Posted in Film, Film Festivals on January 31st, 2008 1 Comment »
58th Berlin Film Festival - 2008 Competition Line-Up
The Berlin Film Festival will be held between February 7–17, 2008.
Opening Film (Out of Competition):
Shine a Light, USA
by Martin Scorsese
with the Rolling Stones
Avaze Gonjeshk-ha / The Song of Sparrows, Iran (World Premiere)
by Majid Majidi
with Reza Najie, Maryam Akbari, Kamran Dehghan, Hossein Aghazi
Ballast, USA (International Premiere)
by [...]
CineKink — the name says it all — has announced the opening night selections for its fifth annual film festival, CineKink NYC. The event, scheduled for February 26–March 2, 2008, is described as "a pansexual celebration that will also feature music, live performances and a fundraising silent auction."
The selections are:
Richard Kimmel’s Schwarzwald, which [...]
More than 100 Academy Award nominees will get together at noon on Monday, February 4, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences annual Nominees Luncheon. (See Oscar Luncheon 2008 - Photos. See more Oscar luncheon 2008 photos.)
From the leading actor and actress categories, George Clooney, [...]
The exhibition "Meet the Oscars, New York" will display 50 new Oscar statuettes, two inscribed Academy Awards, and one Oscar for the public to hold. The East Coast version of "Meet the Oscars" will take place at the Times Square Studios in New York City from Friday, February 15, through Saturday, February 23. The free [...]
The two top nominees for the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television’s 28th Genie Awards are heavy dramas: David Cronenberg’s Russian mafia thriller Eastern Promises and Roger Spottiswoode’s Rwanda genocide tale Shake Hands With the Devil, each with 12 nominations. They were followed by Away from Her with seven nods; The Tracey Fragments with six; [...]
Posted in Film, Film Awards on January 30th, 2008 No Comments »
Final ballots for the 80th Academy Awards, with the names of the nominees in 19 Academy Award categories, were mailed today, January 30, to the 5,829 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Separate ballots for five categories (Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, Foreign Language Film, Animated Short Film and Live [...]
Best Cinematography: There Will Be Blood, Robert Elswit
Robert Elswit won the American Society of Cinematographers award, beating Roger Deakins for two films, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men. Though Deakins does have a chance to win the Oscar 2008 for either film, this is one [...]
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s ballad "Falling Slowly," from John Carney’s Irish-made romantic musical Once, remains in the running in the Best Original Song category of the 2008 Academy Awards.
Several days ago, questions had arisen about the song’s eligibility because before Once came out different versions of "Falling Slowly" had been featured in two music [...]
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
George Clooney (for Michael Clayton) might have been the sentimental favorite for he’s a local Hollywood-ite, while Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays a ruthless oil baron in There Will Be Blood, is an Englishman living in Ireland. Clooney, however, won an Oscar (for Syriana) a mere two years ago, [...]
Best Film: No Country for Old Men
Until late last week, things were still somewhat murky in the best film race. No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood were the front-runners, while Juno was the dark horse that could potentially upset the heavy-drama heavyweights. But after the SAG best ensemble and DGA wins, [...]
Posted in Directors, Film, Film Awards on January 29th, 2008 No Comments »
The filmmakers of this year’s Academy Award-nominated foreign-language films will take part — "subject to availability" — in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Foreign Language Film Award Nominees Symposium on Saturday, February 23, at 10 a.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. [2008 Foreign Language Film Academy Award Symposium [...]
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will screen the 2007 Academy Award-nominated films in the Animated and Live Action Short Film categories, on Tuesday, February 19, at 7 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The program will feature onstage discussions with the nominated filmmakers (subject to availability).
They are:
Animated [...]
Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, a thriller about two economically strapped women (Melissa Leo and Misty Upham, above) who turn to immigrant-smuggling at the US-Canada border, was chosen best American fiction film at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. (In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan calls Leo and Upham "magnificent," adding that Frozen River is a [...]
