A director’s vision is nothing without the ability of other artistic minds to carry it out, or in some cases, create it entirely on their own. Art direction, costumes and makeup all add authenticity to a film or sometime give it that extra sparkle to become a sterling example of a visual story. Art direction [...]

The sound and visual effects aspects of a film are interesting in that they are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the movie-watching experience. In that way it makes their achievement categories for the Academy Awards a great place to start my Oscar predictions.

And they’re up! I’ve got your list of Oscar nominees this morning along with how my predictions checked out. The big news is that the Academy absolutely loves The Hurt Locker, giving it as many nominations as Avatar. They share noms in seven of those categories, so this should really be quite a race to the [...]

Tomorrow, Punxatawney Phil will try and check out his shadow, but even if we have six more weeks of winter, we’ll at least have the list of Oscar nominations. The announcement will come Tuesday morning at 7:00 CST/5:00 am PST and will be announced by the lovely Anne Hathaway. Ah, the smell of Oscar season. [...]