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Oscars 2016: Best Supporting Actor Winner Is Mark Rylance

And the winner for Best Supporting Actor at the 2016 Oscars is Mark Rylance for “Bridge of Spies.”

The five nominees at this year’s Academy Awards were Christian Bale for “The Big Short,” Tom Hardy for “The Revenant,” Mark Ruffalo for “Spotlight,” Mark Rylance for “Bridge of Spies,” and Sylvester Stallone for “Creed.”

Mark Rylance is a three-time Tony winner, but his work as real-life Soviet Spy Rudolph Abel in “Bridge of Spies” got him his first Oscar nomination and win.

The Best Supporting Actor category was filled with stiff competition and Stallone was the predicted favorite to take home the gold considering he nabbed the Golden Globe earlier this year.

Critics predicted chances of a Mark Rylance upset and it turned out that the theater veteran came through and knocked out Rocky himself. TKO, indeed.
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February 28, 2016
Oscars 2016: Best Supporting Actress Winner Is Alicia Vikander

And the 2016 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress goes to… Alicia Vikander for “The Danish Girl.”

The Best Supporting Actress award may be the least talked about but one of the most up-in-the-air categories in the 2016 Oscar race. Vikander had already won a SAG Award for her role in “The Danish Girl,” so, while her win isn’t a shocker, it’s still somewhat of an upset that Winslet didn’t take home the Academy Award given that she’d already won a Golden Globe and the BAFTA for her role as Joanna Hoffman in “Steve Jobs.”

Oscar-winner Vikander is on a bit of a hot streak, starring in two Oscar-nominated films in 2015: the aforementioned “The Danish Girl” and critical sci-fi darling “Ex Machina” (if you haven’t seen the latter, do yourself a favor and watch it.

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February 28, 2016
Oscar Predictions 2016: Who Will Win Best Actor?

The 2016 Oscars are almost here, which means it’s time to firm up those predictions and get your ballot all ready to go.

This week, leading up to film’s biggest night of the year, Moviefone’s editors are revealing our predictions in the ceremony’s biggest categories. We’ve already given you our picks for Best Actress. Now it’s time for Best Actor. The nominees are:

Bryan Cranston, “Trumbo”
Matt Damon, “The Martian”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Revenant”
Michael Fassbender, “Steve Jobs”
Eddie Redmayne, “The Danish Girl”

Here, we’ve filled you in on who we think will win, as well as who we feel truly deserves to take home that coveted golden statue.

Tim Hayne
Who Will Win: Leonardo DiCaprio for “The Revenant.” Please, won’t someone give Leo the Oscar before he kills himself for a role?! DiCaprio is one of the most talented actors working today, and he’s been passed over for multiple Oscar-worthy performances in the past (“The Aviator” and “Wolf of Wall Street” come to mind), so this is his year. Like his Best Actress counterpart Brie Larson, he’s already won the Golden Globe, SAG Award, and BAFTA for his role in “The Revenant,” so if the Academy decides to pass him up for Michael Fassbender or Matt Damon, it’ll be a jaw-dropper.

Who Should Win: Leonardo DiCaprio. For his health, and for the hopes of a nation rooting for him to win.

Phil Pirrello
Who Will Win: Leonardo DiCaprio.

Who Should Win: Matt Damon. “The Revenant” star is practically a lock to get his first Oscar, which is more of a “he’s-put-the-time-in” award — which the Academy loves to do, to make up for previous oversights like “Wolf of Wall Street” or “The Aviator.” But I need convincing that one should win an award because they grunted through the cold a lot. And braving harsh conditions and how “hard” it was has been the throughline of the actor’s campaign, which seems to be winning over voters if early awards wins are an indication. Damon’s performance as the most likable astronaut ever made is arguably career-best level work; any other year, he’d likely take home the Oscar.

Rachel Horner
Who Should Win: Leonardo DiCaprio. Just give him a freaking Oscar already. The competition isn’t that impressive and if he doesn’t win, everyone is going to be more mad at the Academy than they already are.

Who Will Win: Honestly, I haven’t a clue who is going to take it home. There isn’t a front runner in my mind, so I’m going to let my optimism come in to play here (which is probably a mistake) and say Leo is finally going to take it home. If not, probably Matt Damon.

