Since the inception of the Academy Awards, the U.S.-based organization behind them has always strived to honor worldwide film achievements. Their extensive roster of competitive acting winners alone consists of artists from 30 unique countries, three of which first gained representation during the 2020s. The last full decade’s worth of triumphant performers hail from eight countries, while 42.1% of the individual actors nominated during that time originate from outside of America.
The academy’s history of recognizing acting talent on a global scale dates all the way back to the inaugural Oscars ceremony in 1929, when Swiss-born Emil Jannings (who was of German and American parentage) won Best Actor for his work in both “The Last Command” and “The Way of All Flesh.” Over the next three years, the Best Actress prize was exclusively awarded to Canadians: Mary Pickford (“Coquette”), Norma Shearer (“The Divorcee”), and Marie Dressler (“Min and Bill...
The academy’s history of recognizing acting talent on a global scale dates all the way back to the inaugural Oscars ceremony in 1929, when Swiss-born Emil Jannings (who was of German and American parentage) won Best Actor for his work in both “The Last Command” and “The Way of All Flesh.” Over the next three years, the Best Actress prize was exclusively awarded to Canadians: Mary Pickford (“Coquette”), Norma Shearer (“The Divorcee”), and Marie Dressler (“Min and Bill...
- 3/18/2024
- by Matthew Stewart
- Gold Derby
Utilizing a tremendous premise in the most laborious way possible, Josef von Sternberg’s The Last Command has to rank among his least dynamic and interesting films. Taking inspiration from an actual Russian general who fled the motherland and was forced to work as a day-player extra in early Hollywood, the 1928 film only treats its present-day setting as a framing device to house a too-familiar tale. Sergius Alexander (Emil Jannings), grand duke and army commander, had a special fervor for quashing revolutionary movements, but, as he’s living on the brink of the Russian Revolution, this task is sure to overwhelm him. Stretching this exposition across an hour of screentime, even someone of Sternberg’s genius cannot find purchase in anything of interest. There’s nothing distinctive about Sergius’s fall from glory, nor the manner in which he wields his power. Nothing in this section is a fraction as...
- 8/12/2016
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
Mad doctors! Mortiferous maidens! Horrifying hallucinations! A key early Euro-horror and one of the very first in color, this French-Italian production is a medical horrorshow crossed with a folk tale -- its centerpiece is a vintage carillon attraction in an old mill; creepy Scilla Gabel is the minatory seducer who bridges the gap between life and death. Mill of the Stone Women Region A+B Blu-ray Subkultur / Media Target Distribution GmbH 1960 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 90, 95, 96 min. / Die Mühle der versteinerten Frauen / Street Date June 30, 2016 / Amazon.de Eur 24,99 Starring Pierre Brice, Scilla Gabel, Wolfgang Preiss, Robert Boehme, Dany Carrel Cinematography Pier Ludovico Pavoni Production Designer Arrigo Equini Film Editor Antonietta Zita Original Music Carlo Innocenzi Written by Remigio Del Grosso, Giorgio Ferroni, Ugo Liberatore, Giorgio Stegani from Flemish Stories by Peter Van Weigen (possibly apocryphal) Produced by Giampaolo Bigazzi Directed by Giorgio Ferroni
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
2016 is shaping up as a...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
2016 is shaping up as a...
- 7/23/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
At the beginning of their career, French metal band Gojira were pumping out one album after another. Their first three albums, Terra Incognita, The Link, and From Mars to Sirius, came out within four years of each other. It’s only with The Way of All Flesh that the band began taking a little longer in […]...
- 6/15/2016
- by JonathanBarkan
- bloody-disgusting.com
It's almost here -- the 88th Academy Awards finally airs this Sunday, and we're counting down the minutes.
We've already given you our Oscar predictions, and now we're bringing you some of the best (and, um, craziest) facts about Hollywood's biggest awards show. From the first Best Actor winner, to the "one dollar" Oscar rule, here are 25 things you (probably) don't know about the Oscars.
1. The youngest Oscar winner was Tatum O'Neal (above), who won Best Supporting Actress for "Paper Moon" (1973) when she was only 10 years old. Shirley Temple won the short-lived Juvenile Award at 6 years old.
2. After winning Best Actress for "Cabaret" (1972), Liza Minnelli became (and still is) the only Oscar winner whose parents both earned Oscars. Her mother, Judy Garland, received an honorary award in 1939 and her father, Vincente Minnelli, won Best Director for "Gigi" (1958).
