Oscars countdown.

"There's a reason why this idea that the Oscars have become a snobbed-up, limousine-liberal affair, out of touch with ordinary Americans, never goes away," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "It has a grain of truth, however teensy and elusive, at its core."

"We all know that the Oscars are a dirty not-so-little pleasure," nudges David Carr. "We pretend to watch them ironically, but they really are beyond the reach of irony."

Updated through 2/24.

"This year, apart from some suspicious choices in the Best Song and Foreign Language categories, the nominees are sound, and the length of the writers' strike mercifully forced party planners to ratchet down their sickening displays of gluttony and self-love," writes Gary Dretzka at Movie City News. "Even so, by successfully turning December into the only month that matters, the studios have limited exposure to the worthy finalists to such a degree, only a small percentage of the television audience will have seen the movies in contention."

"With two movies - Away From Her and The Savages - dealing with Alzheimer's and dementia, respectively, up for Oscars on Sunday, Alzheimer's experts hope emcee Jon Stewart and the celebrity presenters and winners will avoid any humor about the disease," reports Robert W Welkos. Also in the Los Angeles Times: Rachel Abramowitz profiles Tom Wilkinson.

"When Hollywood needs Western desolation, it comes to Marfa." Michael Graczyk visits the town that served as a location for No Country for Old Men and There will Be Blood. Via MCN.

Erik Davis launches Oscars Week at Cinematical.

Glenn Kenny and Arion Berger begin a week-long dialogue at Premiere, discussing who should win for what and who will win: "Here's how it's gonna work - every day between now and Friday, Arion and I are going to square off on the major categories - Supporting, Screenplay, Acting, Director, Picture."

More ongoing Oscar predictions: Film Threat; GH Lewmer and Paul Matwychuk; Craig Phillips; and Slant.

Want to try it yourself? "Call it, friendo," dares Yair Raveh.

Meanwhile, the Film Experience has issued a modest call for help.

"I get a kick from guild awards shows, particularly the art directors, because they not only celebrate the current year's best - No Country for Old Men took the contemporary prize, There will Be Blood the period, and The Golden Compass the fantasy - but they look to the past to honor the pioneers who went before." Variety's Anne Thompson reports on a fun evening out and points to the winners of the Cinema Audio Society's awards as well.

Among the winners of the American Cinema Editors' Eddies: "In the film categories, Christopher Rouse won for his work on The Bourne Ultimatum in the dramatic category, Chris Lebenzon won in the comedic category for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, while Geoffrey Richman, Chris Seward and Dan Swietlik won for Sicko in the documentary category," reports indieWIRE's Peter Knegt.

Updates: "Do the Oscars really matter?" Not a new question, of course, but this time it's being put forward by Richard T Jameson, who takes a long historical look at the Academy's hits and misses at MSN Movies.

Richard Corliss looks back ten years and picks the nominees who should've won.

Spout and the Reeler are throwing an Oscar party - with Oscar cookies!

And I'll have another reminder on this one in a few days, but: GreenCine will be live-blogging the night, and of course, you're invited.

Updates, 2/19: "Salon writers and special guests weigh in on their favorite performances and movies of the year - and the ones they couldn't stand."

"Every year, the Academy tries to stop Oscar films from leaking online. And every year, they leak all the same. I've been tracking Oscar piracy since 2004, but I've decided to up the ante, releasing all the underlying data and extending it to 2003." Andy Baio's got charts, spreadsheets, the works.

In Vanity Fair, Peter Biskind looks back to the spring of 1979: "As Bruce Gilbert, associate producer of Coming Home, puts it, 'The war may have been over, but the war over the interpretation of the war was just beginning.' Both movies vacuumed up Oscar nominations - The Deer Hunter nine, Coming Home eight - setting the stage for the war to be refought at, of all places, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, in Los Angeles. It was a battle that would echo the real one in its bitterness."

"Who Will Drink Whose Milkshake?" David Edelstein and Lynda Obst talk Oscars from now through Friday.

Observations on the Oscar race worth following: First, I haven't mentioned Carpetbagger David Carr in general yet, and I certainly should've; second, Little Gold Men, "VF's Daily Guide to Oscar Season," with the VF standing for Vanity Fair.

Scott Kirsner lists "Five Oscar Wins That Shaped the Movies."

Updates, 2/20: The New York Observer's all excited.

Blogging at Filmmaker's site, Nick Dawson argues against the prevailing winds of condemnation blowing around the selection panel nominating films for the Best Foreign Language category: "Persepolis, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Orphanage were denied a shot at the Oscar, yet by that stage all three were already internationally acclaimed movies with US distribution deals.... [T]his year Oscar has all but guaranteed us the new films from Nikita Mikhalkov, Andrzej Wajda and Sergei Bodrov - three undeniably great directors - in addition."

In the New York Times, Bill Carter talks with an almost eerily relaxed Jon Stewart about having just a bit over a week to prepare to host "the Super Bowl of entertainment shows."

More predictions: Erik Childress (Hollywood Bitchslap), Dennis Cozzalio and Bill Gibron (PopMatters).

A list from Stephen Salto at IFC News: "Fake Names, Real Oscars: Five Nominees Who Didn't Really Exist."

Christian Hamaker for Crosswalk: "Humans are 'by nature objects of wrath' and 'dead in transgressions' (Eph. 2:3, 5) 'There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins,' says the author of Ecclesiastes (7:20).... This year's Oscar nominees show this biblical condition in the extreme."

More on Oscar's shorts: Kim Adelman (indieWIRE) and Andrew O'Hehir (Salon).

