Awards & Oscars

I say it every year and I’ll say it again: I am not a huge fan of short films. I have trouble making an emotional connection with the characters, or getting invested in such a short story. But I still respect the work that goes into any film project, and among the five films nominated for Best Animated Short at this year’s Academy Awards, there are two legitimately great films.

Read the full article »

Meryl Streep gave the best performance but still managed to be a surprise win, while Billy Crystal gave us a much better show than recent years… with Hugo and The Artist battling for top honors.

What a boring year for movies. The ten films nominated for Best Picture are uninspiring, and the annual shindig – the 84th Annual Academy Awards – seems prepped for a showdown between Hugo and The Artist, with the overrated Martin Scorsese drama poised to rake up in the technical categories and The Artist to more deservingly win the bigger prizes. There are a few interesting categories, but I’ll be more interested to see if host Billy Crystal can overcome the inevitable stale jokes that have plagued the Oscars for the last several years.

Read the full article »

The Oscar-nominated documentary Hell and Back Again is an intimate portrait of one American soldier’s attempt to transition back to regular life after a harrowing deployment in which he was horribly injured. Unfortunately, despite its strengths, Hell and Back Again does not stand out in any way or form.

Read FilmJabber’s full Hell and Back Again movie review.

Just as it was about to slip away into oblivion, A Better Life makes a triumphant comeback, claiming a coveted nomination for its star at the Academy Awards. Demián Bichir is a candidate to win the award for Best Actor for his portrayal of an illegal immigrant just trying to give his son a decent (or should I say ‘better’?) life, but whose circumstances quickly spiral out of control.

Read FilmJabber’s full A Better Life movie review.

The nominations for the 84th Annual Academy Awards were announced yesterday. And they were… shall we say… uninspired. Several of the year’s best films were ignored outright, while the movies and performances that played to Oscar sentiments were rewarded with nominations, regardless of originality or creativity. Here are 12 observations, or reactions if you will, to the movies that will compete at this year’s Academy Awards.

Read the full article »

The Help. It’s about maids, black people, racism and a plain, ugly girl played by a beautiful actress. It’s a movie born and raised to be an Oscar contender, an accessible, lighthearted picture about a serious issue. It’s this year’s Blind Side, good-hearted and purposeful, harmless while entertaining. It’s also a box office hit, and Oscar voters love box office hits.

Read the full article »

It’s that special time of year. The air is getting colder. The weather is getting crappier. Families are coming together. Families are fighting. Families are eating big feasts. People are buying presents. Santa is packing the sled. Oh, and a good percentage of the year’s best movies are all being released into theaters over the next month and a half.

Read the full article »

The Oscars start today at 5pm PST and it has the potential to be a good show. I’m looking forward to see how James Franco and Anne Hathaway, two of the youngest hosts to ever present and the first onstage male-female pairing, perform. Franco can be hilarious when he wants to be; Hathaway is a good actress but a question mark as a host. And you never know how the Academy Awards writing team will botch their potential.

Expect lots of “I should win for 127 Hours jokes” and “Love and Other Drugs not being nominated jokes” from the pair.

Read the full article »

The 83rd Academy Awards are this weekend, which means by the end of Sunday four actors will have been chosen to be the best among the tens of thousands of players who performed in movies in 2010. But while a spattering of people here and there see the Oscars as the ultimate award show, we know better… there is no higher privilege than being selected by FilmJabber.

We might not have fancy awards shows or alcohol-and-drug-fueled after parties (I’m just saying that to steer the police off course!) or beautiful women in sexy dresses or Jack Nicholson, but FilmJabber’s list is just the best. Take our word for it.

Without further ado, here are the top 20 performances of 2010…

After watching the 2011 Oscar nominees for animated short films, I can conclude that the category is intended more for showing off artistic talent than delivering all-around cohesive movies. That’s not to say the animated short films nominated this year aren’t good – they are – they’re just not that good.

Read the full article »

One of the most nebulous categories at the Oscars, short films are typically anyone’s guess – because the average movie fan never actually sees them. Only in recent years has Shorts International Magnolia Pictures been releasing the Oscar-nominated short films to theaters – which is a great idea – but still, how many people are going to pay to go see short films?

Read the full article »