3. Nameplates for all potential winners are prepared ahead of time; in 2014, the Academy made 215 of them!
We've already given you our Oscar predictions, and now we're bringing you some of the best (and, um, craziest) facts about Hollywood's biggest awards show. From the first Best Actor winner, to the "one dollar" Oscar rule, here are 25 things you (probably) don't know about the Oscars.
1. The youngest Oscar winner was Tatum O'Neal (above), who won Best Supporting Actress for "Paper Moon" (1973) when she was only 10 years old. Shirley Temple won the short-lived Juvenile Award at 6 years old.
2. After winning Best Actress for "Cabaret" (1972), Liza Minnelli became (and still is) the only Oscar winner whose parents both earned Oscars. Her mother, Judy Garland, received an honorary award in 1939 and her father, Vincente Minnelli, won Best Director for "Gigi" (1958).
3. Nameplates for all potential winners are prepared ahead of time; in 2014, the Academy made 215 of them!
- 2/26/2016
- by Phil Pirrello
- Moviefone
Norma Shearer: The Boss' wife was cast in 'The Divorcee.' Norma Shearer movies on TCM: Early talkies and Best Actress Oscar Note: This Norma Shearer article is currently being revised and expanded. Please Check back later. Norma Shearer, one of the top stars in Hollywood history and known as the Queen of MGM back in the 1930s, is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of Nov. 2015. That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that even though its parent company, Time Warner, owns most of Shearer's movies, TCM isn't airing any premieres. So, if you were expecting to check out a very young Norma Shearer in The Devil's Circus, Upstage, or After Midnight, you're out of luck. (I've seen all three; they're all worth a look.) It's a crime that, music score or no, restored print or no, TCM/Time Warner don't make available for viewing the...
- 11/11/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Every year Villa Aurora follows its own long tradition of welcoming the German community and friends to socialize and celebrate the German contribution to American culture.
The German co-production “Citizenfour” by Laura Poitras (De/Us, Praxis Films, Br, Ndr) was awarded the Oscar® for Best Documentary Feature yesterday. “Citizenfour” has also received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature.
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” by Wes Anderson (Gb/De, Neunzehnte Babelsberg Film), another German co-production, picked up four Academy Awards® in the categories Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Hair and Make-Up as well as Best Original Score. It had been nominated in nine categories.
A day before the Oscars®, German Films joined forces with the Villa Aurora and the German Consul-General in Los Angeles to hold their traditional reception in honor of the German Oscar® nominees at the garden of the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.
The teams of “Citizenfour” comprising the German producers Dirk Wilutzky and Mathilde Bonnefoy, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” with the producers Carl Woebcken, Henning Molfenter and Christoph Fisser, the representatives of the German regional funders Carl Bergengruen of Mfg Baden-württemberg and Kirsten Niehuus of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as well as the director Wim Wenders, who was nominated for Best Documentary Feature for “The Salt Of The Earth," celebrated there with guests from the German and international film industry.
The beautiful Spanish Deco home at 520 Paseo Miramar in the Pacific Palisades was bought by the famed author, Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta in 1943 the same year that he published The Devil in France, the account of his imprisonment by the Nazis in the South of France before he fled to the U.S.
In September of 1940, with the support of Varian Fry and the U.S. Vice Consul in Marseille, Hiram Bingham, Lion and Marta were able to join another group of exiles in crossing the Pyrenees on foot. They made their journey from Lisbon to New York on different ships. From there, they traveled to Los Angeles, and in 1943 moved into the Villa Aurora, which soon became a focal point in the lives of many intellectuals and artists who had fled from Germany including Bertold Brecht, Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich Mann, Marlene Dietrich.
Their German passports had been confiscated by the Nazis. In the McCarthy era, Feuchtwanger was scrutinized as a “premature antifascist” by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Fearing that he would not be allowed to return, he never traveled outside the U.S. again. After years of immigration hearings, Feuchtwangers application for American citizenship was finally granted, but the letter informing Feuchtwanger of the fact was not received until a day after his death.
Marta bequeathed to the University of Southern California the library and the house in exchange for the life-long right to live in the Villa. She was appointed curator of the Villa and was politically and culturally active. The Villa remained a social destination in Los Angeles. In 1987 she died at the age of 96.
"So, in my fiftieth year, I literally arrived in the U.S. on foot. Has that made me a U.S. citizen? Can a piece of paper change half a century of my life? I don’t believe it. Now, that I have only 10 years to complete the second half of the century, I feel, it is good to have the citizenship of a country that unites my German routes with the ones of many other nations. Being American is very close to being a citizen of the world."
