Los Angeles: Two of The Weinstein Company's contenders for Academy Awards - 'The Artist' and 'The Iron Lady' - surpassed the $20 million mark at the box office this weekend. The company's 'W.E.', directed by Madonna, meanwhile, opened to a run-of-the-mill $45,000 at four locations. IFC's horror-thriller 'Kill List' opened to $12,400 at two locations, according to Rentrak's numbers.

'W.E.' is drawing critical praise for star Andrea Riseborough - The New York Times wrote that the actress "is a strong enough presence that she could hold your attention for an entire movie, and her absences are keenly felt." But the critics are less kind to the movie itself: Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 16 percent, Movie Review Intelligence gives it a poor 31.8 percent, and Metacritic gives it a generally unfavorable 34.

In its second week in release, Roadside Attractions' 'Albert Nobbs' grossed $533,610 - only a 23 percent drop from its debut weekend. The movie played at 245 locations, for a per-location average of $2,178.
The film with the biggest per-location average of the weekend was 'An Inconsistent Truth', from Rocky Mountain Pictures. The movie debuted to $20,282 on one screen last week and took in $12,296 on a single screen this week. 'Inconsistent Truth' attempts to rebut 'An Inconvenient Truth', the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary about global warming. Increasingly, though, 'The Artist' is drawing audience attention.

"If someone would have said, 'There's a black-and-white, silent film that you're going to be releasing in November, and it's still going to be in theaters in February, at $20 million,' we all would have said, 'Not in this lifetime,'" Erik Lomis, the Weinstein Company's head of distribution, told TheWrap on Sunday morning. According to Rentrak, the PG-13 movie, now in its 11th week of release, grossed $2.57 million this weekend. That gives it a total of $20.58 million. And the movie is still in limited release. This weekend, it played at only 1,005 locations. Its per-location average was $2,552.

'The Iron Lady', a PG-13 biopic of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's former prime minister, took $1.84 million at 1,021 locations, and has grossed $20.6 million, Rentrak shows. The movie is in its sixth week of release.
"It's a great moment for independent cinema, and we're really proud that two of our movies are resonating with audiences," David Glasser, the Weinstein Company's chief operating officer, told TheWrap on Sunday morning. "And they're not at their peak."Indeed, the company has pursued a slow rollout strategy for 'The Artist', which is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture.

The company plans to hold off its DVD release for some time in order to keep the movie in theaters "so the public has a chance to see it the way it was meant to be seen," Lomis said. He said he expects to increase the number of locations showing the movie just in time for the February 26 Academy Awards. Another best picture nominee, Fox Searchlight's 'The Descendants',also continued its strong performance. The R-rated film, now in its 12th week of release, took in $4.6 million this weekend, for a total of $65.62 million - enough to make it the No. 8 movie in North America. It played at 2,038 locations, for a per-location average of $2,257.

This weekend's numbers made 'The Descendants' Alexander Payne's second-highest-grossing film ever, passing his 2002 film 'About Schmidt', which took in $65 million. And the film is on track to become Payne's highest-grossing picture. His 2004 'Sideways' took in $71.5 million - a sum 'The Descendants' is all but certain to surpass.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s blog post will be all about the man behind the camera–the director. This year’s list has a mix of both newcomers and more experienced directors that are used to the Oscar rounds, and like the last week’s post about Best Picture, it’s a pretty close race this year. Nothing is for certain until the names are called out on February 26, but here is some speculation anyway as to who will win the prize for Best Director.

The Contenders:  Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist, Alexander Payne – The Descendants, Martin Scorsese – Hugo, Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris, Terrance Malick – The Tree of Life

The Front Runner: This is a pretty solid bet–Michel Hazanavicius is most definitely the front runner in this category. While there is a lot of love for Hugo, there is no question that The Artist will take home the prize. Even if The Artist doesn’t tick all of the Academy’s boxes for “Oscar Winner” (it is a silent period piece with beautiful costumes that is set in Hollywood’s Golden Age), Hazanavicius has managed to distinguish The Artist from all the other nominees by creating a modern film using bygone methods, one which manages to breathe some fresh air into the category. Hazanavicius also won the Directors’ Guild’s Best Director prize, which is further proof that he will most likely take home the little gold man this February. What’s more, The Artist is the most likely to win Best Picture. Historically, the two categories have been closely linked together.

