It’s safe to say that the contest for the Academy Award’s best picture Oscar was never any deeper than a three horse race: The Hurt Locker, Avatar and Up in the Air were the frontrunners all along. As the weeks and months have progressed, it has become more and more apparent that Jason Reitman’s touching drama about a layoff artist looking for love has dropped off the radar. Two horses have pulled ahead as we head into the straightaway.

And it’s Avatar by a nose! If history is any indication, James Cameron’s eco-action flick will be the big winner at the industry’s annual self-love fest. Three main factors point to the bloated opus taking home the best picture statue.

First off, it’s a box office smash. Now, that doesn’t always translate into gold at the Oscars – see last year’s unconscionable failure to even nominate The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s critically praised film that was, at the time, the second-highest grossing film of all time – but it’s a pretty solid indicator. (more…)

Ben Shapiro’s recent list of the ten most overrated directors has kicked up quite the controversy: Disparaging blog posts (including one from myself) and more than 300 (mostly negative) comments from Big Hollywood’s lovely readers took Mr. Shapiro to task for, amongst other things, daring to label Alfred Hitchcock as the most overrated director of all time.

My problem with the list wasn’t so much the subjective nature of it. Taste is personal, and our likes and dislikes are informed by our life experiences. If he had made a list of critically acclaimed directors that he didn’t much care for, well, that would’ve been different. But by framing his list as an assault on the auteur theory and a discussion of which directors have been unduly praised, Mr. Shapiro changes the game. Furthermore, by placing Alfred Hitchcock at the top of that list – a man who directed a half-dozen of the greatest films in the history of the American cinema, helped reinvent the language of cinema and is one of the most widely imitated directors in the history of filmmaking – Mr. Shapiro’s list mutates from purely subjective to (at least partially) objective, and opens him up to some serious criticism. (more…)