Coming off of last year’s magnificent Moonrise Kingdom, writer/director Wes Anderson is currently in the midst of filming his highly anticipated follow-up, a period film called The Grand Budapest Hotel.  Plot details for the pic have been hard to come by thus far, but we know that it takes place in 1927 and centers around the goings-on at a Hungarian hotel.  Now a full synopsis has landed online, revealing that the central story involves a legendary concierge and a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé, with a litany of other fascinating plot points taking place at the titular hotel.  Given that Ralph Fiennes and Saoirse Ronan are leading the stellar ensemble, one assumes they will be playing the concierge and protégé.

Hit the jump for more, including the full synopsis and news regarding the film’s release date.  The pic also stars Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Jude Law, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, and Willem Dafoe.

The first set photos and video from Wes Anderson‘s Grand Budapest Hotel have leaked online.  Details about the film are scarce, but we know it takes place in 1927 in a Hungarian hotel and has Ralph Fiennes and Saoirse Ronan in the lead roles. Plot details are scarce, but the movie is reportedly in the vein of the films of Billy Wilder (The Apartment) and Ernest Lubitsch (The Shop Around the Corner).  The impressive cast also includes Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, and Mathieu Amalric.  In addition to showing off the setting, the images also show us the colorful costumes (I like the purple coats) and Goldblum’s commanding facial hair.

Hit the jump to check out the set photos.  Grand Budapest Hotel should arrive some time next year.

For proof that 2012 was a nutty year for awards contenders, look no further than the Best Director category.  Over the past few days, we’ve been looking back how the ebbs and flows of the past 12 months have shaped the awards race in a number of categories, and one of the most dynamic shifts came with Best Director.  After the jump, we run down how the race for Oscar glory progressed over the past few months to give us the five nominees who will be vying for the gold on Oscar Sunday.  Hit the jump to read on.

A couple of new featurettes have landed online, one for an upcoming movie and one for a 2012 film that’s vying for Oscar gold:

• Oz the Great and Powerful – A new featurette for director Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz shows quite a bit of new footage and does a nice job of introducing us to the cast of characters (James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams).  I find it curious that they’re trying to keep the audience guessing as to which witches are good and which are bad, since the names are the same as the ones in the source material.  The film opens in 3D on March 7th.
• Moonrise Kingdom – Hot off a Best Original Screenplay nomination for writers Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, this new featurette focuses on the genesis of the project and the writing of the incredible script.  The film is currently available on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD.

Hit the jump to watch the featurettes.

The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards have been announced, and it’s quite a whirlwind of nominees.  As expected, Lincoln landed the most nominations with 12, followed with Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which nabbed 11.  The big story here, though, is the Best Director category.  Shockingly, only two (two!) of the DGA nominees for Best Director made the Oscar cut: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.  The rest of the category was filled out by Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, and Michael Haneke for Amour.  It was almost guaranteed that Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow would be landing nominations for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, respectively, but shockingly neither made the cut.  Apparently those films just directed themselves.  Based off today’s nominations, it now looks like it’s (surprisingly) down to Lincoln vs. Silver Linings Playbook for the big win.

Hit the jump to check out the list of nominees, and click here to check them against my predictions (somehow I predicted the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories perfectly).  The 85th Academy Awards will take place on February 24th.

At last, Oscar is upon us.  Back in November I shared a look at the early awards season race by way of our 2013 Oscar Preview articles, and now nearly two months later there’s still quite a bit up in the air.  This truly is one of the more exciting awards races in recent years, as 2012 is so stacked with quality that there are a surprising number of uncertainties this close to the Academy Awards ceremony.  Nevertheless, I am once again foolishly going to attempt to predict how the Oscar nominations will shake out when they’re announced tomorrow morning, January 10th.  Hit the jump to check out my predictions.

As we head into the thick of awards season, we’re starting to see how the various guilds stack up with regards to the best of 2012 (the PGA nominations were announced yesterday).  The guilds are usually a good Oscar predictor as their voting bodies overlap significantly with the Academy’s voting body, and today we have a peek into the screenplay race by way of the nominations for the 2013 Writers Guild Awards.  The list includes some pleasant surprises like Rian Johnson’s brilliantly original script for Looper and Steven Chbosky’s touching adaptation of his own novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as well as expected candidates like The Master, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty, and Lincoln.

Each year a number of screenplays are ruled ineligible for the WGA’s, and this year is no exception as Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Behn Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, and William Nicholson’s Les Miserables were all  ineligible for WGA consideration for various insignificant reasons.  Hit the jump to check out the full list of WGA nominations.  The 2013 Writers Guild Awards will be held on February 17th.

