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The 2024 Oscar race is on, and one film has the potential to accomplish a feat that hasn’t happened in 64 years. “Oppenheimer” leads the nominations with 13, and it’s on track to win several of those categories. If Christopher Nolan‘s epic claims Best Picture, Best Actor (Cillian Murphy) and Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), it will be the first time since 1960 that the same film (“Ben-Hur”) has won those three exact categories. And it would be only the fourth time it’s ever happened.

See Cillian Murphy interview: ‘Oppenheimer’

Since the Best Supporting Actor category was introduced in 1937, only three films have walked away with Best Picture as well as both male acting categories. In 1945, the inspirational musical comedy “Going My Way” not only became the highest-grossing film of 1944, but also won seven of its ten Oscar nominations, making it the big winner of the night. Beside the top prize,...

It’s time for Peter Sarsgaard to finally shatter the Oscar glass.

Once upon a time, actor Peter Sarsgaard won the most precursors prizes during the 2003-2004 awards season for his supporting turn in Billy Ray’s “Shattered Glass.” In the film, he plays Charles Lane, a newly promoted editor who suspects one of his revered writers (played by Hayden Christensen) could have fabricated some of his stories. It was a breakout performance in the early days of online Oscar punditry that had everyone buzzing. However, when it came time for the major televised ceremonies, he was only able to muster a Golden Globe nod, then to be followed by shocking snubs from SAG, BAFTA and eventually the Academy Awards.

It was one of the few times in recent awards history where the leader of critics’ acting prizes failed to nab Oscar recognition (others include Ethan Hawke for “First Reformed...

Radioactive Photo: Studiocanal It's World Laboratory Day today, celebrating the work of pioneering scientists around the globe - something that has, arguably, never been more relevant than now, as we continue to fight the Covid pandemic. Films have long had a love affair with laboratories as well, whether as places of industry like that depicted in The Story Of Louis Pasteur, which won Paul Muni an Oscar for his portrayal of the French scientist back in 1936, or as secretive environments where strange potions - or large monsters including the many iterations of Frankenstein's monster - can be cooked up. Today our streaming spotlight is going up to the lab to see what's on the slab. Shivering with antici...pation, entirely optional.

Radioactive, Amazon Prime

Real world lab discoveries don't come much more important than those made by Marie and Pierre Curie - who "did the double" in Nobel terms, first taking home the Physics accolade.

The Venice Film Festival is the starting pistol of the awards season, but that’s only been the case for the past five years or so. The Lido will unveil the first looks at technical juggernauts like “Dune,” from Warner Bros., and emotional period dramas like “The Power of the Dog,” from Netflix. Venice could unleash all the momentum for the upcoming awards season, sure to be dense — and long again — with an Academy ceremony dated March 27.

In the last 20 years, the Golden Lion, the festival’s highest honor, has matched the Oscars’ choice for best picture only two times: “The Shape of Water” and “Nomadland.”

But Venice has produced a cache of films that have garnered best pic nominations. Moreover, since the best picture lineup was expanded to 10 nominees in 2009, “Birdman” (2015) took home a best pic Oscar, while “Gravity” (although it played out of competition) and “Philomena” in 2013 landed noms.

The July lineup at The Criterion Channel has been revealed, most notably featuring the new Wong Kar Wai restorations from the recent box set release, including As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046, and his shorts Hua yang de nian hua and The Hand.

Also among the lineup is a series on neo-noir with Body Double, Manhunter, Thief, The Last Seduction, Cutter’s Way, Brick, Night Moves, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and more. The channel will also feature a spotlight on art-house animation with work by Marcell Jankovics, Satoshi Kon, Ari Folman, Don Hertzfeldt, Karel Zeman, and more.

With Jodie Mack’s delightful The Grand Bizarre, the landmark doc Hoop Dreams, Orson Welles’ take on Othello, the recent Oscar entries Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time and You Will Die at Twenty, and much more,...

In 2009 — when the Academy Awards went to 10 Best Picture nominees for the first time since 1943 — the preferential system of voting, which had been used from 1934 to 1945, was reintroduced. The academy did so as it believed this “best allows the collective judgment of all voting members to be most accurately represented.”

We have detailed how the preferential voting system works at the Oscars in the modern era. So, let’s take a look back at those dozen years early in the history of the academy when it first used this complicated counting to determine the Best Picture winner rather than a simple popular vote. (At the bottom of this post, be sure to vote for the film that you think will take the top Oscar this year.)

See Best Picture Gallery: Every winner of the top Academy Award

1934

This seventh ceremony marked the first time that the Oscars eligibility period was the calendar year.

