Oscars

CHICAGO – Time to fill out the Oscar prediction ballots! The 90th Academy Awards are on Sunday, March 4th, 2018, and HC film critics Patrick McDonald, Michael “Spike” Walters and Jon Lennon Espino are ready to add their prognosticating powers to all the major categories, plus three wild cards. Let the predicting begin.

CHICAGO – And the winner was… a wild and bizarre ending to the 89th Academy Awards, as Best Picture presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were given a wrong envelope, resulting in a call of “La La Land” as top movie, but after an on-stage melee, it was further revealed that the Best Picture was actually “Moonlight.”

CHICAGO – For the second year in a row, Comcast, ABC-TV and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences are partnering up for an “immersive” TV experience on The Oscars telecast. This year’s The Oscars experience will include more than 1500 hours of extra content, as well as live streams of backstage activity and the red carpet, interactive voice commands and enhanced extras – all on TV with Xfinity X1.

CHICAGO – When is comes to Academy Award predictions, HollywoodChicago.com is second to none. That’s right, nobody does it better, even the approximately 100 million other outlets predicting the Big Night awards. HC film critics Patrick McDonald, Michael “Spike” Walters and Jon Lennon Espino “correctly” predict the major categories.

CHICAGO – Okay kids, time to jump into the 2016 Oscar Pool. There are “predictors,” and then there is HollywoodChicago.com! That’s right, critic contributors Spike Walters and Patrick McDonald have the inside scoop to who will win on Oscar night, because they have a DeLorean time machine – in their dreams!

CHICAGO – The advocacy group of Women in Film Chicago (WIFC) have an annual event that honors prominent members of the media industry in the city, and the 2016 Focus Awards Gala will take place this year on January 28th. The honorees are Advertising Creative Director Jean Batthany, Documentary Filmmaker Kathryn Hempel, Film Director Kris Swanberg, and Writer/Actor Megan Mercier.

CHICAGO – The Bird was the word at the 87th Academy Awards, as the film “Birdman” won Best Picture and Alejandro González Iñárrittu won Best Director for the same film. The stellar broadcast was hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, and was highlighted by some passionate speeches and song performances.

CHICAGO – Oscar! Oscar! Oscar! Say it three times to win it, and you’ll win every Academy Award pool you enter – at least for the nine categories covered here – if you follow the advice of the HollywoodChicago.com “experts.” We have the Oscar magic, so if you believe in it, then we deliver.

CHICAGO – In an unprecedented oversight, especially for the film community in Chicago, film critic Roger Ebert’s biography “Life Itself” was snubbed for Best Documentary as the nominations were announced on Jan. 15, 2015 for the 87th Academy Awards. The films “Birdman” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” tied for most Oscar nominations with nine.

CHICAGO – As the envelope was opened at the 86th Academy Awards on March 2nd, announcing the winner of the Best Foreign Language Film – “The Great Beauty” – it was Toni Servillo who was the lead actor in the movie. His long career as a an actor and director has culminated with this honor, to go along being named Best Actor at the 26th European Film Awards for the same film.