Up in the Air Will Edge Hurt Locker

Film critic: The problem is that they're usually right

(NEWSER) - As the film critic for the Los Angeles Times , Kenneth Turan loves the Oscars. But he hates the nonstop barrage of predictions that bombard us ahead of the show. His beef "is not that the pundits are often wrong but, frankly, that they are often right," he says. "The more academy votes and voters are studied, the more patterns emerge, the more identifiable signs and meanings become apparent, and the more the awards can be unceremoniously pinned to a board like a captured butterfly." More»

The Blind Side as White Lady Saves the Day and more

(NEWSER) - It’s just about time for the Oscars, but first, check College Humor ’s list of what some of the nominated films should be called, if we’re being honest with ourselves.

• Avatar: Predictable, with James-Cameron-ripping subtitle, “From the guy who knows how to spend $280,000,000.”
• The Blind Side: White Lady Saves the Day
• Inglourious Basterds: Inaccurate Trailer (“Brad Pitt’s hardly in it, and it’s mostly in French.”)

Tarantino's flick has the best shot at top Oscar

(NEWSER) - Though everyone is buzzing about Avatar’s best-picture prospects, Tom O'Neil was an early predictor of Inglourious Basterds snagging the top Oscar prize—and now he’s defending his position. Even though it came out eons ago (in August), the disappointing performance of many much-hyped late-year films leaves Basterds in a position to make a “late-year dash” a la Gladiator or Braveheart, he writes in the Los Angeles Times . More»

Article on black Oscar winners fails to mention her win

(NEWSER) - Whoopi Goldberg has lashed out at the New York Times for an article on how no black actors are being considered for Academy Awards this year. While Goldberg can sympathize with the article's main thrust, it's the fact that the authors—movie critics AO Scott and Manohla Dargis—seem to list every black Academy Award winner except her, Mediaite reports. Goldberg took her grievances—and her actual Oscar—to the View. More»

In field of possible nominees, barely any minorities

(NEWSER) - Next year’s Oscars are shaping up to be the whitest Academy Awards in a decade, according to the Hollywood Reporter . Among the early lists of possible nominees, there are no blacks in the acting categories and almost no minorities at all in the major categories. Why? Partly because right now in the filmmaking industry, it’s hard to make serious movies—“let alone an ethnic-themed one,” says John Singleton, nominated twice for 1991’s Boyz N the Hood. More»