Alana Altmann
Who Will Win: Leonardo DiCaprio. Panting heavily through the snow is hard you work, you guys. We kid. We kid. His performance was not only the best of the lot, it looked like the most physically exhausting and emotionally demanding. We’re tired just thinking about it.

Who Should Win: Leo. (But let’s pretend it’s for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” or “The Wolf of Wall Street.) It’s his time.
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February 23, 2016
Oscars 2016: What Is Going on With the Best Director Race?

Predicting the Oscar winners this year is a little like predicting the winners of the early presidential caucuses and primaries — that’s how wide open the field is in some categories, particularly Best Director.

In the Oscar race, we had two important guild votes this week, from the actors and the editors, and the results made the Academy’s contest a bit more clear. Will the DGA’s vote this weekend help make sense of things? Maybe, depending on who wins.

The Screen Actors Guild awards last Saturday did help confirm some of the acting races. SAG winner Leonardo DiCaprio still has a lock on a Best Actor Oscar for “The Revenant,” and Brie Larson is still far and away the Best Actress frontrunner for “Room.” Alicia Vikander‘s SAG win for Supporting Actress for “The Danish Girl” puts her ahead of the pack; at this point, her only real competition is Golden Globe winner Kate Winslet (“Steve Jobs“), as the other nominees have shown little to no momentum.

And Best Supporting Actor? The SAGs gave the prize to Idris Elba (“Beasts of No Nation“), which is good news for Sylvester Stallone, even though the SAGs didn’t even nominate him for “Creed.” Why does Elba’s SAG victory help Stallone? Because Elba’s not nominated for an Oscar. And the SAG voters didn’t pick Christian Bale (“The Big Short“) or Mark Rylance (“Bridge of Spies“), Stallone’s biggest competitors for Oscar. Despite their talents and the quality of their performances, the sentimental narrative of a Rocky Balboa comeback giving the 69-year-old his first Oscar will be too powerful for those whippersnappers to thwart.

But for Best Picture, the SAGs (with their Best Ensemble award) did pick “Spotlight.” This win helped the journalism drama bubble back up as a frontrunner, despite having lost momentum in recent weeks to “The Revenant,” “The Big Short,” “The Martian,” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The American Cinema Editors’ Eddie awards could have clarified the race — after all, it’s nearly impossible to win Best Picture without strong support from the editors. But last weekend’s ACE Eddies resulted in a tie between “The Big Short” and “Mad Max.”

So we have to look to this weekend’s Directors Guild of America prizes. We’ll know a lot more about what to expect from the Academy based on who wins the DGA. Here are the five ways it could play out:

1. Adam McKay
The “Big Short” director may impress his fellow guild members, not just with his accomplishment, but also with his growth as a filmmaker (this is a long way from Will Ferrell running around in his underwear). If he wins, his movie will have won the Producers Guild (a near-certain predictor of the Oscar winner for Best Picture), the Eddie, and the DGA prize, and it’ll be a near-lock for Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards.

2. Tom McCarthy
“Spotlight” is a conventional, visually subtle movie, lacking the apparent directorial flash of its rivals. Nonetheless, McCarthy’s peers may recognize his achievement here, both in directing his A-list actors to give award-worthy performances and in telling a weighty story drawn from recent history. A DGA win would be a huge boost for the movie, which has been nominated by just about every awards group but has picked up major prizes only from SAG, the Critics Choice Awards, and the National Society of Film Critics. It might also be enough to halt “Big Short” in its tracks.

3. Alejandro González Iñárritu
“The Revenant” still leads the Oscar pack with 12 nominations, not to mention its Best Drama victory at the Golden Globes. The Mexican director is clearly a favorite at both the DGA and the Academy, having won directing prizes from both last year for “Birdman.”

But that could work against him; no one has won back-to-back directing Oscars since Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1950 and 1951. (John Ford, in 1941 and 1942, is the only other director to pull off the feat.) And no one has ever won the DGA prize two years running. So if the Directors Guild does honor Iñárritu — and given the epic scope and technical difficulty of his snowbound period drama, it might — that could indicate such broad industry support for his film that we could expect a “Revenant” sweep on Oscar night.

