Rob and Steven offer their Oscar predictions, as well as their two cents about who should win. more ›

Receiving two Academy Awards nominations last week seems to have put some wind in the sails of arguably the past year, Asghar Farhadi's A Separation: the best film out right now will be around for a few more weeks. more ›

Accepting an award from the Chicago Film Critics Association, Jason Segal reminds us that awards speeches are often more memorable than who won what. more ›

It's been a banner year for Melissa McCarthy. Those who knew Gilmore Girls are saying "I told you so," to those just now "discovering" her. And so are the YouTube fans of Marbles Harsgrove. more ›

The acclaimed documentary from Kartemquin is nowhere to be found on the Best Documentary Feature shortlist. more ›

• There are only 50 Academy-sanction Oscar Night America parties around the country, but the bash at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of them. In addition to sipping cocktails and enjoying the simulcast of the awards ceremony on both of the big screens, there will be food, raffle prizes and a red carpet for you to walk on. Cocktail attire, please. A few tickets remain, so get your $100 ready and head to the Film Center website to RSVP.
• Lincoln Hall hosts an Oscar evening with a cocktails beginning as early as 4:30 and red carpet roasting preceding the 7 p.m. main event on their 220" projector. Raffle prizes, a best dressed lookalike contest and a ballot contest will also be on hand, with Mercedes Tyler hosting and Quixotic Comedy performing. The price is right: FREE.
• North Halsted Oscar Night staple Kit Kat club also chips in with a party this year, with a Black Swan theme. Red Carpet action starts at 5:30, and there will be a performance by the University Ballet of Chicago at some point during the evening. The martinis are half-price all night, so fill out your ballot early before you can't write legibly.

The King's Speech, a film that could have been subtitled "Oscarbait" and which cultivated an aura of inevitability that the Rahm Emanuel campaign had to admire, garnered the most Academy Awards nominations with 12. Advocates of critical darling and would-be shoo-in The Social Network found it tied for third with Inception with eight nods, behind popular late-comer True Grit which scored ten. more ›

There were very few surprises Sunday night at the 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards. The list of winners seemed heavily skewed to the favorites. At least there was Ricky Gervais' acid tongue to keep things interesting. As a tool for handicapping the Academy Awards nominations coming out next week, the Golden Globes were particularly useless this year. So how are we going to get a leg up in filling out the ballot? more ›

Movie writer and director John Hughes, who passed away last summer at the age of 59, was honored at last night's Academy Awards. While many stars are honored during the "In Memoriam" segment (including Michael Jackson but not Farah Fawcett), Hughes was singled out for a full segment featuring Matthew Broderick, several members of the Brat Pack (including Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall) and Macaulay Culkin. The actors remembered Hughes and honored him with a montage of clips from his movies. more ›

This year, for the first time since 1944, there are ten Best Picture nominees. And that means the return of the "preferential voting" system, also known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). more ›

Did you know that in the 30's and 40's there were frequently ten nominees for Best Picture? Neither did we. The practice ended in 1943, when Casablanca took home the Oscar. Since then it's always been winnowed to a list of five. But this morning AMPAS President Sid Ganis announced that the bigger list is being revived for next year's awards. There will once again be ten nominees. Said Ganis, "Having ten Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize. The final outcome, of course, will be the same - one Best Picture winner." The other categories will remain unchanged. more ›

The Hollywood Hills will soon be set aflutter, as the stars of screen pen their acceptance speeches and rehearse their red carpet sashays in preparation for the 81st Academy Awards. These stars--with the spotlight often on their personal lives as much as their performances--we know all too well. Yet few know much about the Academy's most important guest of the evening: Oscar himself. Far from the paparazzi and tabloid presses, Oscar is making his own preparations at Chicago's R.S. Owens & Company. In fact, the specialty awards company has been the exclusive crafter of the iconic statuettes since 1982. An annual run of Oscars takes three to four weeks to complete, and as Chicagoist found out firsthand, there is a great deal of substance behind the glitz and glam we see on stage. more ›

