Mike Myers, Kevin Kline…Outtakes. Be forewarned; and a mature audience, please.

Here it is again! The 2012 Academy Awards Nominee Ballot. Click on the graphic below to open the page with an official, unmarked Oscar ballot. Print, mark your choices…

Here it is! Download the bingo cards in PDF and print to play during the 83rd Academy Awards…(Earlier This Year, I Got An Email From A Reporter In FRANCE Asking About Oscar® Bingo…
It’s one of the most popular things that I post on Oscar Prep.)

James Franco Posted This Himself…
It’s a recording of his singing a song that was going to be part of the Academy Awards® broadcast…and has since been cut.  How cool is it that James Franco put it on the net, singing ‘warts’ and all??

Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeff Wells is a skilled film writer with a notoriously contentious comment section. He’s been doing Oscar® predicting and pundit-ing for years; earning him more and bigger movie ads on his site than anyone else’s. This year’s Oscar® race doesn’t have much sparkle or spunk. Lots of talent, yet little competition. Especially for those [...]

83RD ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEES TO BE HONORED AT ACADEMY LUNCHEON Beverly Hills, CA – Nineteen of the 20 nominees in the acting categories will be among more than 140 Oscar® nominees who will gather at noon on Monday, February 7, at the Beverly Hilton when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honors this [...]

The King’s Speech featurette: With film scenes and ‘behind the scenes’.

Oscar© Nominees for Best Picture–All 10 in Legos! Contest: I wonder if you can correctly guess which Oscar Nominated Best Picture that each one of these Lego photos represent?

Use the comments section to put your answers, or if you are on Facebook, here’s a link to Hollywood Actor Prep’s Page…post the answers there if that’s easier for you.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg makes a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, while actor Jesse Eisenberg (Best Actor Oscar Nominee) hosts the show. VIDEO.

I pasted this Oscar® Nominations list from the Press Release that the Academy Awards® sent to my email this morning. I did fool around with the order of nominees …
Nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Javier Bardem in “Biutiful” (Roadside Attractions)
Jeff Bridges in “True Grit” (Paramount)
Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network” (Sony Pictures Releasing)….

…For making me practice every day when I got home. Piano, ballet, whatever it is I wanted to be. She said to be an artist, you had to practice every day, and for reminding her daughters…

Bridges didn’t need to win it for a ‘sum of the acting parts’… This one, in Crazy Heart, was that specific, deep, seamless, real. An Oscar winning performance, for a solidly Oscar-able actor. [speech transcript]

I Tweeted A Day-Before-Oscars Question:
‘What Oscar Nominated Acting Performance Knocked Your Socks Off?’
Here are some of the tweets that I got back:

A comic by Doug Savage about the Oscars and choosing actors that win for longevity rather than recent performance.

Thanks to Oscar.com, you can print out these 9 bingo cards, and play during the show.

Every Year The Oscars® Hosts A Luncheon For All Oscar® Nominees
Here’s the full yearbook photo from this year’s Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon.

I Have Been Watching As Many Nominated Performances As I Can
And I will post my reviews, and my choices for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress…In the week before the Academy Awards…

At The Open Call For Dancers For The Academy Awards Show
I had originally posted information about this for all interested dancers, here, on Oscar Prep.
There’s a few more photos, at my other blog, called Hollywood Actor Prep.

Home : Press : Press Releases Final Oscar® Ballots Mailed to Academy Members Beverly Hills, CA (February 10, 2010) — Final ballots for the 82nd Academy Awards® were mailed today (February 10) to the 5,777 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Completed ballots must be returned to PricewaterhouseCoopers by 5 [...]

There’s a cool feature too, to save your colored ink. If you click on the arrows at the very top of your download window, of the PDF, you’ll see an arrow that looks like it takes you to Page 2.
The arrow opens an identical Official Oscar© Ballot, in black-and-white. Your choice, on which to print…

Ouch. Awfully early, I’d say. …

February 2nd, 2010 Is The Big Day When The Oscar Noms Are Announced For the 82nd Academy Awards®. ©A.M.P.A.S.® This year, the announcement will be made by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak and Oscar-nominated actress, Anne Hathaway.

January 23rd Was D-day To Have Nominee Ballots In Here’s The Academy Of Motion Pictures Press Release: OSCAR® NOMINATION BALLOTS DUE JANUARY 23 Beverly Hills, CA — The 5,777 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must return their completed Oscar nominations ballots to PricewaterhouseCoopers no later than 5 p.m. on [...]

“Open dance auditions for the 82nd Academy Awards® telecast will be held on Friday, January 22, and Saturday, January 23, at CenterStaging in Burbank…” Schedule of auditions is posted here.

Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Mark Sagar for the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures… with their ability to capture high fidelity reflectance data of human subjects, allows for the creation of photorealistic digital faces as they would appear in any lighting condition. (complete list)

List of 7 films…
On Saturday, January 23, all members of the Academy’s Makeup Branch will be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the seven shortlisted films. Following the screenings, members will vote to nominate three films for final Oscar consideration.

The Academy sent this press release, at 8 AM today. 2009 Oscar® Nomination Ballots Mailed to 5,777 Academy Voters Beverly Hills, CA — Nomination ballots for the 82nd Academy Awards® were mailed today to the 5,777 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Will CGI Acting Be Recognized As Oscar-Worthy Acting At The Academy Awards?
Is Performance Capture something that will compete for acting recognition, alongside traditional acting? Compete equally for Oscars in the acting categories?
That’s a question that been zinging around Hollywood, especially after Avatar’s recent surge into the mix.
James Cameron leaked a photo of his actress, Zoe Saldana…

That’s a beautiful number, 2010. So was the acting this year, and I am looking forward to writing about it here, at Hollywood Oscar Prep.

Acting categories. Academy Awards. 2010….Welcome back!

I hope you are all ready for another Academy Awards Season!
Hope you are ready to focus once again on the acting categories, and the great performances of this past year, in film.
Have you noticed? There are more Oscar Pundits, Oscar Sites, and Oscarologists, this year, than inhabitants on the island of Haiti…
So I think what I will do…

In the rush and the heat, all the excitement of the Oscar wins; and the fiercely joyous passion over “Milk”‘s triumph (that seems to permeate the industry), I’d like to point out that little part of his Sean Penn’s Oscar acceptance speech, again. What Sean said about Mickey Rourke…It is these sensitive ones, who are our finest actors.
Here’s to them.

Kate Winslet, Accepting The Best Actress Award, For Her Performance In “The Reader” ::: Video:::Photos
Penelope Cruz, Accepting The Best Supporting Actress Award, For Her Performance In Vicky Christina Barcelona::Video::Photos

Includes Best Actress Kate Winslet, Best Supporting Actress Penelope Cruz, and ‘Milk’ Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, Director Danny Boyle, Jerry Lewis…
Oscar winners, backstage at the Academy Awards–video here:

She is a spirited woman in the midst of all these aging people, who are getting ready to die. She is a cherishing, loving mother, to this child who was born an old man. And, even when he’s Brad Pitt, she convinced me of her maternal love for Benjamin Button.

Viola Davis shows everything, in her character-restraining way of showing practically nothing.
She is calm, and direct, and holds back with the dignity of a black woman who is confronted, unexpectedly; and yet is able to maintain composure. All the while, letting us, the audience, get a sense of her whole life. All the burdens she experiences.

Subtitle of this post could be: “I’m MRS. Norman Maine”… See the film clip, at end of this Oscar Prep post.

Next, they reveal: What are underlying influential factors, determinants; that motivate the members of the Academy when choosing the winner?

Tiny little moments, that strung together, make up the years in movies…pieces of nearly all of the very best films of this past year! On YouTube…Didn’t this guy put together a wonderful Oscar nomination show-piece?

Best Actress Winner, Audrey Hepburn, gives a thank-you speech. Lithe, with unchallenged grace. Eternally epitomizing the term…gamine.

One myth, whether true or not, is that Bette Davis remarked that the derriere, specifically, of the statuette; reminded her of the same body part of one of her ex-husbands. (It certainly doesn’t look like my ex’s.)

The following actors never won an Academy Award: Joseph Cotton, Dana Andrews, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, Margaret Sullavan, Deborah Kerr, Ida Lupino, Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre…Anthony Perkins, Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Orson Welles…

Another Dana Kaminski Jam: Hollywood Oscar Prep

Oscar’s Best Actor Nominees Discuss The Answer Amongst Themselves…

Well, I was drawing from my life, too, from my mom. We were the only black family in Central Falls, Rhode Island in 1965. She had to fight doctors who wanted to experiment on us when we were sick, and she had to fight parents who saw us as thugs and bad influences on their children, though we were just rambunctious, creative kids. She had to fight teachers who just didn’t see our intelligence at times.

(Oh! So that’s why “The Dark Knight” didn’t get an Oscar nomination.)—But what frequently happens is that only two or three movies cross that threshold. In this case, the Academy takes the movie with the lowest number of No. 1 votes and reallocates those votes to the No. 2 choices on the ballots.

…6 The fable-like structure of the film has the strength and simplicity of a fairytale….9 The profound hatred or mistrust of corrupt wealth and the consequent adoration of lucky poverty could not have a better dramatic demonstration….10 The new air of magical realism is about to crush photographic realism in the movies.”