4. George Miller
“Max Max” marks the first DGA nomination in the 70-year-old’s distinguished career. His film won the top prize at the National Board of Review and the Eddies, as well as a Best Stunt Ensemble award at the SAGs. “Max” has 10 Oscar nominations, more than any rival except “The Revenant.” A DGA win would still move “Max” to the front of the pack.

5. Ridley Scott
He’s the Idris Elba of the DGA race, since he’s not nominated for an Oscar. (The fifth Academy nominee is “Room” director Lenny Abrahamson, who’s this year’s Benh Zeitlin; like the “Beasts of the Southern Wild” director, he should consider himself fortunate just to be nominated.) He does stand a good chance at winning a DGA prize for “The Martian” — he’s 78, he’s legendary, and he’s been nominated for three previous DGA awards but has never won (he’s never won a directing Oscar, either).

“The Martian” has already won the top Golden Globe, and it’s the biggest crowd-pleasing box office hit among the Best Picture nominees. But if Scott wins at the DGA, the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars will still go to the Stallones of those categories.

And those are…? Right now, “Big Short” remains on top, and “Martian” (with six Academy nominations, same as “Spotlight”) remains a long shot. “Revenant” and “Mad Max” still have sheer numbers of nominations on their side, if not much momentum from recent victories.

So a lot is riding on the Directors Guild. After that ceremony, we’re left with the subtler, good-behavior contests. Next week begins with the annual nominees luncheon in Hollywood and ends with the BAFTAs (the British Academy Awards) in London. The first isn’t a competitive event, and the second has nearly zero influence over Academy voters. But both are important because they’re the last big events where the nominees rub shoulders with each other (and the press) and show that they’re gracious enough not to disgrace the Academy if they win.

That’s another good lesson from Iowa. Rude and cranky may generate colorful stories out on the campaign trail, but it also can scare off the voters.
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February 5, 2016
Oscar Nominations 2016: Snubs and Surprises

With such a wide-open race this year, it was hard to predict which movies would be the leading candidates to grab an armload of Oscar nominations — or even how many Best Picture nominees there were likely to be.

Still, there were a lot of names and titles that experts expected to be on the list when the Academy announced its nominations on Thursday morning. Now that the list is out, we can all express the proper shock and outrage and delight over which of our favorites made the cut and which got robbed.
Best Actor
This was one of the easiest categories to predict. But one of the bigger surprises among nominees was Bryan Cranston as Hollywood’s favorite blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, in “Trumbo.” Fans crossing their fingers for Michael B. Jordan (“Creed“) or last year’s nominee Steve Carell (“The Big Short“) were disappointed as well.
Best Supporting Actor
Aside from Sylvester Stallone (a sentimental favorite for “Creed“) and Mark Rylance (“Bridge of Spies“), this category was really up for grabs. The entire “Spotlight” ensemble submitted itself in the supporting category, and only Mark Ruffalo and Supporting Actress nominee Rachel McAdams made the cut. (Tough break, Michael Keaton.)

With Tom Hardy riding the wave of “Revenant” love into the category’s final slot — a surprise of sorts — that meant snubs for such worthy candidates as Paul Dano (“Love & Mercy”) and little Jacob Tremblay (the captive boy in “Room”). Oh, and if you expected the Academy to nominate Idris Elba for “Beasts of No Nation,” not only because he was so charismatic and terrifying but also to avoid another #OscarsSoWhite hashtag protest this year, no such luck. Sorry, performers of color, you all got snubbed.Best Supporting Actress
Many wondered if Rooney Mara‘s bid for Supporting Actress instead of co-lead in “Carol” would persuade the Academy that she belonged in the category. It did. Many also wondered if Jennifer Jason Leigh, in the late-screening “Hateful Eight,” could transcend viewers’ mixed feelings about the film to earn a supporting nomination. She did. A bit of a surprise was Alicia Vikander (above); while some expected a nomination for her work in “The Danish Girl,” it wasn’t a sure thing. And apparently Tessa Thompson‘s subtle, scary-good work in “Creed” was too subtle and nuanced for the Academy to take notice.
Best Original Screenplay
Quentin Tarantino often aces this category, but the Academy snubbed his “Hateful EIght” script. Many also thought fan-favorite Amy Schumer would get a nod for her “Trainwreck” script, since the Academy loves actors who generate their own opportunities — but she was snubbed as well. Hit indie thriller “Sicario” had a shot here, too, but no such luck.

