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AP: Is Gore pursuing Oscar nod or presidency

Al Gore is waging a fierce campaign for recognition and an Oscar statuette for his global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," while reviving talk that he's pursuing a bigger prize: the presidency. His recent itinerary has been the ultimate in high profile. The former vice president made sel...

REVIEW | Out of the Past: Isabel Coixet's "The Secret Life of Words"

Spanish-born writer-director Isabel Coixet treads delicate territory with alternately slippered feet and hammer toes in "The Secret Life of Words," an admirably intimate, character-driven work that burdens itself with more importance than it can ultimately handle. Without spoiling the film's final r...

BBC: Oscar hopefuls hit by BAFTA rule

A rule change means Oscar hopefuls Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro and George Clooney cannot be entered for the 2007 Bafta film awards. Bafta has decided only movies released in the UK before its ceremony on 11 February are eligible, instead of the end of March, as in previous years. Some of the majo...

AFP: Communist-era love story cinches top Moroccan film award

A love story set in bleak communist-era East Germany scooped the top Gold Star award at the sixth Marrakesh International Film Festival studded with international luminaries. "Der Rote Kakadu" or "The Red Cockatoo," by German film director Dominique Graf, trumped 15 other films vying for the best film award in the sun-washed Moroccan city. Tracing an affair in 1961 Dresden between a theater scenery painter and a poet, "The Red Cockatoo" also handed German actor Max Riemelt the best actor award. The drama was among a total of 120 movies screened over nine days in Marrakesh. The 15 in competition hailed from countries as diverse as Italy, Iran,...

AWARDS WATCH | New York Critics Pick "United 93" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" Top Choice in LA

Two notable critics groups named their top choices for 2006 in the last 24 hours, both considered harbingers in the Oscar race among awards watchers. Unlike last year, the two groups had separate choices for best film, with the New York Film Critics Circle naming "United 93" by Paul Greengrass as it...

VIDEO: Michel Gondry Solves Rubik's Cube in Under 2 Minutes With His Feet

REVIEW | Exit Wounds: Irwin Winkler's "Home of the Brave"

At the very least, "Home of the Brave" is one for the history books: the first major fiction film about the Iraq War and its effect on those fighting it. Updating "The Best Years of Our Lives" before conflict has reached an end (if there ever is one), this too-earnest drama seeks to realistically po...

Emerging Spectators: Cultivating the Art-House Audience in a Post-Auteur Culture

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier this month, renowned critic Andrew Sarris--the man who helped cultivate the auteur theory in the U.S.--appeared at a panel with critics J. Hoberman and Dennis Lim to celebrate the publication of the Village Voice Film Guide and a screening of Robert Bresson's...

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