This is a big week for Rachel Hannah Weisz, who besides turning 43 this week, has her latest film, Oz the Great and Powerful, opening in wide release. Weisz was born March 7th, 1970 in Westminster, London, and began her acting career with small roles in television. She had a small role in her first film, Death Machine (1994), but her first big turn was opposite Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman in Chain Reaction (1996). Weisz would become a star after landing the role of Evelyn Carnahan, the female lead in The Mummy (1999). The Mummy became an enormous box office success and gained her international recognition.
Read more on Circuit 3: Rachel Weisz…
 This year we don’t have the fortune of knowing exactly who will win Best Actress. We have five nominees that include two frontrunners, one possible upset and two actresses who should be honored to receive recognition for their work.
Read more on Oscar Circuit: Best Actress…
Categories: Oscar Circuit Tags: Amour, Anna Karenina, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Best Actress, Deep Blue Sea, Emmanuelle Riva, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, Keira Knightley, Marion Cotillard, naomi watts, Oscar Circuit, Oscars, Quvenzhané Wallis, Rachel Weisz, Rust &Bone, Silver Linings Playbook, The Impossible, Zero Dark Thirty
 In case you missed it during the Super Bowl this evening, here’s the Game Day commercial for the upcoming Oz: The Great and Powerful starring James Franco, Michelle Williams, and Rachel Weisz.
Read more on OZ – THE GREAT AND POWERFUL / Game Day Commercial!…
 With the Oscar nominations being announced tomorrow morning and all other nominations revealed, it’s that time folks where we all wonder and debate who will be honored with a nomination Oscar morning.
Read more on Women in Cinema- The “Oscarettes”: Who will be nominated for Best Actress?…
Categories: Oscar Predictions, Women in Cinema Tags: Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Emmanuelle Riva, Helen Mirren, hitchcock, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, La Vie En Rose, Marion Cotillard, naomi watts, Oscars, Quvenzhané Wallis, Rachel Weisz, Rust and Bone, Silver Linings Playbook, The Deep Blue Sea, The Impossible, Winter's Bone, women in cinema, Zero Dark Thirty
 The New York Film Critics have announced their winners for the best in cinema for 2012. The East Coast group that awarded Best Picture to Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist last year chose the brilliant Zero Dark Thirty directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The film won a total of three awards from the coveted group including Cinematography for Greig Fraser and Director for Bigelow. The film has put itself in a prime position for the Oscars.
In a surprising mention, Rachel Weisz won Best Actress for her portrayal in Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea. Buzz for Weisz’s performance and film had been dead for months and with her highly praised work, she has regained some momentum for an Academy Award nomination. After winning for The Constant Gardener (2005), Weisz has not been on critics’ radar. Her film performed minimally at the box office and had a very early release date. Is this mention to be taken seriously for a nomination? Let’s see if she shows up in more places for the season. She wasn’t the only surprise however; Matthew McConaughey beat out Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tommy Lee Jones to be named Best Supporting Actor for his works in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike and Richard Linklater’s Bernie. Has a spot just freed up for the character actor in this year’s Oscar race? Read more on McConaughey and Weisz Surprise with NYFCC, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln take 3 awards…
Categories: Editor, News Tags: American film directors, Argo Hooper, Artist, Ben Affleck, Cinema of the United States, Daniel Day-Lewis, Deep Blue Sea, Director for Bigelow, East Coast, Entertainment/Culture, Film, Human Interest, kathryn bigelow, Lincoln, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Haneke, Michel Hazanavicius, Movie Release, Rachel Weisz, Sally Field, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, Supporting Actress, The Constant Gardener, the Oscars, The Princeton Review Inc., Tom Hooper, Tony Kushner
 Will be announced shortly! Check back for the winners as they are announced! My predictions are here.
WINNERS
Best Picture – Zero Dark Thirty!!!!!
Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty
Best Screenplay – Tony Kushner for Lincoln
Best Actor – Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln
Best Actress – Rachel Weisz for The Deep Blue Sea
Best Foreign Language Film – Amour
Best Animated Feature – Frankenweenie
Best Supporting Actor – Matthew McConaughey for Magic Mike and Bernie
Best Supporting Actress – Sally Field for Lincoln
Best Cinematography – Greig Fraser for Zero Dark Thirty
Best Non-Fiction Film – The Central Park Five
Best First Feature – How to Survive a Plague
Read more on New York Film Critics Winners Announced!!…
Categories: Editor, News, Precursors Tags: British people, Cinema of the United States, Daniel Day-Lewis, Director, English people, Entertainment/Culture, Hospitality/Recreation, Human Interest, Kathryn, kathryn bigelow, Lincoln, Matthew McConaughey, Rachel Weisz, Sally Field, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Tony Kushner
A new trailer has arrived for Disney’s Oz: The Great and Powerful, and this one has me a bit more optimistic than the last. James Franco stars as the “wizard” who is whisked away to Oz via a tornado, where he meets three witches (Mila Kunis’s Theodora, Rachel Weisz’s Evanora, and Michelle Williams’s Glinda). All of Oz wants him to fulfill a prophecy by destroying the wicked witch (who we might or might not see in the trailer).
Read more on New ‘Oz: The Great and Powerful’ Trailer is Full of Hope and Magic…
 When Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass collectively walked away from a proposed fourth film in the wildly popular and increasingly successful Bourne film franchise, Universal Pictures opted to go forward anyway. By turning the series over completely to Oscar-nominated writer and director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton), an architect of the cinematic Bourne franchise (Gilroy had co-written all three previous Bourne films), I am sure the studio felt things were in safe hands. Gilroy got a robust production budget and the greenlight to make this spin-off/relaunch/reboot/reinvention of the franchise the best way he saw fit.
Read more on The Bourne Legacy (**)…
 I feel as though something significant has happened to director Fernando Meirelles and screenwriter Peter Morgan. Simply put, both are in ruts and are so much better than this. ’360′ is a mediocre relationship drama, a multi-character flick that never finds a focus or, ultimately, a point. The film once or twice threatens to get interesting, but never rises above its contrived plot. Each and every character is a plot device, not a person, so you never care what happens to any of them. Meirelles and Morgan have been on a bit of downward trend, and this does nothing to make me think they can right the ship anytime soon. I hope that I’m wrong, but all evidence to the contrary here, especially coming off of ‘Blindness’ for the former and ‘Hereafter’ for the latter. The cast is fine, but none of them are able to elevate the material and make their parts memorable. This adaptation of the Arthur Schnitzler play ‘Reigen’ just never manages to satisfy in any real way. A year ago, this was pegged as a potential Oscar player. Now, after a lengthy delay, it’s easy to see why the film skipped the awards season last year. It’s simply just not up to snuff, and a real disappointment…
Read more on 360 (**)…
 Last year, ’360′ was pegged as a possible Oscar contender. A relationship drama based on a classic play, it had Fernando Meirelles directing a script from Peter Morgan, along with an all-star cast that included Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, and Ben Foster. Well, then it debut to rather middling reviews at the Toronto Film Festival, leading to it being pushed back to this year. Now, we have a Trailer to show you, which you can see after the jump and use to decide for yourself if it’s really a contender or a pretender. I’m edging towards the latter (thought it certainly doesn’t look bad), but who knows for sure? Take a gander at the Trailer below…
Read more on Here’s the Trailer for the new Fernando Meirelles film ’360′!…
Many people were wondering how the Bourne franchise would survive without its star Matt Damon and renowned director Paul Greengrass, but the new trailer for The Bourne Legacy should help alleviate fears that this might be just a lame retread of previous material. While the story will revolve around Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz’ characters, there are a ton of call backs to the previous Bourne films and the universe that was created. The action in this trailer looks slick and the cast on their game, so this should provide some good summer entertainment. The Bourne Legacy will hit theaters August 3.