Source: Marta Feuchtwanger: Only a Woman, Years Days Hours, Aufbau Verlag Berlin Leipzig, 1984
Celebrating the Academy Award Nominees at the same time as 20 years of present ownership of the Villa Aurora and at the same time as 25 years after German reunification, restoration of the famed Babelsberg Studios made this year especially notable.
At the party, I had the chance to speak with Mariette Rissenbeek, Managing Director or German Films.
How long have you been with German Export?
I started in 2002, 13 years ago. I was in charge of festivals and public relations. The position gave me rewarding insights into festivals and I was able to meet many producers.
What changes have you seen in your time there?
I started a year after “Good Bye Lenin” and “Nowhere in Africa”. In the 2000s, German films became very popular internationally. Since 2011 I have been the Managing Director which involves lots of administration and politics.
How do German films do abroad?
Every year two to three titles work well. “Phoenix” is doing very well in France. “Hannah Arendt” and “The Lives of Others” did well worldwide. This year we have “Elser” (“Thirteen Minutes”) which just premiered in Berlin and of course “Salt of the Earth” and “CitizenFour” (winner of the 2015 Spirit Award for Best Documentary), “Victoria” which Adopt Films acquired for U.S.
Germans have consistently won Academy Awards since 1929 when Emil Jannings won for Best Actor in “The Way of All Flesh” and “ The Last Command”.
I also had the chance to speak with the Director of Villa Aurora, my friend since her days at Goethe Institute.
How long have you been Director of Villa Aurora ?
Three years in May.
You moved over from Goethe Institute and have changed Villa Aurora significantly. Can you tell us what changes it has undergone since you took over as its director?
When I applied for the position, I gave my vision for the Villa in various areas which included increased visibility, and renovations, as the home was in a rather neglected state. I also wanted our guests to network more with the Los Angeles arts community. So now their work appears in galleries, they give master classes and they show their work.
I had support from the Berlin headquarters and the German Foreign office and so we could renovate, landscape and install better lighting. I love creative work and this has been very satisfying.
Similarly as at the Goethe Institute, I still network and organize events, but I am also a “den mother” to the fellows. At this time we have five artists in residence. Four are here for three months and one is here for eight months – a writer in exile who cannot live in the native country of birth. We have had a writer from Syria living in Turkey; last year we had someone from Viet Nam and before, a blogger from Belarus living in Poland.
We also have an agreement with Cal Arts to send an artist to Germany to work and present their work.
Once again the congeniality and milieu brought together Hollywood and Germany, a partnership which goes back to the first days of the Hollywood we know today.
The German co-production “Citizenfour” by Laura Poitras (De/Us, Praxis Films, Br, Ndr) was awarded the Oscar® for Best Documentary Feature yesterday. “Citizenfour” has also received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature.
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” by Wes Anderson (Gb/De, Neunzehnte Babelsberg Film), another German co-production, picked up four Academy Awards® in the categories Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Hair and Make-Up as well as Best Original Score. It had been nominated in nine categories.
A day before the Oscars®, German Films joined forces with the Villa Aurora and the German Consul-General in Los Angeles to hold their traditional reception in honor of the German Oscar® nominees at the garden of the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.
The teams of “Citizenfour” comprising the German producers Dirk Wilutzky and Mathilde Bonnefoy, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” with the producers Carl Woebcken, Henning Molfenter and Christoph Fisser, the representatives of the German regional funders Carl Bergengruen of Mfg Baden-württemberg and Kirsten Niehuus of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as well as the director Wim Wenders, who was nominated for Best Documentary Feature for “The Salt Of The Earth," celebrated there with guests from the German and international film industry.
The beautiful Spanish Deco home at 520 Paseo Miramar in the Pacific Palisades was bought by the famed author, Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta in 1943 the same year that he published The Devil in France, the account of his imprisonment by the Nazis in the South of France before he fled to the U.S.
In September of 1940, with the support of Varian Fry and the U.S. Vice Consul in Marseille, Hiram Bingham, Lion and Marta were able to join another group of exiles in crossing the Pyrenees on foot. They made their journey from Lisbon to New York on different ships. From there, they traveled to Los Angeles, and in 1943 moved into the Villa Aurora, which soon became a focal point in the lives of many intellectuals and artists who had fled from Germany including Bertold Brecht, Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich Mann, Marlene Dietrich.
Their German passports had been confiscated by the Nazis. In the McCarthy era, Feuchtwanger was scrutinized as a “premature antifascist” by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Fearing that he would not be allowed to return, he never traveled outside the U.S. again. After years of immigration hearings, Feuchtwangers application for American citizenship was finally granted, but the letter informing Feuchtwanger of the fact was not received until a day after his death.
