Watch this year's Oscar nominees

The Oscar nominees for 2017 are out!

Keep in mind that awards are political and determined by the arbitrary makeup of whichever group is voting for them. That said, this year's nominations already seem richer and more varied than usual. There's far greater diversity, led not just by Moonlight and the recent hit Hidden Figures but across the board in acting and production categories. Most shocking for us, at least, was the Best Documentary nomination for O.J.: Made in America, the first Oscar nod for ESPN Films.

As always happens, most of the Oscar nominees were released late last year. You'll have to go to the theaters to see La La Land, but we have a few of the nominated films available to check out.

Hell or High Water – HU DVD 13629
Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay

Captain Fantastic – HU DVD 13625
Best Actor

Kubo and the Two Strings – HU DVD 13637 and HU BLU 13637
Best Animated Feature, Best Visual Effects

Zootopia – HU DVD 13259
Best Animated Feature

O.J.: Made in America – HU DVD 13289 and HU BLU 13289
Best Documentary Feature

Life, Animated – HU DVD 13661
Best Documentary Feature

Hail, Caesar! – HU DVD 13258
Best Production Design

The Lobster – HU DVD 13642
Best Original Screenplay

Live up the Oscars glitz right here in DC

We've been more mum about the Oscars this year than usual. Maybe the controversies soured us a little bit. Then again, hey, the Oscars are on Sunday! That was fast!

Most people would be comfortable watching at home or catching up on the results the next morning, but a certain level of Hollywood nerd might want something a little... flashier. Enter the Washington Post's Going Out Guide's list of the cities biggest, glitziest Oscar parties.

A few restaurants and bars in the area have specials for the event, but the two clear highlights are the Arlington Cinema 'n' Drafthouse and Malmaison. Arlington's film-and-theater venue will host a full party complete with an Oscar win pool and an autographed movie poster auction. Malmaison, going above and beyond the call of duty, is rolling out a red carpet with imitation paparazzi and press interviews. Not everyone will want something that showy, but if you want the full Oscar experience locally, Malmaison's (pricey) event sounds close to the real deal.

This is all a bunch of hoopla around an arguably meaningless, indulgent awards show, but for film people, it's our meaningless indulgence. This is the one time a year when broader culture talks about the artistic accomplishments of film, and we're going to celebrate that with a mock red carpet.

This year's Oscars remind about the importance of cinematography

This year's Oscar nominations are out, with the usual mix of surprises (Mad Max!) and disappointments (whitewashing across the board). But the one incontestable standout out on the list is the Achievement in Cinematography award. 2016's lineup might be one of the most competitive races ever.

It's too easy to lump cinematography in with the technical categories (which is what the Academy does), but this award is one of the most important to the filmmaking process. Directors receive all the credit for how a film looks, but skilled cinematographers are the ones who execute their vision. For examples, read The Beat's summary of famous directors and cinematographers who teamed up: when you watch a Christopher Nolan film, the tone and composition of those images were chosen by his cinematographer Wally Pfister. Don't underestimate a great cinematographer.

All five nominated films are outstanding, and a four in particular represent exceptional achievements and pedigrees.

• Robert Richardson's work on The Hateful Eight was famously the first Ultra Panavsion 70 production in decades, and the work shows.
• Mad Max: Fury Road has been considered one of the all-time greatest action movies thanks to John Seale's surreal camera work.
• Emmanuel Lubezki has won the cinematography Oscar for the past two years for good reason, and he stands a chance to repeat for his gripping work on The Revenant.
• Roger Deakins's nod for Sicario is his thirteenth nomination, but the legendary DP has never won an Academy Award yet (?!).

Of the five nominees, only Mad Max: Fury Road is currently available in the library (HU DVD 12486), but Carol, The Revenant, and The Hateful Eight are still in theaters. If you can see all of them, remember that someone sat behind that camera to get those gorgeous – and this year, chaotic – shots.

See Leonardo DiCaprio's next big (award-winning?) film early!

November and December are the peak release months for prestige films. Academy Award nominees are announced in January, and the big hopefuls have a habit of popping up right before the deadline. We've been fortunate enough to share passes to a few of these movies, but we're saving the biggest for the end of the semester...

