Oscar News

• The Toronto Film Festival is in full swing, and there are already some films getting strong reviews that look to turn into Oscar contenders: Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (with praise for leading-man George Clooney) and David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. Among the films to get less-than-stellar reviews are Madonna’s W.E.
• The Venice Film Festival is also running, and among the films screening there are George Clooney’s The Ides of March and Roman Polanski’s Carnage. Both of those films have gotten solid, but not stellar, response.
• The Telluride Film Festival is this weekend, and among the films supposedly playing at the secretive film festival are The Descendants, The Artist and the as-yet-unseen Albert Nobbs.
• In a controversial interview that has gotten a lot of attention, Sean Penn has spoken out against The Tree of Life, which he one of the principal players in. He says that while it was one of the best scripts he has ever read, the movie is too hard to follow.

Review Round-Up

No possible Oscar contenders have been released in the last two weeks.

Oscar Box Office

• The Help passsed the $100 million mark this week, officially making it one of the biggest surprise hits of the summer. Rise of the Planet of the Apes also passed the $100 million mark, making this the first August to have two $100 million movies in four years.

Oscar Farewell

No members of the Oscar family passed away in the last two weeks.