Marta bequeathed to the University of Southern California the library and the house in exchange for the life-long right to live in the Villa. She was appointed curator of the Villa and was politically and culturally active. The Villa remained a social destination in Los Angeles. In 1987 she died at the age of 96.
"So, in my fiftieth year, I literally arrived in the U.S. on foot. Has that made me a U.S. citizen? Can a piece of paper change half a century of my life? I don’t believe it. Now, that I have only 10 years to complete the second half of the century, I feel, it is good to have the citizenship of a country that unites my German routes with the ones of many other nations. Being American is very close to being a citizen of the world."
Source: Marta Feuchtwanger: Only a Woman, Years Days Hours, Aufbau Verlag Berlin Leipzig, 1984
Celebrating the Academy Award Nominees at the same time as 20 years of present ownership of the Villa Aurora and at the same time as 25 years after German reunification, restoration of the famed Babelsberg Studios made this year especially notable.
At the party, I had the chance to speak with Mariette Rissenbeek, Managing Director or German Films.
How long have you been with German Export?
I started in 2002, 13 years ago. I was in charge of festivals and public relations. The position gave me rewarding insights into festivals and I was able to meet many producers.
What changes have you seen in your time there?
I started a year after “Good Bye Lenin” and “Nowhere in Africa”. In the 2000s, German films became very popular internationally. Since 2011 I have been the Managing Director which involves lots of administration and politics.
How do German films do abroad?
Every year two to three titles work well. “Phoenix” is doing very well in France. “Hannah Arendt” and “The Lives of Others” did well worldwide. This year we have “Elser” (“Thirteen Minutes”) which just premiered in Berlin and of course “Salt of the Earth” and “CitizenFour” (winner of the 2015 Spirit Award for Best Documentary), “Victoria” which Adopt Films acquired for U.S.
Germans have consistently won Academy Awards since 1929 when Emil Jannings won for Best Actor in “The Way of All Flesh” and “ The Last Command”.
I also had the chance to speak with the Director of Villa Aurora, my friend since her days at Goethe Institute.
How long have you been Director of Villa Aurora ?
Three years in May.
You moved over from Goethe Institute and have changed Villa Aurora significantly. Can you tell us what changes it has undergone since you took over as its director?
When I applied for the position, I gave my vision for the Villa in various areas which included increased visibility, and renovations, as the home was in a rather neglected state. I also wanted our guests to network more with the Los Angeles arts community. So now their work appears in galleries, they give master classes and they show their work.
I had support from the Berlin headquarters and the German Foreign office and so we could renovate, landscape and install better lighting. I love creative work and this has been very satisfying.
Similarly as at the Goethe Institute, I still network and organize events, but I am also a “den mother” to the fellows. At this time we have five artists in residence. Four are here for three months and one is here for eight months – a writer in exile who cannot live in the native country of birth. We have had a writer from Syria living in Turkey; last year we had someone from Viet Nam and before, a blogger from Belarus living in Poland.
We also have an agreement with Cal Arts to send an artist to Germany to work and present their work.
Once again the congeniality and milieu brought together Hollywood and Germany, a partnership which goes back to the first days of the Hollywood we know today.
- 2/26/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
The 87th Academy Awards are this Sunday evening, and we're counting down the minutes!
We've already given you our Oscar predictions, and now we're bringing you a few of the best (and craziest) Academy Awards facts. From the first Best Actor winner to the "one dollar" Oscar rule, here are 25 things you (probably) don't know about the Oscars.
1. The youngest Oscar winner was Tatum O'Neal, who won Best Supporting Actress for "Paper Moon" (1973) when she was only 10 years old. Shirley Temple won the short-lived Juvenile Award at 6 years old.
2. At 82, Christopher Plummer became the oldest person to win an Academy Award. He received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in "Beginners" (2010) opposite Ewan McGregor.
3. After winning Best Actress for "Cabaret" (1972), Liza Minnelli became (and still is) the only Oscar winner whose parents both earned Oscars. Her mother, Judy Garland, received an honorary award in 1939 and her father, Vincente Minnelli,...
We've already given you our Oscar predictions, and now we're bringing you a few of the best (and craziest) Academy Awards facts. From the first Best Actor winner to the "one dollar" Oscar rule, here are 25 things you (probably) don't know about the Oscars.
1. The youngest Oscar winner was Tatum O'Neal, who won Best Supporting Actress for "Paper Moon" (1973) when she was only 10 years old. Shirley Temple won the short-lived Juvenile Award at 6 years old.