Worth Mentioning: Even though The Artist will most likely take home the prize, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is a directorial triumph that has earned its place on the list of nominees. With its lavish and beautifully directed story that manages to intersect childhood fantasy with a melancholic touch, it is a different side to Scorsese that audiences haven’t seen from him. Instead of his usual adult-orientated films, his family friendly fantasy is an intricately designed, almost Harry Potter-esque film that is infused with the Lumière brothers’ whimsical influence. All in all, it is a great film that is worthy of a prize.

Probably Won’t Win: That just leaves Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris and Terrance Malick’s The Tree of Life. All three are examples of great filmmaking, but on Oscar night they most likely will not take home the prize. Having said that, the directors’ efforts should not be overlooked. Alexander Payne makes his film visually lush with the Hawaiian setting, managing to adeptly capture the natural beauty of the area. Likewise, Woody Allen captures Paris in all its romantic glory, making viewers swoon under the charm of the French capitol. While Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is not the most conventional of films and at times is even a little confusing, his direction provides the film with visually stunning sequences of the origins of the world.

Snubs Galore: The five directors on the list are all worthy of the Oscar this year, but where are Steven Spielberg, David Fincher and Nicolas Winding Refn? Spielberg is having a tough Oscar year with two snubs, first for being left off of the Best Director list for War Horse, and second for The Adventures of Tintin not making the Best Animated Film category. David Fincher (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) was nominated for a Directors’ Guild Award along with the five Best Director nominees but was ultimately left off of the Oscar list. And what about Nicolas Winding Refn? He won the Best Director award at Cannes and has received lots of positive attention for Drive, so why isn’t he on the list? In a perfect world, there would be more than five nominees in the Best Director category.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sit back, settle in and pour yourself a cuppa, assuming you're the cuppa sort. Author and newly minted Oscar nominee William Joyce and his cohorts at Shreveport's fledgling Moonbot Studios have a story to tell.

And given that storytelling is their stock in trade, it only feels fitting that it all starts with a "once upon a time," so here goes:

Once upon a time, celebrated children's author and illustrator Bill Joyce got an idea for a story. It was a simple story, but a heartfelt one, about the powers of the written word. One history-making hurricane later -- not to mention the founding of a shiny, new animation studio in Shreveport -- and the 15-minute animated charmer "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" was born, "inspired in equal measures by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, 'The Wizard of Oz,' and a love for books."

Last week, "Morris Lessmore" was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated short film. And just like that, it became apparent that Moonbot's moonshot had paid off. In describing his reaction to the nomination, "Morris Lessmore" co-director Joyce -- though a man of letters -- admitted to being at something of a loss for words. "The only quote that would work here is 'insert primal scream of joy,'" he said.

It was a mutual feeling at the 35-employee strong studio, as a raucous celebration erupted on nomination morning at Moonbot mission control in Shreveport. (See embedded video below.) There were shouts and shrieks. There were hugs and high-fives. There was champagne and Mason jars of moonshine. But before all that, there was that story.

The New Orleans influence in "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" is evident from the film's very first frames, as its title character -- a dead ringer for silent-film icon Keaton -- reads peacefully on a French Quarter balcony.

Over the next 15 dialog-free minutes of screen time, Morris learns that a good book can be a wonderful salve for aching wounds. The first germ of the story took root in the brain of Joyce -- creator of "Rolie Polie Olie," "George Shrinks" and other fixtures in the kid's-book universe -- when he was flying to visit an ailing publishing mentor of his, and a fellow book-lover, named Bill Morris, around 2003. But in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2006, it all started to take a slightly different shape. For starters, the storm chased former New Orleanian Lampton Enochs -- who would go on to co-produce the film with New Orleans resident Alissa Kantrow -- to Shreveport. And he was by no means alone.

