The Bears released defensive tackle Anthony Adams, a Bronzeville crash injured four, and other news. more ›

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 ›

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

Last night's Oscar telecast was relatively straightforward, entertaining, and almost entirely free of surprises--with some notable exceptions. 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.

Immediately catapulting him into the sweet spot for the Best Cinematography Oscar, Wally Pfister took home his first American Society of Cinematographers award over the weekend. Born in Chicago, the son of a TV producer, Pfister has worked with director Chris Nolan since Memento. He had previously been nominated for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Roger Deakins (True Grit) was favored to win, but instead had to settle for an ASC LIfetime Achievement Award. more ›

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 ›

If you're determined to win your Oscars pool this year, now is when you start doing a tiny bit of homework. Today's announcement of the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards nominations caps off the busiest week of movie awards news until the Golden Globes ceremony a month from now, and provides a decent crib sheet for the Academy Awards nominations. more ›

The Newberry Library has countless fascinating objects within their collections, but one of the coolest is an Oscar. Yes, an actual Academy Award, given to Ben Hecht for Best Original Story for Underworld (1927) at the first Academy Awards. It ended up at the Newberry with the rest of the Ben Hecht Papers, bequeathed to the library by his widow Rose. The collection was in a state of disarray at the time it was acquired; in fact there's a memorable photo that shows Hecht's Oscar being used as a doorstop! more ›

In lieu of last night's Oscars, enjoy this trailer, a template, "A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever." 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 ›

Every few years the Academy perversely nominates someone who's directly criticized Hollywood. Take Robert Altman: he made The Player and was nominated for Best Director. Well, the Academy has done it again this year. more ›

Sometimes a smorgasbord is the best way to consume information, so ... 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 ›

At the beginning of each year cinephiles always like to try and predict what the new year will bring. And not just Oscar-related stuff either. Partially due to the mega-success of Avatar, people seem even more technology-obsessed than usual. Just a few days ago we learned that 3-D television from the likes of ESPN is less than a year away. 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 ›

A party is always a great excuse to get out the punchbowl, and an Oscar party calls for sparking wine. By the end of the evening at least few people will feel like celebrating; and well before the end of the evening the rest of us will feel like drinking. For many years the Weinstein brothers held their Oscar party at the Beverly Hills Trader Vic's. That particular location is not quite the same, alas, but we have a tiki punch recipe straight from the Trader's cookbook that we've made before and loved. We've modified it, boosting its star power. Francis Coppola named his sparkling wine, Sofia Blanc de Blancs, after his daughter. It's light, crisp and refreshing. In other words: perfect for punch. In Chicago it's available at Sam's, Binny's, Cost Plus, and elsewhere. None of the Coppola clan are nominated this year, but surely they'd approve. more ›

Has there been a more predictable year for the Academy Awards than this one? Not since Titanic, in our view; and wouldn't you know it, Kate Winslet is up for Best Actress again. Roger Ebert is predicting a win for her, one for Sean Penn in Milk, and a whole mess of awards for the all-but-unstoppable acclaim-train that is Slumdog Millionaire. In an annual tradition Mr. Ebert once again invites you to try and outguess him for a chance to win a trip for two to the world premiere of Disney/Pixar's Up. If the results are as surprise-free as we're expecting, outguessing Ebert is going to hinge on a wild card category like Best Documentary (he's predicting Man on Wire, but don't overlook Trouble the Water). more ›

• Tomorrow the Music Box begins a week-long run of the 2009 Oscar-nominated short films, with one program for Live Action and another for Animation. It's a great smorgasbord including films from all over the world. If you can't make it to the Music Box, you'll be able to watch them at home: the nominated short films will be released on iTunes on February 17. Just keep in mind what David Lynch says about that.
• Speaking of digital cinema, one of the films we loved the most at last year's CIFF gets a non-traditional release in a few weeks. Must Read After My Death, the fascinating and disturbing documentary fashioned by Morgan Dews from materials left behind by his family, opens theatrically in New York and LA on February 20 but will also be viewable in ultrahigh quality online. Via Gigantic Digital, a $2.99 "ticket" will give a viewer unlimited access. As a result of their outreach, Time Out Chicago will actually change the way they cover films. Hank Sartin explains: "After an extended discussion, we're going to run a review both online and in print. In print, we're going to include a newly designed logo indicating that this film is not in theaters but is online. We're going to take this case-by-case, but try to cover films getting non-traditional release whenever we can, online if not always in print."
• Also on February 20, the Alliance Française of Chicago presents an evening of Europe's best short films of 2008. More than 2,000 international cinema professionals voted for the winners, in a format inspired by the Césars. The lineup is a surprise, but expect some solid work that you're unlikely to see anywhere else. Tickets are $12 for members, $15 for non-members; more info here.

We've been so preoccupied lately with Blago and Huberman that we forgot to get excited about the Oscar nominations. Frankly, compared to last year, this year's crop holds a lot less excitement for us, although there are some notable exceptions. It's pretty awesome to see Richard Jenkins and Werner Herzog (!) up for awards, but coolest of all is the Best Supporting Actor nomination for long-time Chicago actor Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road. 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 ›

The Writer's Guild of America has announced their nominations for "outstanding achievement in TV, radio, news, promotional writing, and graphic animation," and guess which movie got a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay? Why, it would be the same one which received an ASC nomination earlier today and a Producer's Guild of America nomination a few days ago. Depending on how you look at it, these noms could be a harbinger of things to come when the Oscars roll around. Or they could just be acknowledgments that The Dark Knight made boatloads of money (in fact it was last year's highest-grossing film). more ›

The first few months of the year are typically the cinematic equivalent of a graveyard. Studios have already unloaded their Oscar bait in advance of the January 1 deadline and are in the midst of prepping their would-be cash cows for release in the late spring. But After Dark's Horrorfest III will take the phrase "cinematic graveyard" seriously. It unspools January 9-15 at Piper's Alley, highlighting eight fright flicks. They'll be shown on a rotating schedule for the duration of the festival. more ›

Winter is a damn good time to just sit around and drink coffee and watch movies. Stuff to watch: more ›

Most of us watched the Oscars last night, while others of us found something else to do, but either way, we were happy to see another Chicago-area native bringing home an award. Writer Diablo Cody, author of the excellent year-as-a-stripper memoir, Candy Girl, won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the teen-pregnancy comedy Juno. While it was the only Oscar for the critical darling little-movie-that-could, it's another addition to the growing list of awards both the film and Ms. Cody have racked up so far. Diablo, accepted the award from Indiana Jones and was on the verge of tears during her acceptance speech (see below). Giving props to her fellow nominees and the cast and crew of her film, Ms. Cody seemed genuinely shocked, excited, and overwhelmed by the award and recognition. We wish Ms. Cody luck on her skyrocketing career and can only imagine the heights of cinematic excellence that could be reached if she were given a crack at something like, say, the next Harry Potter movie. We might actually pay to see that. more ›

Here's what our local ne'erdowells have been up to while waiting in eager anticipation for tonight's Oscars: more ›

More fascinated by Kelis' milkshake than Daniel Plainview's? Is the only Oscar you'll watch living in a garbage can? Then this Sunday probably means nothing to you. You're burnt out on the "glitz" and "glamor" of the night, not to mention the drama surrounding that writers strike. more ›