February 24, 2011

The Oscars: The Supporting Acting Categories

[As we approach the the 83rd Academy Awards, this site will be breaking down the major categories and posting about the Oscars in general. Enjoy.]

The Oscars are days away. Days! The votes are tallied. Information about the ceremony is starting to leak. Jack Nicholson has already been lowered, by crane, into his front-row seat at the Kodak Theater; he’s still asleep, mind you, and they’ll just wake him up a few minutes before the show begins.

There’s been an odd buildup to the Oscars this year. Last year, pretty much every frontrunner took home the award; in each of the three preceding years, there were only one or two close races or surprises. In other words, since “Crash” won the Oscar and forever besmirched (BESMIRCHED) the ceremony, Academy members seem to have decided to just watch the lengthy awards season and agree with the majority whenever possible.

So let’s predict some stuff.

Continue reading →

October 25, 2010

The “True Grit” bad word jar

Hailee Steinfeld, the 13-year-old star of the Coen Brothers’s “True Grit,” chatted with USA Today about filming the movie amidst such intimidating dudes as the Coens, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin:

“I actually started what I called the Bad Boy Jar,” she says. “If they were to curse, they had to pay, because they did that pretty often.”

She collected about $300 and donated it to the Alzheimer’s Foundation.

“The f-word was $5, and every other word was $1,” she says cheerfully. “They would say the f-word, and then realize they’d said it, and then they would say the s-word. So I’d be like, ‘OK, that’s $6!’ “

Adorable.