Finally, there’s the booby prize of Oscar categories, Best Supporting Actress. It’s where Academy voters feel emboldened to indulge in odd tastes or speak their minds. Ruby Dee looked like a viable candidate after her Screen Actors Guild award; she, too, is an icon, largely unrewarded, and as the title villain’s long-suffering mom, she’s the main reason to see American Gangster. But I think the prize will go to a different kind of mother, the model of irresponsible parenthood played by Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone, the closest the Oscars will get to an anti-Juno.
Related:
Primary concerns, Where is the love - side, Politics on the ground, More 
- Primary concerns
The last thing people are looking for when they go to the movies is a reminder of the political crapola they are trying to escape.
- Where is the love - side
- Politics on the ground
Convention , the opening-night feature at the fifth annual Camden International Film Festival, is a logistical triumph that chronicles a logistical triumph. AJ Schnack, the director of the Kurt Cobain documentary About a Son, organized a group of nine filmmakers to capture the breadth of the August 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.
- Best in show
Tom Hall, the new artistic director of the Newport International Film Festival (June 3-7), had the usual hard time culling more than 600 submissions — some invited but most over the transom — down to 90 films — 17 narrative features (plus five Hollywood classics), 17 feature-length documentaries, and 56 shorts.
- Interview: Jamie Foxx
"Until you get a chance to define another side of your career, people will always say, 'You're doing it as a hobby.' "
- Glower power
It’s a mysterious career. To Whitehead’s credit, it’s not a career in the normal sense at all.
- Are we grading on a curve?
It’s a solid B, which isn’t bad considering the vagaries of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.
- Fools rush in
If you think Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Daniel Day-Lewis, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, and Judi Dench are all hopelessly overrated, then WGBH/ITV has your TV movie.
- Our superheroes, ourselves
Is there a breed of person more tenderly optimistic, more winsomely hopeful for the best, more loyal to the possibility of good, than the American summer moviegoer?
- The plots thicken
Eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Center — the result of one of the most devastatingly successful conspiracies in history — Americans still take comfort in paranoia.
- Interview: Leonard Nimoy
If Leonard Nimoy’s acting work had been limited to that deliriously crazy music video for “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins,” he’d probably still be celebrated by a lot of us.
- Less
Topics:
Features
, Barack Obama, Elections and Voting, Film Awards, More
, Barack Obama, Elections and Voting, Film Awards, Julie Christie, Diablo Cody, Javier Bardem, Michael Clayton, Ruby Dee, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Ryan, Less
