The Screening Room

You've been part of our live chat series the past month, and now the big day is almost here! We know you're totally stoked, so here are some fun local events to help you celebrate:

The Angelika Film Center presents Oscars on the Big Screen

Studio Movie Grill's Oscar Night America

The Magnolia features the Best Animated Short Films

The Magnolia features the Best Live Action Short Films at the Magnolia

AMC Theaters showcase the 10 Best Picture nominations

Attend an Oscars watching party

It's the category you've all been waiting for! Chris Vognar, Tom Maurstad, Dawn Burkes and myself will take a look at the Oscar nominees for best picture at noon this Friday, March 5. Got any questions on the 10-film category for the panel? Leave them in the Comments section below.

Best Picture nominees: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air

Full list of Oscar nominees

Previous chat: Animated Feature Films
Previous chat: Leading Actor and Leading Actress
Previous chat: Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress

Coming Sunday night: The movies staff returns to cover the 82nd annual Academy Awards live. Join us here at 7 p.m. as we watch and discuss the ABC-televised show.

Hi all. I'll be talking Oscars today at 1 p.m. on Think, Krys Boyd's venerable interview show on KERA (90.1 FM). Christopher Kelly of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Stephen Becker of KERA's Art&Seek will also be participating. Give a listen; the three of us know each other well enough to bust some chops but still keep it fun. Plus you'll get the drop on our Oscar picks.

Chris Vognar, Tom Maurstad, Dawn Burkes and myself looked at the Oscar nominees for best animated film. This fun category isn't for just for kids anymore.

Animated Feature Film nominees: Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog, The Secret of Kells, Up

Full list of Oscar nominees

Next week's topic: Best Feature Film
Previous chat: Leading Actor and Leading Actress
Previous chat: Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress

Today brings this Facebook update:

The Official TWILIGHT SAGA Facebook fan page has reached over 5 million of the best fans in the world! To celebrate, we would like to announce that the first trailer for ECLIPSE will play with REMEMBER ME in theatres on March 12! Stay tuned for more information on where you can see it earlier that week. Thank you so much for your love and support!

For those who've been living in a cave at the bottom of the ocean for the past few years, Eclipse is the upcoming third film of The Twilight Saga, based on author Stephanie Meyer's vampire series. Theatrical release date: June 30. And Remember Me is Robert Pattinson's second attempt to prove his acting chops not as the sought-after Edward Cullen. Anyone remember last year's Little Ashes? So, what good is it doing him as an actor for the studios to premiere the Eclipe trailer with Remember Me?

I can just imagine how that's so not going to help him. Young enthralled girls everywhere want to go see him in a love a story, where he's not a vampire, just to be reminded minutes before the film begins of this fan-crazed role. How can you then watch the film without thinking about the Edward-Bella chemistry the whole time? I guess the absence of sparkles will help.

The movies staff is taking a break this Friday from our weekly Oscars chatting. But next week, Friday, Feb. 26, we'll be back at it talking about the nominees for best animated feature film; and then Friday, March 5 we'll hit the big one and discuss the 10 nominees for best picture.

In the meantime, send us your questions you'd like to see our movies staff and critics answer in the upcoming chats. Either write in your questions below or shoot me an e-mail, enunez@dallasnews.com. But don't forget to come back to The Screening Room for the scoop!

Also, check out our previous live chats when we discussed the nominees for best supporting actor and supporting actress, and best actor and actress.

Last week the complete list of feature films showing at this year's SXSW Film Festival (March 12-20) were announced.

A few features that have my interest:

Get Low | Trailer
Synopsis: A film spun out of equal parts folk tale, fable and real-life legend about a mysterious, 1930s Tennessee hermit who plans his own rollicking funeral party... while still alive.
Starring: Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek
Director: Aaron Schneider; Screenwriters: Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell
Premiered: Toronto International Film Festival
SXSW Category: Headliners

Movies critic Chris Vognar, media critic Tom Maurstad, Samantha Urban and myself discussed the nominees for the 82nd annual Academy Awards' best leading actor and leading actress categories. Read the conversation below.

