From Southern Accent: Join us from 5:00pm to 11:00pm at Southern Accent (839 College Street in Toronto) with an evening of Hollywood fun hosted by former Southern Accent favourite bartender and host of CTV’s “Pop Life”, Mr. Richard Crouse.
Richard makes his return to Southern Accent where he’ll step behind his favourite bar in the city, 20-years since his cocktail slinging days of old! Richard will host a 20-question movie themed quiz (team entries allowed) while the red carpet plays in the background. Insert your predictions for the awards themselves before the show gets underway at 8pm.
The quiz entry with the most correct answers will receive a bottle of sparkling for the ceremony to be enjoyed on the night! Prizes will be awarded throughout the quiz for correct answers to particular questions. There will also be a prize also for the best “red carpet” look. Academy Award Prediction winners to be announced at noon on the 25th February.
Oscar food and drink specials available all night long along with Cajun popcorn. Full food and drink menus also available.
Award season has kicked into high gear and the momentum is leading us to roll out the red carpet at Drake Commissary for Oscars 2018. On March 4, we are celebrating everyone’s favourite award show with television host and film critic Richard Crouse. The Oscar Party at the Commissary is an interactive experience with guests using the Oscar Poll on their mobile devices hoping their predictions pull-through.
We talked with Richard Crouse about Oscars 2018 and his predictions – be sure to take notes!
What are your Oscar predictions for some of the major categories this year? Which films or nominees are the ones on your radar?
Predicting winners is pretty easy. There are the signifiers of Oscar success. Who won the SAG Award? What movie scored big at the Producer’s Guild? You have a look at all that and make educated guesses as to which way the Academy winds are blowing. This is one of the rare years that the cold hard facts and my heart line up. Looks like my favourite movie of the year, The Shape of Water, will take Best Picture. In the Best Actress category everyone except Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,’s Frances McDormand might as well stay home. Darkest Hour’s Gary Oldman looks like a lock for Best Actor and, fingers crossed, Guillermo del Toro may get an Oscar to pair with his recent Golden Globe for directing…. READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
A friend is boycotting the Academy Awards because his favourite film of 2015, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, didn’t make the Oscar’s Best Picture list.
The awards, he says, aren’t relevant because they ignore genre movies and in this particular case, have snubbed the most financially successful film of the year. In fact, the old canard that the Academy doesn’t honour genre movies with Best Picture nods has been shot down this year with nominations for The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road.
The Oscar folks also gave The Force Awakens five nominations and in recent years Inception, Avatar, District 9, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Django Unchained have all earned top nods with LOTR taking home the gold.
Genre movies do just fine with the Academy. No need for C-3PO to cry little metal tears. To the Academy’s credit, not recognizing the year’s box office behemoth while giving Room, a modestly grossing movie, Best Picture, Actress, Directing and Adapted Screenplay nods, actually suggests the Academy will not be wowed by wheelbarrows of cash.
Perhaps the truth is that the Oscars, and awards shows in general, are only as relevant as you want them to be. Are they as important as the Republican debates? It’s all just show biz, so maybe. Ultimately, unless you’re an actor, a director or a shareholder in a nominated film the Oscars are probably not extremely significant to your life. I pay attention to them as a function of my job, and I enjoy them, but this year I’m on board with my friend but for different reasons.
I’m disappointed in Oscar’s failure to acknowledge diversity. For the second year in a row all 20 acting nominations went to white actors. To be clear I’m not implying the Academy is overtly racist. There are too many voters for there to be a conspiracy to keep actors of colour out of the headline categories. Have you ever gone to a restaurant with more than 10 people and tried to get everyone to agree on an appetizer for the table? It’s nearly impossible. Now imagine trying to arrange collusion between 6,000 members of the Academy. Totally hopeless.
So if it’s not a conspiracy why were stellar performances from Creed’s Michael B. Jordan, The Hateful Eight’s Samuel L. Jackson, Sicario’s Benicio Del Toro, Beasts of No Nation’s Idris Elba or any of Straight Outta Compton’s top line cast not nominated? I think it’s a combination of studio decision makers, who tend to be white, male and older coupled with the same demographic of voters at the Academy.
It’s a systemic issue being addressed by Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs’ effort to mould the Academy’s membership to be more in line with the population.
Until the Oscars represent the full width and breadth of the best in Hollywood, regardless of race or gender, they will continue to slide toward irrelevancy. My guess is that the most interesting part of this year’s ceremony won’t be who wins Best Actor but host Chris Rock’s opening monologue, which, if the movie gods prevail, will address the situation in no uncertain terms. It’s a speech I’m predicting will be just as entertaining and provocative as any of the nominees, Star Wars: The Force Awakens included.
Roll out the red carpet from your doorstep and make Oscars night as memorable for your friends as it is for the stars.