Child actor Dickie Moore: 'Our Gang' member. Former child actor Dickie Moore dead at 89: Film career ranged from 'Our Gang' shorts to features opposite Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper 1930s child actor Dickie Moore, whose 100+ movie career ranged from Our Gang shorts to playing opposite the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, and Gary Cooper, died in Connecticut on Sept. 7, '15 – five days before his 90th birthday. So far, news reports haven't specified the cause of death. According to a 2013 Boston Phoenix article about Moore's wife, MGM musical star Jane Powell, he had been “suffering from arthritis and bouts of dementia.” Dickie Moore movies At the behest of a persistent family friend, combined with the fact that his father was out of a job, Dickie Moore (born on Sept. 12, 1925, in Los Angeles) made his film debut as an infant in Alan Crosland's 1927 costume drama The Beloved Rogue,...

Robert Walker: Actor in MGM films of the '40s. Robert Walker: Actor who conveyed boy-next-door charms, psychoses At least on screen, I've always found the underrated actor Robert Walker to be everything his fellow – and more famous – MGM contract player James Stewart only pretended to be: shy, amiable, naive. The one thing that made Walker look less like an idealized “Average Joe” than Stewart was that the former did not have a vacuous look. Walker's intelligence shone clearly through his bright (in black and white) grey eyes. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” programming, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating today, Aug. 9, '15, to Robert Walker, who was featured in 20 films between 1943 and his untimely death at age 32 in 1951. Time Warner (via Ted Turner) owns the pre-1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library (and almost got to buy the studio outright in 2009), so most of Walker's movies have...

Luise Rainer dies at age 104: Rainer was first consecutive Oscar winner, first two-time winner in acting categories and oldest surviving winner (photo: MGM star Luise Rainer in the mid-'30s.) The first consecutive Academy Award winner, the first two-time winner in the acting categories, and, at age 104, the oldest surviving Oscar winner as well, Luise Rainer (Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld, 1936, and The Good Earth, 1937) died at her London apartment on December 30 -- nearly two weeks before her 105th birthday. Below is an article originally posted in January 2014, at the time Rainer turned 104. I'll be sharing more Luise Rainer news later on Tuesday. January 17, 2014: Inevitably, the Transformers movies' director Michael Bay (who recently had an on-camera "meltdown" after a teleprompter stopped working at the Consumer Electronics Show) and the Transformers movies' star Shia Labeouf (who was recently accused of plagiarism) were mentioned -- or rather, blasted, in...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of Navy Seal Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper has been garnering Oscar buzz since the film premiered at AFI Fest. With The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy saying, “nothing the actor has done before suggests the dramatic assuredness he brings to his way of detailing Kyle’s self-control, confidence, coolness, genuine concern for his comrades-in-arms, compulsion to serve his country and ultimate realization that enough is enough, even of the thing he loves most, which is war,” Cooper may earn his third consecutive Oscar nomination this year. This would follow behind his best actor nomination last year for Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and this year’s nomination for his supporting role in American Hustle (2013).

The last male actor to accomplish this feat was Russell Crowe, who scored three nominations from 2000 to 2002. He won in 2001 for his lead role in Gladiator.

Joan Lorring, 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee, dead at 88: One of the earliest surviving Academy Award nominees in the acting categories, Lorring was best known for holding her own against Bette Davis in ‘The Corn Is Green’ (photo: Joan Lorring in ‘Three Strangers’) Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee Joan Lorring, who stole the 1945 film version of The Corn Is Green from none other than Warner Bros. reigning queen Bette Davis, died Friday, May 30, 2014, in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow. So far, online obits haven’t mentioned the cause of death. Lorring, one of the earliest surviving Oscar nominees in the acting categories, was 88. Directed by Irving Rapper, who had also handled one of Bette Davis’ biggest hits, the 1942 sudsy soap opera Now, Voyager, Warners’ The Corn Is Green was a decent if uninspired film version of Emlyn Williams’ semi-autobiographical 1938 hit play about an English schoolteacher,...

Lee Daniels appears to have modeled his movie on a visit to Madame Tussauds. The historical impersonation as Oscar horse is something new

• First look review: The Butler

• Video: Whitaker and Winfrey at the Butler premiere

• Gallery: all the presidents' men

When did acting turn into a sub-category of karaoke? When Robin Williams first turns up as Dwight Eisenhower in Lee Daniels' The Butler, his face saggy with prostheses and floured like an overbaked pizza, it draws giggles from the audience. This sort of star turn requires a certain amount of time for audiences to acclimatise; the same giggles greeted the sight of Leonardo DiCaprio, looking like an aged liverwurst as J Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's 2009 biopic. Half an hour in and we had adjusted.

The Butler doesn't have that luxury, but instead has an entire series of similar impersonations – Liev Schriber as Lyndon Johnson, John Cusack as Richard Nixon,...

Charlton Heston: Moses has his ‘Summer Under the Stars’ day Charlton Heston is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star on Monday, August 5, 2013. TCM will be presenting one Heston movie premiere: Guy Green’s Hawaiian-set family drama Diamond Head (1963), in which Heston plays a pineapple grower, U.S. Senate candidate, and total control freak at odds with his strong-willed younger sister, the lovely Yvette Mimieux. Also in the Diamond Head cast: France Nuyen, Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winner George Chakiris (West Side Story), The Time Tunnel‘s James Darren, and veteran Aline MacMahon (Gold Diggers of 1933, Five Star Final) in one of her last movie roles. And last but not least, silent film star Billie Dove reportedly has a bit role in the film. (Photo: Charlton Heston ca. 1955.) (Charlton Heston movies: TCM schedule.) Now, with the exception of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, in which Charlton Heston...