We have advance passes to see The Revenant, director Alejandro González Iñárritu's upcoming frontier movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio! The Revenant is in serious contention for Best Picture, and DiCaprio is an early favorite to win Best Actor – potentially his first Oscar. And you can see it almost a month before everyone else. Lucky you!

(Plus, there will be a Q&A afterwards with supporting actor Will Poulter!)

We have only 40 admit-two passes to give away for this screening on Thursday, December 3 at 7pm at the Georgetown Loews 14. Follow this link to redeem your pass before they're gone. This screening will no doubt be packed, so you'll need to arrive way in advance of the 7pm start time to ensure that you get a seat. Passes don't guarantee that you'll get in!

Snag a pass now so you can lord it over your family for Thanksgiving! Or, because it's an incredibly exciting movie that you can see weeks early for free before it becomes a hot topic.

Meet Chuck Workman, the Oscar montage man

There's really nothing else we have to say about the Oscars last night apart from congratulating Birdman for its big win. Instead, let's direct your attention to one of the most important people behind the scenes at the biggest award show of the year. He's Chuck Workman, and he creates the clips played during the Oscar ceremonies.

NPR put together a great profile about Workman and his twenty years of experience cutting clips for the Oscars. There's a ton of skill on display, whether that's matching cuts for a montage, reducing a film to a highlight reel, or finding a single great scene from an actor's entire career. Everyone in the industry seems to have great respect for him and his talents. You've gotta respect his craft, even if his interview is tinged with some disdain towards new media.

Workman is one of the many people who gets overlooked when dolling out credit to the film industry, and we always love to see more attention thrown their way.

A radical proposal: what if the Oscars removed nominations?

The Oscars are this Sunday, and although we're as excited as every year, there's a certain level of predictability in every ceremony. A few months ago, the current Oscar race was considered one of the most competitive of all time, but the past weeks of tertiary award shows have made it clear who will win most of the awards. Best Picture and Best Director are down between Birdman and Boyhood. Julianne Moore and Patricia Arquette will win the actress categories. Even the Best Actor category, a field of overwhelming talent, is now just between Michael Keaton and Eddie Redmayne.

So how do you bring back the surprise? Vulture writer Adam Sternbergh has an interesting idea: never reveal the nominees.

Sternbergh points out that the Oscar nomination announcements are often more exciting and talked-about than the winners themselves. Consider all the ink spilled about Selma's nomination snubs this year; there will certainly be less attention if the film doesn't win Best Picture or Best Song. It would probably never fly for a number of reasons (practicality chief among them), but Sternbergh's proposal would involve revealing the nominees at the event itself, bringing some drama and immediacy back to the ceremony.

The Oscars's problems are well-documented and possibly over-discussed, but much of that criticism focuses on the structure of the Academy and its voting process. We give Sternbergh points for thinking outside the box in an attempt to repair the ceremony.

Everything is Oscars! See the Academy Award nominees that have hit DVD

Earlier today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominations for this year's Oscars ceremony. It's a solid if unsurprising list: Birdman and Boyhood earned big nods, and Jake Gyllenhaal is sadly nowhere in sight. For a full list of nominees that you'll have to start learning the names of, check out the Washington Post's list.

(ADDENDUM: One of our staff members points out that this is the whitest and most male Oscar ceremony in decades. No women are nominated in the major awards outside of the actress categories; Iñárritu is the only person of color in those categories. Somewhat a letdown considering the diversity among directors and writers this year.)

Most of the nominated films were released in the last few months, as tends to happen for award-seeking movies, so very few are available on DVD yet. We have a few in process (Boyhood, Gone Girl, and Guardians of the Galaxy are on their way...), but a handful of the foreign and documentary films have already seen home video release. And to be honest, those are the ones you probably needed to watch anyway.

There'll probably be repertoire theaters replaying some of the nominees in the coming weeks, but if you find yourself in the library, consider watching these award contenders in advance of the big ceremony.

