AFTER PGA WIN, ARGO TAKES LEAD IN OSCAR RACE

In what is regarded as the surest indicator of which film will win the Academy Award for best picture, Ben Affleck’s Argo took the top feature-film award from the Producers Guild of America on Saturday night. Over the last five years every PGA winner has gone on to triumph at the Oscars. Accepting the trophy […]

PRODUCER OF JAWS, COCOON, DRIVING MISS DAISY, PLANET OF APES, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, DIES

Prolific producer Richard D. Zanuck, who won an Oscar for his 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy, and whose other films were some of the most admired releases of the past 50 years, has died of a heart attack in Los Angeles at the age of 77. He was the son of Daryl F. Zanuck, the […]

THE ARTIST RETURNS — BUT NOBODY CARES

Oscar winner The Artist did OK at the box office in its initial run, earning $44 million, even without ever hitting the top ten. But it earned nearly twice that amount overseas. So executives at the Weinstein Co. figured that there must be a bigger audience for the movie at home, too, and they decided […]

MORE OSCARS TO FIND NEW HOMES ON TUESDAY

Two days after this year’s Oscars are handed out, 14 additional Oscars will be awarded to the winning bidders of a Hollywood memorabilia auction — believed to be twice the total number of Oscar trophies that have been sold to date. The sale, being featured online by the Los Angeles auction house Nate D. Sanders, […]

RADCLIFFE — MIFFED ABOUT ACADEMY SNUB OF HARRY

Daniel Radcliffe says that he felt disheartened when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 was not nominated for a best picture Oscar. In an interview with the BBC’s Radio Times magazine, Radcliffe said, “I never thought I’d care. But it would’ve been nice to have some recognition.” The 22-year-old actor attributed the […]

BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL SELECTS TWO OSCAR-CONTENDING FILMS

Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, has been selected to make its international debut in February at the Berlin Film Festival, where it will screen out of competition, the festival announced today (Monday). The film, set in New York during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, is due […]

WELLES’S CITIZEN KANE OSCAR TO GO ON SALE FOR ABOUT $1 MILLION

The only Oscar ever won by Orson Welles — for co-writing Citizen Kane — is due to be auctioned off online by Nate D. Sanders Auctions on December 20, and presumably between now and then, the Academy will make some effort to prevent the sale from going forward. It has long fought efforts to sell […]

VETERAN ACTOR/DIRECTOR JACKIE COOPER DEAD AT 88

Jackie Cooper, whose history in the movie business probably predated that of any other living film star, died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 88. He first appeared in short films at the age of 6, then joined the ragged tykes in the early Our Gang comedy shorts a year later. At the age of […]

WEINSTEIN: “THINGS CAN TURN AROUND REALLY FAST”

Harvey Weinstein is celebrating his return to the upper echelons of movie moguldom after years of failure following his departure from Miramax and Disney in 2005, interrupted only by the success of Inglourious Basterds in 2009. Today’s (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times observed that The Weinstein Co.’s The King’s Speech, which was the big winner at […]

NOT SO GLORIOUS A KING?

Virtually every film “based on” a real event or a real person is eventually picked apart by critics who find inaccuracies in it. Last year, for example, Fair Game, the movie that dealt with the “outing” of CIA operative Valerie Plame by the Bush administration, was blasted from the right and left for distorting actual […]

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