"The main thing I guess," Joyce said, "was going into the shelters and seeing the displaced people and seeing the kids in these, usually a sports arena, with no privacy or any of the stuff they knew as home. But they had been given books -- there were different organizations to make sure kids had books to read while they were in the shelter. Seeing these kids reading these books and being able to shut out all the sadness and the uncertainty and lose themselves in a book ...

"And then Lampton ... is from New Orleans, and we got this whole perspective of how displacing all that was, and sad it was, and how the city looked like it was black and white for a long time after that.
"But once you get people telling their stories of what happened to them, it helped ground them a bit again, so it all started curling into the story of our own experiences and the experiences of Bill Morris. It's just that books matter. We were worried about that -- that they seem endangered."With all of those influences at work, Enochs said "Morris Lessmore" seemed like the perfect story to build the studio's inaugural film around.

"We founded the studio with the initial desire to create a short film first, to be able to use it as our calling card and express not only the quality of craftsmanship of everything we create," he said. "But it seemed like the right story to tell first as well. Since our company is rooted in storytelling, we should tell a story about the joy of story and the curative power of it."

Read the rest of this entry »

Months ago, at the beginning of the awards season, I suggested that some of the finest films around would struggle to win recognition because the Oscar voters have a tendency to play it safe. I mentioned three releases (all British, as it happens) that should have had the industry prostrating itself at their feet — actor Paddy Considine’s stunning behind-the-camera debut Tyrannosaur, Shame by artist-turned-director Steve McQueen, and We Need to Talk About Kevin from Lynne Ramsay, an old hand, though hardly prolific.

It gave me no pleasure to be proved right by last week’s nominations: all three films were snubbed in all categories. And why? Surely no other reason than that the Academy instinctively shies away from the sort of tough subjects tackled by this trio of gems — domestic violence (Tyrannosaur), sex addiction (Shame) and mass murder (We Need to Talk About Kevin).

Not that I expected any of them to carry off the Best Picture statuette. No, where they really should have shone was in the acting categories. Olivia Colman’s performance as a battered wife is heartbreakingly poignant; Michael Fassbender is almost unwatchably raw in McQueen’s film; and Tilda Swinton, as the mother of a teenage monster, marshals a fierce vulnerability.

Meanwhile, the frontrunner for Best Picture clocked up yet another clutch of victories in the run-up to Oscar night on February 26. The Producers Guild of America gave its top prize to The Artist. The PGA’s choice has chimed with the Academy’s for the past four years.

Even more prescient are members of the Directors Guild of America, who have provided a pre-echo of the Oscars every year for the past nine years — and a total of 57 times over the past 63 years. Last weekend, they declared The Artist’s Michel Hazanavicius director of the year.

And, finally, at the Screen Actors Guild awards, Jean Dujardin won another gong for his charming, and wordless, performance in… The Artist.

Read the rest of this entry »

Curiously, this year looks like one where the most widely panned films have crept into the Oscars nomination basket. Movies such as Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, Albert Nobbs, W.E., and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close are some. The last perhaps is one of the most criticised films to have ever been given the Best Picture nod by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

What is equally strange is that highly clichéd works like Warrior and Moneyball have clinched nominations. And the movies of master directors (Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris), far from their best, have also been recognised.

Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona, for instance, was miles ahead of Midnight in Paris, which attracted a lot of publicity largely because France’s First Lady, Carla Bruni, was part of the cast. I am sure many Europeans must have seen it only because of Bruni, controversial as she has been.

It is such a pity that some excellent fare like Shame, We Need to Talk about Kevin, A Dangerous Method and Carnage have been left by the wayside. These are power packed dramas tackling subjects as provocative as obsessive sexual urge, teenage violence, Freud and adult ego.  

Yet, to be fair, the Academy must be lauded for giving greater prominence – more than the usual – to foreign language cinema. While two of the five animated features are from countries other than America, Iran’s A Separation gets a well-deserved Original Screenplay nod. The movie also figures in the Best Foreign Language Film section. The Artist with a Best Picture nomination is certainly set in Hollywood, but is very French even though it has no French dialogues.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mainers will have two strong contenders to root for when Oscar time arrives this year. The nominations for Academy Awards announced Tuesday include work by Glenn Close, a part-time Scarborough resident, and Alexander Libby, a Freeport native.

