How One of History’s Biggest Explosions Inspired Oscar-Nominated Animated Short ‘The Flying Sailor’

Djimon Hounsou got very real about his treatment in Hollywood.

seemed defeated and appeared to look like she was about to break down in tears at the 2023 Oscars. Bassett lost the Best Supporting Actress statue to Jamie Lee Curtis from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”“Godfather” star Talia Shire looked visibly upset in 1977 when she was obliterated by Faye Dunaway for the award for Best Actress.The “Bonnie and Clyde” star won for her role in “Network,” while Shire earned her nomination for “Rocky.”Cher scored the Best Actress trophy in 1988 for “Moonstruck,” but one of her fellow contenders, Sally Kirkland, appeared irate, rolled her eyes and briefly pursed her lips when she didn’t win.

Angela Bassett was considered a favorite to win the Best Supporting Actress award for her amazing work in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at last night’s Academy Awards.

The Oscars’ annual In Memoriam segment on Sunday included a live performance of the song “Calling All Angels” by Lenny Kravitz.

London-based PR maven Matthew Freud, joined by fellow Brit and collaborator Charlie Mackesy, offered his apologies for winning the Oscar for Short Film (Animated) for The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse.

Angelique Jackson Jamie Lee Curtis has picked up her first Oscar, winning the best supporting actress trophy for her performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” “I know it looks like I’m standing up here by myself but I am not, I am hundreds of people. I’m hundreds of people. Where are the Daniels?,” she asked in her emotional acceptance speech, continuing to list of all the people who supported her. “Halloween” director John Carpenter was one of the first to congratulate the longtime horror star, tweeting “Congratulations Jamie Lee! You are the bomb!”“To all the people who have supported the genre movies that I’ve made for these years, the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, we just won an Oscar together!,” she said.

Black Panther and 9-1-1 star Angela Bassett is back at the Academy Awards as a nominee, but this time she'll be joined by her beloved husband Courtney B. Vance.Courtney has been by the 64-year-old's side this entire awards season, and the two celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in October 2022.

A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic How long does a documentary need to be? Frederick Wiseman frequently goes long, and Oscar-winning “OJ: Made in America” ran nearly eight hours. Lately, with “Bill Russell: Legend” and “Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker,” streamers have embraced the so-called “two-part documentary” — a fancy term for what used to be called a miniseries. So, while there are no limits on how much longer docs can get, it’s refreshing to see a compelling subject covered in 40 minutes or less, and doubly rewarding to realize that four of the five packaged in ShortsTV’s “2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary” found audiences on their own merits, even without theatrical distribution.

It’s not easy to tackle a gruesome subject matter with humor. And to make the Irish dark comedy work, its filmmakers drew inspiration from their own ideations of life and death. An Irish Goodbye, written and directed by Tom Berkeley and Ross White, follows a pair of estranged brothers who must learn to get along after their mother’s untimely passing. Lorcan (James Martin), an adult with Down syndrome, takes his mother’s death the hardest and soon fears that his brother will abandon him. While Turlough (Seamus O’Hara) grapples with whether he should ship Lorcan off to live with their aunt in London or learn to care for his brother. Though death is not a revolutionary topic in the cinematic medium, the unique and heartfelt way Berkeley and White explore grief through centering on the unusual brotherhood is poignant. Fresh off of a BAFTA win and headed to the Oscars, the filmmakers discuss their inspiration, casting actors with disabilities and creating a sentimental exploration of love and grief.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Of the 10 films up for best picture, no fewer than six run 199 minutes or more. On one extreme, James Cameron’s punishing “Avatar” sequel is long enough to require bathroom breaks. At the other, Daniels’ ADHD-styled “Everything Everywhere All at Once” proves equally exhausting, dedicating every hyperkinetic second to stimulating easily distracted audiences. It’s enough to make folks grateful for the lower-profile but still engaging live-action shorts category, where nominees are bound by a strict 40-minute time limit. This year’s crop — the so-so “2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action” program — clocks in at under two hours. Available in theaters and on myriad streaming platforms, the international assembly may be a hit-and-miss affair, but never outstays its welcome.

Shocking images have emerged of two animal legs among boxes and bags of rubbish dumped in an alleyway. The horrific scene was uncovered in Levenshulme, south Manchester, earlier today (March 3).

nominees luncheon, and we came upon Steven Spielberg, as one does…he said, ‘I’ve seen your film three times now and I’ve cried in a different spot,” Malala said. Spielberg is nominated as director, cowriter and a producer of his majorly autobiographical drama “The Fabelmans” for this year’s Oscar ceremony.Malala remembers this vital moment as being singular as well.

After bringing home an Oscar in 2019 for her animated short Bao, Domee Shi returned to her well of childhood experiences for Turning Red. Due to a family blessing/curse, 13-year-old Chinese Canadian Meilin (Rosalie Chang) transforms into a red panda whenever she experiences strong emotions, which is less than ideal for a teenager. Using Mei as a surrogate character, Shi replicates her childhood experience of struggling to please her mother as she entered adolescence. The film’s portrayal of the mother-daughter relationship sparked dialogues between teens and parents going through the same experience and gave Shi a chance to become closer with her own mother.

The Oscar-nominated documentary “Fire of Love” is getting the narrative remake treatment. The acclaimed non-fiction movie, concerning the scientific research and on-the-job romance of French volcanologist filmmakers Katia and Maurice Krafft, will become a live-action narrative feature film.

EXCLUSIVE: Searchlight Pictures is making a deal to turn Fire of Love into a narrative feature. The film, which tells the story of the scientific research and romance of preeminent French volcanologist filmmakers Katia and Maurice Krafft, is a frontrunner in the Oscar race for Best Documentary after premiering at 2022 Sundance, winning a Jury Prize and being acquired by National Geographic Documentary Films.  

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic On Oscar night, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” will almost certainly win the Academy Award for feature animation. For many of those following along at home, it will look as though the director of “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Shape of Water” is being rewarded for some kind of secondary passion, as if del Toro had scaled Everest and then set his sights on a smaller peak on which to plant his flag. But that’s not how it happened at all. Way back in Mexico, del Toro started his filmmaking career doing animated shorts: Obsessed with Ray Harryhausen, the amateur future auteur built rudimentary armatures, painstakingly repositioning the puppets one frame at a time. Decades later, once established in Hollywood, del Toro accepted a side gig at DreamWorks Animation, serving as a story consultant on films such as “Megamind” and “Kung Fu Panda 2” as a pretext for teaching himself the trade. With “Pinocchio,” he put those lessons to work on a stop-motion passion project that’s every bit as challenging as his most impressive films.

Naman Ramachandran “The Elephant Whisperers,” the Indian film nominated in the Oscars’ documentary short film category, has received an outpouring of love globally with young fans sending their fan art and appreciation in hundreds of emails to the filmmakers. The film follows a couple, Bomman and Bellie, who devote their lives to caring for an orphaned baby elephant named Raghu. Director Kartiki Gonsalves and producer Guneet Monga, along with the film’s team in India and the U.S., have been receiving fan art depicting their love for the orphaned babies and the caring couple from the film. They have also received testimonials from many parents and some fans who sent video clips of their own animal companions watching the film at home.

own memoir for the 26-minute film and was also on the call, offered this tidbit: “I sent a link to Dick’s Sporting Goods. It’s not a lie. I slid into their DM’s and was like, ‘Hey.