrence’s withholding father, with his patented highbrow hamminess, and Emily Blunt plays Gwen ...

Happy Valentine's Day from Movie Dearest! ...

This post is part of The LAMB Devours the Oscars, a 33-part series dissecting the 82nd Annual Academy Awards hosted by the Large Association of Movie Blogs.Unlike last year, the Academy's music branch managed to deem five songs (from four films) worthy of nomination for Original Song in the 2009 Oscar race. This in itself is notable considering the rules for this category were once again tinkered with earlier this year, creating new restrictions that could have resulted in at little as two nominees or even (gulp) no nominations at all.Thankfully, that didn't happen, ...

Drag queens have been imitating Bette Davis and Joan Crawford from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? since the campy masterpiece was released in 1962. Writer/director William Clift had a different idea, and the results are startling. Baby Jane? is a faithful remake of the original, with an almost all-male cast. It’s shot in black and white. Rather than go for the easy laughs, it plays things fairly straight, pardon the term.Matthew Martin is popular in San Francisco, especially when he plays Bette onstage in the hilarious Hush Up, Sweet Charlotte! or when he imitates All About ...

When it comes to picking your "must see" movie of 2010, Movie Dearest readers proved their mad about the hatter:Tim Burton's sure-to-be-trippy take on the Lewis Carroll classic Alice in Wonderland (starring his muse, Johnny Depp, as the hatter in question) came out on top in the latest MD Poll. In doing so, it soundly defeated another blockbuster-to-be based on a popular British book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 1, which placed second.  The catch-all "other" rounded out the top 3.See the comments section below for the complete stats, and stay tuned for our epic Oscar polls, ...

It's that time of year again! Time for you to pick what movies and performances you would vote for if you were a member of the Academy and could vote for the best of film 2009 in the actual Oscars.Last year, you correctly matched the real thing in four out of the five major categories: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.  But remember, this isn't about predictions, you are voting for who you want to win!There are five separate polls, located in the right-hand sidebar, so be sure to vote in ...

2005 may be remembered as “Oscar’s gayest year” in terms of GLBT-themed nominees, with Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Transamerica each receiving multiple commendations. Happily, the movies and artists vying for the gold on March 7 of this year likely represent the second-highest number of GLBT contenders in Academy Awards history.Leading the pack is Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. The film received six nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Lee Daniels), Best Actress (Gabourey Sidibe) and Best Supporting Actress (Mo’Nique). This deeply felt story of an abused, HIV+ teenager trying to escape her horrific home ...

Haven't seen all of this year's Academy Award nominees? Here's a complete list of all of the Oscar nominated feature films that are currently available on DVD and/or Blu-ray, plus release dates for those that are coming soon.Now available:- Bright Star: DVD- Coraline:  DVD / Blu-ray- The Cove:  DVD- District 9:  DVD / Blu-ray- Food, Inc.:  DVD / Blu-ray- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:  DVD / Blu-ray- The Hurt Locker:  DVD / Blu-ray- ...

As you can see, Movie Dearest got up early this morning to catch the announcement of the nominees for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards!Well, it looks like turning the Oscar Best Picture category up to 10 worked out for the Academy, as the finalist seem evenly matched between audience favorites — Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, Inglourious Basterds and Up — and critical darlings — An Education, The Hurt Locker, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, A Serious Man and Up in the Air.  Plus, nothing too embarrassing (The Hangover, ...

With Valentine's Day at its heart, February is the month for love ... of all kinds.  Therefore, this month's Movie Dearest calendar wallpaper salutes the many kinds of cinematic "strange love", unlikely romances that think outside the box.And, as seen in several "beauty and the beast" scenarios, sometimes that is outside the species, not to mention love connections that transcend age, class and (surprise) gender differences.  Then there is the undying love (literally) of ghosts and the undead, not to mention the spark of amour that can be ignited between a certain pair of robotic lovebirds.  These may not ...

The Church has many saints, and several Saint Johns. Saint John of Las Vegas isn't currently among this heavenly company, but it is a new movie being released in select cities starting today. Steve Buscemi — veteran of the gay classic Parting Glances and many other memorable films — stars as John, a compulsive gambler who has fled from Las Vegas following a run of bad luck. Now living in the decidedly less-full-of-temptation city of Albuquerque, John works for an auto insurance company headed by Mr. Townsend (the always-enjoyable Peter Dinklage). John also enjoys a flirtatious friendship with ...

If you, like me, spent your teen years obsessing over getting into the next high school musical, you'll find a lot to identify with — and enjoy — in Drama Queers!Author Frank Anthony Polito's fab follow up to his debut novel Band Fags!, Drama Queers! recounts in loving detail the trials and tribulations of, you guessed it, being a "drama queer".  Stuck in the "sorry little suburb" of Hazel Park, Michigan circa 1987, Polito's semi-autobiographical protagonist, Bradley James Dayton, yearns to be a star of stage and screen ... but first he has to ...

The British are coming, but this time they aren't sporting redcoats and muskets. Instead, they have Rupert Everett in drag and two hot, female singer-songwriters in their arsenal. Having sampled this assortment, I predict the Brits will have a better run in the colonies in 2010 than they did 230+ years ago!First up is the DVD release today of the delightful St. Trinian's, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. One of the highest-grossing independent British films of all time, it features the openly gay Everett and an all-star cast of gay faves including Colin Firth (the current ...

David Oliveras' Watercolors, about a high school art student who falls in love with a hunky if troubled member of the swim team, made quite a splash (no pun intended ... OK, maybe a little) at Outfest, Los Angeles's GLBT film festival, way back in the summer of 2008. It is finally being released theatrically this weekend in Los Angeles and New York as part of a gay mini-fest sponsored by Regent Releasing/here! Films and Gay.com.The plot of Watercolors is reminiscent of the superior, 1999 British film Get Real, in which a self-accepting gay ...

Kirk Douglas was sexy, to be sure, as the loincloth-clad star of Stanley Kubrick’s epic 1960 film Spartacus. Apart from that loincloth, though, Douglas doesn’t have anything on the sometimes-nude hunks that populate the new Starz series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which premieres on the cable channel tonight. Seemingly inspired by the blockbuster 2007 film 300 as much as by historical accounts of a slave uprising against ancient Rome, the series is a stylish if graphically bloody soap opera. A lot of money appears to have gone into Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and its high-powered producers include filmmaker ...