Hosting an at-home Oscars party can involve anything from a five-course meal in designer duds to having your guests feast on popcorn as they gather around the TV set.
Canada AM film critic Richard Crouse never misses an opportunity to celebrate the biggest night in Hollywood.
“The Oscars are like the Super Bowl for movie fans. Football fans get to eat wings and drink beer for the Super Bowl — so why shouldn’t movie fans have the same excuse to whoop it up once a year?” says Crouse.
But whether he’s hosting an at-home party or a swanky affair at The Drake Hotel, he only has one rule for guests — no talking during the show.
“No conversation that isn’t directly related to what’s happening on the show is permitted,” says Crouse.
While this won’t be a problem for a film buff like Crouse, how does he make sure his guests follow the same rule?
“Well they have to be carefully selected,” Crouse says with a laugh. “People who are huge film fans like me take the awards very seriously so you have to invite people who are thinking along the same wavelength.”
Crouse, who likes to dress up in a tux for Oscars night, says a good Oscars party always includes watching the red carpet (the etalk Red Carpet special begins at 6:30 pm ET on CTV). Not only is it a great warm-up to the big event, it allows the guests to get all of the chit chat about what everyone’s wearing out of the way before the show begins.
“The King’s Speech,” the tale of King George VI’s struggle with a stammer, leads this year’s Academy Award nominations with 12 nods, including best picture and acting honours for Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush.
The British drama has already won the prestigious Producers Guild of America Award – a good omen since the Producers Guild have correctly forecast the Oscar best picture 13 times in the past two decades. But it will have serious competition from “The Social Network,” which tells the story of the early days of Facebook and which dominated the Golden Globe awards and Critics Choice awards.
The Western remake “True Grit” is next in line in nominations with 10, yet its prospects for nabbing a coveted Best Picture trophy on Feb. 27 seem smaller. The film has largely been ignored in awards so far this season, and was completely snubbed by the Golden Globes earlier this month.
Also on the ballot for best picture are the boxing drama “The Fighter,” science fiction thriller “Inception,” the lesbian family tale “The Kids Are All Right,” the stranded hiker drama “127 Hours,” the independent film “Winter’s Bone,” and the animated feature “Toy Story 3.”
“The King’s Speech” star Colin Firth, seen by many as the front-runner for the Best Actor trophy, may have some competition from Javier Bardem, whose performance in the Spanish-language “Biutiful” has been celebrated by critics. Also in the running are Jeff Bridges for “True Grit,” Jesse Eisenberg for “The Social Network” and James Franco for “127 Hours.”
Natalie Portman, currently pregnant with her first child, is seen as a favourite for Best Actress, after picking up a Best Actress Golden Globe earlier this month. But also vying for the trophy is Annette Bening for her performance in the lesbian family drama “The Kids Are All Right.” Also in contention are Nicole Kidman for “Rabbit Hole”; Jennifer Lawrence for “Winter’s Bone”; and Michelle Williams for “Blue Valentine.”
Up for best director are Tom Hooper for “The King’s Speech”; David Fincher for “The Social Network”; Darren Aronofsky for “Black Swan”; David O. Russell for “The Fighter”; and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for “True Grit.”
Notably absent from that list are “127 Hours” director Danny Boyle and “Inception” director Christopher Nolan — a snub that is already generating buzz, given that the movie is up for eight other awards.
Canadian film “Incendies”, from Quebec director Denis Villeneuve, is up for Best Foreign Language Film. The film has already been named best Canadian film by Toronto and Vancouver film critics and has collected several awards on the festival circuit.
Canada hasn’t had a film nominated for a foreign-language film Oscar since 2007, when Deepa Mehta’s “Water” was in contention. And the last time a Canadian film won the category was in 2004 for Denys Arcand’s “The Barbarian Invasions.”
Yet “Barney’s Version,” based on the novel of the same name by Canadian legend Mordechai Richler, was snubbed from any big awards. The film did earn a nomination for best makeup.
Movie critic Richard Crouse says he was surprised to see both Christopher Nolan and Danny Boyle omitted from the best directors list. But he wasn’t surprised to see “The King’s Speech” earn so many nods.
“It will win a whole bunch of those,” Crouse told CTV’s Canada AM shortly after the nominations were announced.
“I mean, it is the kind of movie that the Academy likes. We always used to talk about how the Academy is old and out of touch and that’s changed a great deal. But still, this is the kind of prestige movie that the Academy likes and it’s the kind of biography that they like.”
This year’s 83rd Academy Awards will air live on CTV from Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.
The show will break with recent traditions of using comedians as hosts. Instead, big-screen stars James Franco, a best-actor nominee for “127 Hours,” and Anne Hathaway will be co-hosts.