Close was nominated for best actress for the film "Albert Nobbs." Libby was assistant to director Stephen Daldry in the making of the Tom Hanks film "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," which was nominated for best picture.

The two have taken very different paths to their nominations. Libby is 28 and worked in New York theater until he got the chance to make the film with Daldry. Close, 64, is a bona fide movie star who has now been nominated for Oscars six times. She came to be a part-time Maine resident after marrying Idexx Laboratories founder David Shaw in 2006.

Besides sharing a home with Shaw on Prouts Neck in Scarborough, Close helped to start a pet supply company in Portland, called FetchDog. Despite being at different stages of their careers, both Close and Libby sounded giddy after hearing the nomination news Tuesday.

Close, through her publicist, sent an email to The Portland Press Herald in which she first expressed her excitement for other nominees who worked on her film. Janet McTeer got a nomination for best supporting actress, and the film got a nomination for best makeup.

"I am thrilled for Janet, I am thrilled for our incomparable hair and makeup team," wrote Close. "It might be my sixth (nomination) but it feels like my first. Bravo team Nobbs." Close wrote the screenplay for the film and stars as a woman passing as a man in 19th-century Ireland.

Though Close has been nominated six times, she has never won an Oscar. Her competition for best actress includes Viola Davis for "The Help," Rooney Mara for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady" and Michelle Williams for "My Week with Marilyn."

Libby found out about the best-picture nomination for "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" while he was in London. He and Daldry are there to get ready for the 2012 Summer Olympics, for which Daldry will produce the opening ceremonies.

"I just found out a couple hours ago, so this doesn't seem real to me," Libby said from London. "It's especially gratifying because the film finished late (it was released nationwide Friday) and not a lot of people saw it," he said. "So it sort of came from behind to get nominated, which means enough people loved it."

Though Libby was Daldry's assistant, Daldry has said Libby's role in important decisions and research made him more like a co-producer. Libby's duties ranged from extensive research on the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York to teaching Hanks how to use paper hand puppets.

The film is about a young boy who lost his father in the World Trade Center attacks. Libby, who grew up in Freeport and graduated from Cheverus High School in Portland, began working on theater productions in New York while he was in college, doing various stage manager-type jobs. He was hired as Daldry's assistant about two years ago. Daldry is primarily a theater director, though he has made other critically acclaimed films, including "The Hours" and "Billy Elliot."

The competition for the film in the best-picture category includes "The Artist," "The Descendants," "The Help," "Hugo," "Midnight in Paris," "Moneyball," "The Tree of Life" and "War Horse."

The Oscar ceremony is scheduled to be held Feb. 26 in Hollywood and to air live on ABC beginning at 7 p.m. Libby said he definitely will attend the ceremony but won't be one of the people who run onto the stage if the film wins. "I'll be sitting in the back somewhere," he said.

Read the rest of this entry »

The pewter-like alloy is poured slowly into a mold and cools quickly. But it takes 40 hours of precise and delicate work before Oscar is ready for the bright lights of Hollywood. The heart of the trophy - with its iconic square jaw, broad chest and sword - is swiftly hammered out in preparation for careful polishing.

Once every blemish is erased and Oscar shines like a mirror, the statue is hand-dipped in electrically-charged tubs of molten copper, nickel, silver and 24-carat gold. Then it's on to more polishing and a blinding lacquer before Oscar is finally screwed into his heavy base and carefully boxed using white gloves.

Hand-casting is a dying art, but one the Academy is willing to pay dearly for as it jealously guards the reputation of one of the most sought-after and recognized trophies in the world. The perils of seeking cheaper alternatives were on display at the Golden Globes last year when Robert De Niro showed up empty-handed in the press room after receiving a lifetime achievement award.

"The top fell off," he told reporters. "They'll have to solder it back on."R.S. Owens - which has been making Oscar since 1982 - is the last trophy manufacturer left in the United States. Most of the cheap trophies handed out at kids' sports tournaments are now made in China.

R.S. Owens has fought to hang on by focusing on "prestige" awards - like the Oscars, the Emmys, MTV Music Awards, and the London International Advertising Award - and the corporate market. Its display cases are filled with familiar figures like the Jolly Green Giant, the Planter's Peanut, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger and a crystal, sunglass-wearing Starkist Tuna.