Oscar winners Olivia de Havilland and Luise Rainer among movie stars of the 1930s still alive With the passing of Deanna Durbin this past April, only a handful of movie stars of the 1930s remain on Planet Earth. Below is a (I believe) full list of surviving Hollywood "movie stars of the 1930s," in addition to a handful of secondary players, chiefly those who achieved stardom in the ensuing decade. Note: There’s only one male performer on the list — and curiously, four of the five child actresses listed below were born in April. (Please scroll down to check out the list of Oscar winners at the 75th Academy Awards, held on March 23, 2003, as seen in the picture above. Click on the photo to enlarge it. © A.M.P.A.S.) Two-time Oscar winner and London resident Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld, The Good Earth, The Great Waltz), 103 last January...

For Daniel Montgomery's rebuttal in favor of Viola Davis, click Here. 1. She plays a real-life person This can’t be overstated. Since the earliest days of Oscar, when George Arliss won for "Disraeli," Charles Laughton won for "The Private Life of Henry VIII" and Paul Muni won for "The Story of Louis Pasteur," the Academy has shown a tendency to reward actors for playing historical figures. In the past 12 years, an astounding 14 of the 24 lead acting awards have gone to actors who played real people: Colin Firth in "The King’s Speech," Sandra Bullock in "The Blind Side," Sean Penn in "Milk," Marion Cotillard in "La Vie en Rose," Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland," Helen Mirren in "The Queen," Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote," Reese Withersoon in "Walk the Line," Jamie Foxx in "Ray," Charlize Theron in &q...

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat is a monthly newspaper run by Steve DeBellis, a well know St. Louis historian, and it.s the largest one-man newspaper in the world. The concept of The Globe is that there is an old historic headline, then all the articles in that issue are written as though it.s the year that the headline is from. It.s an unusual concept but the paper is now in its 25th successful year! Steve and I collaborated last Spring on an all-Vincent Price issue of The Globe and I’ve been writing a regular monthly movie-related column since then. Since there is no on-line version of The Globe, I will be posting all of my articles here at We Are Movie Geeks. When Steve informed me that this month.s St. Louis Globe-Democrat was to take place in 1939, often labeled “Hollywood’s Greatest Year”, I knew the possibilities were immense.

We continue our examination of the business book The One Minute Manager with an interview of author Ken Blanchard. What did he write a business fable rather than a nonfiction book, and what makes a good business book stand out?

What was the impetus for you to write The One Minute Manager?

I met Spencer Johnson at a cocktail party. He had written a bunch of children's books as part of a series called Value Tales--The Value of Determination: The Story of Helen Keller, The Value of Believing in Yourself: The Story of Louis Pasteur, The Value of Humor: The Story of Will Rogers. My wife met Spencer first and hand-carried him over to me. She said, "You guys ought to write a children's book for managers. They won't read anything else." So that was really the impetus for our book. I invited him to a seminar I was doing...

Hollywood's first family of movie make-up is to be honoured with a star on the Walk of Fame.

Marvin and Michael Westmore will unveil the 2,370th star near the corner of Los Angeles' Hollywood and Vine on behalf of the Westmore Family on Friday.

The Westmores are make-up artists who have defined beauty and glamour, setting trends over the decades.

George Westmore and his six sons, Monte, Ern, Perc, Wally, Bud, and Frank "changed the face of Hollywood, literally", according to a Walk of Fame spokeswoman.

The representative adds, "The Westmores not only created, but they defined the role of make-up artists in Motion Pictures. George Westmore opened the very first make-up department at Selig Studios in 1917... and the brothers were responsible for creating the signature looks for stars like Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn and even the teenage fashion doll, Barbie."

Ern Westmore became the first make-up artist recipient of the Academy Cup in 1931 for his work on Cimarron starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, while Monte wowed Hollywood with his styling skills on movie epic Gone with the Wind - he made Vivien Leigh's hazel eyes appear green at the request of director David O. Selznick.

And when Paul Muni won the Best Actor Oscar for The Story of Louis Pasteur in 1936, he thanked only one person, Perc Westmore, in his acceptance speech.

Other family claims to fame include Bud Westmore's molded foam rubber suit in The Creature from the Black Lagoon and his make-up expertise on TV show The Munsters and youngest brother Frank's work on cult show Kung Fu, for which he became the first Westmore to receive an Emmy Award.

The family continues to pursue excellence on the big and small screen - Monte's son, Michael, received an Oscar and a British Academy Award nomination in 1986 for his artistry on Mask. He has also picked up nine Emmy statuettes and an impressive 42 Emmy nominations over the course of his career. He holds the record for more Emmy nominations than any other make-up artist.