The Artist (2011): Black and White, Silent and Charming

To make a black and white film for the broad audience in the 21st century requires courage. To make a silent movie for the average moviegoer in 2011 calls for more than just boldness. To do it you have to be imaginative and inventive with a spice of craziness. Apparently, The Artist's director Michel Hazanavicius does not have any deficiency of these and he deserves respect for his risky initiative to create this movie. But what makes the story really charming is the fact his effort has proven to be a quite successful film enchanting the audiences all over the world and wining several of the most important Academy Awards in 2012.

The Artist does not sport an original plot or even an original score despite its win in the category of Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures. Nevertheless the plot is decent and the music is actually very cool and appropriate for the movie. You will most probably even recall some of the melodies for at least a few days after watching the film. The rest of The Artist's five Oscars are well deserved and the movie's win in the category of Best Motion Picture of the Year is not surprising although there will be always people arguing which the most worthy film has been. Of course, it's a matter of personal preference but we can safely say The Artist is one of the better and amongst the most notable movies of the previous year.

With this almost entirely silent black and white picture director Michel Hazanavicius proves to be a good moviemaker and unconventional entertainer. He has successfully managed to put in the movie simple but effective details to make his task of conquering the public easier. One example could be the presence of a cute dog and his owner's interaction with him. Another praise we own Michel Hazanavicius is for his skilful utilization of the otherwise limited in sound or color silent or black and white characteristics of the movie. For example, the story of The Artist (about a silent era movie star's struggle with the rise of talking pictures) might not be very original but it is perfect for using silence as a creative device in the film.

Of course, the accessibility of an old fashioned movie to the general 21st century audience does not come only from the clever use of antiquated technologies. The advancement of filmmaking furthers not only talking and color movies but also their ancient relatives. What I mean is you won't see here a black and white picture quality on the level of the films made in the dawn of cinema. The same is valid for The Artist's audio quality. Being a 2011 movie provides for a high-grade picture and sound thus bringing the film far closer to the contemporary audience compared to the early 20th century movies, which are definitely not for everybody.

The cast of The Artist is something we should not miss mentioning. The lead actor Jean Dujardin has not won his Best Actor Academy Award for nothing. He is funny, colorful and he doesn't need to speak in order to fascinate you. His partner Bérénice Bejo (receiving "just" a nomination for Best Supporting Actress Oscar) is captivating even more than Dujardin. She is convincing simultaneously as an admirer and opposition of Jean Dujardin's character. John Goodman and James Cromwell have also solid although not long screen appearances in quite suitable roles for themselves.

To be objective, the movie has some flaws. There are a few moments that are a bit boring but nothing too extensive to drive you away from the film. And as already noticed the story lacks originality but this is well compensated with its incorporation into the movie's realization. It's not the plot that makes The Artist easily recommendable for everybody. It's the overall experience you get by watching a well-crafted "old" film in a 2012 movie theater. Do not expect a tribute to the silent era black and white films cause you may be disappointed at the end. Just go and enjoy The Artist for what it has to offer on the big screen.

Academy Awards 2012: Oscar Winners and Nominees Trivia

This year's Academy Awards broke a few records and introduced novelties. Some of them were probably expected and others not so much. Most notably it had never happened before a movie produced by a country different from the United States or the United Kingdom to win the Oscar in the Best Picture category. Well, it happened this year. There were also other interesting developments like the cease of Pixar's domination in the Best Animated Feature Film category. And a few personal achievements contributed to make 2012 Academy Awards a curious event. Here are some of the particular achievements and trivia.

French/Belgian movie The Artist won the Oscar in the Best Motion Picture of the Year category. For the first time, the winning film had not been produced by the US or the UK. Consequently, The Artist became the first French movie to win Best Picture. It also became the film produced by a non-English speaking country winning the most Oscars (5) in a single year. In addition to Best Picture, The Artist also won the Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Actor, Best Costume Design and Best Music Written for Motion Pictures. Finally, the film had received 10 Oscar nominations which equalled Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's record for a foreign movie. Some could say that all these achievements are actually due to the fact that The Artist is a silent movie thus it is not exactly a foreign language film, which makes it more accessible to the American public. On the other hand it has enough non-appealing to the general audience features (silence included).

