April 11th, 2019
We’ve hit the summer doldrums on the home market, as there are no major winter releases that haven’t come out and none of 2019’s early releases were amazing, so there’s going to be a large gap between monster hits. One of the biggest hits is On the Basis of Sex, which is also one of the best. Another contender for Pick of the Week is Mirai while last week’s Archer: The Complete Season Nine: Danger Island would have been a contender last week, if the screener had arrived on time. In the end, it wasn’t a particularly close race and the Oscar-nominated movie won.
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February 24th, 2019
It’s Oscar night and we will be live blogging the show. We will announce the winners and have our reactions as they happen, while keeping track of how our readers did in predicting the outcomes.
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February 24th, 2019
It’s Oscar Day, and we will be live blogging the show. Before that, let’s take a last look at the nominations with a few annotations. in Italics are those that have received the most votes from our readers so far in our Oscar contest (which is open to new entries until noon, Pacific, today—enter now!). Bold films are those films I think will win. Meanwhile, those that are Underlined are those I want to win. Not all categories have underlined nominees, because not all categories have someone I’m cheering for, or because there are two nominees I couldn’t pick between. For example, I would be happy with half of the Best Picture nominees winning.
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February 7th, 2019
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try and figure out who the favorites are and which films should just feel honored to be nominated. A lot of people call this Oscar the Pixar Award, and there is a Pixar film on this list. However, in a shocking twist, it isn’t the overwhelming favorite to win.
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January 23rd, 2019
The Oscar nominations were announced yesterday starting at just after 5 am Pacific time. They do this every year for reasons no one has been able to adequately explain to me. Because it was the day after a long weekend, it took a bit of time to get all the normal work done and digest the results. And there were some interesting results to digest. No one film led the way with total nominations, as two films, The Favourite and Roma tied with 10 nominations each.
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December 6th, 2018
The Golden Globes nominations are the second major Awards Season set to come out. It is still very early in the year and the predictive value of the Golden Globes is a little suspect, but there are still some things to learn here. For example Vice led the way with six nominations, so its Oscar chances have gone up, but don’t expect it to lead the way when the Oscars nominations are announced.
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December 2nd, 2018
Ralph Breaks the Internet will retain top spot on the weekend box office chart with an estimated $25.8 million for a two-week total of $119.3 million. Granted, this is lower than we predicted, but not so much lower than anyone at Disney should be panicking. Internationally, the film added an estimated $33.7 million in 27 markets, lifting its international total to $87.7 million after two weeks of release. Its only major market opening of the weekend was the U.K. where it reportedly earned $5.2 million. This is less than Wreck-It Ralph opened with, but that film debuted during the school holidays, so it got a boost. Ralph Breaks the Internet should have longer than average legs thanks to Christmas, but I don’t think it will match its predecessor in this market.
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November 30th, 2018
It’s another slow week for new releases, so like last week, I had to be a little more liberal when it came to including films on this list. There are some films that I think could find an audience, including Alanis and Bathtubs Over Broadway. However, Anna and the Apocalypse is the film I’m most interested in seeing.
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