Editor’s Note: This article will be updated in real time as the winners come in during the Academy Awards broadcast. Please join us for our Live-Blog tonight (because we ask nicely), and while you wait for the winners, check out our Oscar Week Series, where you will find breakdowns and predictions for all of the major categories. Tonight’s the night! You find out if you will take top prize in your office pool, and, you know, you’ll get to see which fantastic films are most celebrated with little naked statues of gold. If you love the Oscars, hate them, or pretend to hate them while sitting riveted to the broadcast, one thing is clear: tonight is a night to celebrate the best in filmmaking. We love movies. So do you. Tonight we can all celebrate our favorites of 2010 even if they don’t win and even if they weren’t nominated. As for those in the running, they are all beautiful works of art, they’re all winners tonight, they went out on the field and gave 110%…and…yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s get to the winning, right? And the Oscar goes to…

Have you ever sat at coffee shop, minding your own business and munching on a tasty croissant, when pleasantly and unexpectedly a handsome man or beautiful lady sits down across from you? If life were a movie, one of you would drop something, reach to pick it up at the same time, and charmingly knock heads. Engaging conversation would ensue, you’d fall madly in love, music would swell, and credits would roll like the tears down your movie-self’s cheek. Le sigh and scene. But like movies are oft to show, so much sexual passion can just as easily bring out the evil in characters as it does the good. Movie love can be so intense it borders on destructive, and a budding couple’s sanity can unravel before the audience’s eyes as the story reaches its climax. Sex unites the couple and keeps them together longer than it rationally should, until both partners become weaved so heavily in a tangle of sex-caused insanity neither can see where reality and delusion lie.

This article is part of our Oscar Week Series, where you will find breakdowns and predictions for all of the major categories. The Best Supporting Actor category is one of the most interesting. As Cole and I discussed last week, there really is no stable definition of what constitutes a “supporting” role, so this category can run the gamut from scene-stealers (Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight) to memorable parts with a limited amount of screen time (Hal Holbrook for Into the Wild) to nominations that seem only to be banking off the presence of a film in other categories (Matt Damon for Invictus). Fortunately this year saw five pretty strong nominees (and three first-time nominees), but this year also exhibits the potential variance of the category. Here we have a crack addict, a sperm donator, a townie gangster, an unqualified speech therapist, and somebody named “Teardrop.” Let’s see how these five incredibly different performances size up against one another. With my winner prediction in red, here are the nominees:

Every week, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius log on to their favorite chat client of 1996 as CriterionCollector85 and JP2themax in order to discuss some topical topic of interest. This week, they puzzle over how to define a Best Supporting Role. What does that support mean? Or look like? Does it matter how long someone is on screen or how big a catalyst they are? Since the Oscars don’t seem to know…what the hell is a supporting role anyway?

In an interview with Shock Till You Drop Brad Anderson, director of The Machinist, broke the news that he will be working on an adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel “Concrete Island” – a book Cole recently dreamcast and wrote about for Print to Projector. Fans of The Machinist should take special note of this because not only will he be re-teaming with the writer of that film, Scott Kosar, to get together the script, but he also says that he will once again be looking to Christian Bale for a star. Anderson describes the upcoming film as “ … like an urban Robinson Crusoe story. A guy crashes a car into a highway interchange and is marooned in this weedy lot, injured, and can’t escape, and he’s basically trying to survive in the middle of the big urban metropolis.” In regards to Bale, Anderson said, “Christian’s on board to do that, when we can fit it into his schedule of course.” We all know what Bale’s upcoming schedule looks like, so it may be a while, but it looks like this is going to happen.

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

So Christian Bale is nominated for his first Academy Award. In a career spanning decades, it’s difficult to imagine he’s never been up for one, but if he had to choose a role better suited for it, he couldn’t have done much better than Dicky Eklund in The Fighter. He pours himself into the role so well that it seems likely that the method actor might have gotten addicted to crack just to nail the role down from the inside. Of course, the film within the film is the making of the documentary High on Crack Street, and if you were interested in the real documentary, here’s your chance to see it:

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this shit late at night, what do you expect?