The Grand Budapest Hotel – HU DVD 11444
Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design

The Lego Movie – HU DVD 11466
Nominated for Best Original Song

Ida – HU DVD 11538
Nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Foreign Language Film

Finding Vivian Maier – HU DVD 11547
Nominated for Best Documentary Feature

Maleficent – HU DVD 11584
Nominated for Best Costume Design

The film event of the year: We update our Best Pictures Pinterest!

Tonight, nine films will battle for the ultimate honor in cinema: a place on our Best Picture Winners Pinterest board.* This esteemed list contains 83 of the greatest films of all time, as voted on each year by the film community. From modern successes like No Country for Old Men to classics like Gone of the Wind and Ben-Hur, this highly prestigious Pinterest board is a Who's Who of a century of quality films. Controversy abounds in this list, such as the decision to pin How Green Was My Valley in 1941 over Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon, but this Pinterest board is still widely regarded as the standard-bearer for film acclamation.

Each films on this list of available for checkout in the AU Library. Follow the links on each pin to see whether it's available.

*Additionally, movies added to this Pinterest board are also presented with an Academy Award.

What you won't see at the Oscars this Sunday

We love the Oscars, but we admit that they're imperfect. With the ceremony only three days away, it's time to be a little critical. The Academy frequently overlooks specific types of films that, in retrospect, we often consider to be some of the greatest.

Comedies, for the most part, are rarely nominated and win even less frequently. There are countless articles belaboring this point, but we'll let this summary from The Atlantic do the talking. With the exception of the occasional quirky dramedy, comedy films almost never receive nods for the top awards. Of the nine films nominated for Best Picture this year, only American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street could be considered comedies – and that's pushing the definition. While we would never expect something like The Hangover to go home with Oscar gold, classic comedies including Blazing Saddles, Airplane!, and This is Spinal Tap have all left the Oscars without any recognition. This is arguably the Academy Awards' greatest repeated oversight.

Relatedly, the Academy also has a habit of overlooking films about youth. This year's acting snub for Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha is part of a long tradition of ignoring coming-of-age stories. Outside of perhaps The Graduate and American Graffiti, it is difficult to find a single film about young people that the Academy loved; now-legendary director John Hughes was never once nominated for his filmography that includes The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Truffaut's groundbreaking The 400 Blows was not nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film award. Considering how often the Academy tips its hat to out-of-the-way gems like Nebraska, the repeated omission of youth stories is conspicuous.

These are perhaps another indication that the Oscars are never a good indicator of long-term acclaim. Or maybe it's just easy to be bitter that Mel Brooks only won a single Academy Award.

Who was Oscar? The story of Emilio Fernández

Once again, as the Academy Awards are less than a week away, Oscar fever is reaching a frenzy. This time, we turn our attention to the statuettes themselves. Who was Oscar? Why is he naked and holding a sword?

Pop culture radio website Studio 360 recently unearthed the story of the man on which the award is based. His name was Emilio Fernández, and he was a notable Mexican actor whose tumultuous life led him from rebellion during the Mexican Revolution to directing the Cannes-winning María Candelaria. His close work with film star Delores del Río put him in contact with Cedric Gibbons, the artist who designed the Oscar. Fernández modeled for the award, and after the design was sculpted by George Stanley, Fernández's contribution was largely forgotten.

This doesn't explain the name Oscar or the sword-wielding nudity, but it is a fascinating story that's well worth a listen. We look forward to watching the Fernándezes this Sunday!

We'd like to thank the Academy for this infographic

The Oscars are almost upon us, and with only a little over one week to go (!), the floodgates have opened on Oscar trivia. Every year we find a new batch of unusual award-related studies, like last year's breakdown of trailer lengths.

This year, Slate has analyzed twelve years of actors' and actresses' Academy Awards acceptance speeches and determined who gets thanked the most. Industry organizations, companies, and agents received the most praise, though most nominees immediately thanked the Academy upon receiving their statue. A decent number of winners thanked their role's namesake, but only one (Javier Bardem) thanked a specific country. It's a fun breakdown to see who appears most in the Oscar spotlight.

And yes, as the article title mentions, Meryl Streep has been thanked more times than all religious entities. This is what happens when you get nominated every year.

The Random Oscar Winner Generator is hilarious, necessary

We still have over a month to go before the Oscars, but we're already excited! Questions about their authority aside, the Academy Awards are a fun time to celebrate nearly a century of great films.

