International Feature Oscar Shortlist: Pakistan Makes Cut For First Time With ‘Joyland’; No Major Snubs

EXCLUSIVE: Trailblazing Pakistani movie Joyland has been picked up for U.S. distribution by Oscilloscope.

“Apollo 10 ½: A Space-Age Childhood”“Boyhood” and “Dazed and Confused” director Richard Linklater’s film is set in Houston in the summer of 1969, and it spends as much time detailing life for a kid in that era (from TV shows to rotary phones) as it does telling the story of a fourth-grader recruited by NASA for a secret, pre-Apollo 11 moon mission. The film was shot in live action and then animated, which initially caused the Academy to rule it ineligible before reversing that decision in November.

Bob Penny, a poet and professor who after retirement appeared in small parts in movies including Forrest Gump, Sweet Home Alabama and My Cousin Vinny and in the TV series In the Heat of the Night, died December 25 in Huntsville, AL. He was 87.

Part of the West Highland Railway Line is set to reopen after more than 100 tonnes of falling debris caused damage to the tracks. The Oban railway was closed on Monday following a landslide near Falls of Cruachan on Loch Awe.

EXCLUSIVE: Vertigo Releasing has set a January 20th North American release for BAFTA winner After Love, marking the company’s first stateside theatrical release.

Best Documentary Feature front runners All That Breathes, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Fire of Love, and The Territory are safely through to the next round after the Academy’s Documentary Branch whittled the list of remaining contenders to a shortlist of 15 films.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed the shortlists for Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, and Animated Short for 2023. As expected acclaimed films “All That Breathes” and “All the Beauty and All the Bloodshed” made the cut for the top category.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed the Oscar shortlists today and the Visual Effects and Sound categories saw some surprises. While films such as “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “NOPE” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” were expected in Visual Effects, “Thirteen Lives” was not.

The Film Academy has unveiled its 15-track shortlist for the Best Original Song Oscar in 2023, which marks a confluence between stars old and new.

Austria, “Corsage”Belgium, “Close”Cambodia, “Return to Seoul”Denmark, “Holy Spider”France, “Saint Omer”Germany, “All Quiet on the Western Front”India, “Last Film Show”Ireland, “The Quiet Girl”Mexico, “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”Morocco, “The Blue Caftan”Pakistan, “Joyland”Poland, “EO”South Korea, “Decision to Leave”Sweden, “Cairo Conspiracy”

The shortlist of 15 films to vie for a Best International Feature Film Oscar nomination is set to be announced Wednesday. In all, films from 92 countries are eligible this year, and as we regularly see, they offer up an embarrassment of riches. For the first time in a while, however, there doesn’t appear to be a hands-down clear frontrunner. 

EXCLUSIVE: Jack Huston is set to make his feature directorial debut with Day of the Fight, a project that will reteam him with his Boardwalk Empire colleague Michael Pitt, who will star.

In a major victory for SAG-AFTRA and GLAAD, IMDb has agreed to allow industry professionals to remove their dates of birth, birth names and other demographic information from its IMDb and IMDbPro sites.

King Charles III is sending his first Christmas cards as monarch with a photo taken days before he took the throne.

For years HBO Documentary Films, under the stewardship of Sheila Nevins, dominated the Oscars, racking up nominations and wins left and right. But since her departure in 2018 it has faced an Oscar dry spell, at least in the documentary feature category. All that could change this year, in a major way.