2. At 82, Christopher Plummer became the oldest person to win an Academy Award. He received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in "Beginners" (2010) opposite Ewan McGregor.
3. After winning Best Actress for "Cabaret" (1972), Liza Minnelli became (and still is) the only Oscar winner whose parents both earned Oscars. Her mother, Judy Garland, received an honorary award in 1939 and her father, Vincente Minnelli,...
- 2/20/2015
- by Jonny Black
- Moviefone
First Best Actor Oscar winner Emil Jannings and first Best Actress Oscar winner Janet Gaynor on TCM (photo: Emil Jannings in 'The Last Command') First Best Actor Academy Award winner Emil Jannings in The Last Command, first Best Actress Academy Award winner Janet Gaynor in Sunrise, and sisters Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge are a few of the silent era performers featured this evening on Turner Classic Movies, as TCM continues with its Silent Monday presentations. Starting at 5 p.m. Pt / 8 p.m. Et on November 17, 2014, get ready to check out several of the biggest movie stars of the 1920s. Following the Jean Negulesco-directed 1943 musical short Hit Parade of the Gay Nineties -- believe me, even the most rabid anti-gay bigot will be able to enjoy this one -- TCM will be showing Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command (1928) one of the two movies that earned...
- 11/18/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The 86th Academy Awards are this Sunday evening, and we're counting down the minutes!
We've already given you our Oscar predictions, and now we're bringing you a few of the best (and craziest) Academy Awards facts. From the first Best Actor winner to the "one dollar" Oscar rule, here are 23 things you (probably) don't know about the Oscars.
1. The youngest Oscar winner was Tatum O'Neal, who won Best Supporting Actress for "Paper Moon" (1973) when she was only 10 years old. Shirley Temple won the short-lived Juvenile Award at 6 years old.
2. At 82, Christopher Plummer became the oldest person to win an Academy Award. He received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in "Beginners" (2010) opposite Ewan McGregor.
3. After winning Best Actress for "Cabaret" (1972), Liza Minnelli became (and still is) the only Oscar winner whose parents both earned Oscars. Her mother, Judy Garland, received an honorary award in 1939 and her father, Vincente Minnelli,...
We've already given you our Oscar predictions, and now we're bringing you a few of the best (and craziest) Academy Awards facts. From the first Best Actor winner to the "one dollar" Oscar rule, here are 23 things you (probably) don't know about the Oscars.
1. The youngest Oscar winner was Tatum O'Neal, who won Best Supporting Actress for "Paper Moon" (1973) when she was only 10 years old. Shirley Temple won the short-lived Juvenile Award at 6 years old.
2. At 82, Christopher Plummer became the oldest person to win an Academy Award. He received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in "Beginners" (2010) opposite Ewan McGregor.
3. After winning Best Actress for "Cabaret" (1972), Liza Minnelli became (and still is) the only Oscar winner whose parents both earned Oscars. Her mother, Judy Garland, received an honorary award in 1939 and her father, Vincente Minnelli,...
- 3/1/2014
- by Jonny Black
- Moviefone
From Jack leching over Jennifer to John Wayne's farewell and Brando's no-show, these are just some of the greatest moments at the Oscars ceremonies ever
1. When Jack met Jennifer
This is perhaps my favourite Oscar moment ever, and it is from last year: the 85th Academy Awards in 2013. Tellingly, it does not take place up on stage, in the often tense and frozen ritual of the awards ceremony itself, but happens in the cheerful buzz of the post-show melee backstage. This single, endlessly replayed clip probably did more for Jennifer Lawrence's public profile than anything on the big screen.
Reading on mobile? Click here to see Jack Nicholson surprise Jennifer Lawrence
George Stephanopoulos, the former Bill Clinton aide who later made a career in TV, was conducting on-the-hoof interviews for ABC and had grabbed 22-year-old Lawrence to talk about her best actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook. The...
1. When Jack met Jennifer
This is perhaps my favourite Oscar moment ever, and it is from last year: the 85th Academy Awards in 2013. Tellingly, it does not take place up on stage, in the often tense and frozen ritual of the awards ceremony itself, but happens in the cheerful buzz of the post-show melee backstage. This single, endlessly replayed clip probably did more for Jennifer Lawrence's public profile than anything on the big screen.
Reading on mobile? Click here to see Jack Nicholson surprise Jennifer Lawrence
George Stephanopoulos, the former Bill Clinton aide who later made a career in TV, was conducting on-the-hoof interviews for ABC and had grabbed 22-year-old Lawrence to talk about her best actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook. The...
