For the first time in nearly a decade (and honestly one of the rather rare times for his career on the whole) Steven Spielberg will be directing a film that’s not predominantly a period piece. Yes, for his next outing in the director’s chair, the Beard has opted to make the biopic of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, known as the most lethal sniper in United States military history. Scribe Jason Hall is adapting Kyle’s autobiography American Sniper, and as if Spielberg directing isn’t enough, he’s got Bradley Cooper in the lead role as well! Cooper actually picked up the rights to this book at one point, so it’s clearly a passion project for him, and now could be a future awards contender as well. After the jump you can see a little more about the book, but I’m very eager to see Cooper work with Spielberg and how the filmmaker chooses to bring this particular story to the big screen. They were competitors of sorts last season, but a team up could lead to even more awards glory for both. If it’s as good as I think it might be, then it could really turn out to be a winner. Read on below for more…
On Saturday evening, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Obama presented the first look at Steven Spielberg’s newest film, Obama, starring three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis in the titular role.
After being announced recently that Matthew McConaughey will be starring in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Deadline is reporting that recent Academy Award Winner Anne Hathaway is close to signing on for a role.
How there any lovers of Steven Spielberg’s Lincolnthat are still bummed it lost Best Picture at last year’s Oscars? We have a chance to make this time a bit more managable for you. We are giving away a few copies of the film that racked up 47 wins, 108 total nominations, and won two Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Best Production Design this past award season.
There a few clips of the film down below along with bonus clips that you will find on your Blu-Ray + DVD copy if you win. How do you win, you ask? All you have to do is watch the clips and comment down below using your Facebook, Twitter, or Google sign-in and answer the following:
Tell us what your favorite scene from Lincoln is and why?
Who gave your favorite performance from the film and why?
What President do you want to see get the biopic treatment next and who do you want to play him?
We have three copies to give away. One will be chosen at random, one will be chosen by myself, and the last will be chosen by one of my writers. Pretty easy, eh? Only one entry per reader, please.
Nearly three years since his last picture director Danny Boyle intends to induce a Trancewith his new psychological heist thriller. This one’s got some early buzz lauding solid performances from leads Rosario Dawson and James McAvoy, a compelling multi-layered narrative, and mind-bendingly stylized visuals. Robert Redford’s got a thriller of his own in the mix this week with The Company You Keep, along with a a 3D rerelease of JurassicPark, and a horror picture promising evil and death in Evil Dead. With the exciting overload of thrills in this batch, make sure to hold on to your butts…
10 years ago today, Steven Spielberg began production on what would become the first film in history to sweep every single major precursor including BAFTA, Golden Globes, and the Academy Award for Best Picture. Schindler’s List (1993) is having its 20th anniversary celebrated on Blu Ray this coming Tuesday.
The film won seven Oscars including Best Picture. One of the craziest misses for the film is the loss of Best Supporting Actor nominee Ralph Fiennes to Tommy Lee Jones for his performance in The Fugitive (1993). I can’t wait until the Awards Circuit Community Awards gets to 1993 to see if our smart readership can correct Oscar’s mistake. It’s also surprising considering the love for the film that Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson wasn’t able to make traction and get ahead of Tom Hanks for his Oscar-winning performance in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia (1993). Daniel Day-Lewis’ Oscar win this year for Lincoln (2012) was the first time an actor in a Spielberg film had won an Oscar.
The press release is below along with the trailer. The film will be released on Tuesday, March 5, 2013.
He wasn’t able to win his third Best Director Oscar last weekend, but Steven Spielberg has been chosen to head up the 66th annual Cannes Film Festival Competition Jury as a nice consolation prize. Spielberg competed for the Palme d’Or with his first film, The Sugarland Express, in 1974. That was the only time Spielberg competed at Cannes, but he also debuted E.T. the Extra Terrestrial outside of the competition at the fest back in 1982.