Instead, the nominations went pretty much to the early favorites, with the surprises being Alex Garland‘s philosophical sci-fi tale “Ex Machina,” and “Straight Outta Compton,” which otherwise didn’t earn any Academy love. A24 had next to nothing in terms of “For Your Consideration” promotion for “Ex Machina,” one of the best films of the year. Going into the nominations, it seemed more likely for the film’s A.I. subject matter to come true than the film score nods at the ceremony. Pleasant surprise to see the Academy give it some much-deserved acknowledgement.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The most shocking snubs were “The Revenant’ (which was nominated in nearly every other possible category, for a total of 12 nods) and Aaron Sorkin‘s Globe-winning script for “Steve Jobs” (pictured). Sorkin won a few years ago for another digital-era biopic, “The Social Network,” but the Academy has apparently unfriended him.
Best Animated Feature
Often, this category throws at least one curveball and nominates a movie that was barely released over a commercial favorite. This year, there were two such curveballs: Brazilian entry “Boy and the World” and, from beloved Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli, “When Marnie Was There.”

“Shaun the Sheep” also made the cut; it didn’t do much business here but was a huge hit in the rest of the world. The remaining slots went to front-runners “Inside Out” and “Anomalisa,” Charlie Kaufman‘s critically-beloved stop-motion animated feature. Denied nominations were fellow Pixar pic “The Good Dinosaur” and summer smash “Minions.”
Best Documentary
One of the most high-profile films going into awards seasons, HBO’s Scientology doc, “Going Clear,” was shut out of the category — leaving many scratching their heads and shaking their fists at Thetans.
Best Original Song
“See You Again” was more than just a fitting send-off tune for Paul Walker’s character in “Furious 7.” It was a radio hit and integral component to the film’s success. Its omission as a nominee is further proof that the Academy is behind the times.
Best Director
Ridley Scott may be the unluckiest director in recent Oscar history. The 78-year-old has never won Best Director, not even when his “Gladiator” won Best Picture in 2001. This year, despite the slew of nominations for “The Martian” (there were seven), he didn’t even land a nod himself. He’s the only one of this year’s five Directors Guild Award nominees who didn’t get an Oscar nomination. And despite having scored nominations for his last three Oscar-bait movies — an impressive run — David O. Russell got nothing for “Joy.” It’s sole major nomination went to lead actor Lawrence.

At least when Scott and Russell are hanging out at the Dolby Theatre bar on Oscar night nursing his resentment, he can have company; fellow Best Picture nominee directors Steven Spielberg (“Bridge of Spies”) and John Crowley (“Brooklyn”) got snubbed as well. So did Todd Haynes for “Carol,” despite widespread critical support. As with Best Picture, the surprising inclusion was “Room,” whose director Lenny Abrahamson did make the Academy shortlist, despite having been snubbed by the DGA.
Best Picture
As it turned out, there were eight nominees this year, out of a possible 10. For the most part, they echoed the Producers Guild Award nominees, as they usually do. Both groups nominated “The Big Short,” “Bridge of Spies,” “Brooklyn,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Martian,” “The Revenant,” and “Spotlight.” In fact, the only PGA nominees that didn’t make the cut were “Sicario,” “Ex Machina,” and “Straight Outta Compton.”

The most surprising inclusion was austere indie drama “Room,” which the PGA had snubbed. “Carol” had been a front-runner among critics’ groups, but the PGA snubbed it and so did the Academy. And if you were expecting the Academy’s newfound populism to be broad enough to include “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” well, these were not the droids you were looking for.
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January 14, 2016
Oscars 2016 Nominations: Full List of Academy Award Nominees

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Let the games begin! The 88th Academy Awards will be handed out February 28, with Chris Rock hosting for the second time, and now we know who has a shot to win those little naked gold guys. The 2016 Oscar nominations were announced the morning of Thursday, January 14.