2007 Screen Actors Guild of America (SAG) Awards
2007 SAG Award nominations: announced by Terrence Howard and Jeanne Tripplehorn on December 20, 2007.
2007 SAG Award winners: Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center on January 27, 2008.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
THEATRICAL MOTION PICTURES
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
GEORGE CLOONEY / [...]
2007 Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards
2007 DGA feature film nominations: January 8, 2008. The DGA’s documentary and television nominations: January 10, 2008.
The 2007 DGA award winners: January 26, 2008.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
FEATURE FILMS
Paul Thomas Anderson - There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage)
Unit Production Manager: Daniel Lupi
First Assistant Director: Adam [...]
2008 Sundance Film Festival Awards
2008 Sundance Film Festival: January 17-27, 2008
Sundance 2008 Award Winners - Article
Grand Jury Prize Dramatic: FROZEN RIVER, directed by Courtney Hunt
Grand Jury Prize Documentary: TROUBLE THE WATER, directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal
World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic: KING OF PING PONG (PING PONGKINGEN) - Sweden, directed by Jens [...]
2007 American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Awards
2007 ASC award winners: Hollywood & Highland complex in Los Angeles on January 26, 2008
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
Roger Deakins became the first cinematographer to receive two ASC nominations in the same year for his film work. Deakins was nominated for No Country for Old Men [...]
In The Vast Picture Show, the [Dublin] Sunday Tribune’s film critic Paul Lynch reports that "Falling Slowly," from the Irish romantic musical Once, may be ineligible for the best original song Oscar. The Academy has been apparently investigating the issue.
Lynch quotes a piece by the Sunday Tribune’s music critic Una Mullally:
"The Sunday Tribune understands that [...]
A couple of American Cinematheque events at the Egyptian Theatre at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles:
The American Cinema Editors‘ seminar "Invisible Art, Visible Artists" will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, February 23. The scheduled participants are the 2008 Oscar nominees:
Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum
Juliette Welfling, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jay Cassidy, [...]
Posted in Classics, Film, Film Festivals on January 26th, 2008 1 Comment »
Among the many sections of the 4th Glasgow Film Festival, to be held from February 14–24, are Great Scots, One Upon a Time in the East (that’s Eastern Europe; above, top photo, Jan Sverák’s Czech comedy-drama Empties), It’s a Wonderful World (world cinema), Fright Fest, The State of Independents (above, bottom photo, Alex Holdridge’s In [...]
2008 Slamdance Film Festival Awards
2008 Slamdance Film Festival: January 17–25, 2008
GRAND JURY AWARDS
Writer-director Tom Quinn’s The New Year Parade portrays the effects of an acrimonious divorce on a couple’s teenage children. The film mixes actors and non-actors, documentary footage and fiction. In the cast: Greg Lyons, Jennifer Welsh, Andrew Conway, MaryAnn McDonald.
Best Narrative Feature: The [...]
Kinky voyeurism of yesteryear: A couple learn about it by watching a wild bird-bunny-bee orgy.
"The Joy of Sex Education" at the British Film Institute Southbank:
"Running the gamut from syphilitic soldiers in WW1 to puberty pep-talks for girls to the government’s infamous AIDS awareness campaigns, this jaunt through 90 years of sex education films aims to [...]
"Envisioning Russia: A Century of Filmmaking" (January 25 — February 14, 2008) at New York City’s Film Society of Lincoln Center:
"Although early film shows took place in Russia soon after the invention of cinema (Maxim Gorky’s book In the Kingdom of Shadows, published July 4, 1896, is one of the most beautiful early descriptions of [...]
The Canadian-based Neoclassics Films has acquired worldwide distribution rights (excluding Canada) in all media for writer-directors Sascha Drews, Ezra Krybus and Matthew Miller’s outdoor action thriller Crooked Lake (aka Portage), which has been recently screened at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The price tag was reportedly in the six figures.
Crooked Lake is [...]
Posted in Film, Film Awards on January 24th, 2008 1 Comment »
In celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has unveiled the latest edition of its Best Picture poster — not to be confused with the official 2008 Oscar poster.
Designed by Alex Swart, the Best Picture poster features a spiraling gold ribbon containing the one-sheets [...]
