Sheldon Turner, acclaimed screenwriter of Up in the Air, is moving into the director’s chair. Variety reports that Turner will be directing By Virtue Fall, based on his own script.

During awards season, Jason Reitman, who directed and co-wrote UITA, wanted sole writing credit for the film. Turner had already written a script and sold it to Warner Bros. before Reitman even got started on the project. Eventually, the WGA ruled that the two must share credit. This definitely hurt the director’s reputation, and may have caused the duo’s snub at the Oscars. (Reitman and Turner now say they have no hard feelings for each other.)

By Virtue Fall is centered on “a man who is framed by his mentor and winds up in prison. Once released, he’s fixated on getting revenge on his former partner, who has flourished in his new life and tried to cleanse himself of the past.”

The film is being produced and financed by Hurt Locker producer Nicholas Chartier through Voltage Pictures. Coincidentally, Chartier also was involved in an Oscar controversy when he was banned from attending the ceremony following an email he sent out urging voters not to vote for Avatar.

Turner said that he wants the film “to stand on the strength of the characters and the power of the performances. This is a film that’s designed to showcase and challenge two great actors.” If he can get two fantastic actors on a less than $20 million dollar budget, this may turn out well.

Although Turner has shown his writing skills, directing is an entirely different animal. He has thought about directing before, but decided to take the plunge because he “cannot imagine anyone else directing this script.” Hopefully, he can take a great written story and successfully realize it on film.

By Virtue Fall is set to begin production September.

Having only been introduced in 2001,”Best Animated Feature” is a fairly new category for the Oscars. Since then, the Academy has only had three nominees in the category every year. This year, however, it’s looking like that might change.

The number of nominees is determined by a set of rules that bases nominations based on how many eligible films come out during that awards year. This year has been a hotbed for animated films, which has resulted in the Academy having a list of 20 films that could be nominated for Best Animated Feature.

Given that number, it’s quite likely that five films could be pulled as nominees, rather than the three that the category has seen in previous years. It’s not guaranteed that the category will see five nominees, but given how well animated films did this year, the potential is definitely there.

The list of eligible films is as follows:

- Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
– Astro Boy
– Battle for Terra
– Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
– Coraline
– Disney’s A Christmas Carol
– The Dolphin – Story of a Dreamer
– Fantastic Mr. Fox
– Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
– Mary and Max
– The Missing Lynx
– Monsters vs. Aliens
– 9
– Planet 51
– Ponyo
– The Princess and the Frog
– The Secret of Kells
– Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure
– A Town Called Panic
– Up

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–Adam Shankman is a busy, busy man. Already a judge for So You Think You Can Dance, Shankman just signed on to direct the upcoming film adaptation of the Broadway smash Rock of Ages.

Now, the Hollywood jack-of-all-trades (Shankman is a choreographer, producer, and director) has had one more project dropped in his lap.

Shankman has been chosen, along with former chairman and CEO of Twentieth Century Fox, Bill Mechanic, by The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ board of directors to produce this spring’s Oscars telecast.

Although not the Academy’s first choice for the awards show’s production (the board went first to last year’s producers, Laurence Mark and Bill Condon), Shankman and Mechanic are expected to give Hollywood and home audiences a worthwhile show.

Between Mechanic’s close relationships with many Hollywood heavyweights, and Shankman’s background as choreographer and director, we can likely look forward to a very well put together, entertaining Oscars packed with A-list presenters.

Despite having a film already lined up, Shankman won’t have to worry about scheduling conflicts. The 82nd Academy Awards air on March 7th, and production on Rock of Love isn’t set to start until next summer.

Shankman’s name may have only started warranting household recognition in the last couple of years, but if he keeps bringing in projects like he has been, I think we’re going to see him take Hollywood by storm.

Just yesterday I was remarking to a friend about how relatively short the wait seemed until Martin Scorcese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Shutter Island would be released. I should have knocked on wood — it seems that the film has been pushed back to a release date on February 19th, 2010, obviously taking it out of the Oscar race for this year.

This news is incredibly disappointing. The promotions for this film have been phenomenal thus far, as has the early word on its quality. A mainstream horror (excuse me, “thriller”) with dramatic overtones, directed by one of the best the industry has to offer seems an unlikely candidate to be postponed like this.

According to a source cited by Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily, the culprit is the financial woes burdening the rest of the economy: “Paramount told the filmmakers it doesn’t have the financing in 2009 to spend the $50M to $60M necessary to market a big awards pic like this.” In addition, the source claimed that “among the many reasons for the move, Leo wasn’t going to be available to promote the pic internationally.”

While that last reason sounds a bit like rubbish, the first sadly isn’t far-fetched.

Looks like we’ll be waiting a little longer for one of the most intriguing movies on the horizon to be released. Fingers crossed that it’s as good as it looks, so that come Oscar season, Scorcese and co. will be rewarded.

It looks like the NCAA tournament isn’t going to be the only thing happening in March now. Announced today from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was the newest date for next year’s Academy Awards. The golden boy will have to sit out a little longer on his shelf by himself, since the date has been moved down to March 7th of 2010.

Along with the newly announced date is another one that ties in with it; releasing the list of nominees for the Oscars. Since it will be later this year for the actual broadcast, the announcement ceremony (that most of us don’t watch at 5 in the morning PST) will commence on February 2nd. So hold onto your mock ballots a little longer to those who still keep track of the Oscars, you just have a little more time to wait to see if you chose correctly. To those who still are greatly turned off by the Oscars due to the great amount of snubbing that happened for the Best Picture category (you know what I’m talking about), maybe it’ll be different this year. Then again, maybe not.

