Slumdog, Winslet Scoop BAFTA Honors

After number-crunching, Slumdog is tops

(NEWSER) - FiveThirtyEight.com stats-cruncher extraordinaire Nate Silver shifts his sights from politics to the Oscars in New York magazine. He compiled data from 30 years of Academy Awards to discover the best predictors of success, and found that other awards (SAGs, Golden Globes) carry the most weight. Genre is also key; release date and MPAA rating don’t matter. His predictions: More»

Heath Ledger receives posthumous award

(NEWSER) - Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner at the Critics' Choice Awards last night, taking home five trophies, including best film and best director (Danny Boyle), MTV News reports. Heath Ledger, meanwhile, continued his posthumous honors, picking up best supporting actor (and a standing ovation) for his turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight. More»

Hating on the suburbs is the cheapest, easiest move in art

(NEWSER) - Revolutionary Road, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, “is the latest entry in a long stream of art that portrays the American suburbs as the physical correlative to spiritual and mental death,” Lee Siegel writes in the Washington Post. Everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Sylvia Plath has given the ‘burbs a bad rap, painting a picture of “materialism, lack of imagination, and conformity.” More»

Streep, Hoffman earn nods; Pitt, Jolie, Penn join them

(NEWSER) - The Screen Actors Guild released its award nominees today, and left no Doubt which flick had the most star power in 2008. As with the Golden Globes, all four Doubt leads earned nods, which, combined with a best ensemble nomination, gave it the most potential honors overall. Brangelina again did well, with both halves of the power couple seeing nominations, the Los Angeles Times reports. More»

(NEWSER) - Michelle Williams, who stars in a new film about the loss of a best friend, says time hasn’t made mourning ex-boyfriend Heath Ledger any easier. “I’m at heart an optimistic person, but in some ways it just gets worse," the Dawson’s Creek alum says through tears. "It's just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone." She likens her grief to "a moving river" that takes her to "a slightly different place" every day. More»