A Wrap-Up of This Year's Oscars Season

The winners of this year's acting categories

This is it for another awards season. It has been a fun past 13 months (since technically Get Out started the prestige talk early), and it only feels right to look back on the highs and lows of this season, specifically as it relates to the Oscars ceremony. To me, the biggest issue with the ceremony is that it was both an exciting year, but also one of rather predictable courses. All of the acting categories went to the blazing front runners who had been winning awards since December. However, it was still a period of change the likes of which The Academy is still surprising us with. In a conventional year, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri would've won Best Picture. Instead, it went to the first monster movie to win Best Picture: The Shape of Water. Say what you will, but this was one of the best Oscar seasons in recent years.

Failed Oscar Campaigns: "Collateral Beauty" (2016)

Scene from Collateral Beauty

As awards seasons pick up, so do the campaigns to make your film have the best chances at the Best Picture race. However, like a drunken stupor, sometimes these efforts come off as trying too hard and leave behind a trailer of ridiculous flamboyance. Join me on every other Saturday for a highlight of the failed campaigns that make this season as much about prestige as it does about train wrecks. Come for the Harvey Weinstein comments and stay for the history. It's going to be a fun time as I explore cinema's rich history of attempting to matter.

Review: "Monsters University" is a Great Welcome Back to the Fun Side of Pixar

If forced to poll a random group of people what their favorite Pixar movie was, there would be little doubt that Monsters Inc. ranked near the top. Its whimsical look into a world of monsters who scare for a living has become one of the studio's most successful both with audiences as well as tonally. It made Billy Crystal a star to a whole new generation and created a universe of wonderment. It only seemed logical that 12 years later they would want to revisit the characters with a trip to Monsters University: a film that saw these characters meet and even bond over their love of scaring. With the voice talents who made the first successful, is it possible that they managed to create another hit?

The "Hitchcock" Trailer Shows the Acting Fields Filling Up Fast

Anthony Hopkins

Today saw the release of the trailer for what has long been considered "the other Alfred Hitchcock film." That's right, first the HBO film The Girl directed by Julian Jarrold and starring Toby Jones and Sienna Miller focusing on Hitchcock's relationship with Tippi Hedron (Miller) and more specifically The Birds. Now comes the less inspired title Hitchcock, directed by Sacha Gervasi and starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, and Scarlett Johansson focusing on the making of Psycho. Despite the dueling banjos aspect of these two films, buzz has been around Hopkins and his portrayal, which is pretty uncanny in the trailer. However, is the film capable of landing more credibility than this?