Actor nominees: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man), Morgan Freeman (Invictus), Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
Chris Vognar: Down-to-earth dudes George Clooney, Jeff Bridges are prime picks for an Oscar

Actress nominees: Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side), Helen Mirren (The Last Station), Carey Mulligan (An Education), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire), Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

Full list of Oscar nominees

We'll be chatting each Friday leading up to the March 7 awards show.

The Dallas International Film Festival announced 10 selections that will screen during the festival, which is scheduled to run April 8-18.

"These first 10 selections are indicative of the great variety of films we will offer Dallas audiences at this year's film festival," said James Faust, the fest's artistic director, in a press release. "They represent the latest work from Academy Award winners, inspiring films that we have found at the latest film festivals, and a return to Dallas by some of our favorite filmmakers like Alex Gibney, Steve James and Tim McCanlies that we consider to be part of the Dallas Film Festival family."

(Photo from Solitary Man from Dallas International Film Festival)

The Oscars in March are huge, but let's not forget all the smaller awards given out leading up to them. To name a couple:

The Beliefnet Film Awards give viewers a chance to select films, released the previous year, that are the most spiritual or inspirational. Each category gets a People's Award and a Judges' Award. Voting ends Feb. 26, so get your votes in. Winners will be announced March 1. A couple of the categories and nominees:

Best Spiritual Film of 2009: The Blind Side, Avatar, A Serious Man, The Stoning of Soraya M. and The Road
Best Inspirational Film of 2009: Up, Precious, American Violet, Away We Go and Invictus
Best Spiritual Documentary of 2009: Oh My God, Enlighten Up, More Than a Game, Earth and Unmistaken Child.

Then, soon after those awards, we have the 25th Film Independent's Spirit Awards at 10 p.m. March 5 on IFC, which will be hosted by Eddie Izzard. All independent films nominated in these awards must: be at least 70 minutes long; have either played one week in a commercial theater in 2009, or have been shown at one of six film festivals (the Los Angeles Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, New York, Sundance, Telluride, or Toronto); be made for no more than $20 million, including post.

You can vote for these too, but must do so by Feb. 22. A few categories and nominees:

Best Feature: (500) Days of Summer, Amreeka, Precious, Sin Nombre and The Last Station.
Best Screenplay: Adventureland, The Messenger, The Vicous Kind, (500) Days of Summer and The Last Station.
John Cassavetes Award (best feature made for under $500,000): Big Fan, Humpday, The New Year Parade, Treeless Mountain and Zero Bridge.

As the blaring Oscar nom headlines begin to fade I'd like to put in a plug for a couple of under-the-radar honorees opening in Dallas in the coming weeks.

This Friday brings The Last Station, for which both Helen Mirren (actress) and Christopher Plummer (supporting actor) earned nominations. Plummer plays Leo Tolstoy in his final years (or at his Last Station, if you will). Mirren is his wife Sofya, increasingly frustrated at her man's focus on the Tolstoyan cause and lack of attention to marital life. As director Michael Hoffman has pointed out, both performances are larger than life yet firmly grounded. Film acting doesn't get much better. Look for my story on Plummer - who somehow had never previously been nominated - in this Sunday's Dallas Morning News.

The following Friday we finally get The White Ribbon, which has bounced around the release schedule like a ping pong ball. The foreign language film nominee, directed by Michael Haneke, is among the best Bergman films Bergman never made. In a small German town, on the eve of World War I, bad things keep happening as floundering and corrupt authority figures and urchin-like kiddos shirk accountability. The White Ribbon is an ascetic jewel that could have been subtitled The Seeds of Nazism. Good times? No, but a great film.