Read more on ‘The Bourne Legacy’ trailer shows new footage, highlights Jason Bourne universe…
 It’s often folly to talk about Oscar contenders this early in the year (though I did discuss the exceptions to that rule in a recent article you can read here), but we are after all an awards-centric site. While ‘The Hunger Games’ and (to a lesser extent) ‘The Raid: Redemption’ are the films most people are talking about at the moment, Deadline has a piece up on their site on how a much smaller film called ‘The Deep Blue Sea’(no it’s not a remake of this film) is actually the one that may end up being remembered come the Oscar season, mainly for Rachel Weisz’s lead performance. Take a look at the article after the jump and let us know if you think the film has any chance of being noticed!
Read more on ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ – 2012′s First Oscar Contender?…
 Rarely does a decent film sabotage itself at the climax as badly as ‘Dream House’ does. What starts out as a decent enough psychological thriller with an A-list cast and production team winds up devolving into the kind of trash that struggles to even go direct to DVD. Director Jim Sheridan and Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel make the film look spooky and effective, but writer David Loucka does such an awful job with the latter portion of his script, that it absolutely destroys any of the goodwill the first part of the movie establishes. When a movie stars has that talent behind the camera and people like Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts in the cast, you’d assume that someone had read the script. Either they didn’t, or the studio tampered with this in a major way, since the end result is pretty crummy. I literally had far less of a problem with this flick until about the last 20 minutes or so, which are among the worst of anything I’ve seen this year. The summation of a decent majority and an awful minority end up making this a sure fire must miss for most. I can’t imagine anyone leaving this film feeling like they got what they wanted out of it.
Read more on Dream House (**)…
As we wave goodbye to September, the awards season just keeps heating up. A lot of interesting releases this weekend, both wide and limited, some of which could be serious Oscar contenders:
First up in wide release is the dramedy 50/50, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young man who is diagnosed with cancer. Reviews have praised this film as an intelligent, sincere and surprisingly funny movie that rises far above and beyond your typical “Disease of the Week” Lifetime-esque melodramas. I’m starting to believe that it may actually be a serious threat for a Best Original Screenplay nomination. Box office-wise…eh, I don’t know. Despite support from critics, cancer isn’t exactly an audience-friendly subject. I’m thinking it’ll hit somewhere around the $8-13 million mark by Sunday. Read more on Weekend Openings (September 30-October 2)…
Categories: Weekend Openings Tags: Anna Faris, Anna Paquin, Courageous, Daniel Craig, Dream House, Jeff Nichols, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kenneth Lonergan, Margaret, Michael Shannon, Rachel Weisz, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin - You Betcha!, Take Shelter, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Weekend Openings, What’s Your Number?
 11 times in the Academy’s history, an actor or actress has been nominated twice in the same year. With the notable exception of Barry Fitzgerald in 1944 getting cited in Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for Going My Way, it’s always been for two different films (in fact, the rule making sure that never happens went into effect right after this, so that’s a fun bit of trivia for you all). The first time it happened, it was in 1938 when Fay Bainter was nominated for Best Actress for White Banners and Supporting Actress for Jezebel. The most recent instance was Cate Blanchett in 2007 for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and I’m Not There. Other double dippers include Jessica Lange (for Frances and Tootsie), Sigourney Weaver (for Gorillas in the Mist and Working Girl), Al Pacino (for Scent of a Woman and Gelngarry Glen Ross), Holly Hunter (for The Piano and The Firm), Emma Thompson (for The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father), Julianne Moore (for Far From Heaven and The Hours), and Jamie Foxx (for Ray and Collateral). It’s an exclusive club, no doubt about that, and one that can usually coincide with a win in one of the categories (but not always of course). This year, could we see our 12th occurrence of this feat?
Read more on The “Double” Possibilities…
Categories: Article Tags: Anton Yelchin, Brad Pitt, Carey Mulligan, Christopher Plummer, George Clooney, Jessica Chastain, Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Mia Wasikowska, Oscar hopefuls, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes, Ryan Gosling, Tom Hardy
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