Editor’s Note: This story originally ran on Dec. 23. Hell or High Water currently counts four Oscar nominations including best picture and an original screenplay nod for Taylor Sheridan. After drug war noir Sicario made enormous waves at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival into last year's awards season, you could feel that…

Charging that "the Academy Awards cannot escape ageism," a new study has found that characters aged 60 and over "are scarce in Best Picture-nominated movies," and that senior women and older minority characters are even scarcer. It also found that there were only two leading characters over 60 featured in all of the 25…

Hey exhibitors — are you listening?

A recent Movio/AARP study recently highlighted that the 50+ age group is one of the more devoted moviegoing demos, particularly during Oscar season. During the period of Jan. 1, 2016-Feb. 5, 2017, those 50 and over repped 56% of the crowd for Oscar-nominated movies versus a 20% turno…

There can only be one winner, but each of the Best Picture nominees overcame creative, financial and logistical hurdles to get this close to the finish line. Here are their war stories.

Arrival

When Ted Chiang's sci-fi Story of Your Life first came across Denis Villeneuve's desk, it wasn't an immediate choice for the…

Better to be a best picture Oscar nominee than a winner. At the box office, that is.

This weekend, eight of the nine best picture nominees saw on average a near-two fold bump in their weekend-to-weekend stateside ticket sales. By Oscar night, their total cumes will have jumped an average of 44% since last Tuesday’s Osc…

When it comes to mounting quintessential auterish independent films on the big screen today, chances are that OddLot Entertainment is there. The company co-founded by Gigi Pritzker has produced and co-financed such titles as this year’s awards season contender Hell or High Water, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and this…

There were close to a thousand limited-release titles that opened in 2016 in North America. Assessing the specialty box office is not as tidy as with the studios. The area requires some subjectivity given when factoring in cast, release strategy and any other number of factors. From well north of 100 distributors…

The Santa Barbara Film Festival has selected Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges as recipient of its American Riviera Award at a career tribute to be held February 9 at the Arlington Theatre. Bridges is currently on an awards high for his performance in Hell Or High Water, which has so far netted him SAG, Golden Globe…

The edgy denizens of the indie film business, having survived a year of daunting disappointments, are now ready for their moment in the sun. Theaters featuring specialty films are packed once again and media attention is focused on once-ignored indie filmmakers. At Globes and Oscar time, a star like Matt Damon suddenly…

The American Film Institute has unveiled its annual AFI Movies of the Year list, which is heavy on Paramount films including the latest comer to the awards-season race, Martin Scorsese’s Silence. Its campaigners have been ramping up getting Scorsese’s passion pic screened for voters, and it secures a spot here for its…

Rattling audiences as moustachioed outlaw Charlie Prince in James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma, Ben Foster is an actor who enjoys his westerns. On the awards circuit this fall for David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water, which puts the actor in close quarters with Chris Pine once again, Foster has also recently wrapped…

"How do we love the ones we love?" Hell or High Water actor Ben Foster said of the acclaimed Texas-based family heist picture from CBS Films. "How do we take care of the people closest to us, and what would you do for the person you love the dearest? And that's where the lines of love get blurred in terms of ethics."

S…