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It was a historic 92nd Academy Awards with a first Best Picture recipient not in the English language in Parasite adding an element of surprise to a largely predictable winners list. There was something historic in the ratings for the 2020 Oscars too — an historic low. Last year, the Academy Awards bet on no traditional host, kicked off the night with an energetic performance by Queen and Adam Lambert, employed “not hosts” with Saturday Night Live pedigree (Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph) to do an opening monologue, kept the show’s length under 3.5 hours and created a musical...

By this point in awards season, Brad Pitt’s march toward a Best Supporting Actor Oscar seems all but inevitable. Not to say anyone’s complaining. In fact, the loudest knock against the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood star is that his warm-up acceptance speeches at events like the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the BAFTAs have been a little too, well, perfect. [snip] Fenway Strategies is a speechwriting and communications firm founded by former Obama administration officials Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. Although the firm’s most obvious connection is to the political arena, helping speakers prep TED...

Here are the winners at the 92nd annual Academy Awards that handed out Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood:Best PictureParasite (Neon) A Barunson E&A Production Kwak Sin Ae and Bong Joon Ho, ProducersActress in a Leading RoleRenée Zellweger Judy (LD Entertainment and Roadside Attractions)Actor in a Leading RoleJoaquin Phoenix Joker (Warner Bros.)DirectingParasite (Neon) Bong Joon HoOriginal Song“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from Rocketman (Paramount) Music by Elton John Lyric by Bernie Taupin Original ScoreJoker (Warner Bros.) Hildur GuðnadóttirInternational FeatureParasite A Barunson E&A Production South KoreaMakeup and HairstylingBombshell (Lionsgate) Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker Visual Effects1917 (Universal/Amblin...

Actor-comedian Ricky Gervais viciously trolled Hollywood celebrities just hours ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards, preemptively deflating their self-important acceptance speeches in a series of humorous tweets. Ricky Gervais took the stars to task for their progressive views on migrant workers, noting that many celebrities employ migrants in their homes to perform menial and backbreaking work. “I can’t wait to hear all your inspirational speeches about equality, and it’s great that the 3 hours you’re here tonight is the only time your badly paid migrant house staff will get some time off to sleep this week” https://t.co/fsFbdDkv6u — Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais)...

Is "1917" a wartime shoo-in for best picture, or might "Parasite" make some Oscar history Sunday night? The 92nd annual Academy Awards brings to a close yet another awards season, one in which the main acting categories are led by performers who've run roughshod over their competition. But the race for best picture is somewhat more up in the air. Sam Mendes' World War I thriller "1917" is the closest to a favorite, having won important Golden Globe, Producers Guild and Directors Guild awards. But Bong Joon-ho's South Korean black comedy "Parasite," which took the best ensemble award at the...

Social media came down on Gary Oldman's win as well. Kobe Bryant took home an Oscar for an animated short film yesterday evening, for his short Dear Basketball, a choice some thought inappropriate given the “Time’s Up” and #MeToo themes of the 90th Academy Awards.Bryant was arrested and charged with sexual assault in 2003 when a 19-year-old woman accused him of rape. The basketball star claimed the encounter was consensual, however, and the case fizzled out when the woman said she did not want to testify in court.Bryant apologized to the woman, and a little over a year after the...

Barack Obama had something to celebrate today because the Netflix documentary he and wife Michelle produced, "American Factory," was predictably nominated for an Oscar for best documentary.“Glad to see American Factory’s Oscar nod for Best Documentary,” Obama tweeted. "It’s the kind of story we don’t see often enough and it’s exactly what Michelle and I hope to achieve with Higher Ground." Higher Ground is the name of the Obamas' production company. Last year they were accused of "deplorable behavior" over a trademark dispute over the name of the company."Congrats to the incredible filmmakers and entire team!” Obama added. Glad...

Until Issa Rae and John Cho announced “Harriet” star Cynthia Erivo as a nominee for best actress for the 92nd Academy Awards, it was looking increasingly likely that the Oscars were heading for a repeat of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy that drove the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences four years ago to aggressively begin diversifying its membership. Instead, Erivo saved the Academy from the embarrassment of yet another slate of all-white acting nominees — but just barely. This year’s Oscar nominations for acting still managed to shut out a wealth of highly regarded performances by actors of color who...

[snip] “But look at all those cameras. That’s like the Academy Awards used to be before it failed. You know why it failed? You know why it failed?” Trump asked his supporters. “Because they came after us. That’s why it failed. It failed because they had stupid people saying horrible things about us. Stupid, stupid people,” Trump continued, noting that their ratings have “dropped like a rock” — something he loves seeing. “They are stupid people, and their ratings have dropped like a rock and I love seeing it, I’m telling you. Love it,” Trump said. “But no matter how...

Film director Roman Polanski is suing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, demanding reinstatement to the storied organization after he was expelled last May. The suit, filed in the state of California, says AMPAS did not follow proper protocol in dismissing him nearly a year ago. The Academy did so “in accordance with the organization’s Standards of Conduct,” they said at the time, adding their leadership expected members to “uphold the Academy’s values of respect for human dignity.” Polanski’s suit says the Academy’s expulsion decision “is not supported by findings, and the Academy’s findings are not supported by...