Something to be expected was Meryl Streep's 17th Oscar nomination. An Academy favorite almost since the dawn of her acting career, she had been nominated for an Academy Award roughly every two years. And not so surprisingly, in addition to breaking her own record for the most acting nominations, Meryl Streep also won the 2012 Oscar in the Best Actress category for The Iron Lady. Now only Katherine Hepburn has more awards than Streep.

Similar to Meryl Streep, Woody Allen broke his own record for the most Oscar nominations in the category of Best Writing (Original Screenplay) with his beautiful film Midnight in Paris. He made them 15. Woody Allen also won the award for the third time, which made him the person with the most Academy Awards in the category.

Canadian actor Christopher Plummer won his first Oscar in the category of Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for the movie Beginners (2010). As a result, he became the oldest actor to win in this category and the oldest person (82) to win an Oscar in the entire history of the Academy Awards.

After Pixar's heavy domination in the last decade it was about time for something new in the field of animated films. Pixar movies have been regularly nominated throughout the decade and they won six Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature Film since 2004 including 4 consecutive Oscars for Toy Story 3 (2010), Up (2009), WALL·E (2008), Ratatouille (2007) in the past 4 years. This year they did not win (Industrial Light & Magic's Rango did). Actually, Pixar hadn't even been nominated. Let's hope it will motivate them to make a better animated film in 2012.

Oscar Winners at 2011 Academy Awards: Another Year, Another Fail

Another year, another Academy fail. Not that anyone would have expected significantly different Oscar winners.

If there is a big Oscar winner at 2011's Academy Awards that's obviously The King's Speech with its 4 wins. While it's not the single film winning 4 Oscars overnight (the other one being Inception), all of The King's Speech statuettes have been won amongst the most important categories: Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. The King's Speech is a decent film. But it is also unworthy of at least two, possibly three of these Oscars. Because, you see, The King's Speech is flawed. And seriously so.

The King's Speech has a very potent premise and it starts quite well, vigorously exploiting that. It is pleasantly witty and sporting some likable characters, most notably Elizabeth and Logue. The acting of the three leads is strong throughout. All is good up to and including the first encounter of Logue and Bertie. Then the film quickly loses steam and (best) direction, and starts treading in circles. Luckily, the stupid substandard Freudian psychoanalysis crap is only superficially mentioned and not explored further, but we are not saved the mediocre court drama and the even more boring brother-son-king-duty stuff. On top of that, everything is presented in distracting wide-angle and self-indulgent framing and camera tilts. This translates The King's Speech into a movie undeserving to be among the Oscar winners in the Best Picture, Best Directing and Best Original Screenplay categories. Whether Colin Firth's Best Actor win is justified can probably be argued but at least it is not as grating as the other three awards. Rewarding Tom Hooper for ruining what could have been a great movie and granting that mess the Best Picture Academy Award is ironic. Especially in the competition of Fincher, the Coens and even Russell.

The Oscar winners in Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor categories add even more ridicule. The Academy's preference for hyperactive roles with a hysterical tendency is utterly amusing. Academy members are like children in a candy shop. They go for the most colorful and noisiest stuff. Which makes Oscar baits so easy to pull on them. Both Oscar winners, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, seriously overact their performances. And while picking Bale for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award over the quiet menace of John Hawkes or the confident eccentricity of Geoffrey Rush is understandable, and to an extent, excusable, as Bale's attention-whore style overacting is mostly during the docu-shoot (a fact that, in a way, makes it acceptable), one can't really say the same for Melissa Leo. Every single alternative among the Oscar nominees for Best Supporting Actress would have been better than her, but apparently not noisy enough for the Academy: Jacki Weaver's measured performance in Animal Kingdom; the regal, yet warm, Helena Bonham Carter; the cocky and determined Hailee Steinfeld; even Amy Adams was less annoying in The Fighter compared to Melissa Leo. And while we are still at the candies, Alice in Wonderland's Academy Awards in the Best Art Direction and Best Costumes categories give us even more examples of the Academy's affinity for the bright and loud.

