It's little things like the recognition of Kate Hudson and Mary-Kate Olsen that keep the status-quo from suffocating us in the thick of Oscar season.
Your annual Oscar anticlimax is officially underway, with Heath Ledger, Penélope Cruz and Slumdog Millionaire — among other familiar names — once again dominating the weekend's awards news.
No flu shot can yet immunize us from the annual plague of Top 10 lists; the best you can hope for is a weaker, less-contagious strain than last year's. Stephen King gives us hope.
Meryl Streep and Amy Adams crashed The View today to court a bit of opening-day goodwill for their new film Doubt. Oscar support would be lovely, too, but, you know, only if you want to.
The search for the next Oscars presenter may be nearing its end, as we are hearing whispers the Academy has settled upon an emcee for Hollywood's Most Glamorous Evening No One Bothers Tuning In To:
To the extent anyone cares about hardware doled out by the invisible half-asses at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, we've still spotted a few Golden Globe revelations worth following through awards season.
The Curious Case of Benjamin earned five Golden Globe nominations this morning — an achievement celebrated by hackers who promptly wiped the studio's awards site off the Internet.
Forget the debate surrounding the viability of The Dark Knight and WALL-E. A far more enduring question that has shaken the Oscar cosmos for the better part of 50 years is close to resolution:
The Black List is out today. It's an annual poll, begun by a plucky assistant at Leonardo DiCaprio's company, in which all of Hollywood's D-boys and girls nominate the strongest unproduced screenplays this year.
The collective shrug over a possible SAG strike gathered a few more shoulders today, with representatives for Hollywood's influential Party Planning Mafia acknowledging that no labor impasse (or recession, for that matter) will prevent it from restoring the Golden Globes afterparties to their long-dormant luster. To wit: Press conferences are out, and "plasma screen-outfitted water walls" are in! And that's just for starters.
Despite our best efforts to the contrary by having a Vons worker plunge an inoculation into our arm, we doubt we'll avoid the awards fever epidemic that hits our area this time of year. And how can we not, when historical precedent is being set: That's right. The Los Angeles Critics Association—voting via touchscreen from their Barcalounger hovercraft—have declared that Disney-PIXAR's WALL-E has succeeded in capturing their plaque-encrusted hearts. It's the first animated film in history to receive such an honor, yet didn't quite make the grade when placed against its peers in the Best Animated Film category. (That honor went to Israel's Waltz With Bashir.) If their decision seems unusual, it's not without precedent, as THR points out the group did something similar in 2000 when it gave Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon its top overall honors, but recognized Magical Flying Bamboo Warriors in the Best Kung-Fu Movie That Played Fast and Loose with the Laws of Physics category.
It's another day to keep your head down around Scott Rudin's office: was snubbed once again in the latest fiery belch from Awards-Season Hell. This time, it was the Broadcast Film Critics Association Critics' Choice Awards issuing the diss among its 2008 nominees, a list where seemingly anything even casually mentioned as Oscar bait in the last three months was recognized — with not just one Revolutionary exception.
Our ongoing Pop Culture Doomsday stroked the infant cheek of awards season this morning when the hooded, cloaked cultists at National Board of Review anointed Slumdog Millionaire as their Best Picture pick for 2008. It's just the latest setback today for Paramount, which, with one notable exception, will chase the bitter aftertaste of rolling layoffs with an ice-cold glass of Button-Snub Ultra.
The pungent scent of hot sulphur at Defamer HQ this morning can mean only one thing: Grammy Hell is bearing down on us, heralded as well by hosts Taylor Swift, LL Cool J and the rest of the wailing demon legion populating last night's first-ever primetime nomination special at the Nokia Theater. And what did their baleful cries portend? We're gonna get more Coldplay performance art!
Nominees for the 51st Grammy Awards were announced. Big winners: Coldplay (seven nominations), Lil Wayne (eight nominations, white nerds are gonna flip), Jazmine Sullivan (new R&B singers gets five noms) and M.I.A., nominated for record of the year (Idolator: "!!!!!!!!"). For the latter, stock up on cave-aged gruyere for the dressing room and prepare the cameras for an ultra-close-up during any self-undermining comments from the singer about how she has so not sold out the struggle (and performance too plz?). Robbed:
