The Quest for "it"

HOT TOPIC: Great Gatsby Box Office Bested By 'Iron Man 3'

Looks like the Great Gatsby fell a little short at the weekend box office in its opening weekend, coming in second to Iron Man 3. Click here for more.

HOT TOPIC: The Great Gatsby Premieres at Lincoln Center

The black carpet was all aflutter on Wednesday evening for what was a stellar screening. Director Baz Luhrmann's latest has indeed premiered in New York. Click here for the WWD take on the event. 

Tribeca Film Festival Opens!

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This year’s 12th Annual Tribeca Film Festival presented by American Express, the Founding Sponsor of the Festival, takes place April 17-28 in Lower Manhattan and Union Square/Chelsea. The Festival screens 89 features and 60 shorts in the following sections: World Narrative Competition, World Documentary Competition, Spotlight, Viewpoint, Midnight and this year’s new Storyscapes section, created in collaboration with BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® Gin. Film stills from these films are available.

The Festival opens tonight with the first of its 3 gala screenings, Mistaken For Strangers, following rock band The National on their most prominent tour yet. The Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival gala, Kevin Connolly of Entourage’s documentary, Big Shot, takes place on April 19th, while a restoration of Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, starring Robert De Niro, marks its 30th anniversary as the festival Closing Night gala on April 27th.

LOS ANGELES: G.I. Joe Retaliation Premieres

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The Los Angeles premiere of G.I. Joe Retaliation meant a grand red carpet with unmeasurable talent and filmmakers in attendance, on Thursday, March 28th. The Paramount Pictures film is expected to be a 3-D fan's dream. Starring enduring action hero Bruce Willis and pro-wrestler (The Rock) turned actor the Dwayne Johnson. G.I. Joe Retaliation centers around each being famed for a crime they did not commit. The G.I. Joes must not only fight Cobra but also vindicate themselves to a government that condemned them.

Front and center on the carpet at the TCL Chinese Theater were: Bruce Willis, Duane Johnson, Rumer Willis, D.J. Cotrona, Adrienne Palicki and more.

Top to Bottom: Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson (above); Duane Johnson; Rumer Willis, Adrienne Palicki, Gleb Savchenko and Elena Samodanova, Elodie Yung

*photos by Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Oscar's Best Acceptance Speeches for 2013

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The winners were all smiles last evening, Sunday, Febuary 24th backstage at the 85th Annual Academy Awards® . Winners included: Actors Daniel Day-Lewis, winner of the Best Actor award for "Lincoln;" Jennifer Lawrence, winner of the Best Actress award for "Silver Linings Playbook;" Anne Hathaway, winner of the Best Supporting Actress award for "Les Miserables;" and Christoph Waltz, winner of the Best Supporting Actor award for "Django Unchained,"at Loews Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood (see photo above).

To follow are excerpts from the acceptance speeches of Oscar 2013's BIG winners.

Daniel Day Lewis-Best Actor, Lincoln

I really don’t know how any of this happened. I do know that I’ve received so much more than my fair share of good fortune in my life and I’m so grateful to the Academy for this beautiful honor. It’s a strange thing because three years ago before we decided to do a straight swap, I had actually been committed to play Margaret Thatcher. [Laughs] And Meryl was Steven’s first choice for Lincoln. And I’d like to see that version. And Steven didn’t have to persuade me to play Lincoln but I had to persuade him that perhaps if I was going to do it that Lincoln shouldn’t be a musical. My fellow nominees, my equals, my betters, I’m so proud to have been included as one amongst you. When we got married 16 years ago, or since we got married 16 years ago, my wife Rebecca has lived with some very strange men. I mean they were strange as individuals and probably even stranger if taken as a group. But luckily she’s the versatile one in the family and she’s been the perfect companion to all of them. I’d like to thank Kathy Kennedy, our producer, and through you, Kathy, and through you our mighty team of co-conspirators. At the apex of that human pyramid there are three men to whom I owe this and a great deal more: Tony Kushner, our beloved skipper Steven Spielberg and the mysteriously beautiful mind, body and spirit of Abraham Lincoln. For my mother, thank you so much.


Jennifer Lawrence-Best Actress, Silver Linings Playbook

Thank you. You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that’s really embarrassing but thank you. This is nuts. Thank you to the Academy and thank you to the women this year. You were so magnificent and so inspiring and not just those of you in my category. And it’s been so amazing getting to know you and you’ve been so nice and you’ve made this experience unforgettable. And thank you to the best producing team: Bruce, Donna, Jon and to my team at CAA and IDPR. And Bradley, and our entire cast: Chris, Jacki, Bob and our crew. My family. Happy birthday, Emmanuelle. Thank you so much. Thanks.