Without further ado, here are your nominees (via Deadline):

Best Picture
The Big Short
Bridge Of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight

Best Actor
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge Of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Directing
The Big Short, Adam McKay
Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller
The Revenant, Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Room, Lenny Abrahamson
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

Film Editing
Big Short
Mad Max
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Foreign Language Film
Embrace Of The Serpent
Mustang
Son Of Saul
A War

Original Score
Bridge of Spies
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Sicario
Star Wars

Production Design
Bridge Of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max
The Martian
The Revenant

Visual Effects
Ex Machina
Mad Max
The Revenant
Star Wars
The Martian

Adapted Screenplay
The Big Short
Brooklyn
Carol
Martian
Room

Original Screenplay
Bridge Of Spies
Alex Garland
Inside Out
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton

Animated Feature Film
Anomalisa
Boy And The World
Inside Out
Shaun The Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There

Cinematography
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Mad Mad: Fury Road
The Revenant
Sicario

Costume Design
Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant

Documentary Feature
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone
Winter On Fire: Ukraine

Documentary Short Subject

Body Team 12
Chau, Bbeyond the Lines
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Last Day of Freedom

Makeup and Hairstyling
Mad Max
100 Year Old Man
The Revenant

Original Song
Fifty Shades Of Grey, “Earned It”
Racing Extinction, “Manta Ray”
Youth, “Simple Song #3”
The Hunting Ground, “Til It Happens To You”
Spectre, “Writing’s On The Wall”

Animated Short Film
Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay’s Super Team
We Can’t Live without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow

Live Action Short Film
Ave Maria
Day One
Everything Will Be OK
Shok
Sutter

Sound Editing
Mad Max
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Sound Mixing
Bridge Of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Now go ahead and compare these nominees to the Golden Globe Award winners, which were just announced — although, granted, they have Drama vs. Comedy/Musical categories.

What do you think? Is this Leo’s year? His movie, “The Revenant,” led the pack with 12 nominations:

2016 Academy Award Nominees | PrettyFamous

Anyone you’re especially glad to see nominated, or especially ticked to see missing?

To the “snubbed” or simply overlooked stars, never fear — Alan Rickman was never nominated for an Oscar either, and he was better than all of you.

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January 14, 2016
Oscars 2016: Here’s Why the Best Picture Race Is Still Up for Grabs

It’s one week until the Oscar nominations are announced, and pundits often think they know how the Academy members will vote. But then we learn what Hollywood really thinks from the industry insiders who actually make the movies: The members of the guilds.

After all, the unions and trade groups who hand out guild awards are often the same people who’ll be voting for the Oscars. We already learned a lot from the Screen Actors Guild, who announced their nominations last month — and who’ll hand out their prizes at the end of January.

But this week, we heard from several other guilds — including the Producers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, and the American Society of Cinematographers — and our simple narrative about “Spotlight” being the runaway front-runner in an otherwise wide-open race has gone out the window.
Earlier this week, the National Society of Film Critics, a group that prides itself on voting according to its members’ own quirky taste and not the conventional wisdom, named “Spotlight” the group’s Best Picture. If even the NSFC picked “Spotlight,” as so many other groups already have, then surely the consensus is right this time, and the ensemble drama about the investigative reporters who exposed the Catholic Church’s pedophilia cover-up is truly the top candidate for a Best Picture Oscar.

But we have to remember, the predictive value of an NSFC award is virtually zero most years, and this year shouldn’t be any different. And if we needed any reminders of whose choices matter and whose don’t, we got several of them this week from the guilds — starting with the American Cinema Editors.