We are not fetishists in any way, shape or form. And yet even we would be loathe to pass up the chance to fondle an actual Academy Award. (Note: we actually have; Ben Hecht's Oscar is in the collection of the Newberry Library). You'll have the chance to do it too: February 13-22 at at The Shops at North Bridge on Michigan Avenue, "Meet the Oscars, Chicago" will feature a display of Oscars. One of which you'll be able to hold. The free exhibit will include six statuettes to be given out during next year's ceremony as well as Clark Gable's Best Actor Oscar for It Happened One Night. Since 1982 the awards have been manufactured here in Chicago by R.S. Owens & Company. more ›

Whew, thank goodness that's over. We were beginning to think that our planned big-ass Oscar preview would be falling on deaf ears. But now that we know there's really going to be a show, it's time to play catch up. Jon Stewart certainly is. In fact there'll probably be more glitz than ever this year if only to overcompensate for the lack of a proper build-up. more ›

Ah, the Academy Award "Shorts." Largely ignored in favor of the races focusing on acting accomplishments and what movie had the saddest/more politically controversial/historically momentous ending, the Short Subject categories often offer a hodgepodge of achievements actually more worthy of your time than most of the feature length tripe that hits theaters these days. They're also full of fun trivia: did you know Billy Zabka, a.k.a the fantastic villain Johnny Lawrence from one of our favorite films of all time, was actually nominated for an Academy Award in the Live Action Short category in 2004? And have you ever seen Don Hertzfeldt's excellent 2001 nominated animated short, "Rejected"? Wacky stuff. more ›

Nominees for this year's Academy Awards were announced this morning and there weren't any huge surprises. Personally we're pretty excited to see P.T. Anderson up against the Coen brothers in both the directing and best picture categories. And everyone we've spoken too seem to think Ellen Page is deserving of her best actress nomination for Juno. in fact, for the first time in recent memory, we actually think just about all of the nominations are pretty right on. more ›

Perhaps it is the image of Jennifer Hudson walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards, but we've been getting inundated with talk of the event. The barrage has had its affect though, we have some Oscar related events for you this weekend, well except for one that involves vintage beer drinking, but we all need a break some time. We are all about gluttony and package deals this weekend, enjoy! We would suggest... more ›

In two short days the 79th Academy Awards will be presented, and this will cause two things to happen. First, people will immediately start whining about what won and what didn't win. Second, our list of Oscar predictions will probably look ridiculous. Since hindsight is always 20/20, undoubtedly we have made some stupendous blunders. (Where's Karnak when you need him?) But it's all in good fun. Unlike predicting the Super Bowl or election results, our... more ›

Did you know that there's an Oscar available for viewing right here in Chicago, and that you can even make an appointment to see it and actually hold it in your hand? It's at the Newberry Library, a private institution that's open to the public and just far enough west of Michigan Avenue that you won't have to worry about shopaholic tourists when you visit. more ›

Our weekend visit to Intuit’s quirky outsider art gallery sure was fun. Maybe not Academy Awards fun or drunken Milwaukee Art Museum party fun, but we did enjoy old timey photos of strangers made ghostly by double exposures and other such manipulation. Sixty-five of these photos comprise Intuit’s “Accidental Mysteries” exhibit, a peek into the John and Teenuh Foster collection of ‘vernacular photography.’ These found snapshots by anonymous photographers of unknown subjects range from... more ›

The Super Bowl of the movie industry begins in about four hours or so and we couldn’t be more inebria...er, excited. Did anyone else know Oscar producer Gil Cates had a blog? Does anyone else know who Gil Cates is? Or care? His most recent entry includes such nuggets as: Without giving away anything from his performance, I can tell you that Chris will be hilarious. “He better be or it’s my ass on the... more ›

Chicagoist plans to spend Oscar night at a house party where our friend has promised "tons of movie-themed food". He better deliver on that shit because we're dying to know what this movie-themed food could be. House parties are where it's at, in our opinion, but if you're more of a socialite and would like to go to some Oscar parties around town, we've picked 3 that we think sound cool for Sunday night -... more ›

There�s a reason Blake Edwards received an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards this year. He was a master of what former Reader critic (and current New York Times DVD columnist) Dave Kehr called the �sophisticated comedy.� Never one to follow comic conventions � he accepted that Oscar with a staged wheelchair crash � his impressive body of work includes Chicagoist favorites The Party and 10 (which he reportedly wants to remake). more ›