As we predicted here, Roger Deakins was once again denied his long overdue Academy Award for Cinematography. This time True Grit was not enough to make him an Oscar winner. Inception's merits in the field of cinematography mostly come down to the use of 35mm in VistaVision mode, adding 65mm to that, mixing in some digital, and executing a few difficult shots. In that regard, its Oscar award is not totally undeserved. Not that the Academy understands it, though. And they aren't less guilty of missing the beauty and superiority of Deakins' work. Still, it could have been worse. The King's Speech could have won the Oscar here...

To end on a more positive vibe, it was not mediocrity and epic fail only at 2011's Academy Awards. After all, Aaron Sorkin did win the Best Adapted Screenplay category, and Hans Zimmer's music was not among the Oscar winners again. And, erm, yeah, that's that then.

Discover more Oscar related articles in our Review Maze.

People with Multiple Oscar Nominations and Not a Single Academy Award

Continuing from our previous article on the Oscars and the Academy's omissions we are now going to talk about a few people who did get multiple Oscar nominations but never received an Academy Award.

This is formally inspired by the ninth Oscar nomination of cinematographer Roger Deakins (for True Grit) who doesn't have an Academy Award in his collection yet. The fact that this cinematographer extraordinaire and a long-time favorite of fellow cinematographers has been continuously neglected by the Academy is symptomatic of the way the Academy ballots work. A good chunk of the Academy members tend to vote for the bigger titles in the technical categories. Voting in these categories for their Best Picture favorite (if it happens to be nominated there) is common practice. Probably that's why Roger Deakins, who usually shoots smaller character driven films, never wins. Especially striking was that in 2008 he was double nominated for No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford but lost to Robert Elswitt's There Will Be Blood (admittedly, a fine looking film but hardly of the exquisite quality of The Assassination). As occasionally happens in such cases, the double Oscar nomination may have been a bad favor, actually leading to split in the votes. Unfortunately, 2011's Best Cinematography Oscar does not look like going Deakins' way considering the competition of The King's Speech (wtf?), The Social Network and Inception. The chance one of these three films seizes the Academy Award for Best Cinematography is huge, but one can never know for sure.

To add some more spice, let's have a quick walk through history for some other multiple Oscar nominees who never got the Academy Award.

Italian maestro Federico Fellini was nominated twelve times for Best Director or Best Writing but never won an Academy Award. This is not surprising. Foreign filmmakers working out of Hollywood rarely won Oscars (other than the Foreign Language category) due to the general unfamiliarity of America audiences (Academy members included) with their work. The Academy sought to offset this omission with an Honorary Award in 1992. Like if anyone cares about these. They remain a popular Academy device for soothing its guilty hive-conscience nevertheless.

Alfred Hitchcock received five Oscar nominations for Best Director. Even though he was a crowd pleaser he never really got much love from the Academy. Even a masterpiece in direction like Rear Window couldn't bring him the Academy Award (that year he lost to Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront). Hitchcock's technical and artistic genius was in a way rediscovered after Truffaut promoted him heavily as an example of the Auteur theory. Truffaut's book-interview with Hitchcock may have actually played a role when Hitchcock received the Honorary Oscar in 1967. Hitchcock's influence continues to be stronger in European cinema, the latest noteworthy Hitchcock inspired outing being Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer.

Robert Altman was nominated seven times (five Oscar nominations for Best Director and two for Best Picture) but lost to the likes of Steven Spielberg, Milos Forman, Ron Howard and Clint Eastwood. He surely had some tough luck meeting serious competition in the years he got nominated. And guess what? Right...he got an Honorary Award in 2006. Well, it was the least the Academy could do to honor his unorthodox methods and contributions to filmmaking: loose scripts, non-linearity, free improvisation, overlapping dialogue. He even fought with the studios to get R ratings for his films in order to keep children out of the audience because they wouldn't get the movies, a commendable trait in a strong business-minded environment as the film industry.

And to finish this off we are getting back further in time. One of the biggest stars of screwball comedy, Irene Dunne, was nominated five times for Best Actress (all leading roles). And she is the only one in this company that did not receive a Honorary Award. Back at the time comedy was not so rare in the acting Oscar nominations as nowadays but performances in drama were still favored. Perfection of comic timing apparently was not enough to win her an Oscar. Ironically, her most critically acclaimed role was in a drama feature (I Remember Mama) which also garnered an Oscar nomination in 1949. But, really, it is the fact she did not receive the Academy Award for her performance opposite Cary Grant in the seminal screwball comedy The Awful Truth that is most infuriating.

