#oscars buzz

📸 GQ UK/Max

As the Oscar buzz starts to ramp up into overdrive, Netflix have done something pretty unprecedented, putting their entire Best Animated Feature-nominated movie up on Youtube FOR FREE. This means that ANYONE who hasn't seen it yet can check it without having to pay ANY MONEY to Netflix first to do so. Obviously this HAS been done mainly just to raise the film's profile in ourder to give it a chance to edge through ahead of Disney's Elemental, Studio Ghibli's The Boy & the Heron and, OF COURSE, Marvel/Sony's UNSTOPPABLE Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, so it's not an ENTIRELY selfless gesture ... but come on, you can't deny it's still SERIOUSLY COOL of them to do this, even so.

-Alex B. of FirstShowing

Indiewire’s latest handicapping of the Oscars race has Eddie Redmayne as a nominee but unlikely to go two-for-two.

http://variety.com/2015/film/in-contention/oscar-predictions-oscars-academy-awards-1201600870/

http://nypost.com/2015/09/17/will-keaton-and-redmayne-battle-for-an-oscar-again/

“Redmayne, who could well become the first performer to win Oscars in consecutive years since Tom Hanks won for 1993’s Philadelphia and 1994’s Forrest Gump, gives a ballsy (forgive me), no-holds-barred, truly transformational performance of such sincerity and sensitivity that even those fiercely resistant to the idea of transgenderism may reconsider their position. It’s all the more remarkable that he gave this performance — his third for Hooper, following the 2005 TV movie Elizabeth I and 2012’s Les Miserables — while he was simultaneously in the midst of last Oscar season’s insanity!”

Really a contenders list, not so much “predictions.”