Moviefone Editorial

Tag: julianne-moore

  • Julianne Moore to Join Amy Adams for Thriller ‘The Woman in the Window’

    Julianne Moore to Join Amy Adams for Thriller ‘The Woman in the Window’

    Amy Adams, Julianne Moore
    HBO/20th Century Fox

    You had us at Julianne Moore and Amy Adams.

    The ginger goddesses are teaming up for “The Woman in the Window,” a thriller based on the A.J. Finn book and directed by Joe Wright (“The Darkest Hour,” “Atonement,” “Pride & Prejudice”).

    According to The Hollywood Reporter, Julianne Moore is in “negotiations” to join Amy Adams, who is already on board as “a child psychologist with severe agoraphobia (and a penchant for mixing alcohol with her medication) who hasn’t left her house in months. The woman believes she witnessed a horrible crime involving a new neighboring family but no one, including the police, will believe her.” Moore would play the mother of a mysterious young boy who moves in across the street.

    It sounds a lot like “The Girl on the Train,” but apparently the story is a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.” Maybe it’s a mix of both, as well as just a classic thriller. Actor/playwright/screenwriter Tracy Letts (“August: Osage County”) wrote the script.

    Amy Adams is on a troubled-but-fascinating protagonist streak, currently heating up HBO’s Sunday night lineup with “Sharp Objects.” We’re looking forward to seeing her in “The Woman in the Window,” but it doesn’t have release date quite yet.

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  • 15 Things You Never Knew About ‘Jurassic Park’ on its 25th Anniversary

    Watching “Jurassic Park” for the first time was like glimpsing into the future. So what does it say that this beloved Steven Spielberg movie is now 25 years old?

    The film, released on June 11 1993, changed the way we make movies. To mark that major milestone, and to pass the time until “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” hits theaters, here are some fun facts you might not know about “Jurassic Park.”
    1. Ian Malcolm’s line, “I think we’re extinct,” was a late addition to the script. In EW’s oral history of the film, back in 2013, the line’s origins started with dino supervisor Phil Tippet, who was brought on to oversee animating the dinos in stop-motion before ILM’s Dennis Muren presented his first CG animation test in wireframe form. “Steven asked me how I felt ­after seeing the footage,” Tippet revealed, “and I said, ‘I think I’m extinct.’ He said, ‘That’s a great line. I’m putting that in the movie.’

    2. Prior to directing “Jurassic Park,” Spielberg was working with writer Michael Crichton to develop a film version of “ER.” The two returned to the hospital-set project after “Jurassic Park” was released, turning it into a TV series instead.
    3. Despite the dinosaurs being the biggest selling point of the movie, “Jurassic Park” features only 15 minutes of actual dinosaur footage.

    4. “Terminator 2” director James Cameron said that he wanted to direct “Jurassic Park,” but the film rights were sold before he had a chance to bid on them. Cameron has admitted that this was probably for the best, as his version would have been darker and more violent.
    5. One of the reasons Spielberg cast Ariana Richards as Lex is that she screamed so loudly and convincingly during her audition, that Spielberg’s sleeping wife woke up and ran into the room to see what was wrong.

    6. In one shot, one of the monitors at Nedry’s cluttered workstation can be seen playing the movie “Jaws,” also directed by Spielberg.
    7. One of the most difficult effects to achieve in the film was also among the simplest — the cup of water that vibrates when the T-Rex nears the tour. Special effects artist Michael Lantieri finally cracked the code by attaching the cup to a guitar string underneath the dashboard and pulling it.

    8. Julianne Moore was one of many actresses who tried out for the role of Ellie Sattler. She was instead cast as Sarah Harding in 1997’s “The Lost World: Jurassic Park.”
    9. Despite the fact that the Jurassic Park logo features a skeletal T-Rex, the T-Rex actually lived during the Cretaceous Period. Crichton admitted that he just picked the design because he thought it looked cool.

    10. The film establishes Ian Malcolm and John Hammond as polar opposites when it comes to scientific philosophy. That clash is even reflected in their respective costume designs, with Malcolm wearing all-black outfits and Hammond all-white.
    11. The film greatly exaggerates the size of Velociraptors for dramatic effect. However, during post-production, a new, larger species of raptor — called the Utahraptor — was discovered.

