Academy Awards
With varying styles and lengths, the 2017 Animated Short Films offer innovation, emotion, and satisfying storytelling.
The Film Inquiry team went back through the history of the Academy Awards, and selected our personal favorites out of the many nominations.
We’ve long established that The Academy suffers from racial and gender bias, but could it be that there’s another bias going on at the Oscars?
It’s quite rare that horror films are given any type of awards attention, despite their prominence in the mainstream film scene. We discuss why.
For Episode #2, Jay and Mike discuss their reactions to the nominees, snubs, and other silly Oscars related topics as they predict who will win and who they think should win.
With masterful performances and finely tuned direction, A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the great adaptations of a play in cinema history.
Miracle on 34th Street is a magical film about believing in Christmas spirit; premiering in 1947, it is still wonderfully enjoyable today.
Every year, ten movies are bestowed the honor of becoming nominated by the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Many of these films will have already had various successes throughout the year; good festival attendance, box office success and the receiving of other prestigious awards. Yet, only one of the ten films ends the night being declared the best of the best.
Every year, ten movies are bestowed the honor of becoming nominated by the Academy Of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. Many of these films will already have had various successes throughout the year: good festival attendance, box office success and probably received other prestigious awards.
Every year, ten movies are bestowed the honor of becoming nominated by the Academy. Many of these films will have already had various successes throughout the year – festivals, box office and other prestigious awards. Yet, only one ends the night being declared the best of the best.
The membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is 94 percent white. Equally real and shameful is the fact that 94 percent of top-grossing films in this country are directed by men. In addition to shameful, the words real, facts, and equally are important here.
It is always nice to visit the short films that people work so hard on but you never really think about viewing. It is not until the Oscars that these films get any mainstream attention, and that is one of the best things the Oscars provides to filmmakers. This year’s nominees are strong, featuring sad bears, old men who desperately want hand-drawn animation to survive, clumsy cosmonauts, Hindu superheroes, and some brilliant sci-fi.
Long maligned no matter the medium, the short film is often seen merely as a launching pad for bigger and better things. However, for documentarians, the short is almost the primary form, as it takes a lot of time, funding and quality footage to come up with a feature-length documentary worthy of release. Thus, for documentary, the short is the rule rather than the exception, and the field is stacked with quality, potent films, more or less unhampered by typical commercial expectations.
“Awards bait.” The phrase is bandied around a lot this time of year in the run up to the Oscars. But what exactly is it?
The outcry against this year’s vanilla list of contenders for the 2016 Academy Awards is reverberating across the country with Spike Lee and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith boycotting Hollywood’s most prestigious fete of the year. Even Mark Ruffalo, nominated for Spotlight, considered joining the boycott before ultimately opting to attend the award ceremony. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made an announcement on Friday regarding new diversity initiatives, but I would hardly say that they’re ‘leading’ the industry by placing some restrictions on lifetime voting and finally attempting some diversity recruiting.