Amour – Michael Haneke
Beasts of the Southern Wild – Benh Zeitlin Life of Pi – Ang Lee Lincoln – Steven Spielberg Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell
(The annual “Will Win/Should Win” of the Awards Circuit has been our most popular yet most challenging series where each writer let’s their final thoughts be known on the Oscar categories. Each writer will reveal their choices everyday leading up to the Oscar ceremony. Think you can do better? Let your final thoughts be known in the comment section or by joining our Oscar Pool. -CD)
It’s here, the Big One. The Oscars are finally upon us, generating a frenzy of excitement and a torrent of ever-changing predictions in its path to the big stage on Sunday. This is the highly anticipated annual organized free-for-all when ideals shatter, frustrations bubble over, and sometimes (though not often) pleasant surprises challenge the odds. The final results could go any which way, and especially in such a quality-loaded year, it’s been a dizzying process trying to peg the sway of Academy Voters. Finally dashing aside unrealistically hopeful designs of one candidate over another, I’ve joined my Awards Circuit colleagues in settling on the probable winners, though not without putting up a fight for my preferred winners. In the spirit of the games, here are my “Win Will/Should Win” Oscar Selections: Read more on Oscar 2013 Will Win/Should Win Selections (Melkonian)…
Add another guild win to Argo‘s impressive tally, as the American Cinema Editors honored William Goldberg’s work on the film with the Best Edited Feature (Dramatic) prize. The 63rd annual ACE Eddie Awards, held last night, celebrate the best in editing for the year. Also picking up prizes for film editing were Silver Linings Playbook, Brave, and Searching For Sugar Man. Stephen Spielberg, Richard Marks and Larry Silk all received special honors at the ceremony. Check out the full list of winner after the jump! Read more on American Cinema Editors crown ‘Argo’, ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ and ‘Brave’…
The Walt Disney Studios publicity team has issued a birthday card of sorts to honor our greatest president, while at the same time throwing in some last minute campaigning for Steven Spielberg’s film, Lincoln. Have a look at their sentiments toward our 16th President – and more notably the film – after the jump.
The 63rd annual ACE Eddie Awards will be presented Saturday, February 16th, honoring excellence in film editing for 2012. The Board of Directors of the American Cinema Editors (ACE) has selected Steven Spielberg to give their highest honor to, the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award. Have a look at the official release after the jump.
On Wednesday, January 16th, Lincoln: An American Journey - a behind-the-scenes special on the making of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln - premiered on iTunes. Lincoln has crossed the $150 million mark at the box office, and pulled in a field-leading 12 Oscar nominations. The special dives into the 12 year adventure the filmmakers went on to bring this film to the big screen, and features interviews with Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Sally Field. Have a look at the press release after the jump.
Since Oscar nominations, everyone is trying to get their heads around what each nomination means and which films are building momentum after the Critics Choice Movie Awards and Golden Globe Awards. On January 27, the Screen Actors Guild Awards will weigh in on their choices for the best of 2012 and then four weeks will go by until the Oscar ceremony. The only thing in between that time will the BAFTA on February 10 with Oscar ballots due nine days later.
The leading nomination tally for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi puts them in a prime position to battle it out for the rest of the season however, Ben Affleck’s Argo, a film without a Best Director nomination attached, has done exceedingly well in the televised award shows. Could Argo become the first film since Driving Miss Daisy to win the top award without a directing nomination? Argo has won the Critics Choice and the Golden Globe Awards which many are calling the kiss of death since only two films in the last ten years have gone on to win the Oscar. Read more on Oscar Updates Begin – Could ‘Argo’ pull it off?…
The North Texas Film Critics Association has honored Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln with four of their awards, including Best Picture. It is even more of a feat when considering the group only hands out seven awards that the film was eligible for. Have a look at the winners after the jump.
Happy holidays, fans of The Awards Circuit! I hope everyone is staying warm and enjoying the time with friends and family this holiday season. This past week was another busy — although slightly less chaotic than last week — one for us at the site, but we carried on with grace and gusto as always! Starting things off, the African-American Film Critics Associationannounced their winners, where Zero Dark Thirty and Middle of Nowhere both won huge. For the latter film, the momentum it’s built throughout the awards circuit now puts it firmly in contention for a “Best Original Screenplay” slot. Zero Dark Thirty’s Mark Boal, however, is a shoo-in for the category. Other critics groups that unveiled their yearly champions include Houston Film Critics Society, San Francisco Film Critics, Kansas City Film Critics, Florida Film Critics Circle, Chicago Film Critics Association and Dallas Fort-Worth Film Critics. The Golden Satellite Awards also gave a ginormous boost to Silver Linings Playbookwith multiple wins (including “Best Film”), which now could be a very, very major threat if it steals the presumed Globe win away from Les Miserables. Read more on Circuit Round-Up (Week Ending 12/23)…
Steven Allan Spielberg was born December 18, 1946, in the great state of Ohio. Before becoming one of our most beloved directors, Spielberg attended Long Beach State University, and made his first short film, Amblin‘, while working as an intern at Universal Studios (the title of which used when naming his production company, Amblin Entertainment). His first television job came when he was chosen to direct one of the segments for the 1969 pilot episode of Night Gallery. He would go on to direct a few TV films, including Duel (1971), a film about a truck driver that goes crazy and runs people off the road. Spielberg’s debut feature film was The Sugarland Express (1974).
The stars have aligned for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. They announced their nominations for the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards. For the first time, their nominees don’t seem as blatant for trying to have the biggest stars in Hollywood join together for a dinner party. Of course, there are some glaring omissions from a few categories but many of the films and performances cited were for the most part, respectable.