    12. Between his salary and back-end royalties, Spielberg earned a whopping $250 million from “Jurassic Park.”
    13. The dilophosaurus is never shown walking during its brief appearance as it attacks Nedry, as the puppeteers struggled to properly convey movement. Spielberg eventually decided that simply having the dilophosaurus appear next to Nedry was more effective.

    14. Both “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List” were released in 1993, with Spielberg having to finish post-production on the former via videoconference while filming the latter. The process proved so grueling that Spielberg didn’t release another film for four years after.

    15. Laura Dern, who played Dr. Ellie Sattler, recalled in Entertainment Weekly’s recent oral history of “Jurassic Park” how Spielberg pitched her the movie: “I know that you’re doing your independent films, but I need you to be chased by dinosaurs, in awe of dinosaurs, and have the adventure of a lifetime. Will you do this with me?” Her “Wild at Heart” co-star Nicolas Cage, who said he’d always dreamed of being in a dinosaur movie, urged her to say yes.

  • 15 Things You Never Knew About ‘The Big Lebowski’

    It’s been 20 years since moviegoers were first introduced to The Dude, an affable hippie just trying to make his way through life and bowl a few rounds — in between buying coffee creamer using a check.

    “The Big Lebowski” was not a smash hit when it first debuted, but it’s built up a considerable cult following in the years since — deservedly so. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, here are 15 things you might not know about this Coen Bros. classic.

    1. While fictional, the movie draws inspiration from several real-life figures. The Dude himself is loosely based on a man named Jeff Dowd, who helped distribute the Coens’ first film, “Blood Simple.”

    2. Meanwhile, Julianne Moore‘s character, Maude, is based on artist Carolee Schneemann and singer Yoko Ono. John Goodman‘s Walter is based on screenwriter John Milius.3. The Coens’ friend, Peter Exline, a screenwriter and film professor, also directly inspired the development of “The Big Lebowski.” It was Exline who actually coined the phrase: “It really ties the room together” and whose personal anecdotes inspired several key moments in the film.

    4. If you’ve ever wondered how The Dude manages to financially support himself while clearly in a perpetual state of “funemployment,” an early draft of the screenplay revealed he’s the heir to the Rubik’s Cube fortune.5. The majority of The Dude’s outfits were supplied by Jeff Bridges himself. He even reused a shirt he previously wore in 1991’s “The Fisher King.”

    6. In order to film the bowling shots from just the right angle, the Coens mounted a camera atop an RC car frame and used that to follow the bowling balls down the alley.
    7. The Dude drives a 1973 Ford Torino. Two versions of the car were used for filming. One of them was destroyed, but the other later resurfaced in an episode of “The X-Files.”

    8. Every single song played during the course of the film is actually heard by the characters themselves, either on the radio or on the supermarket loudspeakers.

    9. Bridges clearly has musical talent, as shown by his starring role in 2009’s “Crazy Heart.” However, Bridges also moonlights as a musician on the side and plays in a Lebowski-inspired band called The Abiders.10. Steve Buscemi‘s poor, put-upon hero Donnie (RIP) apparently has trouble remembering his own name, or at least has really ticked off his tailor. The character’s customized bowling bowling shirts always display the wrong name throughout the film.

    11. Donnie is also notable for bowling a strike every single time — until his very last turn, which comes moments before his tragic death.
    12. Walter’s gun shop, Sobchak Security, advertises that it sells “peace of mind.” This is a callback to John Goodman’s character in “Barton Fink,” who made a similar claim.13. Peter Stormare‘s character, Uli, was partly conceived on the set of “Fargo.” There, Stormare’s character showed a similar obsession with pancakes, and Stormare would often lapse into an exaggerated German accent in between takes.

    14. The Dude is so lazy, that he’s never actually seen bowling once in the entire film, even during that iconic dream sequence. However, he does drink exactly nine White Russians during that time.15. Characters say the F-word exactly 292 times throughout the movie, which puts it just above 1983’s “Scarface” and below 1990’s “Goodfellas.”

  • 21 Things You Never Knew About ‘Boogie Nights’

    In the age of HBO’s “The Deuce,” “Boogie Nights” looks like a time-honored masterpiece, but when the sprawling period epic about the golden age of porn filmmaking opened 20 years ago this week (on October 10, 1997), moviegoers didn’t exactly embrace it.

