Wednesday, January 17-----After winning a Golden Globe on Monday night, it seems that the actor Forest Whitaker is unstoppable as he moves towards Oscar glory next month for his tour-de-force performance as Ugandan strongman Idi Amin in THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND. New York audiences are therefore in for a treat when the Film Society of Lincoln Center presents A WEEKEND WITH FOREST WHITAKER, a celebration of the man and his talent. Starting on Friday, January 19th and continuing on Saturday, J...

Monday, January 15-----The Critics Choice Awards, chosen by members of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA), were announced at a gala awards ceremony in Los Angeles on Friday. Coming just days before the Golden Globe ceremonies, to be held later tonight, and just two weeks before the Oscar nominations are announced, the clear momentum for certain films and talents seems to be reaching a crescendo. Unless there are some major surprises this evening at the Golden Globes ceremonies, the w...

Friday, January 12----The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced its nominees in fifteen seperate categories for the Orange British Academy Film Awards, affectionately knowns as the BAFTAs. By and large, they read like a re-do of the Golden Globes, with some prominent exceptions. Which film dominated the proceedings? THE QUEEN, of course. The acclaimed behind-the-scenes look at the Royal Family received the most BAFTA nods, with 10 nominations in all, in the categor...

Wednesday, January 10----The Directors Guild of America (DGA), which represents film and television directors, announced its five nominess for the DGA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film at a ceremony in Los Angeles yesterday. DGA President Michael Apted made the announcement. Aside from being a highly prized award determined by one’s peers, the DGA Award has traditionally been one of the industry's most accurate barometers for who will win the Best Director Academy Award. ...

Monday, January 8-----The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC), one of the most prestigious film critics organizations in North America, has chosen the Spanish-language film PAN’S LABYRINTH as the Best Picture of the Year. The choice of a non-English language film harkens back to the heyday of foreign films in the 1960s and 1970s, when the films of Truffaut, Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa were given the Society’s highest accolade. In fact, all top three vote-getters in the Best Picture c...

Friday, January 5------With the 2007 only four days old, the awards season frenzy that had a brief respite over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays has resumed in full force. Yesterday morning, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the organization that represents acting talent on both the large and small screen, announced its nominations for the prestigious SAG Awards. Announcements were made by Elijah Wood (LORD OF THE RINGS) and Sandra Oh (SIDEWAYS, GREY’S ANATOMY). The honors, which are p...

Monday, January 1, 2007------While a lot of ink (or bytes) will be spent on the films and performers who will win accolades in the busy awards season to come (from the Golden Globes through the Independent Spirit Awards to the Oscar extravaganza), it seems appropriate, on this first day of the New Year, to take a moment to list the celebrated actors, directors, producers and other film professionals who took their final curtain calls in 2006. We remember them all, and how wonderful that their ...

Two-time Actor® recipient Sandra Oh, currently starring in the ABC series Grey’s Anatomy, and Actor® recipient Elijah Wood, currently starring in the Golden Globe®-nominated films Bobby and Happy Feet, will join Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg to announce the nominees for the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®, Executive Producer Jeff Margolis announced today. The SAG Awards™ nominations will be revealed at 6:05 a.m. PT on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007, in the SilverScreen Th...

Thursday, December 28----With documentary films experiencing a commercial and critical peak, the stakes have never been higher (and the rewards greater) for the sixteen American Independent documentary features competing at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Considering the box office clout of such films as AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and THE MARCH OF THE PENGUINS in the past year, one can expect some of the most ferocious bidding wars will be unleashed for distribution rights to many of these fil...

Friday, December 29-----In a last farewell nod to the best films of the past year, respected film website IndieWire has announced the results of its first annual Critics Poll. The Romanian drama THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU, an emotionally devastating meditation on the thin line between life and death, was the top choice of a group of 100 leading North American film critics. The film, the second feature of director Cristi Puiu, won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, wa...

Wednesday, December 27----Sherry Lansing, the recently retired Chairperson of Paramount Pictures and one of the pioneering women producers in Hollywood, will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy Award ceremonies, to be held at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles on February 25, 2007. Sherry Lansing's long career as a producer and studio executive is rivaled only by her philanthropic commitments and activities. Lansing helped Armand Hammer form the nonprofit organization St...

Monday, December 25----While most industries take a rare respite during Christmas week, for the film industry it is a frenzied period that is not the least bit sleepy or relaxed. For film distributors, the Christmas-New Year's holiday period has become one of the most essential make-or-break weeks of the year, with Americans (and presumably others) adding movie-going as part of their Holiday celebrations. In other words, after the spate of last minute Christmas shopping, going out to the movie...

“17 Sept”. a documentary about Hyderabad freedom movement, Produced by Gulbarga DD station, won best Doordarshan documentary award in a glittering event at Jallunder in India. Station Director Mr. Chandrakant Barve received the award on behalf of the creative team. The documentary is about struggle by people of Hyderabad State during British India. It was against atrocities by administrators under Nizam rule. The freedom movement was parallel to Indian Freedom movement and was lead by Sw...

Friday, December 22----The final film critics prizes were announced by the film critics associations in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Dallas and the Southeast (including Florida, Georgia and other states south of the Mason Dixon line). There was concensus in certain categories, but critics also differed enough to keep the Oscar race varied and interesting. BEST PICTURE The Phoenix Film Critics Association, along with the Dallas/Fort Worth Film Critics Association, chose the 9-11 docudrama UNITED 93...