Updates, 2/21: "Every year as we move toward the cusp of Oscar night, a couple of Vue film critics sit down to hash out their responses to the Academy's choices and, more importantly, acknowledge the great work that didn't get recognized in the past year." And this year it's Josef Braun and Brian Wilson.

Via MCN: "Scott's Oscar Almanac," a wall chart or something - if your printer can handle it.

Online viewing tip. MTV puts Josh Horowitz in an Oscar montage that, as Anne Thompson puts it, is "pretty funny."

"George Clooney swears he has never lost an Oscar pool." Check out his picks and the pretty amusing quips that introduce them at Time.

Joe Leydon's got a "mild case of Oscar fever" - enough to prompt him to make his predictions.

More predictions? Sure: Phil Nugent at ScreenGrab.

Updates, 2/22: More predictions: Andrew Bemis; David Carr; the Guardian critics (PDF); Peter Knegt (indieWIRE); and Jeffrey Wells.

At InContention, Kristopher Tapley lists the "Top 10 Shots of 2007." Via Anne Thompson.

Online listening tip. John Lichman and Vadim Rizov and ST VanAirsdale talk Oscars at the House Next Door.

Slate's got something going on with Kim Masters, Troy Patterson and Dana Stevens that's sort of like the "Movie Club," only it's all about the Oscars.

The New Republic's Chris Orr explains his predictions.

Chicagoist's Rob Christopher's got predictions and a recipe for Pink Panther Punch.

The Chicago Reader's critics drop their ballots.

Nathaniel R makes his final predictions.

Updates, 2/23: "I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I found myself hoping that the strike would shut the Academy Awards down; that for once, in a year of such cinematic bounty and variety, appreciation for the best movies could be liberated from the pomp and tedium of Hollywood spectacle," writes AO Scott. "It's not that I'm against the spectacle as such.... The Oscars themselves may be harmless fun, but the idea that they matter is as dangerous as it is ridiculous."

"As juicy a target as the Oscars are - the bacchanal is like the large-chested blonde in the horror movie who always gets mauled first - they continue to occupy an important and irreplaceable role in our culture," counters David Carr. And you can listen to these two New York Times writers hash it out, too, via an MP3 downloadable from both pages. Via Movie City News.

Robert Koehler at filmjourney.org: "Garbage In Garbage Out, or Why the Foreign Oscars Need to be Blown Up."

"[T]he docu-Oscar nominees of the last two years tell us something about how heartily sick of George W Bush and his brilliant geo-strategic adventures even the constitutionally controversy-averse human beings of the movie industry have become," writes Andrew O'Hehir. Also in Salon, Stephanie Zacharek and Matt Singer discuss the cinematography nominees - as well as who should have been nominated.

More on the nominated docs from Tom Roston at the POV Blog.

Craig Phillips rates the nominated screenplays.

The Atlantic Monthly points to a piece Raymond Chandler wrote for the magazine in 1948: "Oscar Night in Hollywood."

The Oregonian's Shawn Levy states his "Picks and Preferences."

Gabriel Shanks lays out his will and should wins, too.

More from Mike at Goatdog.

"Each art form has its good and its bad years. But whoever collects those cherished golden statuettes, we do seem to be in the midst of a new golden age for movies," argues the Independent. Also: Andrew Gumbel on marvelous Marfa and Hermione Eyre on the exhilarating insanity of Oscar Night.

Online scrolling tip. Movie Poster Addict has "a compilation of the posters for all of the best picture winners so far." Via Coudal Partners.

Updates, 2/24: The Steak Knives: The Flak Film Also-Ran Awards.

In the Los Angeles Times:

• "To glance at the Academy Award nominees for lead actor is to get a quick but thorough lesson in the major themes that dominated American movies last year," writes Carina Chocano. "Almost to a man, Daniel Day-Lewis, Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Tommy Lee Jones and Viggo Mortensen played avenging anti-heroes in an immoral, amoral or morally relativistic world. They were grim, compromised and pessimistic, embodiments of the queasy morass we find ourselves in and a reflection of the national mood. To glance at the Academy Award nominees for lead actress is to get nothing of the sort.... Either the roles are archetypal in a way that Oscar voters recognize as 'worthy,' or the nominations feel like an attempt to honor a film or an actress for impressive box office returns or a nostalgic comeback."

• "In voting for Michael Clayton, Hollywood would in essence be voting for itself, voting for thoughtful, adult studio films crafted in the heart of the system," argues Kenneth Turan. "I can't think of any other movie-making constituency that needs more help right now."

• Dennis Lim: "To commemorate the occasions when the academy does get it right, here are a half-dozen best picture winners (in reverse chronological order) that have not only held up over the years but can also be found in decent-to-excellent DVD editions."

• Mark Swed profiles Marion Cotillard.

• "Two films that featured their stars in multiple roles - Lindsay Lohan's I Know Who Killed Me and Eddie Murphy's Norbit - combined today for a near-sweep of the 28th annual Golden Raspberry Awards, a feat that may leave them feeling as if they wound up in a dumpster," reports Lee Margulies.

Critics for the Observer set the odds. And for Rachel Cooke, There Will Be Blood "stands apart from such frivolous competition, a ravenous beast prowling at the edge of a particularly lavish and decadent party."

"A very British invasion: UK hails its 21 Oscar nominees." Jonathan Romney and Neil Norman report in the Independent.

Big Oscar roundup at the House Next Door.

Nick Davis makes his predictions. So does Newsweek's David Ansen.

AS Hamrah has a preview in n+1.

MovieMaker contributors lay out their predictions.

Jim Emerson at MSN: "Your Oscar speech: How not to blow it."

Posted by dwhudson at February 18, 2008 7:58 AM