    The subject matter was still too skeevy to draw mainstream or even art-house audiences, yet not nearly explicit enough to draw the trench coat crowd. “Most people don’t share my moral sense,” writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson explained in 1999, “which is, ‘I’ll masturbate, but I have to clean it up very quickly afterwards.’” No wonder “Boogie Nights” wasn’t exactly a hit.

    Nonetheless, it earned three Oscar nominations, made a serious leading man out of Mark Wahlberg, gave Burt Reynolds his best role of the last 35 years, put Anderson on the map, and gave early career boosts to Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, and Thomas Jane.

    These days, “Boogie Nights” evokes double nostalgia, both for the disco 1970s, lovingly recreated in the movie’s costumes and soundtrack, and for the 1990s, when Hollywood studios still nurtured indie directors and let them realize their visions instead of plucking them fresh from Sundance and assigning them to direct CGI blockbuster franchise sequels.

    “Boogie Nights” had a famously fraught production history, including some life-imitates-porn moments and a near-fistfight between Reynolds and Anderson. Here are some of the things that, uh, went down.
    1. Anderson (above, right) grew up in the Valley and was, as a teen, obsessed with the porn industry existing all around him. He was still in high school when he made his first movie, a 32-minute short called “The Dirk Diggler Story,” a “Zelig”-like mockumentary about a fallen porn star. In addition to the protagonist, several other characters and much of the dialogue would find their way into “Boogie Nights” a decade later.

    2. The Dirk Diggler of Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” screenplay bears a strong resemblance to legendary porn actor John Holmes, and not just in terms of length. There’s Holmes’ rise to fame via the series of “Johnny Wadd” thrillers (echoed in Dirk’s “Brock Landers” movies), his biographical documentary directed by a colleague (“Exhausted,” the inspiration for the movie that Julianne Moore‘s Amber makes about Dirk), and his alleged involvement in the Wonderland drug murder case (the inspiration for the whole nightmarish sequence involving Alfred Molina‘s Rahad Jackson).
    3. New Line wanted to be the next Miramax, and they needed their own Quentin Tarantino. After seeing Anderson’s first film, “Hard Eight,” they thought he might be it. They decided the director’s phone-book-sized script about a guy with a 13-inch penis was edgy enough, as long as he agreed to keep it under three hours and keep the rating down to an R.

    4. Anderson initially wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to star as Dirk Diggler, but the actor begged off, citing his commitment to star in “Titanic.” But he recommended his “Basketball Diaries” co-star Wahlberg. “You know,” Anderson joked, “Mark came to me and said, ‘I’ve got an inch on Leo.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he showed it to me. And then I hired him.” Years later, DiCaprio would cite turning down “Boogie Nights” as his “biggest regret.”
    5. The role of Jack Horner, the porn filmmaker who becomes a surrogate father to Dirk and an ad hoc family of cast and crew members, was hard to cast. Before hiring Burt Reynolds, Anderson considered actors as diverse as Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson and Sydney Pollack.

    6. Warren Beatty expressed interest, but he ultimately acknowledged he just wanted to be associated with the project because the 59-year-old star saw himself more as Dirk. (“I think he was joking and not joking,” Anderson mused.)7. Samuel L. Jackson, who’d played the villain in “Hard Eight,” turned down the role of Buck Swope, the porn actor who dreams of selling stereos. His response to the script, Anderson recalled, was “What the hell is this?” After Moore vouched for the young director, Cheadle took the part and turned it into a career-boosting showcase.

    8. There were a number of real-life porn actors in the cast, mostly as extras, though Nina Hartley had the biggest part as the emasculating wife of Little Bill (William H. Macy). Anderson hired them to help make sure he was depicting the porn world accurately, but sometimes, things got a little too much like the real thing. Hartley would often walk around the set in the nude because that’s what she was used to doing on porn sets, even though it unnerved Anderson’s cast and crew. She also wondered aloud why she couldn’t just have sex in her sex scenes, since she found simulating sex much more complicated. During one scene, some of the actors and crew claimed she and her partner really were having sex, but she insisted later that his penis wasn’t venturing where everyone thought it was going; it just wasn’t taped to his thigh like it should have been.
    9. Like her character, Heather Graham (Rollergirl) seldom took off her skates, even when cameras weren’t rolling.

