It’s been roughly a week since actress Sigourney Weaver blamed his lack of breasts as the reason James Cameron lost out to Kathryn Bigelow in the battle for the Best Director Oscar.  Yet, there’s been no media feeding frenzy as a result, even though Weaver essentially said Bigelow didn’t really deserve her Oscar – it was simply a matter of gender politics at work.

Shouldn’t women’s groups be outraged by such a remark? Or did they see a kernel of truth in what Weaver said?  The National Organization for Women has nothing about the incident on its web site.

So Big Hollywood reached out to several women connected to the film industry to get their thoughts on Weaver’s accusations.

Ally Acker with Reel Women Media says politics play a factor in why certain people win that golden statuette: “When Mo’Nique said at the Oscars, ‘I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics,’ she must have been delusional,” Acker says. “Her performance was good, but her award was all about politics.” (more…)

As we say goodbye to the first decade of the new century – and I don’t wanna hear any revisionist bellyaching about the decade not ending until December 2010 – we also say hello to the mainstream media movie critics’ lists of the best movies since 2000.  Like their “hard news” reporting brethren, the MSM’s critics’ consensus view of what’s good constitutes a conventional wisdom that emphasizes the “conventional” while going light on the “wisdom.”  And, like the rest of the MSM, they are almost always wrong.

This countdown of movies – all but one of which was nominated for at least a couple of Oscars – is not a list of the worst movies of the last decade.  Instead, it counts down ten notable cinematic critical darlings that simply do not hold up over time.  They are not necessarily awful films – though some are transcendentally terrible – and many have good performances, memorable scenes or even a classic character or two.  But overall, the effect of watching them again today is similar to what you might experience at your high school reunion when you see how that sexy cheerleader you once dated is now a bloated wildebeest with a tat on her meaty hock reading “Hope and Change.”  You just shake your head, asking yourself, “Man, what was I thinking?” (more…)

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

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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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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