Latest in Oscars

The International Feature Film Oscar shortlist is due a little less than a month from now. And while it’s again a hotly-contested race, just a slight change this year — which had nothing to do with the eligibility rules — has made headlines. In an era where the Academy is endeavoring to be more inclusive and global…

Alejandro Landes has had a busy year. His survivalist saga Monos debuted at Sundance in January where it won a Special Jury Award and was acquired by Neon after its world premiere there. Landes was then signed by UTA and the film went on to play Berlin as well as a host of other festivals, scooping prizes along they…

Oscar-nominated A Star Is Born producer Lynette Howell Taylor and Dear White People producer Stephanie Allain will produce the 92nd Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Friday. It will be the first involvement with the Oscars for both. "The combined producing talents of Lynette and…

Levan Akin is a Swedish-born filmmaker of Georgian descent whose third film, And Then We Danced, is Sweden's Oscar submission for the International Feature race. The Georgian-language film is the first LGBTQ+ movie set in the country and debuted in the Directors' Fortnight section of Cannes earlier this year. When…

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences abruptly moved the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony up to early February, panic set in among those other awards shows that often serve as bellweathers for Oscar's grande finale. Stung by record low ratings for the 2018 telecast, hosted for the second year in a row by…

At first blush, I thought that John Ford moment in Roland Emmerich's Midway was surely over-the-top, a parody, like the semi-silly Bruce Lee bit in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But why interrupt a deadly serious war film with what seemed to be a comic walk-on by a famous movie director, shouting…

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released its list of 159 documentary features that have been submitted for the 92 annual Academy Awards. See the full list below. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced on December 16. The Academy notes that several of the films have not had their required Los…

Sudabeh Mortezai’s Joy, Austria’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar this year, has been disqualified from the category after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences determined the film did not meet eligibility requirements of a submitted film being predominately in a foreign language. The…

A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit. If you want your movie to be eligible for the Oscars or WGA awards, you have only one week to comply. All forms are due in November 15 for both organizations, and they are serious. In fact AMPAS minces no words according to their official release on…

UPDATED with Academy statement: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s decision to disqualify Nigeria’s first International Feature Film submission, Genevieve Nnaji’s Lionheart, has been met with criticism since the news first broke. But the Academy said in a statement Tuesday that the film simply didn’t…

EXCLUSIVE: Following online criticism over the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's decision to disqualify Nigeria's first International Feature Film submission, Genevieve Nnaji's Lionheart, co-chair of the International Feature Film executive committee Larry Karaszewski has responded, calling the situation…

COMMENTARY: The grid is wobbly. The hills are on fire. Some homeless camps in the Valley have been almost as crowded as CityWalk. If ever we needed the annual migration of awards-season out-of-towners, it is now. The Descent of the Visitors—most of them from New York—is my favorite part of the Oscar cycle. Like…