Movie Make-out

By now, almost everyone knows that the best way for an actor—or actress, but I really dislike the word sometimes—to garner an Oscar nomination includes being British or playing a person with mental disabilities.

Well, Variety’s Timothy M. Gray came up with a few more categories to add to the “Oscars bait” pool, including:

Talk funny. Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood was a prime example of a long, proud tradition of speaking in a strange voice, using eccentric rhythms and speech patterns and—this is important—doing it while squinting.

Gratitude should therefore be expressed to those brave filmmakers and theatrical producers who are bucking the trend. When it comes to mood-altering movies, Slumdog Millionaire takes the cake. It’s so uplifting, it’s downright narcotic. On Broadway, critics by and large are raving about Billy Elliot for similar reasons. Yeah, it’s a tear-jerker; sure, Elton John has written better scores. But the show is not just theater, it’s a tonic. Isn’t that really why people are willing to pay money for tickets?
—Variety’s EIC Peter Bart, on how today’s economy may affect tomorrow’s Oscars voters

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[In the running for the Best Animated Picture nomination is] $9.99, a stop motion toon for grown-ups, based on the very short stories of Israeli writer Etgar Keret (some of them no longer than a sneeze, but evocative enough to set your imagination running). That might seem like a shortage of material on which to base a feature, but consider that most blockbusters can be reduced to 25 words or less….”
—Variety’s Peter Debruge, on the very curious nature of this year’s Best Animated Picture selections