Almost There: Peter Dinklage in "The Station Agent"

by Cláudio Alves

With Cyrano in cinemas at the end of the month, Peter Dinklage is on the hunt for his first Oscar nomination. Playing a musicalized version of the classic role, the actor can capitalize on his stardom, which has been steadily growing over the past decade. After years of being ignored, Dinklage's stint in Game of Thrones made him a household name, beloved by the industry and with a slew of trophies to show for it. Will an Oscar nomination be next? It's the second time he's seeking Hollywood's most coveted statuette, having also been a contender back in 2003. Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent was Dinklage's breakthrough, an indie gem with incredible acting across the board…

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Dame Judi Dench deserved the Best Actress Oscar for "Notes on a Scandal"

by Matt St Clair

Dame Judi Dench is an international treasure. The legendary actress currently has seven Oscar nominations under her belt, having won once in Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (recently discussed right here at length). Should the stars align, she might add an eighth nomination to her record for her role as the lovable Granny in current Best Picture frontrunner Belfast. Even at 86 years-old, and with her deteriorating eyesight, Dench is still going strong, managing to get quality roles in an industry notoriously unkind to actresses when they reach a certain age and whose names don’t rhyme with Beryl Deep. 

Astonishingly, Dench didn’t become an official Academy darling until she reached her 60’s. Up until she joined the James Bond franchise as M in GoldenEye, and earned her first Oscar bid for Mrs. Brown in ‘97, Dench was more of a theater mainstay while working sporadically on film. Yet since that one-two punch, she's been a consistent movie presence with Notes on a Scandal being a high water mark. She deserved to win her the Best Actress Oscar that year...

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Posterized: Sean Penn as director

by Nathaniel R

Dylan and Sean Penn earlier this summer at Cannes.

Former movie star Sean Penn celebrated his 61st birthday just two days ago and now welcomes his sixth directorial effort, Flag Day, into US theaters. Though Penn's name was once intoned with a kind of reverence by fellow actors and critics his film career has been curiously uneventful for a decade now (with his supporting role in The Tree of Life, 2011, his last real prestigious success... and mostly by association at that). One suspects the fading film career is more from a shift in his own interest and priorities given his political activism than a lack of opportunities but it's always hard to know given the fickle nature of Hollywood and stardom in general.

Can Flag Day serve as a kind of jumpstart for a comeback in the next few years? Does he even want that? He has two films (as an actor) in preproduction now, a drama with Dakota Johnson and a drama with Tye Sheridan.  How many of his six directorial efforts have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

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Almost There: Paul Bettany in "Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World"

by Cláudio Alves

Paul Bettany's one of those actors who feels like an Oscar nominee despite having never received love from the Academy. Since the late 90s, the British thespian has starred in various awards-friendly titles, including a Best Picture winner, and is regularly praised by critics even when his projects disappoint. Nonetheless, AMPAS always ignores him. His best shot came in 2003 when his supporting turn in Peter Weir's Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World earned him some well-deserved buzz. Since the actor just celebrated his 50th birthday, I chose to celebrate the occasion by looking back at that performance in a special entry to the Almost There series…

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"Crouching Tiger" and the Foreign Language Films of 2000

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000. 

Juliette Binoche and Jack Valenti announcing Best Foreign Language Film.

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Coming into the 73rd Academy Awards, the results of the Foreign Language Film category must have felt like the biggest lock of the night (this writer can only assume based on hindsight since he was only a five-year old bébé at the time). Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the perfect storm when it hit American audiences. The film came from an established filmmaker, Ang Lee, who had made several critical and commercial hits in English and otherwise, the storytelling was tailored to better suit Western sensibilities, it featured international stars known to the English-speaking film market, it received rave reviews and enormous box office returns, and it was both partially funded and widely distributed by a major American studio...

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