Brokeback Mountain had the highest opening weekend per screen average in 2005, and it went from opening in only five theaters to playing wide all over the world by the end of its run. Then, when award season rolled around, it garnered all sorts of acclaim, getting awards for best picture from multiple outlets, Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director, and it even got recognition from GLAAD for being the year’s most outstanding film. Pretty much it was embraced by everyone as being groundbreaking and important, and it saved Ang Lee’s butt after he pissed everyone off by making The Hulk. Weekend came out just this last September, but you might not remember it because not many people ended up checking it out. By the time it left theaters it had only made a domestic gross of  $484,592. Ouch. And while this movie also got some love from GLAAD, it was ignored by all of the mainstream awards shows like the Oscars and the Golden Globes. A cultural phenomenon it wasn’t.

Famed British filmmaker Mike Leigh recently received his fifth screenwriting nomination for Another Year. Another Oscar nomination for a highly celebrated filmmaker should be surprising to no one except, in this special case, for the fact that precisely zero of Leigh’s nominated films actually use screenplays. Leigh’s films are constructed through a painstaking and long-term process of creating characters and scenarios with his cast and creative team. His films aren’t improvised in the sense of, say, a Christopher Guest film, where a basic framework exists and actors are allowed to ad-lib and play with(in) that paradigm. Leigh’s films are instead created from the outset through an involved collaborative process. Leigh’s regular team of actors bring to each individual film their construction of a character from scratch. Details arise eventually through this collaboration, and the final work projected onscreen is the end result of a long selection of various possibilities. The only reason Leigh’s films even qualify for screenwriting awards is because of the written script that Leigh creates after the end product has been made. The physical screenplay, in this case, is nothing more than a transcription written after the fact, or a record of a much larger event (whose details are largely unknown to the audience). While Leigh is the sole nominee for Another Year, the creation of the script (or, in this case, the transcript) is just as indebted to the creative efforts of other individuals involved. Stars Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville are, in a sense, just [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

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?

Kevin Carr sits his chubbiness down and sees if Daybreakers, Leap Year and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus can make the grade.

As a part of FSR’s Decade in Review I’ve been tasked with coming up a list of the most memorable, landmark performances since 2000.

On this particular night of Fantastic Fest, at this particular secret screening, we witnessed something spectacular in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

Sony is inches away from scooping up Terry Gilliam’s inventive flick, and they might even send it to theaters this year. Doesn’t it make you want to watch the trailer again?

Prepare to lose your geek minds and have your inner child take over, because this new Wild Things featurette will revert you back to 6-years old.

A clip of Heath Ledger in his last performance was shown last night at Comic-Con, and it’s now online for everyone’s eyeballs to behold.

Wait, The Dark Knight still wins awards?

Arriving with the loud crash of silence, the MTV Movie Awards seem to have been taken over by the Disney Corporation this year. Most of the awards seem fair, but Best High School Musical Movie seems to be a loaded category. Complete winners inside!

In the wake of its appearance at the Cannes Film Festival this past week, three new clips from Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus have appeared online via the French site Comme Au Cinema.

New photos have been released from Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, including new shots of Heath Ledger as well as his replacements, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law.

I was about ready to just feature this product as part of our ongoing series of Stuff You Need, but then logic started to take hold.

An awesome reader named JJ sent over a link to this video earlier today which was posted on the website of 42 Entertainment, the company responsible for the ridiculously successful “Why So Serious” alternate reality game that led up to the release of last year’s highest grossing film, The Dark Knight.

As if it weren’t enough that Heath Ledger died during production, now that it’s finished, Gilliam has to somehow sell the damned thing.

The DP for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus just threw a compilation image up on his personal website, and apparently it’s a slow enough news week for people in the internet tubes to find it amazing. Consider it a photographic revolution.

For better or for worse, filmic performances are often determined by an unavoidable cultural weight as well as increasingly mediating technological factors that go largely unacknowledged or unrecognized by critics or audiences as an actual part of the performance.

Fans are calling for Heath Ledger’s rendition of The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster bash The Dark Knight to be acknowledged as the pinnacle of the character’s representation on film.

The SAG Awards took place last night and gave us a few things to think about as we enter the home stretch for the Oscars.