The first images of Rooney Mara in the David Fincher-directed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo adaptation were released to the world on Wednesday. In the form of a cover for W magazine and one other still inside the actual article, the images sparked a brush fire of opinions, cynicism, and what some are calling misogynistic backlash all across the Interwebs. In his article on the images for Badass Digest, Devin Faraci referred to the actress as “Ruined Mara” and said she looks “sickly and awful and her haircut is just… yikes.” He also made a particularly pointed crack at the character’s eyebrows. But let’s sit back for a moment and look at that word. “Character.” What exactly are Mara and Fincher going for with Lisbeth Salander? Is she supposed to be iconic, something of a role model for young girls who watch the Americanized version of Stieg Larsson’s original novel? If so, then maybe Faraci’s claims and the claims by some writers and bloggers on Twitter that the girl is “disgusting”, “gross” or “needs a sandwich” might have some weight behind them. As they are presented, though, they’re just quick jabs that make sexist labels easy to apply.

As China’s filmmaking profile rises, so does director Zhang Yimou’s. The veteran of over two decades has a considerable number of solid films under his belt, including the action flicks Hero and House of Flying Daggers. His base, however, is in drama, and with movies like Raise the Red Lantern, it’s clear that he’s got a formidable skill. That skill will meet halfway around the world with Christian Bale now that Bale has signed on for Zhang’s next project – Nanjing Heroes. The film focuses on the massacre of 1937 where Japanese military killed thousands of Chinese citizens, and Bale is set to play an American man of the cloth who helps save a considerable amount of lives. With the film split between English and Mandarin, it’s unclear where the bulk of the story will be told, but it also signifies the slow growth of China’s presence as a filmmaker for the world. With Zhang and the production jumping into the ocean to the tune of $90 million, this marks the most expensive movie in the country’s history, and the Bale connection delivers a famous name recognized in countries beyond US shores. On a tangent, now that MGM has financing funds, their Red Dawn – the film about a Communist Chinese invasion on US soil – might see the light of day. With any luck, these films will be released on the same weekend to make cultural trend spotting that much easier.[THR]

The power that The Fighter displays is immense. As unconventional a conventional sports film as has been seen, David O. Russell has directed a film where the comedic impact is just as strong as the emotional. It is a triumph of real people on screen in a film culture that has become more and more frightened of stories that are well-rounded enough to not need a dimension tacked on. Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a blue collar worker with a dream of making it big as a boxer. In his corner is Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale) who once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard and has lived off the local fame and crack cocaine ever since. His mother (Melissa Leo) is the older version of a pageant mom who desperately wants success for her boy but struggles against her own selfishness. Everyone in his corner is working against him until he meets Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams) who helps him get his career and his life on track.

The Fighter is the perfect type of film for David O. Russell to followup I Heart Huckabees with. I Heart Huckabees was a very divisive and alienating film for many, most not being into the ‘existential comedy’ vibe. It isn’t what you would call the most accessible film to certain audiences, and O. Russell even referred to it as an experiment. The Fighter is a lot safer, on a commercial level. It’s the type of film that practically excludes no one, but instead is a film with open arms. With I Heart Huckabees, David O. Russell went unrelentingly artful, in an excellent and under-appreciated way, but now with The Fighter he strikes a perfect note of art and commerce. Russell and I spent most of the time in our 13-minute interview discussing this. If you’ve ever seen one of his films, then you know he shows a true love for his characters. No matter how moronic they act or how much they do wrong, David O. Russell still strives for nothing but empathy and love. This is even more understandable when you talk to the acclaimed filmmaker, who was quite friendly and talked very passionately about his process. He took time in his responses, and gave what felt like honest answers.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr heads to the movie theater to enjoy the holiday releases and the award films. But how do they stack up against each other. After being swept into Narnia in post-converted 3D, Kevin takes a trip to Venice where he watches a portly Johnny Depp play an everyman to Angelina Jolie walking around a lot. Finally, he takes another award season trip to Boston to watch Mark Wahlberg get punch drunk..