The editors of the ACE threw the oddsmakers for a loop by leavIng “Spotlight” off their list of nominees. Their drama category includes such expected titles as “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Martian,” and “The Revenant.” The ACE animation nominees are less controversial: Pixar’s “Inside Out” and “The Good Dinosaur,” along with Charlie Kaufman‘s stop-motion “Anomalisa.” Granted, the ACE picks won’t necessarily foretell the Academy nominees for Best Picture or even Best Editing, but no movie has won a Best Picture Oscar in 20 years without first being nominated for an Eddie. Tough break, “Spotlight” fans.
The producers, whose guild prize is usually a very good predictor of who’ll get a Best Picture Oscar nomination, did include “Spotlight,” as well as Oscar front-runners “The Martian,” “The Revenant,” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” They also echoed the rising support for such films as “The Big Short,” “Bridge of Spies,” and “Brooklyn.” But they snubbed “Star Wars,” as well as supposed front-runners “Carol,” “Room,” “Joy,” and “The Hateful Eight.”

The writers liked “Spotlight,” “Carol,” and “Martian,” as well as rising contenders “The Big Short” and “Compton.” Of course, the WGA nominations come with a caveat: Only union members are eligible for nominations, which means they ignore most foreign scripts and some by non-member domestic writers. So that leaves out some likely Oscar screenplay contenders, including Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” Hungarian drama “Son of Saul” (currently the front-runner for the foreign-language Oscar), “Inside Out” (the probable Best Animated Feature Oscar winner), “Anomalisa,” “Brooklyn,” “Room,” “The Danish Girl,” and “Ex Machina.” Still, the WGA awards do have some predictive value. They may not get all the Oscar nominees right, but 22 of the 32 winners of the guild’s Original and Adapted Screenplay honors over the past 16 years have gone on to win on Oscar night.

What do all these guild awards tell us? First of all, the race is still up for grabs, and “Spotlight” is far (ish) from a sure thing. Second, there’s more support for “The Big Short,” “Bridge,” “Ex Machina,” “Sicario,” and “Compton” than one might have guessed a month ago. (And maybe less for “Carol,” “Brooklyn,” “Hateful Eight,” and “Room.”) Third, crowdpleasers that critics love — including “Martian,” “Mad Max,” and “Star Wars” — all still have a good shot. And fourth, because of the complexities of the Academy’s weighted ballot system, the lack of strong support for almost all of these movies could mean as few as five Best Picture nominees this year, instead of the usual eight or nine. Which five have the most enthusiastic support, and which are merely well-liked but not loved, is still too hard to tell.
The suspense of this early, chaotic phase of the race is about to end. On Sunday, the Golden Globes will be handed out, but they won’t matter much because voting for Oscar nominations ends two days earlier, on January 8. We also haven’t heard yet from the Directors Guild of America; their nominations come out Tuesday, January 12, and will offer a strong indication of Oscar voters’ picks for Best Director and Best Picture nominations.

Finally, the Oscar nominations themselves will be announced on Thursday, January 14. At that point, none of the winners journalists have picked will matter anymore, and we’ll focus entirely on what and whom the industry insiders choose.
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January 8, 2016
Here’s Chris Rock’s First Oscars 2016 Promo

The first promo for the 2016 Oscars is here, and host Chris Rock — returning for his second stint as Oscar emcee — is promising a party. Just not the lighthearted one we’d all hoped for.

The clip, which has a New Year’s Eve theme, features Rock urging viewers to tune in for the telecast by comparing it to the annual end-of-year celebration. But it sounds like Rock has been taking some cues from noted NYE naysayer Jennifer Lawrence, offering up a decidedly more depressing version of the boisterous holiday.

“Much like New Year’s Eve, it will be a night that ends with a lot of drunk, disappointed people swearing they’ll do better next year,” Rock said of this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.

It’s an apt comparison, if a tired one. Still, Rock is a seasoned performer, and we’re confident he has plenty of people working on writing better jokes for him in time for the telecast.

The 88th annual Academy Awards broadcast will air on February 28 on ABC.

Photo credit: YouTube

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January 4, 2016
Oscars 2016: How Academy Voters Are Being Dragged Into the 21st Century

The Academy‘s voters are often derided as being old and out of touch. But they’re being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.

Whether they want to or not, awards voters are being forced to contend with new technology, not just in the film’s themselves, but even in their own judgment and voting processes. But they’re also finding that the new ways are not all they’re cracked up to be, especially in a year full of cinematic throwbacks.