Discover some interesting facts about the Academy Awards or search for other movie articles in our Review Maze.

Academy Award Nominations 2011: Best Animated Feature Oscar Nominees Criticism, Part I

When it comes to Academy Awards the omissions of the Academy often generate more buzz than actual winners. Frankly, they are often more buzz-worthy indeed. While in 2011's Academy Award nominations there aren't really any laughter inducing blunders among the actual Oscar nominees like the ones at the Golden Globes (*cough* The Tourist *cough*), there are still some noteworthy omissions. One of these is discussed here, and it is in the category for Best Animated Feature.

If you have been following the Academy Award nominations in this category in recent years you may have noticed that the number of nominations varies between three and five. For example, last year there were five Oscar nominees and this year we have three: Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon and The Illusionist. This is because of a funny article in the nomination rules which defines a maximum of three nominees if there are less than fifteen submissions in the Best Animated Feature category and a maximum of five Oscar nominees if there are more than fifteen submissions. So in 2009 there were 20 movies submitted, which resulted in five nominees selected for the 2010 Oscars. And in 2010 there were 15 movies submitted resulting in three Academy Award nominations for the 2011 Oscars. One might wonder why the rules do not explicitly specify when to select four Oscar nominees and leave that to the discretion of the Nomination Committee.

The eligible movies for Best Animated Feature category were (in alphabetical order): Alpha and Omega, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, Despicable Me, The Dreams of Jinsha, How to Train Your Dragon, Idiots and Angels, The Illusionist, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, Megamind, My Dog Tulip, Shrek Forever After, Summer Wars, Tangled, Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue, Toy Story 3. It's a pretty decent line-up despite a few cringeworthy entries (but hey, it is a free country, any movie can be submitted if eligible). And the three Oscar nominees selected out of these fifteen are all solid movies. But as it ever(y) so often happens with the Academy Award nominations, the 2011 Oscar worthy title is not amongst them.

Before delving into that, a digression. The Academy has branches based on professional occupation. Most of the Oscar nominees are decided by members of the corresponding branch in a simple vote. The submissions collecting most votes are elected as nominees, which are then voted by all members of the Academy. This is actually reasonable because how many people can really judge the Sound Editing category, for example? So the sound nominations are decided by the Sound branch, the cinematography nominations by the Cinematographers branch, etc. This is not the case for all Awards, though. The Best Picture Oscar nominees are decided by all members. And some other categories are judged by committees. The chairman of a committee is appointed by the Academy president, and the chairman then invites people to serve on the committee. This is the procedure for most of the categories which don't have a corresponding branch in the Academy. And Animation is one of these "branchless" fields. So this is one of the categories that are not decided on a pure professional level. Which means that other factors come into play: politics, box-office and so on.

Follow the link to read the second part of our article Academy Award Nominations 2011: Best Animated Feature Oscar Nominees Criticism, Part II.

Academy Award Nominations 2011: Best Animated Feature Oscar Nominees Criticism, Part II

Follow the link to read the first part of our article Academy Award Nominations 2011: Best Animated Feature Oscar Nominees Criticism, Part I.

In recent years the category for Best Animated Feature has been dominated by Pixar productions. Which is perfectly understandable. Pixar have been at the forefront in the field of 3D animation, both technically and storytelling-wise. And their rivals were constantly lagging behind. Pixar's superiority was just a fact of life. The norm. One of those things that's silly to question. And Toy Story 3 is no exception here. The mature themes and their handling were even acknowledged with an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Second in a row for Pixar after Up. And also pretty much cementing Toy Story 3's win in the Best Animated Feature category, but this is another story.

How to Train Your Dragon is undoubtedly the best Dreamworks animation so far. Undoubtedly, it's also a worthy Oscar nominee. As all other Dreamworks productions it is a little bit uneven technically, mostly in the way it handles its realistic environments versus the stylized characters. But one can't help but notice the positive influence of visual consultant Roger Deakins in the way the movie is "shot": the fluid but restrained camera and the live-action-like lighting. In view of the forementioned Pixar excellence this little twist is commendable as an effort for differentiation. The end result is beautiful to behold, with night scenes and interiors being especially gorgeous.