    10. Speaking of penises, the movie’s most famous special effect was the prosthetic Diggler that Wahlberg shows off in the final scene. The first one that the make-up team built was John Holmes-sized, but it just looked too huge to seem real, so they built a shorter one, still large enough for Marky Mark to hide his actual funky bunch inside.
    11. In fact, the make-up artists built several, in case of breakage. Wahlberg also whipped it out during the sequence where Dirk and Amber are shooting a sex scene; it doesn’t appear on camera then, but Wahlberg wanted to get a rise out of Moore. Most of the time, however, the package shown straining against the confines of Dirk’s bellbottoms is just a woman’s stocking filled with birdseed. The propmakers left the stocking in a warm trunk, where its seeds started to sprout, so they had to make another one.

    12. During one scene where Little Bill grumbles about having caught his wife being sodomized by another man, Macy repeatedly muffed his line and said it backwards: “My f**king wife has an ass in her c**k.” Anderson decided he preferred the mistake and kept it in the film.
    13. While Anderson allowed Macy and others to ad lib, he insisted that Reynolds stay on script. Reynolds became irked and felt that the relatively inexperienced director wasn’t giving him the respect he deserved as a veteran movie star. The two men argued loudly, and Reynolds swung a fist that might have hit Anderson in the face had a crew member not held back his arm.

    14. Why is Molina the only actor in his scene not distracted by the firecrackers going off at random intervals? Because he’s wearing a hidden earpiece piping in “Sister Christian” on a continuous loop.
    15. If the song “You Got the Touch,” which Dirk records during his dubious effort to branch out into music, sounds familiar, it’s because it originally appeared on the soundtrack of the first “Transformers” movie — the 1986 cartoon, that is. Dirk’s other song, “Feel the Heat,” was composed by Anderson and Reilly.

    16. Avant-garde satirical film director Robert Downey Sr. (yep, Iron Man’s real-life dad) shows up in a cameo as the record label executive. With Downey’s permission, Anderson cribbed the kid setting off firecrackers from Downey’s 1969 movie “Putney Swope,” as well as Buck Swope’s last name.
    17. Anderson had to submit the film to the MPAA 18 times, cutting a few frames each time from scenes the ratings board found too risqué, in order to avoid an NC-17 rating and earn the R rating he was contractually obliged to deliver. In the end, the difference between NC-17 and R turned out to be only 45 seconds worth of film. “I don’t miss it at all,” Anderson said of the snipped footage.

    18. Still, Anderson’s cut was over three hours long, making both test audiences and executives at New Line restless. Studio co-founder Bob Shaye made his own two-hour cut of the film and screened it for a test audience in Pasadena. Before the screening, the then-unknown director walked among the viewers in line and bad-mouthed his own film, saying, “This movie sucks. You’re gonna hate it. This movie sucks,” so that Shaye’s cut would earn even lower test scores than his own. Eventually, both sides reached a compromise, resulting in a 155-minute release. Among the lost scenes: Dirk learns his parents have been killed in a gruesome car crash, which is then briefly shown on screen.
    19. “Boogie Nights” reportedly cost $15.5 million to make. It earned back $26.4 million in North America and another $16.7 million overseas.

    20. The Academy nominated “Boogie Nights” for three Oscars: Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Moore), and Best Supporting Actor (Reynolds). It was shut out of all three categories.
    21. In 2015, Reynolds said that, to this day, he still hasn’t ever watched “Boogie Nights” all the way through, and that he turned down an offer to appear in Anderson’s follow-up, “Magnolia.” “I’d done my picture with Paul Thomas Anderson, that was enough for me,” he said. Wahlberg, who recalled Reynolds trying an Irish accent for his role in rehearsals, said in 2014 that he believed Reynolds’ evident ill will toward what could have been his career comeback role had consequences. “He would have won the Oscar,” Wahlberg said, “had he not dug such a hole for himself.”

  • The Squirm-Inducing Genius of ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’: Podcast

    THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLELooking to be forcibly removed from your comfort zone? Then “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” is the movie for you!

    This week, Tim Hayne, Phil Pirrello, Rachel Horner, and Tony Maccio talk about 1992’s most disquieting, lactation-inducing, politically incorrect thriller, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.” Directed by Curtis Hanson (yes, that Curtis Hanson), “Cradle” follows the exploits of a vengeful nanny named Peyton (Rebecca De Mornay) and her hapless, far less interesting victims: asthmatic mom (Annabella Sciorra), Lloyd Braun from “Seinfeld” / dad (Matt McCoy), adorable little girl (Madeline Zima), sassy redhead / nosy best friend (Julianne Moore!), and mentally challenged Ernie Hudson. This movie works hard to make its audience feel as uncomfortable as humanly possible, and, for the most part, it truly succeeds. Sinister, nipple-exposed breastfeeding, anyone?