But it had to lay off around a third of its staff after the 2008 economic crisis took a huge bite out of the "employee recognition" market as it was already struggling to stem a slow, but steady loss of its "prestige" client base.

"In the past, many of the prestigious awards (contracts) that we lost didn't care that they were made in China," said Scott Siegel, whose father founded R.S. Owens in 1938. "They only cared about price, especially when the recession hit, that became even more important. I'm starting to see signs of that turning around. People are more interested in protecting jobs in the United States."

Some clients are coming back because of quality concerns - especially after the R.S. Owens tested a competitor's award that was handed out to children and found it was made of lead with no protective coating.

Others are coming back for ease of service, Siegel said. Shipments arrive sooner, as do repairs. Siegel takes particular pride in how his company responded when a shipment of 55 Oscars was stolen just weeks before the awards ceremony.

They worked day and night and managed to make replacements in just 10 days - a process that usually takes about six weeks. The stolen statues were found in a dumpster just days before the ceremony, but the Academy held on to the extras - and a handful more - to make sure it never gets caught empty-handed again. Nominations for the 84th Academy Awards will be announced Tuesday at 1330 GMT. The awards ceremony will be broadcast worldwide on February 26.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leonardo DiCaprio has admitted he'd love to bag an Oscar - but it's not what motivates him. Hollywood's highest paid actor, Leonardo has been nominated for an Academy Award three times. "I don't think anyone would say that they wouldn't want one. I think they would be lying," the star said. But Leonardo, 35, who could be nominated again for his title role in Clint EastWood's J Edgar Hoover biopic, said: "I don't think I ever expected anything like an Oscar ever, to tell you the truth. That is not my motivation when I do these roles.

"I really am motivated by being able to work with great people and create a body of work that I can look back and be proud of. "I grew up when I was 15 when I had my first opportunity in movies. I watched every great movie for a year and a half, and since then I've asked myself how I can emulate such artistry. "That's really my motivation. I want to do something as good as my heroes have done."

Read the rest of this entry »

"Wings," a World War I aerial dogfight epic made in 1927, won the first ever Oscar for best picture. Paramount Pictures, which is celebrating its centenary, has restored the classic silent action film and will present it with live organ accompaniment at the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences on Wednesday, ahead of a Blu-ray release on January 24th.

William Wellman, a veteran World War I fighter pilot, directed "Wings," giving 1927 audiences a view of the world most had never seen. With cameras affixed to the flimsy bi-planes, a crew of flyers created dogfights featuring death-defying aerial stunts that continue to amaze viewers today.

"The thing about 'Wings' that's so exciting is that it was the 'Avatar' and the 'Star Wars' of its day. It was a state of the art action film," said Academy archivist Randy Haberkamp.

Set in Hollywood during the advent of sound, "The Artist" is not the only new movie focusing on early cinema. Martin Scorsese's 3D family film "Hugo" centers on French film pioneer Georges Melies, and in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" Owen Wilson plays a modern screenwriter time traveling back to the 1920s.

"I think the zeitgeist is the realization that silent films are not a dead art form because true cinema is a very visceral and visually-generated thing," Haberkamp said.

In "Wings," Richard Arlen played David Armstrong, a small-town kid with a taste for speed. Immune to the affection of Mary (Clara Bow), the girl next door, he is smitten by city girl Sylvia (Jobyna Ralston). His rival in romance is Jack Powell (Charles Rogers), heir to a fortune.

Volunteering for service, the two men become fast friends through their wartime experience. Early on, they meet Gary Cooper playing a doomed pilot in one of his first screen appearances, a role that catapulted him to stardom.

WAY OVER BUDGET
Budgeted at what was then a record-setting $2 million dollars, "Wings" wound up costing way over that amount while Wellman spent idle days waiting for clouds, which he claimed were needed to offset the planes against the background.

Due to his bickering with studio brass, Wellman was not invited to the 1929 Oscar ceremony even though the movie was a hit. Powered by public enthusiasm for Charles Lindbergh's daring crossing of the Atlantic, "Wings" went on to become one of the top-grossing films of the decade.

