When I spoke to Danny Boyle last October, he was surprised by the positive response that his Slumdog Millionaire was starting to receive stateside after buzz from the Toronto Film Festival began getting louder and louder. Four months later, in the wake of dozens of awards and on the eve of an Oscars in which most people predict Slumdog will win at least half a dozen awards, I often wonder if he's still surprised now. What would surprise him more? A win for best Picture, Director, or Adapted Screenplay? It looks like finally, after a string of Oscar bridesmaids - Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno - Fox Searchlight will finally be the bride, thanks to Slumdog.

And, if Slumdog is the blushing bride this year, then an old-looking baby gets to be the Best Man. If our predictions are right, Slumdog and Button will be the big winners on Sunday night with Boyle's film taking home an amazing seven awards and David Fincher’s three. Other films that won seven Oscars? Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, Out of Africa, The Sting, The Best Years of Our Lives, and The Bridge on the River Kwai. Incredible company. And, if we're right, Slumdog will have one more trophy than The Godfather, Part II and Star Wars. It's been an absolutely amazing, almost unprecedented run, and I don't expect any other movie to get anywhere near that seven-trophy total on Sunday night.

The closest competition for Best Picture this year and the only film that could conceivably take the grand prize from Slumdog is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but I think that film will only be recognized technically, taking home three Oscars. It almost feels like vindication for a generation that adored Trainspotting and Se7en to watch the auteurs that we knew would eventually be among the greats finally ascend to the

With Neil Gaiman's Coraline becoming one of the first critical and commercial hits of the year, it got us thinking about how stop-motion animation has evolved over the years - from creepy old Russian fairy tales to Rankin/Bass Christmas specials to The Nightmare Before Christmas. And now that, with few box-office successes under its belt, stop-motion has arguably worked itself into the Hollywood mainstream, we can't

For the last few years, Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International have been expertly taking the ten nominated films for the Oscar for Short Film: Live Action & Animation and presenting them in two theatrical programs for separate admissions. The lineup is currently playing at the Music Box in Chicago and in theatres in New York and Los Angeles and is expanding to 60 cities

We recently revisited the musical biopic The Buddy Holly Story following the 50^th anniversary of the death of Holly (Buddy died along with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper on February 3, 1950). This got us to thinking about the music biopic genre as a whole and the characteristics movies within the genre share.

It’s been a long few years for Kyle Newman. The young director’s comedy, Fanboys, following a group of George Lucas-obsessed friends on a quest to see Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace before its released, wrapped in the summer of 2006 and is just now being released in theaters on February 6th, 2009. What took so long? Well, the involvement of Harvey Weinstein, another

Not all three-quels are created equal. For every Bourne Ultimatum, we have to sit through a dozen or so films of the quality of X-Men: The Last Stand. But even with the VAST chasm of difference in quality between those two films, they do share something in common - they were inevitable. The Bourne Supremacy and

MovieRetriever.com is going on record. Write it down. Impress your friends. These WILL be the nominees when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences goes through their annual routine on Thursday morning at 5:30am PST. Yes, we're confident. You almost have to be in a year as weird as this one. Or, at least, Hollywood is that predictable.

If you're a fan of Edward Zwick's previous films like Blood Diamond, Legends of the Fall, The Last Samurai, and The Siege, then you will probably like

Last Chance Harvey is one of those simple, gentle movies that doesn't really do anything