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln leads the tally with seven nominations including Best Picture and Director. Daniel Day-Lewis nabbed his seventh nomination along co-stars Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones. Lincoln remains a definite favorite to win in nearly every category. To some surprise, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained was able to grab five nominations including a double Supporting Actor citation for Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz. Tarantino was also nominated Best Director and Screenplay. Missing in the director’s field, Tom Hooper for the dynamite musical Les Miserables, which did grab four nominations in total. Read more on Analysis of the Golden Globe Nominations…
Winners to be announced live on the CW Television Network from the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica on January 10, 2013.
BEST PICTURE Argo Beasts of the Southern Wild Django Unchained Les Miserables Life of Pi Lincoln The Master Moonrise Kingdom Silver Linings Playbook Zero Dark Thirty
While Zero Dark Thirty, admittedly a brilliant, troubling film, has taken two of the major Best Picture and Best Director Awards, I am still a firm believer that Lincoln will take the Academy Award for Best Picture. Steven Spielberg I am less sure about, though the members of the Academy will acknowledge that his brilliant decision to allow the actors and the screenplay to shine was a superb directorial decision, the stuff of Best Director indeed. Audiences use to his stunning visuals, (and who isn’t?), instead found a film that focused on character, thereby performance, on words, and atmosphere, something he accomplished with Schindler’s List (1993) which won him his first Oscar for Best Director. Read more on Why ‘Lincoln’ Can Still Win Picture……
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…
With two (really one) contender left to be unveiled, this is the most exciting awards race I’ve covered in all my years of Oscar prognosticating. Every category is competitive and with races like this, anything can happen. Along with updating the official Oscar Predictions, I’ve updated the major precursors such as the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
As New York gets ready to lift on Monday, which I’ve attempted to take a stab at, the National Board of Review and Los Angeles Film Critics will start the chain reaction of the awards season. Before anyone knows the winners, I’m seeing this as a three-horse race between Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Ben Affleck’s Argo, more particularly the first two films. Currently I’m foreseeing Hooper’s film to lead the way on Oscar nomination morning with 13 nominations, assuming lead Hugh Jackman and standout Eddie Redmayne can plow through some of the veterans in their categories. Read more on Oscar Circuit – Music vs. History…
On top of all of the things we have to be thankful for due to our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln is also responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday. So be sure to see Steven Spielberg’s film, Lincoln, this holiday weekend (especially if you want to have any idea of what’s going on at this year’s Oscars!). Check out the informative banner after the jump. Read more on Celebrate the Spirit of Lincoln This Thanksgiving…
There’s no two ways around it…getting to interview James Spader is a bit of an intimidating experience. Just look at the roles that he’s played over his career, and it’s hard to not think of those characters when you sit down to speak with him. Luckily for me, when I was invited to interview him about ‘Lincoln’ (a film I loved, and my review of which you can find here), I was delighted to learn he’s of course nothing like those individuals and was a gregarious and talkative guy, eager to chat with me about the likes of Nate Silver, the politics of ‘Lincoln’, and of course his scene stealing part in the film. It was a good, if short talk with an incredibly fascinating man.
For the first time in nearly a decade (and honestly one of the rather rare times for his career on the whole) Steven Spielberg will be directing a film that’s not predominantly a period piece. Yes, for his next outing in the director’s chair, the Beard has opted to make the biopic of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, known as the most lethal sniper in United States military history. Scribe Jason Hall is adapting Kyle’s autobiography American Sniper, and as if Spielberg directing isn’t enough, he’s got Bradley Cooper in the lead role as well! Cooper actually picked up the rights to this book at one point, so it’s clearly a passion project for him, and now could be a future awards contender as well. After the jump you can see a little more about the book, but I’m very eager to see Cooper work with Spielberg and how the filmmaker chooses to bring this particular story to the big screen. They were competitors of sorts last season, but a team up could lead to even more awards glory for both. If it’s as good as I think it might be, then it could really turn out to be a winner. Read on below for more…
Add another guild win to Argo‘s impressive tally, as the American Cinema Editors honored William Goldberg’s work on the film with the Best Edited Feature (Dramatic) prize. The 63rd annual ACE Eddie Awards, held last night, celebrate the best in editing for the year. Also picking up prizes for film editing were Silver Linings Playbook, Brave, and Searching For Sugar Man. Stephen Spielberg, Richard Marks and Larry Silk all received special honors at the ceremony. Check out the full list of winner after the jump! 
The stars have aligned for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. They announced their nominations for the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards. For the first time, their nominees don’t seem as blatant for trying to have the biggest stars in Hollywood join together for a dinner party. Of course, there are some glaring omissions from a few categories but many of the films and performances cited were for the most part, respectable.
