Oscar News

• Michel Hazanavicius, the director of The Artist, took the top prize from the Directors Guild of America, the award most scene as the surest precursor to Oscar success. Project Nim was the documentary winner.
• The Help was the big winner at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, taking the prize for Best Cast, Best Actress (Viola Davis) and Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer). Jean Dujardin won Best Actor for The Artist and Christopher Plummer won Best Supporting Actor for Beginners.
• The Sundance Film Festival concluded last weekend, with Beasts of the Southern Wild winning the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film.
• The presenters for the Oscar ceremony have started to be announced, including previous Oscar Winners Halle Berry and Tom Hanks and Oscar Nominee Tom Cruise.

Review Round-Up

There were no Oscar contenders released this week.

Oscar Box Office

•  The Oscar nominations weren’t a great help to nominated films, with none garnering a major bump in box office. Albert Nobbs premiered with $700,000, while Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was the leading nominee at the box office with just under $7 million.

Oscar Farewell

• Damien Bona, the celebrated author of Inside Oscar and Inside Oscar 2, passed away of cardiac arrest. One of the leading Oscar experts, he was also a longtime member of this website’s discussion board.
• Legendary stage actor Ben Gazzara, who was also a three-time Golden Globe nominee for his television work, died Friday at the age of 81. Among his film credits are the Best Picture nominee Anatomy of a Murder.