Let's be serious though: there's a lot of hot air involved too. With so many award contenders dealing with serious themes, sometimes it's necessary to make fun of the whole endeavour.

To this end, Time's excellent Random Oscar Winner Generator is a goldmine. Using keywords culled from IMDb for all previous Best Picture nominees, this web widget creates convincing-sounding descriptions for borderline-generic prestige movies. It's a highly entertaining way to look at the types of films that Hollywood likes to reward, many of which apparently feature gay piano players and orphans from Manhattan.

It's all in good fun of course, but it's also vaguely educational. Hopefully this takes some of the bluster out of the buildup to March 2nd.

Seasonal question: How are the Oscar nominees picked?

In case you missed it, the Oscar nominees came out this morning. By all accounts it's a pretty good list, featuring a wide cut of the most acclaimed films of the year. And Matthew McConaughey stands a chance to win his first Oscar!

The question, of course, is how these nominees were even selected. Is it a public vote? Is it a shadowy cabal? Is it just a computer? Realistically, it's a combination of all three.

The good folks at mental_floss have explained in detail how a film goes from a submission to a nominee. The process is surprisingly complicated, involving voting blocs and formulas that set the threshold for potential nominee. This explains why some of the technical categories only get three or four nominees in some years.

If you were ever curious about what happens in this mysterious process [and why Inside Llewyn Davis was robbed! -ed.], give mental_floss's article a read for a clearer look. As for the final voting, that's an entirely different and much more political contest.

It's the Oscars!

The Oscars are tonight! After weeks of buildup, speculation, and the most use of the word "Argo" on record, the Academy will reveal the results of the most prestigious and contentious film awards ceremony at 8pm in the Dolby Theatre. We're very excited in Media Services, if you couldn't tell from our weeks of Academy Award-related posts.

Naturally, many of the films nominated for awards are still in theaters, so we can't really advertise them in our collection. But now is as good of a time as any to look back at big winners from previous years. Our Pinterest page has a list of all the Best Picture winners in our collection, with only a few missing (some of the older winners have not been released on DVD). Everyone's immediately familiar with The Artist and Slumdog Millionaire given their recent wins, but have you seen The Sting or Midnight Cowboy lately?

We'll be around all evening. If you don't feel like watching the ceremony or need to detox from the awards season, come grab one of the 82 winners in our collection. (Or 83 if Argo wins!)

The New York Times breaks down Oscar trailer timelines

The art of the crafting a movie trailer has recently become a science. Every smash cut, cliffhanger, fade to black, and fancy shot of an actor's name has been reduced to a formula that seemingly every studio follows.

The New York Times adds a new wrinkle to that analysis by splitting apart trailers for this year's Best Picture-nominated films based on when its scenes appear in the movie. A basic formula seems to exist: follow the movie chronologically to introduce the characters and plot, then end with a series of quick cuts through the middle and end to show the major action. With some variance, Silver Linings Playbook and Beasts of the Southern Wild follow this outline fairly closely.

Then there's ones like Lincoln and Amour that skip around wildly with seemingly no attention to the film's timeline. Stephen Garrett, a trailer producer that the Times interviewed, suggests that these trailers focus less on the plot than the tone of the movie. They don't need to follow the plot order if they're just suggesting a mood.

It's interesting to see how filmmakers choose to portray their works. Argo is about a story. Amour is about a feeling.

Burning question: Does Best Picture matter?

With all the Oscar hullabaloo (of which we're guilty as well), it's easy to accept that the Oscars matter, that the acting winners represent the fines that Hollywood offers, and that an institution as venerated as the Academy is the official tastemaker.

Take a step back and read this interesting and controversial opinion from Rob Lowman of the L.A. Daily News. Lowman rightfully argues that past Best Picture winners have not stood the test of time and greatness compared to other nominees. Everyone has an example they can point to. 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, was not even nominated for Best Picture and lost to a largely forgotten Oliver Twist musical. Lowman calls out Rocky – a fine film – for beating legendary directors Sidney Lumet and Ingmar Bergman for Best Director.

