Oscar News

• The Santa Barbara Film Festival will give its American Rivera Award to Annette Bening. Last year, the award went to eventual Best Actress winner Sandra Bullock, while Oscar winners Forrest Whitaker and Philip Seymour Hoffman won the award the same year as their Oscar (along with eventual nominees Mickey Rourke and Diane Lane).
• The official cut-off date for eligibility for Best Animated film was November 1. At this point, it looks like the count is 14 films, meaning there will be only 3 nominees, but official numbers are not in yet.

Review Round-Up

• Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls, his first entry into the Oscar conversation, failed with the critics this weekend. Metacritic gives is a subpar 52, while on Rotten Tomatoes it gets a dismal 34%. The film has a few supporters, especially Mick LaSalle from The San Francisco Chronicle, but most critics agreed that much was lost in a stage-to-screen adaptation.
• 127 Hours became a much stronger contender with its reviews this week, garnering a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 85 on Metacritic. Almost all of the reviews single out James Franco’s career-best work and the strong direction of Oscar-winner Danny Boyle.
• Fair Game got solid, but not great reviews, with a Metacritic score of 69 and a 78% from Rotten Tomatoes. Critics seem to agree that the film is nothing special, but a solid thriller, not the kind of reviews most Oscar contenders look for.

Oscar Box Office

• Oscar hopefuls The Social Network and Secretariat are both continuing solid runs at the box office, both dipping less that 1/3 from week to week. The Town remains in the Top 10 seven weeks after being released.

New Trailers

• The Illusionist: Sylvain Chomet managed a couple of unexpected nods for The Triplets of Belleville, and could come out strong again with this one. A story by the legendary Jacques Tati doesn’t hurt.
• Tangled: Disney’s animated entry this year can’t be discounted, even if it doesn’t look like their most intriguing film.
• The Way Back: The trailer credits director Peter Weir with six Oscar nominations, and this looks like a strong candidate to bring him number 7.

Oscar Farewell

• Jill Clayburgh, a Best Actress nominee for An Unmarried Woman and Starting Over, died this week after a 21-year battle with leukemia. She was 66. A full obituary is here.
• George Hickenlooper, a film director whose upcoming film Casino Jack is a possible contender for awards this fall, died suddenly at the age of 47. He also directed the documentary Hearts of Darkness, about the making of Best Picture nominee Apocalypse Now.
• Jerry Bock, the legendary Broadway composer, passed away Wednesday at the age of 81. His musical Fiddler on the Roof was turned into an Oscar winning movie in 1971.