Movies critic Chris Vognar, media critic Tom Maurstad and myself discussed the nominees for the 82nd annual Academy Awards' best supporting actress and best supporting actor categories. Read the conversation down below.

Supporting actor nominees: Matt Damon (Invictus), Woody Harrelson (The Messenger), Christopher Plummer (The Last Station), Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

Supporting actress nominees: Penelope Cruz (Nine), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart), Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), Mo'Nique (Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire)

Chris Vognar: 10-film format varies little from Oscar tradition
Full list of Oscar nominees

We'll be chatting each Friday leading up to the March 7 awards show.

Next week: Discussing the best actor and best actress nominees

Having 10 Best Picture nominations is already making a difference. As the writer who reviewed The Blind Side (which won nominations for Best Actress and, amazingly, Best Picture), I gave it an A-minus -- though some have complained (correctly) that it's too commercial, even too corny. (To read my review, click here.) It is, however, an enduring crowd-pleaser and a remarkable true story, involving the life of Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Michael Oher, which may account for its box-office tally of more than $238 million. It proved to be the perfect vehicle for Best Actress candidate Sandra Bullock, who has undermined her talent over the years by saying yes to so many bad movies. Bullock, who spends much of her time these days in Austin, has already won Best Actress from the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes and deservingly so. At the Oscars, of course, she will have serious competition from the ever-popular Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia), Helen Mirren (The Last Station), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) and Carey Mulligan (An Education). She was aided by Texan John Lee Hancock, who wrote and directed The Blind Side. (To read my feature on Hancock, click here.) I was thrilled to see that Jeff Bridges, whose first major role came in The Last Picture Show in 1971, was nominated for Best Actor for Crazy Heart. No less an authority than Jackson Browne was raving about Crazy Heart before his recent sold-out performance at Music City Texas Theater in Linden. So far, Bridges has copied Bullock's success, winning Best Actor from the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes.

Photo: A scene from The Blind Side

Interesting that though Avatar got nominated as Best Picture and James Cameron for Best Director, the film didn't receive a single acting or writing nomination. Seems a reflection of the art vs commerce split within the Hollywood community. Avatar is the perfect big-tent nominee to drive public interest and, more to the point, TV ratings, just as Cameron's Titanic was back in 1997.

But Titanic's record-setting 14 nominations included a Best Actress nod for Kate Winslet (she didn't win) and some critical grousing that co-star Leonardo DiCaprio was overlooked. Not so with Avatar. The film is a box-office-shattering behemoth and a spectacle-generating stunner and now seems likely to be Oscar night's top contender for its two biggest prizes. But in this whole-is-greater-than-its parts scenario, won't it send a strange message to say that neither the writing nor the acting is all that great (or even all that important) in what may be crowned the best film of the year?

Couple of quick notes before I get cranking on my story:

Big ups for District 9. Great to see something that edgy score a best picture nod.

The Final Ten: Not so populist. No Hangover. No Star Trek. Great to see Up in there though.

If you checked in yesterday you know I'm stoked about Jeremy Renner. Good call, Oscar.

Gotta write.

Good morning movie lovers! We're up, it's early, and we're ready to hear who's been nominated for the 82nd Academy Awards. Watch the announcement along with us on ABC. 7:30 a.m.

7:35: In just a few moments we're going to see which 10 films get the Best Picture nom. Read Chris Vognar's predictions here.

7:38: It's starting! Anne Hathaway walks on to the stage to begin the announcement.

WHAT STUCK OUT TO ME
Supporting actor: Matt Damon (Invictus), Woody Harrellson (The Messanger), Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)

Best actress: Sandra Bullock, any surprise here? Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)

Best actor: Jeff Bridges *heart!*, George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man), Morgan Freeman (Invictus), Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

Best director: James Cameron, bigelow, tarantino, lee daniels precious, reitman up in the air

7:42: The guys for Up

7:42: animated: Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog, The Secret of Kells, Up -- My favorite category!

