All posts tagged: Academys

The Academy’s Annual Oscar Nominees Luncheon Is the Best Party of Awards Season

The Academy’s Annual Oscar Nominees Luncheon Is the Best Party of Awards Season

Published by Sam Flores

Earlier, over lunch, Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor welcomed all the attendees, revealing that the 230 nominees represented 29 different countries, and that there were a record 76 women nominated this year. “What a year 2025 was,” Howell Taylor said in her opening remarks. “The world broke our hearts, but somehow every single nominee in this room found a way to use their art, their gifts, their tenacity, their bravery through their stories to inspire us and bring us together.” Leonardo DiCaprio PATRICK T. FALLON/Getty Images. With all the nominees in one place, Howell Taylor also seized the opportunity to share a few helpful tips on how nominees should prepare for their acceptance speech, should they be called to give one on March 15. The general gist: Be prepared; keep it under 45 seconds; don’t put your speech on your phone; and, most importantly, “Make it heartfelt. Be authentic.” She discouraged the nominees from listing a bunch of names, asking them instead to talk about the significance of the moment. “The fact is the majority …

Guardian of the Film Academy’s Treasures Talks Museum and Collection

Guardian of the Film Academy’s Treasures Talks Museum and Collection

Published by Daniella Wilson

On Jan. 13, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Amy Homma, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ director and president, will henceforth also oversee the Academy Collection, which includes some 52 million film-related items held within the Margaret Herrick Library and the Academy Film Archive, ranging from an original script of Citizen Kane to a pair of the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. It’s all part of an effort to better organizationally link all aspects of the Academy’s history and preservation efforts, the Academy says. Homma, a 41-year-old wife and mother of two, was born in Chicago to a Jewish mother and a Japanese father. Her dad, who owned a landscape architecture company that sometimes worked on local film productions, once brought his daughter to the set of Uncle Buck to meet John Candy. But where she most enjoyed spending time was at the city’s arts and culture institutions. She went on to get her B.A. in art history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her M.A. in teaching …

Matthijs Wouter Knol on the European Academy’s Awards Season Pivot

Matthijs Wouter Knol on the European Academy’s Awards Season Pivot

Published by Daniella Wilson

This year’s awards race has seen an unprecedented surge for European talent with several films from continental auteurs — including Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Oliver Laxe’s Sirat, and Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident (a French-Iranian production from the Iranian director) — heading into the final lap as Oscar favorites. No longer relegated to the sidelines of the international circuit, European cinema is front and center in the conversation, regularly appearing on both Golden Globe and Academy Award shortlists. This year, the European Film Academy has decided to lean into this momentum with a bold strategic pivot. By shifting their premium honors, the European Film Awards (EFAs) from December to January (the 38th European Film Awards are in Berlin on Saturday), they are slotting European films directly within the global awards window, hoping to capitalize on the promotional machinery that traditionally favors Hollywood. Knol spoke to THR about the strategic calendar shift, his hopes for a European star system, and why (unlike, say, the Golden Globes) there will be plenty of politics on stage …

Horror doesn’t need the Academy’s permission to matter

Horror doesn’t need the Academy’s permission to matter

Published by Sam Flores

Dear reader, I’m delighted to tell you that, if you’ve ever been at a social function and had to hear someone utter the words, “Toni Collette should’ve been nominated for an Oscar for ‘Hereditary,’” you may be entitled to compensation. (Smaller monetary rewards may be awarded to those who have seen similar sentiments on social media. Please record your responses and tie them to the foot of a carrier pigeon, in care of me; the pigeon will know where to bring it.) It’s not that Collette’s performance in Ari Aster’s 2018 horror film is so bad that it’s worthy of a class action lawsuit, but rather, that her work is so incredibly good that hearing about how Collette was robbed of a nomination has become utterly banal. Anyone who’s seen the film knows it firsthand, and anyone who hasn’t has probably heard chatter that Collette was overlooked because “Hereditary” is a horror film. Would it have been nice to see Collette included among her contemporaries in the best actress lineup, especially if she could’ve knocked …