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Posts Tagged ‘best actor’

Steve Mason

Mickey Rourke with another priceless acceptance speech! Stage set for Oscar glory?

by Steve Mason

Mickey Rourke won the Independent Spirit Award last night in Santa Monica, possibly setting the stage for a memorable Oscar moment tonight. Randy “The Ram” Robinson, the character that Rourke plays in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) is a blazing, raw, “broken down piece of meat” of a professional wrestler, and it is a once in a lifetime performance for the not-that-long-ago has-been.

His speech is so entertaining that as I was hosting an Oscar Eve radio special on 790 KABC in Los Angeles last night, every guest that had been at the Spirits could talk about nothing else, including Best Supporting Actress nominee Taraji P. Henson from Benjamin Button, E!’s Ben Lyons, Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire, James Marsh, the writer/director of Man On Wire (favored to win Best Documentary Feature tonight) and Emmy winning actor Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad (set to return on AMC on March 8). (more…)

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Posted Feb 22nd 2009 at 10:39 am in Celebrity News, Entertainment, Steve Mason's Box Office | 15 Comments

Steve Mason

Final Oscar Predix: SLUMDOG, Rourke, Streep, Ledger, Cruz; BEN BUTTON could win just 2 of 13!

by Steve Mason

I am forecasting a coronation for Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) at Sunday’s Academy Awards. My final predictions call for Slumdog wins in 8 of the 9 categories it is competing in including Best Picture and Best Director: Danny Boyle. The only place I think it will fail is in the Sound Mixing category where The Dark Knight (Warner Bros) may trump it.

Slumdog Millionaire is about to win the Hollywood's Grand Prize

Slumdog Millionaire is about to win the Hollywood's Grand Prize

The “Battle Royale” of the night is Mickey Rouke from The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) vs. Sean Penn in Milk (Focus) in the Best Actor category. There have been two ties in major categories in Academy Award history. The first was in 1932 when Frederic March in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde shared Best Actor with Wallace Beery for The Champ. (March had one more vote, but in that era, any finish within 3 votes was rules a tie.) Then in 1968, Katherine Hepburn for The Lion In Winter and Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl tied for Best Actress. If there was any justice, Rourke and Penn would share the award. In any other year, either of them would be a lock. Forced to make a pick, I’m going with Rourke.

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Posted Feb 22nd 2009 at 1:01 am in Celebrity News, Entertainment, Featured Story, Steve Mason's Box Office | 36 Comments

Steve Mason

Oscar odds: SLUMDOG, Rourke, Winslet, Cruz are favorites, but Penn, Streep and Tomei are live underdogs!

by Steve Mason

On Sunday, the Academy Awards will be handed out at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, and there are some clear favorites. Slumdog Millionaire, the feel-good Danny Boyle Mumbai opus made for just $14M, is a heavy favorite to win Best Picture. It’s hard to imagine Slumdog missing out on Hollywood’s biggest prize, having won the Golden Globe, the BAFTA Award and just about everything in between.


But, in the world of gambling, you always want to look for value. What are the films and performances with longer odds that would be worth a wager on Sunday? My purpose here is to establish a betting line for each of the six major categories, and then find the value bet in each category.

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Posted Feb 15th 2009 at 6:29 pm in Entertainment, Featured Story, Steve Mason's Box Office | 48 Comments