Streep: Move Oscars Before Other Awards

After 10 years, an opportunity to fix mistakes: Lowen Liu

(NEWSER) - Slate wants to fix the Oscars—"Academy Awards ceremonies are laughable, even to those of us who love them," the site declares —so it's asking writers and editors to offer up their proposals in advance of the Feb. 26 ceremony. Lowen Liu's idea : Allow for a re-vote on the major categories 10 years later. That would mean that this year, Academy voters could finally make up for the travesty that occurred when A Beautiful Mind won over such "diverse and dazzling" films as English manners mystery Gosford Park and the theatrical Moulin Rouge! More»

Silent film grabs 7 Brit honors, Meryl Street wins Best Actress

(NEWSER) - In what could be a preview of the Oscars, The Artist swept the top honors at the Bafta movie awards in London yesterday. The quirky black-and-white film raked in seven British movie honors, including those for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actor for French star Jean Dujardin. "Some people thought there was no script because there was no dialog, so the British are very clever," said filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius when he picked up the screenplay trophy for the silent picture. More»

Yet Martin Scorsese's 'Hugo' gets acclaim, actor laments

(NEWSER) - Daniel Radcliffe is "slightly miffed" that none of the Harry Potter films have won an Academy Award, whereas children's movie Hugo was nominated for Best Picture and 10 other categories this year. "I don't think the Oscars like commercial films, or kids' films, unless they're directed by Martin Scorsese," Radcliffe tells the Radio Times . "I was watching Hugo the other day and going, 'Why is this nominated and we're not?' I was slightly miffed. There's a certain amount of snobbery." More»

Martin Scorsese film scores 11 nods, silent film gets 10

(AP) - Martin Scorsese's Paris adventure Hugo leads the Academy Awards with 11 nominations, among them Best Picture and the latest Best Director nod for the Oscar-riffic filmmaker. Also nominated for Best Picture this morning: silent film The Artist; family drama The Descendants; Sept. 11 tale Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; Deep South drama The Help; romantic fantasy Midnight in Paris; sports tale Moneyball; family chronicle The Tree of Life; and World War I epic War Horse. More»

Helps redeem otherwise mediocre film

(NEWSER) - As a biopic, The Iron Lady is nothing to write home about—but critics are blown away by Meryl Streep's typically excellent performance as Margaret Thatcher:

• The film contains "little sense of the outside world, the human cost, or the ripple effect of divisive government policies. It is a movie that gives us Thatcher without Thatcherism," writes Xan Brooks in the Guardian . But Streep "is the one great weapon of this often silly and suspect picture." She offers "a masterpiece of mimicry."