- 2/28/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
It begins as many zombie stories do, with a survivor shuffling down the streets of his hometown. Everything has fallen into a post-apocalyptic ruin, the sky has turned a noxious yellow, and there’s some kind of strange mold growing over the broken walls and cracked streets. The survivor remembers that his name is David, but he doesn’t remember much else. All he knows is that he’s scared, confused, and hungrier than he’s ever been in his life.
I reached the end of the first few pages of Tim Waggoner’s The Way of All Flesh (coming in April from Samhain Publishing) with visions of The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later dancing in my head. But by the time David made it to the park and began to fight a woman over a hunk of caged meat, I knew Waggoner had something entirely different in mind. From...
I reached the end of the first few pages of Tim Waggoner’s The Way of All Flesh (coming in April from Samhain Publishing) with visions of The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later dancing in my head. But by the time David made it to the park and began to fight a woman over a hunk of caged meat, I knew Waggoner had something entirely different in mind. From...
- 1/23/2014
- by Blu Gilliand
- FEARnet
Best Supporting Actor Oscar Predictions 2014 (photo: Jared Leto in ‘Dallas Buyers Club’) As explained in our previous Oscar 2014 predictions post, this year’s Academy Award nominations in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories initially looked impossible to predict. For Best Supporting Actor, Jared Leto was the front-runner for his performance as a transsexual with AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club, and Michael Fassbender was another strong possibility for his evil planter in 12 Years a Slave — but who else? (See also: "Oscar Predictions 2014 Best Actress: Meryl Streep Possibly to Break Another Record," "Oscar Predictions 2014 Best Actor: Robert Redford Possible Near-Record," "Best Supporting Actress 2014 Oscar Predictions: Jennifer Lawrence and/or Scarlett Johansson to Make Oscar History?" and "Oscar Predictions 2014: Best Picture, Best Director.") A couple of weeks ago, the SAG Award nominations helped to clarify things some, but, just as in the Best Supporting Actress category, there remains quite...
- 1/8/2014
- by Steve Montgomery
- Alt Film Guide
(Click to enlarge) There.s no real formula one can use to win an Oscar . except this one. Researcher David Shaw broke down the history of Academy Award winner for Delayed Gratification, focusing on the winners in the Best Actor and Best Actress categories. They start with Emil Jannings (who won in 1928 for both The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh) and Janet Gaynor (who won for participating in Three features that year: Seventh Heaven; Street Angel; and Sunrise). The chart is a hot mess of colorful lines. Staring at it for longer than a minute can induce migraine headaches. But here are a few of the major factors the research revealed. If you want to win an acting Oscar, you should: - Play a Fictional Character. - Play a North American (instead of a Brit or someone of a different, European descent). - Play someone who works...
- 10/31/2013
- cinemablend.com
This year, Chicago’s durable Onion City Experimental Film And Video Festival is celebrating its devotion to challenging, exciting and entertaining experimental and avant-garde films for a quarter of a century. Hosted, as always, by Chicago Filmmakers, the 25th annual edition of the fest runs at several locations around the Windy City — the Gene Siskel Film Center, Columbia College and the Music Box Theater — on September 5-8.
The opening night program is a terrific lineup of eclectic short works from some of the giants of the experimental film world, such as animators Jodie Mack and Lawrence Jordan, documentarian Deborah Stratman, British filmmaker Ben Rivers, Indian filmmakers Shai Heredia and Shumona Goel, classic experimental filmmaker Phil Solomon and several more.
The rest of the fest is also jam-packed with other terrific short films and videos, from filmmakers such as Jennifer Reeder, Stephanie Barber, Mike Hoolboom, Lewis Klahr, Scott Fitzpatrick and tons more; plus,...
The opening night program is a terrific lineup of eclectic short works from some of the giants of the experimental film world, such as animators Jodie Mack and Lawrence Jordan, documentarian Deborah Stratman, British filmmaker Ben Rivers, Indian filmmakers Shai Heredia and Shumona Goel, classic experimental filmmaker Phil Solomon and several more.
The rest of the fest is also jam-packed with other terrific short films and videos, from filmmakers such as Jennifer Reeder, Stephanie Barber, Mike Hoolboom, Lewis Klahr, Scott Fitzpatrick and tons more; plus,...
- 9/5/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Germany has a long and trivia-crazy history with the Oscars that didn’t just begin with Sandra Bullock speaking German in her Blind Side acceptance speech or Christoph Waltz, an Austrian-German talent winning two Tarantino-Flavored Oscars for multi-lingual performances. We’ll get to more trivia in a minute but first the German shortlist. We await their choice for Oscar’s Foreign Language Film submission with curiousity because they’re always a threat for the eventual shortlist. Germany has received 18 nominations and 3 wins over the years. They’re weighing the quality of nine different pictures before deciding. Which will they send our way?
