Oscar News

• At last weekend’s SAG Awards, The Fighter and The King’s Speech each took 2 acting awards, with the latter winning the Best Ensemble award. Oscar nominees Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo each took home an individual acting award.
• Tom Hooper won the Directors Guild of America award last weekend for Best Director for his work on The King’s Speech. Charles Ferguson won Best Director – Documentary for Inside Job.
• The Academy released the performers for Best Song at this year’s ceremony. Gwenyth Paltrow will sing “Country Strong,” nominee A.R. Rahman and Florence Welch will sing “If I Rise,” Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi and nominee Alan Menken will perform “I See the Light,” and nominee Randy Newman will sing “We Belong Together.”
• Marisa Tomei will host the Scientific and Technical Awards on Saturday, February 12.
• Aaron Sorkin and Ben Mezrich won the USC Scripter Award for The Social Network on Friday night.
• Inception led the winners of the Visual Effects Society Awards with 4 wins, including Best Visual Effects in an Effects Driven Movie.
• The Canadian Genie nominations were released this week, and among the nominees were two films nominated for Oscars: makeup contender Barney’s Version and Canada’s foreign language film nominee Incendies.
• The King’s Speech got a big endorsement this week, with approval from Queen Elizabeth II, who appears as a character in the film. She said she was especially struck by Colin Firth’s portrayal of her father.
• Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris will be the opening film of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
• The 2011 Sundance Film Festival wrapped up last weekend, with Like Crazy taking the top dramatic prize, and Circumstance taking the audience prize.

Review Round-Up

No Oscar contenders were released this week.

Oscar Box Office

• No Strings Attached, starring Best Actress-nominee Natalie Portman (albeit for another film, Black Swan), continued a strong box office presence, dropping only 32% from its opening weekend.

New Trailers

No new trailers to feature here.

Oscar Farewell

• John Barry, the five-time Oscar winning composer, died at the age of 77. He won Oscars for his music for Dances with Wolves, Out of Africa, The Lion in Winter and Born Free (which won him two awards), and was nominated two other times. A full obituary can be found here.
• Oscar winning costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge passed away at the age of 78. She won an Oscar for 1974’s The Great Gatsby, and was a multiple Tony Award winner as well.
• Maria Schneider, who starred opposite Oscar nominee Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris died at the age of 58 after a long battle with cancer.