Oscar TimeAnd the Winner Is... Jews for Basterds. Interesting tiny story from the final days of voting.Nick's Flick Picks "Best Actress Project 2009" astute writeups on this year's Oscar contenders.Movies And... "10 Things I Want to See on Oscar Night"Hollywood Elsewhere Will Anne Hathaway be in it to win it in the next Best Actress race?Off Oscar (yes, other things exist)ModFab The August: Osage County screenplay is complete. Still no word on casting but it won't be the original stage cast.John August on not writing the new Alice in Wonderland. Interesting ...

Continuing my weekly Oscar column at Tribeca Film, I've riffed on the titles of this year's Best Pictures for "talking points" from Oscar's problem with comedies, it's love of education and the grand tradition of calling the 'snubs'. The annual announcement of the Oscar nominations always offers up plenty of fodder for discussion. But before we get there, travel back in time with me to June 2009 when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS for short) made a canny if questionable PR move: after 66 years of a 5-wide Best Picture shortlist, ...

Some of you may have noticed that any articles that have slipped off the front page now have moderated comments. I was forced to do this by huge waves of spam hitting my blog -- it's getting worse all the time actually, dozens of spam comments to be weeded out every day. But I'm delighted that people still comment on older articles. Two recent comments I wanted to draw attention to:anonymous (sign your names people, it takes all of 1.5 seconds) on the casting of the August: Osage County movieYou know Doris Day has been itching to come ...

Today is the 109th anniversary of one Chester Gould the creator of Dick Tracy. Every time Dick Tracy (1990) comes up, I think "you should watch that movie again!" but I never do. I think I'm still mad that Warren Beatty kept cutting away from Madonna's "More" performance... which should've easily been one of the best movie musical numbers of the 90s (sigh). Otherwise I quite like the movieTrivia Alert! Dick Tracy is one of Oscar's two favorite comic book movies along with The Dark Knight (2008). Their Oscar track was very similar. Dick Tracy had ...