Awards voting is always subjective, and Lowman seems to have a particular axe to grind with Oscar frontrunner Argo, but his point is valid. Flavors of the moment and popular consensus do tend to cloud judgment, and the Academy's track record is spotty. But the Academy gets it right more often than not: there's good reason Patton won over Love Story.

Website reveals widespread movie screener piracy

Movie piracy is a major issue, but it can be easy to attribute it to overzealous hackers or teenagers who sneak cameras into theaters. Turns out this isn't the case: even members of the film community are prone to leak new movies onto the Internet.

An amazing new spreadsheet compiled by the author of Waxy.org tracks the history of Academy Award screener leaks. Essentially, distributors will give free movies to voting members of the film community for consideration during awards season. These copies are usually branded with some sort of watermark indicating that they should not be released or distributed. Still, it happens. Bigger movies with widespread appeal, such as The Hobbit and Lincoln, have already had screener copies leak, but niche movies (including Argo and Beasts of the Southern Wild) have yet to see preview copies hit the Internet.

This spreadsheet is another interesting piece in the ongoing puzzle of piracy. Nobody, it seems, is immune.

Oscar nominations: What can you watch right now?

The Academy Award nominations are out! There are a few surprises this time around, most significantly the inclusion of Beasts of the Southern Wild and Michael Haneke's Amour. You can view the full list on the official Oscars website.

As much as we would love for you to watch these movies, most of them aren't on DVD yet. That said, we do have a few movies that were nominated, as well as Beasts of the Southern Wild, which is quickly becoming the dark horse in the Best Picture race.

• Beasts of the Southern Wild (Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay) — HU DVD 10813
• Inocente (Best Documentary Short) — DVD 10637
• The Invisible War (Best Documentary Feature) — HU DVD 10567
• Marvel's The Avengers (Best Visual Effects) — HU DVD 10567
• Prometheus (Best Visual Effects) — HU DVD 10496

Get ready for Oscar nominations with Wings

Tomorrow, the Academy will announce its nominations for the 85th Academy Awards. We can probably expect the likely nominees (Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, etc.), but given the widespread critical acclaim for these films, it will probably be a contentious and exciting contest.

Last year, many were taken aback by the success of The Artist, the first silent film to win the Academy's highest honor since the 1920s. Here's the thing: very few people have seen that movie. Wings, the first winner of the Outstanding Picture award (as it was known at the time), was only ever released on VHS. The original negatives are long lost, preventing a proper redux for decades.

That finally changed in 2012 when Paramount released a retouched version of Wings on DVD and Blu-ray. I can't imagine how time and work went into the restoration process, but the fruits of their labor are finally available for public consumption.

Brush up on your Academy Award history by checking out Wings from Media Services (HU DVD 10854).

The Oscars: Will you be tweeting tonight?

The Oscars are on tonight at 7pm. Will you be watching? If so, will you be tweeting about it too? Word on the street is that tonight there may be some record numbers in social media usage involving tonight's award ceremony. Many celebrities are expected to be tweeting, some from behind the scenes at the Oscars, some from the red carpet and others from their couches. Tons of non-celebrity TV viewers are expected to be tweeting and Facebook posting their opinions on various aspects of the Oscars throughout the course of the event.

There is quite a busy Oscars site with plenty of things to keep you occupied as you watch the ceremony. This includes a Backstage Pass page with photos and videos designed to give you the "insider's experience". There's plenty of fuel here for all your social media activities this evening.

There's even a free Oscars App which is also designed to provide you with some sort of insider's view of all the excitement. I actually just downloaded it out of curiosity and at first glance, it's similar to the Oscar website and appears to more or less be a source for all the little behind the scenes videos you may or may not have an interest in watching.

To learn more about social media and the Oscars, check out this article from the Wall Street Journal and check out the video below.

A Social Media Guide to the Oscars

Check out one of these nominated titles from the Media Services Home Use Collection:
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - HU DVD 9337
Bridesmaids - HU DVD 9104
The Help - HU DVD 9309
Tree of Life - HU DVD 9230
Moneyball - HU DVD 9419
Midnight in Paris - HU DVD 9410

The Oscar illustration above was done by a Media Services staff member.