What is the problem then, one might ask?

See, it is pretty obvious: that's the glaring absence of Tangled amongst the Oscar nominees. Tangled might be the most refreshing thing to happen to 3D animation since its advent. With the way it mimics the movements of the classic Disney animated figures. And with the way it boldly shuns away photorealistic rendering (which is Pixar's domain, anyway) in favor of hand-drawn simulation and then enhancing that with established modern techniques like global illumination (overemphasized for a richer look) and subsurface scattering. Tangled is really the missing link between photo-realistic 3D done the Pixar way and Disney from the old days. Surely, it deserves to be amongst 2011 Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature. Well, one could probably do with less singing, but, hey, it's Disney...

Now all this should be quite obvious to the Nomination Committee, or at least to a part of it. While Pixar and Dreamworks go evolutionary, Disney have gone radical. One possible reason for the omission of Tangled among the Oscar nominees in this category may be the fact Pixar and Disney are one company now. And with only three slots available the politically correct decision is probably to promote studio diversity in the Academy Award nominations. With the box-office success of Toy Story 3 and its apparent appeal (as pointed to by the Best Picture nod) favoring it over Tangled is understandable. Another possible explanation is philosophical and concerns the very foundations of the Best Animated Feature category and how the submissions for Oscar nominees are judged: Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon could just happen to be better films. But then again, this is not the Best Picture category, this is the category for Animated Features.

So maybe just bad luck for Tangled then. In a better year with five Oscar nominees the movie would most certainly get an Academy Award nomination. Yet, this is not a consolation or whatnot. The point is, the Academy has once again taken a wrong step. Unsurprisingly.

Read our opinion about 2011 Oscar winners. You might also find interesting to read about people who got multiple Oscar nominations but never received the Academy Award. If you like animated films, you may check our Top 5 3D Blu-ray movies article, where naturally you'll find some animations listed. Or just browse the Review Maze for more reviews.

Oscar Trivia: Who's the Youngest Oscar Winner or Has Most Oscars Won, Part I

In anticipation of the announcement of 2011's Academy Award winners this month, let's warm up with some Oscar trivia. (Some of the listed achievements below have become obsolete after 2012 Academy Awards.)

General Oscar trivia

- The Oscars have been rewarded since 1929. The current "sealed envelope" method for the announcements is used since 1941.

- The Oscar statuette was modelled after actor Emilio Fernandez.

- The Oscar statuette weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg), and is 13.5 inches (34 cm) tall.

- The origin of the name "Oscar" is unclear with several versions circulating for many years but it has been around since the 1930's.

- Since 1950, the winners and their heirs have been legally prohibited from selling the Oscar statuettes without initially offering them back to the Academy for $1.

- Since 2002 the award ceremony is held at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

Personal Oscar trivia - the oldest and youngest Oscar winners

- The youngest Oscar winner ever was 6-year-old Shirley Temple although her 1935's Academy Award was an honorary one.

- The youngest Oscar winner of a standard Academy Award was Tatum O'Neal at age 10. She won in 1974 for her role in Paper Moon in the category of Best Supporting Actress. This also makes her the youngest woman/girl to win for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. And she is also the youngest Oscar nominee in the category.

- The oldest actress to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress was Peggy Ashcroft at age 77. The oldest Oscar nominee for Best Actress in a Supporting Role was Gloria Stuart at age 87 for Titanic which also makes her the oldest Oscar nominee ever.

- The youngest Oscar Winner in the Best Supporting Actor category was Timothy Hutton at age 20. He won for Ordinary People in 1981. The previous year Justin Henry at age 8 became the youngest nominee in the category for Kramer vs. Kramer and the youngest Oscar nominee ever.

- George Burns was the oldest winner for Best Supporting Actor at age 80. Hal Holbrook was the oldest nominee in the category of Best Actor in a Supporting Role. He was 82 years old when nominated for Into the Wild.

- Marlee Matlin was the youngest Oscar winner in the Best Actress category. She was 21 years old when winning for her role in Children of a Lesser God. Keisha Castle-Hughes was the youngest nominee in the category at age 13.

- Jessica Tandy was the oldest Oscar winner in the Best Actress category. She was 80 when she won for Driving Miss Daisy. Thus she is also the oldest Academy Award winner ever. She is also the oldest Oscar nominee in the category of Best Actress in a Leading Role.