The finalists are…
My Beautiful Country Michaela Kezele
This one skews international - a romance between a young Serbian widow and an Albanian soldier The German Friend Jeanine Meerapfel
A coproduction with Argentina Free Fall Stephan Lacant
A gay romantic drama about two cops The Girl With Nine...
The finalists are…
My Beautiful Country Michaela Kezele
This one skews international - a romance between a young Serbian widow and an Albanian soldier The German Friend Jeanine Meerapfel
A coproduction with Argentina Free Fall Stephan Lacant
A gay romantic drama about two cops The Girl With Nine...
- 8/20/2013
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
The Loves of Pharaoh: Ernst Lubitsch early historical epic (photo: Emil Jannings [center] in The Loves of Pharaoh) Ernst Lubitsch’s The Loves of Pharaoh (1922) exists only in a truncated version, with some stills and title cards inserted into the lost footage. Lubitsch’s early epic was screened at the 2012 San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The film tells the familiar story of the lustful, evil King Amenes (Emil Jannings), Pharaoh of Egypt, and his unrequited love for the Greek slave girl Theonis (Dagny Servaes), who loves the gallant Ramphis (Harry Liedtke), who, for his part, is being kept prisoner in a rock quarry. Pharaoh Amenes makes Theonis his Queen, but she manages to avoid getting in bed with him. Then those pesky Ethiopians want their Queen / Slave for their own and invade Egypt. Needless to say, Ramphis escapes to claim Theonis. The Loves of Pharaoh‘s tale of treachery and...
- 6/4/2013
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Christopher Plummer, Jean Dujardin, Meryl Streep, and Octavia Spencer to be back at the Oscars, this time as presenters Streep, Dujardin, Spencer, and Plummer, last year's Oscar winners in the acting categories (respectively Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor), will return to the Oscar stage this year -- but this time as presenters on the 2013 Oscar telecast, the show's two producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan have announced. None of the four actors are in the running for the 2013 Oscars. (Pictured above: Christopher Plummer, Octavia Spencer, Meryl Streep, Jean Dujardin all looking very elegant posing for photographers backstage at last year's Academy Awards ceremony.) Meryl Streep: record-setting feat in the acting categories: With no less than 17 nominations, Streep is the record-setter in the acting categories. Streep has won a total of three statuettes: in the Best Supporting Actress category for Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer...
- 2/7/2013
- by Anna Robinson
- Alt Film Guide
2012 Oscar Predictions Best Actress: Tilda Swinton, Glenn Close. [Photo: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley in The Descendants.] Like in the Best Actress 2012 Academy Award race, there are three shoo-ins for the Best Actor shortlist: George Clooney, Jean Dujardin, and Brad Pitt. Clooney will be in the running for Alexander Payne's The Descendants, Dujardin for Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist, and Pitt for Bennett Miller's Moneyball. Clooney has already won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his sleazy U.S. spy/weapons dealer in Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005). In the acting categories, he was also nominated as Best Actor for Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton (2007) and Jason Reitman's Up in the Air (2009). This year, Clooney's own Golden Globe-nominated political drama The Ides of March serves as further evidence of the actor-director's "worthiness." (Clooney was a Best Director Oscar nominee for the 2005 black-and-white drama Good Night, and Good Luck, which also earned David Strathairn a Best Actor nod.
- 1/24/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Frederica Sagor Pt.2: Women Screenwriters in 1920s Hollywood [Photo: Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh.] Frederica Sagor's reported final Hollywood screen credit was the scenario for the 1928 slapstick comedy The Farmer's Daughter, directed by Arthur Rosson at Fox. Marjorie Beebe, previously featured in several comedy shorts, had the title role (no relation to Loretta Young's 1947 Oscar-winning Congresswoman-to-be). In her book, Sagor says she was paid $750 a week (approx. $9,700 today) to write the story for this programmer — one she hated — about rural lovers and piles of manure. The previous year, Sagor had married screenwriter Ernest Maas, who held an executive post at Fox. In her autobiography, she states that the couple wrote a story named Beefsteak Joe, inspired by the life of Maas' father, that was misappropriated by Paramount and released as The Way of All Flesh. Directed by Gone with the Wind's Victor Fleming, the now-lost melodrama — Madame X meets Stella Dallas in...