OSCAR® NEWS: Jane Fonda, Jennifer Garner, Kristen Stewart And Kerry Washington To Present On Oscar® Telecast

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Academy Award® winner Jane Fonda will join Jennifer Garner, Kristen Stewart and Kerry Washington to present on the Oscar telecast, show producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced today.

Fonda earned seven nominations and won Academy Awards for her roles in "Klute" and "Coming Home." Garner was seen in this year's "The Odd Life of Timothy Green" and will be seen next in "Dallas Buyers Club." Stewart is best known for her role as Bella Swan in the "Twilight" saga and also starred in 2012's "On the Road" and "Snow White and the Huntsman." Washington starred in the Best Picture Nominee "Django Unchained" and was seen in "A Thousand Words." Washington is also the star of ABC's hit drama "Scandal."

Fonda, Garner, Stewart and Washington join a stellar list of previously announced Oscar presenters including Jennifer Aniston, Michael Douglas, Jamie Foxx, Paul Rudd, Salma Hayek Pinault, Melissa McCarthy, Liam Neeson, John Travolta, Ben Affleck, Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Mark Wahlberg, Ted and "Marvel's The Avengers" cast members Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo; returning 2011 Oscar winners Jean Dujardin, Christopher Plummer, Octavia Spencer and Meryl Streep; "Chicago" cast members Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones; special guests Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Daniel Radcliffe, Channing Tatum and Charlize Theron; and performers including Kristin Chenoweth, Jennifer Hudson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Aaron Tveit and Helena Bonham,Adele, Dame Shirley Bassey, Norah Jones and Barbra Streisand.

Catching Up with Sundance 2013

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A street in Park City Utah

It all kicked off just a few days ago-the 2013 Sundance Film Festival that is! Supported by the nonprofit Sundance Institute, the Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most ground-breaking films of the past two decades, including sex, lies, and videotape, Maria Full of Grace, The Cove, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious, Trouble the Water and Napoleon Dynamite and, through its New Frontier initiative, has brought the cinematic works of media artists including Isaac Julian, Doug Aitken, Pierre Huyghe, Jennifer Steinkamp and Matthew Barney. Click here for more.

 

The Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards®

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Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards® have been announced by the show's host, Seth MacFarlane, and actress Emma Stone TODAY, Thursday, January 10. This will be the first time since 1972 that an Oscar show host has participated in the nominations announcement.

MacFarlane and Stone unveiled the nominations at a 5:30 a.m. PT news conference at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, where hundreds of media representatives from around the world gathered.  For a complete list of nominees, visit the official Academy Awards website, www.oscar.com.

The New York Premiere of 'Django Unchained' at the Ziegfeld Theatre

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Last night at New York City's Ziegfield Theater, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained premiered. Tarantino's upcoming drama, due in theaters nationwide on December 25th is a western with a twist and stars Leo De Caprio, Smauel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx, Christopher Waltz, and Kerry Washington.  The red carpet of December 11th New York premiere was graced by:  Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx,Leo DiCaprio, Uma Thurman, Olivia Wilde, Don Johnson Michael Strahan, etc,. To follow are a few select photos. 

Top to Bottom: Leo Di Caprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Quentin Tarantino & Uma Thurman, Olivia Wilde

*photos by PacifcCoastNews.com

LONDON: Academy to Fete Pedro Almodovar in London

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will celebrate the groundbreaking career of Oscar®-winning filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar with an intimate retrospective on Thursday, December 13, at the Curzon Soho Cinema in London. Hosted by Sir Christopher Frayling, the evening features a conversation with Almodóvar and discussions with friends, colleagues and family members including Agustín Almodóvar, Stephen Frears, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Alberto Iglesias, Peter Morgan, and Sally Potter.

Excerpts from many of Almodóvar's films will illustrate the breadth of his artistic explorations, his passionate engagement with the human heart, and a worldview often articulated by powerful female leads.

Almodóvar was a significant figure in La movida madrileña, the pop culture movement of late '70s and early '80s Madrid. He made his first feature-length film, "Pepi, Luci, Bom," in 1980, but his breakthrough came in 1988 with the release of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." Nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film, it brought him international recognition and virtually secured worldwide releases for his subsequent works. In 1999 Almodóvar's "All about My Mother" won the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and in 2002 "Talk to Her" earned the filmmaker a Directing nomination as well as an Oscar for Original Screenplay. He has received numerous other accolades for films as diverse as "Live Flesh" (1997), "Bad Education" (2004), "Volver" (2006) and "The Skin I Live In" (2011).

"An Academy Tribute to Pedro Almodóvar" is an invitation-only event.