The Everyone’s-a-Winner 2016 Oscar Nominee Unofficial Goodie Bag

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by Gary Meyer

Are you having an Oscar Party? Maybe you should go through your house and assemble some goodie bags. But we doubt you can top the bags that will be delivered to the acting- and director-category nominees the morning after the Academy Awards.

Lash Fary with some of the 2014 Unofficial Oscar Goodie Bag goodies his team assembled. –Photo courtesy of Business Week

Lash Fary with some of the 2014 Unofficial Oscar Goodie Bag goodies his team assembled. –Photo courtesy of Business Week

“Even Hollywood’s most acclaimed stars are disappointed if they do not win an Oscar. When our consolation gift shows up the next day, we like to think it is welcome distraction to lift their spirits,” says Lash Fary, whose company Distinctive Assets assembles the bags.

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Wonder if they were fighting over a goodie bag?

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Q & A: The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture

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heroes-book-lgIn light of Spotlight’s six Oscar nominations  – and the winners being announced at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, Feb. 28 – we talked to Joe Saltzman, co-author (with Matthew C. Ehrlich) of the new book Heroes and Scoundrels: The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (University of Illinois Press). [Ed. note: Spotlight won the Best Picture Oscar.]

Saltzman is a professor of journalism and communication at USC Annenberg, and he maintains the comprehensive Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC) research database www.ijpc.org (more than 87,000 entries and counting). Saltzman previously had a long, award-filled career in newspaper reporting and editing, broadcast journalism and documentary filmmaking. Roger Leatherwood interviews him for EatDrinkFilms.

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Critics Corner: EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

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Embrace_of_the_Serpent-863726984-largeBeautifully shot in black and white – a rarity these days – Ciro Guerro’s Embrace of the Serpent is Columbia’s nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, and deservedly so. An “elegy for lost cultures and an indictment of exploitation,” this saga of human endurance in the wilderness – also the theme of fellow Oscar nominee The Revenant – plays like “a rainforest fever dream.” Critics Daniel Barnes and Dennis Harvey present their takes on this vivid physical adventure, which opens  across North America in February and March.

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Critics Corner: A WAR

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The Danes think enough of Tobias Lindholm’s A War to nominate it for best foreign-language film in this year’s Oscars. See how Bay Area reviewers Daniel Barnes and Richard von Busack view Lindholm’s “… look at the burden of leadership and the psychological toll of living through hell” in this week’s Critics Corner.

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Dash’s Crib – Where modern crime fiction was born

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by Eddie Muller

[John Huston’s film version of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Turner Classic Movies presents screenings Feb. 21 and 24 at theaters around the country. For more, click here and for the line-up of TCM Big Screen Classics.  And, as is our policy, look for extras after the article-ed.]

The first time I walked into Sam Spade’s apartment I thought my head would explode. Continue reading →