- 1/7/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Susan Orlean says canine accrued most best-actor votes at inaugural Academy Awards in 1929 but was passed over
It has been seen as one of the darkest scandals in Academy history: the tale of a cherished Hollywood star, robbed of his rightful best actor Oscar by a craven Hollywood establishment. Now, at long last, justice may be at hand as the American author Susan Orlean calls on the Academy to come clean, admit its mistake and award a posthumous Oscar to Rin Tin Tin.
Orlean's new biography Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend gives credence to a longstanding Hollywood rumour that the canine star won the most votes at the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929 only to be passed over in favour of the German actor Emil Jannings. "The first year the Oscars were awarded, it seems to have been more a popularity contest than a serious assessment of performance,...
It has been seen as one of the darkest scandals in Academy history: the tale of a cherished Hollywood star, robbed of his rightful best actor Oscar by a craven Hollywood establishment. Now, at long last, justice may be at hand as the American author Susan Orlean calls on the Academy to come clean, admit its mistake and award a posthumous Oscar to Rin Tin Tin.
Orlean's new biography Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend gives credence to a longstanding Hollywood rumour that the canine star won the most votes at the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929 only to be passed over in favour of the German actor Emil Jannings. "The first year the Oscars were awarded, it seems to have been more a popularity contest than a serious assessment of performance,...
- 1/4/2012
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
Author Susan Orlean, whose book The Orchid Thief became — more or less — director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's all but unwatchable Adaptation (Meryl Streep played Orlean), has another book out, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, published last September. Today, Deadline's Mike Fleming wrote a piece in which he explains that Orlean "discovered that the true Best Actor winner in the first Oscars in 1929 was the German Shepherd, not the German silent film actor Emil Jannings, who walked away with the prize." A quote from Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend found in The Hollywood Reporter reads: "According to Hollywood legend, Rinty received the most votes for best actor. But members of the Academy, anxious to establish the awards were serious and important, decided that giving an Oscar to a dog did not serve that end." I haven't read Orlean's book, so...
- 1/4/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Marlene Dietrich on TCM: Shanghai Express, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil Is A Woman Raoul Walsh's unpretentious Manpower (1941) is a surprisingly entertaining drama about a love triangle featuring good-time gal Marlene Dietrich and unlikely partners Edward G. Robinson and George Raft. As an ex-Nazi chanteuse/black marketer (photo), Dietrich nearly steals the show in Billy Wilder's post-war Berlin-set A Foreign Affair (1948); I say nearly because Jean Arthur is Dietrich's equal as the goody-goody American congresswoman who learns that goody-goodiness may take you far at work (at least in the movies) but not in life. In the hands of someone like Ernst Lubitsch, A Foreign Affair would have been a humorously romantic masterpiece, cleverly and subtly interweaving the personal, the social, and the political. As it is, the comedy works great whenever Arthur and Dietrich are on-screen; else, A Foreign Affair suffers from Wilder's heavy hand; lapses in judgment in Wilder,...
- 9/1/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Emil Jannings in Victor Fleming's The Way of All Flesh The final reel of John Ford’s The Village Blacksmith (1922), featuring Virginia Valli; Best Actor Oscar winner Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927); screen legends Douglas Fairbanks in He Comes Up Smiling (1918), Theda Bara in Cleopatra (1917), and Lon Chaney in The Miracle Man (1919); the early sound, Technicolor musical Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929); and the only color footage of Clara Bow — in Red Hair (1928). All that and more in the Flicker Alley-produced Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films, a two-hour documentary featuring remaining bits and pieces from "lost films" that will be shown on Turner Classic Movies at 5 p.m. Pt. That's a great chance to look at some rare footage that until quite recently had been available only at places such as the UCLA Film & Television Archives, the Library of Congress, or [...]...
- 4/3/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Today's generation is surrounded by technology. Rapidly-advancing tools of all sorts are so prevalent in every aspect of our lives that we depend on them, nay, expect them to make our lives easier, more enjoyable, and more interesting. Multi-billion dollar industries such as cinema are in no way immune from the public's desire for bigger and better things. Moviegoers have the options of watching films in a variety of locales, in IMAX or 3D, via regular projection screens or the latest in digital picture. For those who prefer to stay close to home, the options multiply. Satellite TV, cable TV, Redbox, a widespread availability of DVDs, and even the disappearing neighborhood rental store all combine to contain every movie that the discerning film aficionado could ever hope to watch, available at the push of a button or a short drive up the street.
Well... almost every movie. It may seem...
Well... almost every movie. It may seem...
- 1/21/2011
- Shadowlocked
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.