On Wednesday, December 30, the Academy opened its private website to its members for online voting. It had mailed out paper ballots days earlier, but the organization would really like to modernize the process and get its members to vote over the Internet. “Encourage your colleagues to join you by voting online. Paper ballot delivery is not reliable — every year, many paper ballots are left uncounted,” Academy CEO Dawn Hudson wrote in a recent e-mail to voters. Given how wide-open many of the category races are this year, and how few votes it takes to actually earn a nomination (as few as 315 of the 6,261 members need to cite a movie as a favorite for it to secure a Best Picture slot), every vote really does matter. And because of the rush-rush awards calendar, Oscar voters have only 10 days to fill out those ballots, which are due back by January 8. So voters who don’t want to risk having their paper ballots arrive late in the mail really do have to go online.But not everything about the migration of the awards season to the Internet is running smoothly. Over at the Screen Actors Guild, the private website the voters use to stream some of the nominated films crashed last weekend for two crucial days as the SAG Awards voters were trying to pick winners. Among the film’s affected were such little-seen titles as “Beasts of No Nation,” “The Big Short,” “The Revenant,” and “99 Homes,” as well as modest box office hits “Bridge of Spies,” “Black Mass,” and “Spotlight,”

It’s long been a common practice for campaigning studios to send DVD screeners to voters, but the makers of “Black Mass,” “Revenant,” “99 Homes,” and “Bridge of Spies” weren’t planning to do so because they were relying on the streaming site. To the extent that the SAGs have an influence on the Oscars — there’s some voter overlap between the two groups, and the late-January SAG Awards ceremony is held while Academy members are voting for winners among the nominees — the streaming blackout could affect the chances of both front-runners (Best Actor favorite Leonardo DiCaprio for “Revenant,” Best Supporting Actor leader Mark Rylance for “Bridge of Spies”) and those who could really use the attention (Supporting Actor long-shot Michael Shannon in “99 Homes,” Best Actor candidate Johnny Depp in “Black Mass,” and the entire casts of “Beasts,” “Spotlight,” and “Short”).The paradox in this drive to make awards screenings and voting digital is that many of this year’s most noteworthy films are self-conscious throwbacks to earlier movies, earlier eras, and earlier technologies. The “Star Wars” prequels may have ushered in the era of digital shooting and projection, but J.J. Abrams made a point of shooting Best Picture candidate “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” on old-school celluloid film, in part to give the movie the same feel as the original trilogy from nearly 40 years ago. Quentin Tarantino has been talking non-stop for a year about how important it was for him to shoot “The Hateful Eight” on celluloid, too, and made a point of screening the movie last week in old-school 70MM at 100 retrofitted theaters around the country. Another old-fashioned western, “The Revenant,” made a point of shooting with only natural light. “Mad Max: Fury Road” isn’t just the revival of a 30-years-dormant franchise; it’s also shot using low-tech special effects, without CGI.

“Brooklyn” is an old-fashioned romantic drama that obeys narrative conventions at least as old as its 1950s setting. Similarly, 1950s-set “Carol” is shot in a way that recalls Douglas Sirk‘s Technicolor romantic dramas of that era. “Bridge of Spies,” a Cold War spy thriller set in 1960, wears its old-fashioned-ness on its sleeve. Journalism procedural “Spotlight” echoes a 1976 Best Picture nominee about investigative reporters who uncover a vast, real-life scandal, “All the President’s Men.” And “Creed” depends on nostalgia for 1976’s Best Picture winner, “Rocky.”

The most forward-looking movie in the awards race, “The Martian,” could be seen as a film about a hero who actually uses science and technology to solve his problems and stay alive. Its director, 78-year-old Ridley Scott, has heartily embraced new technology and choose to shoot the film with state-of-the-art 3D cameras. Then again, he’s been making movies about stranded astronauts since “Alien” 36 years ago. And he’s never won an Oscar, not even for Best Picture winner “Gladiator” 15 years ago, so many of his peers may consider a win for him for “The Martian” as a redressing of past wrongs. No matter how much the Academy wants to look toward the future, it’ll be forced to reckon with the past as well.

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January 1, 2016