- The youngest Oscar winner in the Best Actor category was Adrien Brody at age 29 for The Pianist. The youngest Oscar nominee in this category was Jackie Cooper at age 9.

- The oldest Oscar winner in the Best Actor category was Henry Fonda at age 76. The oldest Academy Award nominee in the category of Best Actor in a Leading Role was Richard Farnsworth at age 79.

- The youngest individual to win the Best Director award was Norman Taurog at age 32. The youngest person to be nominated for Best Director was John Singleton at age 24 for Boyz n the Hood. Orson Welles was 26 years old when nominated for Citizen Kane.

- The oldest person to win the Best Director award was Clint Eastwood at age 74 for Million Dollar Baby. The oldest Oscar nominee in the Best Director category was John Huston at age 79 for Prizzi's Honor.

- The first woman to win the Best Director Academy Award was Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker last year.

Read Oscar Trivia, Part 2 to learn who has the most Oscars won and some movie-related Oscar trivia.

Oscar Trivia: Who's the Youngest Oscar Winner or Has Most Oscars Won, Part II

Read Oscar Trivia, Part 1 to learn about the oldest and youngest Oscar winners along with some general Oscar trivia. (Note: A few of the achievements below have become obsolete after Academy Awards 2012.)

Personal Oscar trivia - most Oscars won and most nominations

- Walt Disney is the individual with the most Oscars ever won and at the same time with the most Oscar nominations ever. He has 22 standard Oscar wins (plus 4 Honorary Awards) and 59 Academy Award nominations.

- Walt Disney is also the person with the most Oscar nominations in a single year: six in 1954, for 6 different films. He won 4 Academy Awards that year, which is also a record for the most Oscars won by an individual in a single year.

- The most Oscar nominated living person is composer John Williams with 45 nominations. He has 5 wins out of these. Another composer, Alfred Newman, also had 45 Academy Award nominations (with 9 wins), including 4 nominations for 4 different films in 1940. It is worth noting that back then the Academy would give out as many as 14 nominations in some categories and also there were categories for both Original Score and Scoring.

- Sound guy Kevin O'Connell has the most Oscar nominations without a single win ever: twenty.

- The director with most Oscars won is John Ford. He has four Academy Awards.

- The director with most Oscar nominations is William Wyler: twelve (3 wins).

- Leon Shamroy and Charles Lang have the most Academy Award nominations for cinematography: 18. Shamroy has 4 wins and Lang has 1 win. Shamroy holds the record for the most wins for cinematography together with Joseph Ruttenberg.

- The actor with the most nominations is Jack Nicholson (12). He and Walter Brennon have 3 wins each. All 3 Brennon's awards though are for Best Supporting Actor while Jack Nicholson has 2 Oscars for Best Actor. Thus, Nicholson is also among the nine actors having the most Academy Awards for Best Actor. The other 8 people having 2 Oscars in the category of Best Actor in a Leading Role are Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Penn.

- The actor with most Academy Award nominations for Best Actor without ever winning is Peter O'Toole. He has been 8 times Oscar nominee in the category. He also holds the record for the longest (44 years) span between his first and last Oscar nominations.

- The actress with the most Oscar nominations is Meryl Streep (16, with 2 wins).

- Katharine Hepburn is the actress that has the most Oscars won: 4 (out of 12 nominations).

Movie-related Oscar trivia

- The movies with most Oscar nominations ever are All About Eve and Titanic. They both have 14 nominations.

- The movies with most Oscars won are Ben Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. They have 11 Academy Awards each.

- Three movies have won the Big Five Awards in one year. The "Big Five" are the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and either Best Adapted Screenplay or Best Original Screenplay. These movies are It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.

- The first animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture was Beauty and the Beast in 1992. Since then, there have been only 2 other animated films nominated for Best Motion Picture of the Year - Up in 2010 and Toy Story 3 in 2011. (Criticism of this year's Best Animated Feature nominees)

- Two movies, The Turning Point and The Color Purple, are tied for most Academy Award nominations (11) without winning a single Oscar.

Read about other people with several Oscar nominations but without a single Academy Award won or browse our Review Maze for more movie articles.