Silent, black-and-white movie "The Artist", directed by Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius, is unlikely to become a major box office blockbuster despite having won more than 40 awards, including three Golden Globes last Sunday.

But it is considered a front-runner for the best film Oscar in February, and it may represent a reexamination of cinema's early roots in an era of dwindling movie goers.

"Through festivals and the availability of different kinds of materials on streaming and DVD release, I think people are experimenting with different types of films," said Paramount archive vice-president Andrea Kalas.

"People listen to the Beatles and the latest thing, and maybe something similar is happening with film too, where we're appreciating all sorts of different movies from different eras," Kalas said.

Oddly, early film technique has become more relevant in the modern era where a proliferation of digital effects has resulted in spectacle-driven box office. Consequently, action scenes are becoming longer and dialogue scenes shorter.

"Most of the movies that we go to see now are based on action sequences," said Haberkamp. "If you don't know how to cut an action sequence, if you don't know how to stage an action sequence, you don't know too much. Frankly, that's where the silent era really was phenomenal."

With all the technical advancements through the years, not a lot has changed, according to Haberkamp. What continues to make cinema past and present a unique art form is the transposition of images and the ability to manipulate time and space.

"In the end, I don't care whether it's silent or sound I just care whether it's compelling and well made," he said. "I think that's why there are so many people looking at silents going, 'Wait a minute, there's something going on here that is more than just a dated technology.'"

Read the rest of this entry »

A growing pack of fans is howling for Uggie the terrier to get a sniff at the Oscars after the Jack Russell stole the show in the silent movie The Artist that scooped a slew of Golden Globe awards.

The nine-year-old mutt last year took the unofficial Palm Dog prize at Cannes for his role in the French-directed movie that won best musical/comedy, best musical/comedy actor and best musical score in Sunday's Golden Globes.

It is time, say his many supporters across the world, for animals like Uggie, who was heading for a grim fate in an animal shelter before his trainer saved him, to be eligible for an Oscar.

Steven Spielberg has joined the campaign, even if his hopes are more equine than canine as he has his sights on a gong for the role of Joey, an English horse caught up in the horrors of battle in his latest movie War Horse.

"Consider Uggie" is the name of the Facebook and Twitter campaign for an Oscar nomination for the dog so he can take his place among the two-legged acting fraternity at the January 24 Oscar awards in Los Angeles.

Uggie, who previously starred in Water for Elephants and Mr Fix It, made no comment when he joined The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius on the stage to pick up the prizes at the Globes ceremony in Los Angeles.

Billed as a tribute to the silent movie era, the black-and-white film tells the story of silent star George Valentin (played by French actor Jean Dujardin) whose career is torpedoed by the arrival of the talkies.

The film is tipped to scoop the best picture award at the Oscars. Uggie has no chance to display his vocal range in the silent film, but he does get to show off his ability to play dead, walk on his hind legs and bury his head in his paws. He even saves George Valentin from a burning house. The Californian-born terrier's skateboarding and waterskiing abilities can be seen on internet videos.

The BBC interviewed him when he visited Britain last week on a promotional tour but he responded only with a bark when asked if he thought that what he was doing was really acting. His trainer, however, told the broadcaster that claims that his dog was only doing it for sausages were false.

"He is a real actor, I don't care what anybody says. He deserves an Oscar more than anybody I know," said Oscar Von Muller. Toby Rose, the organiser of the annual Palm Dog prize at the Cannes film festival, denounced what he called the "outrageous dogism" that was stopping Uggie from getting a shot at the Oscars.

He noted that "the homeland of this Gallic production has recognised the plucky pooch in the French equivalent of the Golden Globes, the Lumieres."There are of course some dissenting voices.

"Giving Oscars to animals is a beastly idea," was the headline on Monday of a tongue-in-cheek editorial in Britain's The Independent newspaper. "The Oscar recipient is supposed to sob while delivering a rambling homily to all the wonderful people who helped them to stardom. Until animals can show they can master that key skill, the case for animal Oscars cannot be said to be proven," it said.

Read the rest of this entry »