As the only literate Reject, it’s my duty to find the latest, the greatest and the untouched classics that would make great source material for film adaptations. I read so you don’t have to. This week, Print to Projector presents the story of a man buried alive buried alive in his car trapped in space stuck between two boulders stranded in between two highways on a small grass island where his survival and sanity depend on a few cases of wine and the sheer will to live.

This is non-news, dear reader. You know it and I know it. The only people who don’t seem to know it are the other 99% of movie bloggers in the world who are treating this as if it doesn’t serve as some logical conclusion. Christopher Nolan has made it no secret that The Dark Knight Rises will be his last Batman film, a likely perfect bookend to a trilogy that has set a new standard in the world of comic adaptations. There’s no reason why his star, Christian Bale won’t retire from the franchise, as well. That said, I really wanted to write that title.

Paramount Pictures has released the first trailer for David O. Russell’s The Fighter, a boxing drama starring Mark Wahlberg as “Irish” Mickey Ward, a 30-something brawler from Boston who takes a long, bumpy road to redemption and a fighting chance at a title. Christian Bale stars as his good-for-nothing druggie brother, the guy who taught him everything he knows about punching holes in other dude’s faces. Amy Adams, lovely as always even hidden behind that thick Bahhston accent, plays his supportive (and at one point combative) lady friend. If you remember back, this is the film that went through something like 35 casting changes before settling on Wahlberg and Bale. Looks like they got it right, from a distance…

Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because, of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t want to work it out. You want to be fooled. In the late 19th century, the magician Alfred Borden, “The Professor,” is on trial for the murder of rival magician, Robert Angier, “The Great Danton.” What the prosecution is trying to prove and what the consensus seems to say is that Borden, furious that Angier had stolen Borden’s “The Transported Man” trick, drowned Angier in a Chinese water torture cell on the evening of his final performance.

Earlier today a very juicy email from an exec at Paramount was let loose into the world by the folks over at The Wrap. Within said email was details on a good number of projects currently in development. Insider notes — like the fact that producers are “very happy” with the recent draft of G.I. Joe 2 from Zombieland scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. That’s encouraging, to say the least. But perhaps the most interesting piece of news to come out of this whole debacle — save for World War Z being on track, which is awesome — is a project that would re-team Oscar winners Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) and pair them with an ensemble of very big names.

With all the invention, intriguing plot webs, and overall solid cinematic storytelling that Christopher Nolan’s films are credited for, yet another innovative characteristic of his signature narrative approach is often looked over: his own special brand of antihero. A thread that has connected Nolan’s films (scripted often in collaboration with his brother Jonathan) is the presence of a central male character who possesses some combination of destructive egotism, desperate selfishness at the risk of others, aggressive self-righteousness, willful delusion, or even the first signs of a messiah complex (“asshole” is used in the title of this post simply as an umbrella term for all the negative traits connecting these protagonists). I credit this aspect of storytelling and character development to the brothers Nolan, for filmmakers who work so successfully in Hollywood aren’t often able to bring to the screen characters who contain so many obvious flaws, and further credit goes to them for actually immersing us in their characters’ subconscious (figuratively in the case of all their films not titled Inception), making us give a damn about these characters to the point that sometimes these otherwise obvious personality flaws are only visible upon reflection after the film has been experienced. Nolan’s characters are often complex and intelligent, but beneath any confident exterior resides a deeply troubled psychology – some more obvious than others.

This week, on a very special Reject Radio, Landon Palmer grabs half a handle of expensive whiskey and gets nostalgic about Cinematic One Night Stands (those movies that you love but never want to see again). We also dig deep into the question of how a CGI character can be fired, debate who should direct Wicked, and discover Youtube. Plus, we manage to squeeze in a few minutes to review Despicable Me, I Am Love, and Predators. Check it out after the jump!