    Tune in next week for Phil’s pick: Michael Bay’s two-and-a-half hour Aerosmith music video, “Armageddon.” You won’t want to miss a thing.

    Listen to CAN’T WAIT! A Movie Lover’s Podcast Episode 12: ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’Total runtime: 60:37

    Subscribe to the CAN’T WAIT! podcast:

    Have thoughts/feelings/feedback about the podcast? Have a movie you really, really want us to watch and talk about? Hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

  • Best of Late Night TV: Shaq and Hugh Jackman’s Hilarious ‘Phone Booth,’ Taylor Swift Soap Opera

    If you’re like us and value your sleep, you probably nodded off into your Ambien dreamland before the party started on post-prime time TV. Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Here’s the best of what happened last night on late night.

    This is classic. On Monday night, “The Tonight Show” guests Hugh Jackman and Shaquille O’Neal played “Phone Booth” with Jimmy Fallon. Just seeing Shaq try to fit into a phone booth was hilarious, but then — for every wrong answer — a stranger from The Mystery Bench was shoved into their booth. Hugh got the first question right, so “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek squeezed into Shaq’s booth.
    Hugh got himself a Blue man next. (Should’ve been Tobias from “Arrested Development.”) The whole thing just got better as it went along. Even the “Property Brothers” showed up! Idris Elba and Tony Goldwyn were both on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” Turns out, like a lot of us, Seth’s mom is a big Idris Elba fan. Idris talked about “The Wire” and “Beasts of No Nation” and Tony talked “Scandal,” saying he prefers when Twitter users play hard to get. Julianne Moore and John Stamos — two very attractive people who both started on soap operas — were on “The Late Late Show with James Corden.” Here’s John explaining that he started collecting Disney memorabilia, but he passed on Disneyland with Michael Jackson. MJ called him and left a voicemail asking if he wanted to go to Disneyland. John didn’t call him back … maybe cause MJ didn’t leave a number.Speaking of Stamos, Julianne Moore and soap operas, here are the stars doing a brilliant “Taylor Swift Soap Opera” — so dubbed because it was written using Tay lyrics. You won’t be able to shake it off!
    Cate Blanchett and Chace Crawford were on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” One of them discussed his new facial hair. The other revealed she got her son’s name from “Captain Underpants.” JKL hit the streets and asked “What’s the Most Impressive Thing You’ve Ever Done?” and one woman had a rather unexpected answer, involving a Tampa hockey player: Because RBF is a serious issue — serious enough to affect Queen Elizabeth and Kanye — “Conan” addressed it head on. So here are Conan O’Brien and Andy Richter discussing Resting Bitch Face: In case you were worried, John McCain told Stephen Colbert he “slept like a baby” after losing the 2008 election. (“Sleep two hours, wake up and cry, sleep two hours, wake up and cry.”) He’s funny! At least he didn’t pull an Al Gore. In a continuing quest to discover Who Is Stephen Colbert, Stephen took a lie detector and shared the results on air:
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  • Best of Late Night TV: Julianne Moore’s ‘Box of Lies,’ Matt Damon’s Film Career in 8 Minutes

    If you’re like us and value your sleep, you probably nodded off into your Ambien dreamland before the party started on post-prime time TV. Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Here’s the best of what happened last night on late night.

    The ageless goddess that is “The Tonight Show” to promote “Freeheld,” but she took some time to play Jimmy Fallon’s classic game “Box of Lies.” They had to take turns describing mystery objects while the other tried to determine whether the descriptions were accurate or lies. Bless her, but she was terrible. Still awesome, though, and endearing in her attempts, especially in the last one.
    If you want to learn how to speak with a Boston accent, Matt Damon was giving lessons over on “The Late Late Show.” Tip: “You can’t really do it without swearing.” (James Corden, who is British, was awful.) Matt also mentioned discovering his fear of heights at age 34. That’s Zachary Levin looking sharp next to him, mostly just listening to the conversation.
    And here’s Matt Damon acting out his entire career in 8 minutes, in another one of James’s classics:
    Over on “Late Night,” Seth Meyers and Kenan Thompson played a fun game called “Three Memes and a GIF.” Question: Isn’t it pronounced with a hard G not like “Jiff”?
    Reigning Emmys queen Viola Davis was on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” talking about her Emmys speech for that historic win, but also dishing on “How to Get Away With Murder,” and how she gives her mom money to go to the casinos every Thursday. Plus, you have to see Jimmy’s bit on “The Dangers of Texting With Viola Davis.” Talk about throwing her under the bus.
    Michael Pena was on JKL and he broke some history too as the first Mexican astronaut … in “The Martian,” anyway.