7:43: film: avatar, the blind side, district 9, an education, hurt locker, inglorious basterd, precious, a serious man, up, up in the air

Precious got 4 noms: Monique for supporting actress, and Gabourey for best actress, best film and screenplay

Up in the Air got 2 supporting actress noms, actor, director, picture, and adaptive screenplay. I wonder if it'll do better than it did at the Golden Globes.

Here's the full list on Oscar.com.

As you may have heard the Oscar nominations will be announced before anyone has a good reason to be out of bed Tuesday morning. Check here for some blog action starting at 7:30 a.m. In the mean time, here's a plug for someone who hasn't been getting a whole lot of buzz.

The Hurt Locker is a piercing look at the dangerous adrenaline highs of war; it will deserve its best picture nod, and Kathryn Bigelow will be a rightful best director nominee. But what about Jeremy Renner? His cock-of-the-walk swagger, and the coiled manic energy behind it, are vital to the film's effectiveness. I'd be very pleased to see him get some Oscar love. But I don't think he will. When a film is this well made, and so much of the vision belongs to the folks behind the camera, performances often get overlooked. (Anthony Mackie would be a solid supporting actor nominee as well). Hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

Next week's Sapphire Blue-ray release of The Godfather and The Godfather II brings up a debate that's always fun: Which movie is better? In today's Couch Potato column I state my case for Part II, but by no means is it a slam dunk. One point I make only in passing: Part II does a brilliant job of using the Mafia as a metaphor for the American corporation, especially in the Cuba section ("That's why they call him Superman." Thanks Fredo). In some ways the bottom line ends up corrupting Michael just as much as family loyalty.

In any case, any excuse to watch these movies is a good one. They get better with every viewing. And how about this '70s hot streak for Coppola: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation (see it now if you haven't) and Apocalypse Now. As they used to say on SportsCenter, en fuego.

Once again, we have a movie that's opening to little or no fanfare (and not being screened for critics). But, as usual, we have your back. Here's what all the non-fuss is about "Preacher's Kid," starring LeToya Luckett. Editor's note: Tough still not my cup of tea, I probably will eventually see this movie. Should be interesting to say the least.

By Robert W. Butler
Kansas City Star
Rated PG-13
Time: 1:41
What is it? The sheltered daughter (LeToya Luckett) of a small-town widowed preacher (Gregalan Williams) strikes out on her own, joining the cast of a touring gospel musical and falling for the company's charismatic leading man (Durrell "Tank" Babbs). It's a modern update of the parable of the prodigal son.
Why didn't Gener8Xion Entertainment show it to us? The studio did not respond to our request for comment. But it seems to be following the marketing plan laid out by Tyler Perry's recent movies -- no advance reviews, emphasize TV advertising.
Who else is in it? Clifton Powell, one of the movies' more reliable black baddies.
Why we'd see it: First-time director Stan Foster has been getting positive buzz. And you've gotta love gospel music.
Why we wouldn't: Not our cup of tea.

(Photo by Paul Hawthorne/The Associated Press)

That's this Saturday, so if you haven't added them to your collection yet, now's the time. My Disney Movie Club e-newsletter reminds me that production will stop on DVDs and Blu-rays on Jan. 30 for Sleeping Beauty 50th Anniversary Platinum Edition, The Jungle Book 40th Anniversary Platinum Edition, The Jungle Book 2 Special Edition, and four 101 Dalmatians movies, including 101 Dalmatians Platinum Edition, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure Special Edition, 101 Dalmatians (the 1996 live-action one), and the 2000 live-action 102 Dalmatians. A couple box sets of these films exclusive to the club are being locked away too.

I'm anxiously awaiting the liberation of Beauty and the Beast from the vault later this year. I don't know how, but I somehow missed that one. And the waiting has been looooong. If any of these are on your list of must-haves, I suggest getting them now, because who knows when your next chance will be.