This is a new feature here at CinemaSight, where every Saturday I will have a round-up of all the latest Academy Award related news of the week. For the next few weeks, we will probably be playing around with different titles and features, so please be patient.

Oscar News

• Perhaps the biggest Oscar-related news of the week was the new release date for sudden Oscar contender The Tourist. GK Films and Sony Pictures Classic announced they are moving the spy film from 2011 to a December 10 release. The film is written by Oscar winner Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) and Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects), and is directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, whose film The Lives of Others won the Best Foreign Film Oscar a few years back. It stars Oscar winner Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted) and three-time Oscar nominee Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland, Sweeney Todd). If the buzz for this comes through as good, we could be looking at a strong contender
• The New York Film Festival announced it’s lineup, and it is filled with films high on the Academy radar. The opening film will be the Facebook film The Social Network, directed by Oscar nominee David Fincher. The closing film will be the ghost story Hereafter, directed by Oscar favorite Clint Eastwood and written by Oscar favorite Peter Morgan. Other films on the line-up to keep an eye out for come Oscartime are Julie Taymor’s The Tempest starring Helen Mirren (the Centerpiece film this year) and Mike Leigh’s Another Year (which picked up good Oscar buzz at Cannes). The full lineup can be found here.
• Danny Boyle’s follow-up to Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, will close the London Film Festival in October.
• Word on the street is that small distributor Music Box Films is hiring an Oscar publicist to create a push for Noomi Rapace in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo for Best Actress.
• The Screen Actors Guild announced that they will give their lifetime achievement award next year to Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine. Borgnine won Best Actor in 1955 for Marty, and will be presented with the award at the SAG Award ceremony at the end of January. The official press release can be found here.
• Two-time Academy Award Winner Michael Douglas announced this week that he is battling throat cancer. He has been undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, and will continue to do so will promoting the release of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps at the end of next month.
• We have our first For Your Consideration ad of the season, and it should be taken very seriously.

Review Round-Up

This is the section every week where we take a look at the reviews of that week’s releases that could play become Oscar contenders. Since none of this weeks films are contenders, there are no reviews to look at.

Oscar Box Office

This is the section every week where we take a look at the box office achievements of Oscar Contenders.

• Best Picture contender Toy Story 3 made itself an even stronger candidate this week by passing the $400 million mark.
• Summer blockbuster Inception, which is making a strong case as a major contender this winter, passed the $250 million mark.
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which is going to try to set up a campaign (see the news above) passed $10 million, a strong feat for a Swedish action movie with little publicity.

New Trailers

This is the section every week where we take a look at any Oscar contenders who have new trailers out this week. For an indepth look at all the trailers of the week, check out Wesley’s Trailer Watch every week.

• Black Swan: Darren Aronofsky’s last film (The Wrestler) managed a few acting nods, but his films are usually a little too dark and bizarre for the Academy’s tastes. This looks more The Fountain and less The Wrestler.
• Fair Game: The Naomi Watts/Sean Penn film about the Valerie Plame scandal didn’t get great buzz at Cannes, but I still think it will be a strong contender this winter.