Do the Oscar's Matter?

Hollywood continued to shine (on a slightly smaller budget) at the Kodak Theatre for the 81rst Academy Awards. Hosted by the multi-talented Hugh Jackman, this star studded event went underway on Sunday evening while producers crossed their fingers, hoping that the minor changes in the show would draw in bigger numbers unlike last year’s broadcast.

Starting off with a simple yet effective opener by Jackman (with the help from Anne Hathaway), the follow up with announcing

the nominees/winner of Best Supporting Actress came off as if the five presenters were at a eulogy. A fair portion of the evening continued the same, going completely bi-polar with the overall tone of the prestigious awards ceremony.

Performances: The musical numbers that fluttered on throughout the evening tried to reach out to a broader audience. The opening number was the most impressive, and even though they appeared to made a make shift background for each film, it was still terribly creative with very witty lyrics. Yes, I wish I had a cardboard Batpod just like Jackman did. For another number, there’s a performance by Jackman and Beyonce who seemed to sing popular songs from the 1930s to 1940s. Despite the growing cast of actors/singers from High School Musical 3 and Mamma Mia, left most people including myself scratching our heads wondering what they all are singing and why it was turning into a fancier version of the MTV Movie Awards. I’ll tap onto the performances and such during the Best Song category later in this article.

Presenters: A majority of the presenters were great, despite a couple others. One of the more awkward presenting came with the stiff Jennifer Aniston and the Pixar envious Jack Black (even though it was a joke, me smells envy). Another strange moment was between comedic actor Ben Stiller trying to pose as Joaquin Phoenix standing next to a slightly aggravated Natalie Portman. Even though they, for myself, were uncomfortable moments, the remainder of the presenters were statuesque and mainly got right down to the point.
Categories: One of the biggest things for many of us is trying to figure out through our own Oscar pools who will win which category. For this year, if you had your ballots in hand while watching the ceremony, it would have been painfully obvious. One example was prolonging the Best Supporting Actor category to futher on into the broadcast than where it normally is (Ledger did deserve that Oscar). Now they have done this kind of thing in previous years with other categories, for instance Diablo Cody winning Best Original Screenplay last year, but it came to the point of ridiculousness as the broadcast continued.

Best Song: Excuse me for a moment while I go on and gripe about this category and how it was handled last night. Out of the three songs that were nominated, two of them were from the Oscar picture favorite, Slumdog Millionaire. The other nominee was from Pixar’s Wall-E, which was supposed to be performed by the original singer (Peter Gabriel) but unfortunately stepped away from it a week before the Oscars. His reason? Not enough time to sing the song, meaning that each one of the three songs is lumped together into a 3 minute mesh, giving Gabriel only 60 seconds to sing a smidgen of the song. Now, I think that might not have been the real reasoning.
When the performance went underway, it started with the song ‘O Saya’, full of glamour and dancing, singing and all sorts of merriment. Then came ‘Down To Earth’, sung by a stiff John Legend while the dancers retire to the corner, all sorts of flashiness that was given to Slumdog Millionaire tucked away for a mediocre backdrop and performance. Then ‘Jai Ho’ started up, the attention quickly peeling away from Legend as it turns into a tribute for Slumdog. Obviously Peter Gabriel’s song did not win, but if the song from a great film was shoved aside for the Oscars to whore out Slumdog, I wouldn’t attend either.
Winners: Aside from the shoe-in win for Danny Boyle and company with Slumdog Millionaire walking away with 8 Oscars, there were some yays and nays over who was chosen. Beside the mumurs that Slumdog should not have won a couple of the technical awards (while I’m just pissed with the Best Song section), one of the outrages has been for Sean Penn winning over Mickey Rourke. Although Penn is a fine actor, to this columnist Rourke appeared more deserving of this award. Wall-E winning Best Animated Feature was something that made many really happy (surprised though it didn’t win Original Screenplay). Visual Effects rightfully went to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was phenominal effects wise. Did it bother anyone else about how they were cutting to so many people during the acceptance speech for Ledger’s Oscar instead of trying to stay focused on his family? For myself it was detracting away from the moment that everyone in the audience was tearing up over.

In the end this year’s Oscars seemed to take a step in the wrong direction, despite its supposed efforts to be different than before. Trying desperately to rekindle some form of an audience it used to have to form better ratings than its dismal previous year, they still continue to be even more overly political and uninteresting. If they continue to be as overly obvious of who will win what for next year, I’ll just tune onto my web browser after the show to see who won.

Here listed below are the winners for each respected Oscar Category.

2009 Oscar Winners
Best Picture
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actor
Sean Penn (Milk)

Best Actress
Kate Winslet (The Reader)

Best Director
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Supporting Actor
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)

Best Supporting Actress
Peneople Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

Best Foreign Language Film
Departures

Best Soundtrack
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Song
‘Jai Ho’ from Slumdog Millionaire

Best Animated Feature Film
Wall-E

Best Cinematography
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Art Direction
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Original Screenplay
Milk

Best Adapted Screenplay
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Documentary (Feature)
Man On Wire

Best Film Editing
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Sound Mixing
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Sound Editing
The Dark Knight

Best Visual Effects
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Short Documentary
Smile Pinki

Best Short Film (Live Action)
Spielzeugland (Toyland)

Best Short Film (Animated)
La Maison En Petits Cubes

Best Hair & Make-Up
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Costume Design
The Duchess