    Ellen Page talked (very eloquently) to Stephen Colbert about “Freeheld” and LGBT progress. Jesse Eisenberg was also on “The Late Show” talking about his new book of short stories and the embarrassment of his face. His words!
    The perfection of Joseph Gordon-Levitt was on “Conan,” describing his new movie “The Walk” as a 3D action movie. He also said it’s like a heist movie, but no one gets hurt. And why not, here’s Mark-Paul Gosselaar reliving his time as Zack Morris back on “Saved by the Bell”:

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  • Julianne Moore and Ellen Page Fight for Their Love in ‘Freeheld’ Trailer

    FreeheldIt’s magical sometimes when films come by just at the right moment to touch viewers, make a statement, and perhaps change lives.

    The first trailer for “Freeheld” is here, and this might be one of those cases now that the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage to be legal in all states. Based on the 2007 Oscar-winning documentary short of the same title, “Freeheld” tells the story of New Jersey police officer Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) and her fight to leave her pension benefits to her domestic partner, Stacie Andree (Ellen Page).
    From the trailer, the movie looks to be part love story between Laurel and Stacie, and part political fight after Laurel is diagnosed with lung cancer. She wants her benefits to go to her partner, just as all the other cops’ benefits go to their spouses in case of death.

    It’s a stirring story, and a stark reminder of how much (and how little) has changed in the marriage equality movement. We also wouldn’t be surprised if the murderer’s row of actors, most of whom already have Oscar nominations — including Michael Shannon and Steve Carell — get awards notice this season.

    “Freeheld” opens in limited release Oct. 2.

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  • Oscars 2015: 9 Politically-Charged Acceptance Speeches

    87th Annual Academy Awards - ShowThere may have been few surprises among the winners at Sunday night’s Academy Awards, but one surprise was how political their speeches were. After all, in recent years, political statements have largely been unwelcome guests at the Dolby Theater.

    In past years, artists from Vanessa Redgrave to Richard Gere to Michael Moore have been criticized for using their time at the Oscar podium to raise controversial issues before a worldwide audience. In an evening of glitz, glamour, and self-congratulation, mentioning the sometimes cruel realities of life beyond Hollywood Boulevard makes winners seem like party poopers. Mentioning God, your cast and crew, your spouse and kids, and Harvey Weinstein is fine, but mentioning the plight of migrant farm workers is a little too much reality for the dream factory.

    Nonetheless, several winners at the 87th annual Oscar ceremony used their victory speeches to mention causes important to them. Some of those causes were at least relevant to the movies they were being recognized for, and some were not. But in a year when the Academy was taken to task for its dearth of minority nominees, and when actresses used the #AskHerMore hashtag to prompt red-carpet interviewers to ask them about their achievements instead of treating them as walking fashion mannequins, it’s understandable that winners would feel encouraged to be more vocal about their politics. Here’s what the issue-minded winners had to say; judge for yourself if they did their causes a favor by touting them at the Oscars.

    1. Patricia Arquette
    The “Boyhood” Best Supporting Actress winner ended her speech with calls for wage equality and equal rights for women. Many viewers probably wondered what these issues had to do with her role as a mom in “Boyhood.” She did imply a connection between motherhood and her pet issues: “To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights,” she said. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

    2. Mat Kirkby and James Lucas
    The Oscar-winning live-action short “The Phone Call” is about a suicide hotline, a topic close to the hearts of filmmakers Kirkby and Lucas. Though Kirkby started his speech with a joke that his Oscar entitled him to a free donut at his favorite bakery, he turned serious, saying, “We’d like to thank all the volunteers around the world in crisis centers who give their time for nothing, including our mums.”