Coming off of 2012’s splendid Moonrise Kingdom, writer/director Wes Anderson is putting the pieces together for his next feature, Grand Budapest Hotel.  As usual with Anderson’s films, plot details are scarce, but we do know that the story takes place 85 years ago and centers on the troubles and tribulations of a hotel concierge played by Ralph Fiennes.  As production gears up to begin, word now comes that one of Anderson’s recent collaborators will be joining the project: composer Alexandre Desplat.  Hit the jump for more details.

Wes Anderson has never had much problem lining-up impressive ensembles for his movies.  Even his earlier movies have great casts albeit less famous ones.  In a recent interview with THR, Anderson revealed his next film, Grand Budapest Hotel, will have one of his best casts to date.  First, Anderson confirmed Ralph Fiennes, Bill Murray, and Saoirse Ronan were in the flick (Fiennes and Ronan are the leads).  But they’re only a small part of the large cast.  Anderson will reunite with Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton, and Jason Schwartzman. Owen Wilson might also have a small role.  The movie will also include Jeff Goldblum, F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, and Mathieu Amalric (Quantum of Solace).

Hit the jump for more.

The nominations for the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards have been announced, and Oscar hopefuls Silver Linings Playbook and Moonrise Kingdom lead the pack.  Both films picked up nominations for Best Feature, Director, and Screenplay with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper landing acting noms for SLP and Bruce Willis garnering a swell Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work in Moonrise Kingdom.  Beasts of the Southern Wild, Bernie, and Keep the Lights On round out the Best Feature nominees, while The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Safety Not Guaranteed were singled out for the Best First Feature award.  Also, Matthew McConaughey pulled double nominations for his stellar work in this year’s Magic Mike and Killer Joe, landing a Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor nod, respectively.  Notably shut out of the race entirely was Leos Carax‘s critically-lauded Holy Motors.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominations.  The winners of the 2013 Spirit Awards will be announced on Saturday, February 23, 2013.

Here’s where things get interesting.  Over that past few days we’ve been taking an early look at the 2013 Oscar race, running down the contenders in a number of categories including Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Actor and Best Actress, and Best Animated Feature, Screenplay, and technological category quick picks.  We’ve now come to our final installment, Best Picture and Best Director, and these two races are shaping up to be incredibly interesting. Hit the jump for the full rundown.

We’re continuing on with our weeklong preview of the upcoming 85th Academy Awards, and after running down both acting categories it’s time to take look at some of the other races.  Today we’ll be looking at the Best Animated Feature, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay categories in depth, and I’ll also make some way-too-early quick picks in the technical categories.  The fun begins after the jump.

In America, few holidays are as sacred as the one we’ll all be celebrating later this week…no, not that one, the one after Thanksgiving…yes, Black Friday:  the only holiday in the world that routinely involves people being maced and/or trampled to death while fighting over $40 DVD players in a Wal-Mart parking lot.  It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

And this year Black Friday’s going to be even crazier than usual:  a number of announcements were recently made by some of Limited Paper’s favorite artists, galleries, and poster-producers…and if half of these drops are as badass as we suspect they’re going to be, some of us will be filing for bankruptcy first thing on Saturday.  Wanna know what to expect from Mondo, Spoke Art, Posters and Toys, and others later this week?  Everything we know’s after the jump, folks.

The folks at Spoke Art have an annual tradition, one that celebrates one of our greatest living entertainers by hiring dozens of artists to produce pieces of art based around that entertainer’s most cherished works.  We’re speaking, of course, about Spoke Art’s long-running Forever The Boss:  The Filmography of Tony Danza Retold Via Knitted Sweaters.  As you might expect, this series hasn’t sold a single piece since its 1988 inception.  It is the art world’s biggest ongoing catastrophic failure, truly one for the books.

Thank God, then, that the Spoke Art guys have another annual show that’s proved to be far more popular:  Bad Dads, an annual showcase of screenprints, paintings, and other works of art based around the filmography of Wes Anderson.  They just opened their third Bad Dads show:  wanna see some of the artwork from that show, and find out where you can buy some of those prints?  Meet me after the jump, folks.

Wes Anderson is a very specific filmmaker.  Flip on a couple seconds of any of his seven feature films and you’ll instantly recognize it as distinctively “Wes Anderson-y.”  Not everyone loves his peculiar style and controlled aesthetic choices, but fans of Anderson relish being enveloped by a wholly new world with each subsequent feature.  The filmmaker’s output has been met with varying degrees of success over the years, but his latest film is a prime example of the bliss that results from the perfect marriage of director and material.  Hit the jump for our review of Moonrise Kingdom on Blu-ray.