When the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences decided to end the relentless parade of host-related Oscars drama by simply doing the show without one, there were concerns as to whether or not the choice would negatively impact the ratings. As it turns out, the absence of a central person to spout toothless jokes and bother the audience actually might have played a part in this year’s ratings boost. The 91st Annual Academy Awards garnered a 7.7 rating in adults 18-49 and 29.6 million viewers this past Sunday. To compare: Last year’s show only saw a 6.8 rating and...

Who watches the Academy Awards anymore? Movies are worse than ever. TV is better than ever. Who wants to go to a movie theater nowadays and worry about picking up bedbugs from the seats, having a rat scurry up your leg in the dark, or getting into a fracas with some psycho over the armrest? I haven’t seen any of the films nominated for an Oscar this year, and didn’t even realize the Oscars were being televised last night until a couple of hours before the show came on. But I watched it anyway. Not because I cared who...

In what could be interpreted as Turkish reaction to President Trump's decision to keep US troops in Syria after saying they would be withdrawn back in December, the Turkish Interior Minister says his government will reveal the links between Kurdish groups considered terrorists by Turkeu and American generals..... Hundreds of suspected Islamic State fighters have been turned over to Iraqi authorities by Kurdish forces operating in eastern Syria...... President Trump tweeted Sunday evening that sufficient progress has been made in trade talks with China to delay tariff increases.... The talks between Afghanistan's Taliban and the United States resumed today in...

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. Social media users are convinced that the Oscars stage was inspired this year by President Trump’s hair. “I can’t be the only one saying this,” wrote Tom Piechura on Twitter. “Anyone else seeing President Trumps hair in the 2019 Oscars stage?” another person asked. “Maybe it is a tribute,” a third user said. The set — which was created by Tony-nominated Broadway production designer David Korins, of “Hamilton” — was supposed to represent “inclusion and humanity, femininity and beauty,” but all anyone seemed to think about was Trump’s pompadour.

Well, well, well, it appears the hostless Oscars came to play. The 2019 ceremony just delivered what could be an Academy Awards first: An acceptance speech dedicated to none other than menstrual periods! Period. End of Sentence. just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. “I’m not crying because I’m on my period, or anything,” said director Rayka Zehtabchi. “I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar,” she continued. Zehtabchi (who is 25!!) shared the stage with producer Melissa Berton and the rest of the Period team. Period tells the story of women in rural India fighting...

Queen has really been keeping in the spotlight over the past year. The band's Bohemian Rhapsody film is currently the highest-grossing music biopic of all time, the film is up for five Oscars at the coming Academy Awards, and the band is back out on the road touring in support of the film.So it should come as no surprise that Queen + Adam Lambert has been announced as a musical act for the 91st Academy Awards coming up this Sunday, February 24.Bohemian Rhapsody is up for the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as Rami Malek for Best Actor...

“Roma” was just one of many foreign-language films to figure prominently in the academy’s main categories this year, a trend that may just as well stem from its recent and ongoing push to diversify its ranks. While Cuaron received a director nomination as expected, for example, he was joined by Pawel Pawlikowski for another black-and-white picture, the moody Polish romance “Cold War.” (Pawlikowski previously directed “Ida,” which won the Oscar for foreign-language film in 2015.) 2019 the first time two entirely non-English-language films have earned directing nominations since 1976, when Ingmar Bergman (“Face to Face”) and Lina Wertmüller (“Seven Beauties”)...

Each year at the Left Coast crack of dawn, when the Oscar nominations are announced, there’s generally at least one major nomination many pundits were predicting that fails to materialize. When that happens, entertainment media tends to rise up as one and say the s-word: snub. In truth, it’s not usually a snub; it’s just somebody getting passed over for other nominees who were loved a little more than the conventional wisdom realized. That’s why the chatter about it tends to get worn out by the end of the day. But when the nominations were announced this morning, and it...

On Jan. 22, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Academy will announce the five short documentary films up for the Oscar. Among the shortlisted films is the documentary “Women of the Gulag” by Russian-American director, Marianna Yarovskaya. It is the first time in the 91 years of the Oscar’s history that a woman director from Russia is so close to getting such prestigious award. Yarovskaya´s documentary film centers on the memories of six remarkable women survivors of the Gulag. Now in their eighties and nineties, they were sentenced to Soviet forced labor camps during the Stalin era. But...

Jon Levine -- the media editor for the entertainment site The Wrap -- has penned an opinion piece for The New York Post that's sure to get him a glare or two at the office on Monday.Levine suggests that conservative actor James Woods might just be what the Academy Awards needs to inject some life into the show's ever-dwindling viewership. With the 2019 Golden Globe Awards now upon us, only one thing is for sure: Not a lot of people are going to watch. Ratings for the event last year fell 5 percent from their 2017 numbers and have fallen three...