    3. Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry
    Kent and Perry won the Best Documentary Short prize for “Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1.” Director Kent said that the honor “really goes to the veterans and their families who are brave enough to seek help.” The topic of suicide is one producer Perry knows all too well; her son Evan killed himself at 15, an event that was the subject of her 2009 film “Boy Interrupted.” In her brief remarks on behalf of “Crisis Hotline,” Perry said, “We should talk about suicide out loud.”

    4. Laura Poitras
    Poitras won the Best Documentary Feature prize for “Citizenfour,” chronicling her interview with fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. “The disclosures that Edward Snowden reveals don’t only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself,” she said. “When the most important decisions being made affecting all of us are made in secret, we lose our ability to check the powers that control. Thank you to Edward Snowden for his courage and for the many other whistleblowers. And I share this with Glenn Greenwald and other journalists who are exposing truth.”

    5. Common and John Legend
    When they won Best Original Song for “Glory,” their tune from “Selma,” both men emphasized that the movie about the civil rights protest in Alabama 50 years ago remains relevant today. Common said that the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the bloody confrontation depicted in “Selma” took place, is now a symbol of hope. “The spirit of this bridge connects the kid from the South Side of Chicago dreaming of a better life to those in France standing up for their freedom of expression, to the people in Hong Kong protesting for democracy.” Legend noted that the Voting Rights Act — the legislation passed as a result of the Selma march — was now being weakened (thanks to a 2013 Supreme Court decision that all but overturned the 1965 law). He also observed that America is “the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850.” The musicians’ speeches echoed the theme of the movie and the song, that the battle for human rights continues.

    6. Graham Moore
    Moore, who won Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Imitation Game,” noted that his film’s subject, World War II codebreaker and computing pioneer Alan Turing, never got to bask in adulation at a podium like the one at the Dolby Theater; instead, he was persecuted by the British legal system and hounded to suicide because he was gay. In perhaps the night’s most moving speech, Moore noted just how personal Turing’s story was for him because “when I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird, and I felt different, and I felt like I did not belong. And now I’m standing here.” He encouraged kids who feel like he did to stick around and do something great so that they, too, can be recognized for their achievement and pass the message of hope on to a new generation. “Stay weird,” he advised. “Stay different.”

    7. Julianne Moore
    Moore won Best Actress for playing an early-onset Alzheimer’s patient in “Still Alice.” Said Moore, “I’m thrilled that we were able to shine a light on Alzheimer’s disease, So many people who have this disease feel marginalized. People who have Alzheimer’s disease deserve to be seen so we can find a cure.”

    8. Eddie Redmayne
    Like Julianne Moore, “The Theory of Everything” star Redmayne won his lead acting prize for playing someone with a debilitating ailment — Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-afflicted physicist Stephen Hawking. “This Oscar belongs to all of those people around the world suffering with ALS,” Redmayne said. “It belongs to one exceptional family — Stephen, Jane and the Hawking children,” Of the Oscar trophy, he said. “I will be his custodian.”

    9. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu
    The “Birdman” filmmaker, who took home three trophies (for Best Original Screenplay, Best Directing, and Best Picture), noted that he was the second Mexican in a row to win the Directing prize. (Last year, his pal Alfonso Cuaron won for “Gravity.”) In his Best Picture speech, Iñarritu called for justice for Mexicans, both at home and in the United States. He expressed a wish that his countrymen in Mexico could “find and build a government that we deserve.” As for Mexicans in America, he said, “I just pray they can be treated with the same dignity and respect of the ones that came before and built this incredible, immigrant nation.”
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  • Oscars 2015: Best Actress Winner Is Julianne Moore

    Julianne MooreAnd the 2015 Oscar for Best Actress goes to… Julianne Moore for “Still Alice.”

    Of all the 2015 Oscar races, the Best Actress award had pretty much been decided since the end of 2014. Most pundits and film critics predicted that Moore would win for her moving and undeniably heartbreaking performance in “Still Alice.” The other nominees this year — Marion Cotillard for “Two Days, One Night,” Felicity Jones for “The Theory of Everything,” Rosamond Pike for “Gone Girl,” and Reese Witherspoon for “Wild — never really stood a chance. Except maybe Witherspoon, whose turn as a former addict literally walking the road to recovery was considered a dark horse.

    All the Moviefone editors chose Moore to win, so it’s not really a surprise. Let’s all revel in this wonderful actress’s victory.

    Now that the Oscars are over, we can dream about next year’s nominees. Or not. Your call.
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