Creating the perfect mix of drama, comedy, romance, and powerful acting is often a theatrical recipe that stands just out of reach of most productions. Sometimes the drama and romance is there, but the comedic moments fall flat, or the actors give their all to a script that jumps from place to place, fostering few laughs and even fewer tears. Silver Linings Playbook, an Academy nominated film with an award-winning cast, gives audiences a full helping of laughs, tears, and embraces in amazing, yet equal measure, brought to the table by a stellar group of actors who not only made their characters lovable, but astonishingly believable.

Here’s a brief look at this week’s new Blu-ray releases:

• Broken City (Blu-ray / DVD + Digital Copy) – $22.96 (43% off)
• The Details [Blu-ray] – $19.99 (33% off)
• Funny Girl [Blu-ray] – $14.99 (25% off)
• The Guilt Trip (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo Digital Copy) – $19.99 (50% off)
• Not Fade Away (Blu-ray +Digital Copy +UltraViolet) – $19.99 (50% off)
• Silver Linings Playbook (Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) – $22.99 (43% off)
• Strictly Ballroom [Blu-ray] – $11.99 (20% off)

Click here for hundreds of other DVD/Blu-ray deals.

2013’s box office downturn stretched to its sixth frame this weekend, as Warner Brothers’ Jack the Giant Slayer failed to justify its giant pricetag. From 3,525 locations, the fairytale adaptation took in an estimated $28 million – more than its Friday estimate promised, but less than half of what The Lorax delivered at this time last year. The weekend’s other offerings fared little better though, in the case of The Last Exorcism Part II, a small opening was mitigated by an even smaller budget.

I just finished live-blogging the Oscars.  My brain hurts.  It wasn’t a very good show, and it was a ceremony unworthy of all the great films we saw in 2012.  Briefly, the prognosticators were correct and Argo took Best Picture.  Ang Lee won his third Oscar and his second Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi, a film that also took home awards for Best Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Visual Effects.  In the acting categories, Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for Lincoln, Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress for Silver Linings Playbook, Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for Django Unchained, and Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for Les Miserables.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of winners.

Though the 85th Academy Awards are a mere day away, tonight an awards ceremony of a different sort took place to celebrate the best of independent film.  Unsurprisingly, Oscar player Silver Linings Playbook took home the most awards of the night with four wins, including Best Picture, Best Director for David O. Russell, Best Actress for Jennifer Lawrence, and Best Screenplay for Russell.  The crowdpleasing pic beat out the likes of Beasts of the Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom for the top prize, but John Hawkes was named Best Actor for his swell work in The Sessions.  The Best First Feature prize deservingly went to The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Hit the jump to read the full list of winners for the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards.

Alas, we’ve come to the end.  The 85th Academy Awards will take place tomorrow evening, after which the past year of maneuvering, campaigning, and controversy-drumming will be rendered obsolete as we wipe the slate clean and start the next awards season cycle anew.  Over the past six days, we’ve been taking a look back at the 2012 awards race in a number of categories, chronicling the ebbs and flows that have led us to today.  This past year was one of the more crazy awards seasons in recent memory, but at least it’s been interesting.  Today we close out our Road to Oscar feature with the final category, Best Picture.  Hit the jump to read on, and click here to read our predictions for tomorrow night’s ceremony.

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.

Continuing on with our “Road to Oscar” feature, today we’re going to take a look at how the race for Best Actress played out over the past 12 months.  With the 85th Academy Awards taking place this coming Sunday, we figured this week would be a nice opportunity to reflect on how a number of Oscar categories got to where they are today.  Join us after the jump as we break down the race for Best Actress.

As Sunday’s 85th Annual Academy Awards loom closer, we’ve using this week as an opportunity to take a look back at how the past year’s Oscar race has played out in a number of categories.  We first took a look at the ebbs and flows in the Best Supporting Actor category, and then we chronicled the road that lead us to the Best Supporting Actress nominees.  Today we’re examining the Best Actor race, which actually seemed to be all wrapped up months before the nominees were even announced.  Hit the jump to read on.

With the 85th Academy Awards looming closer, we here at Collider thought now would be a good time to take a look back at Oscar race thus far.  It’s been a wild and somewhat nutty 12 months, as we’ve seen numerous contenders rise and fall (and some rise back up again) in the contentious hunt for Oscar gold.  We’ve already run down the ebbs and flows of the Best Supporting Actor category, and today we’ll be taking a look back and how the race played out for Best Supporting Actress.

The 63rd annual American Cinema Editors Eddie awards were held last night, honoring editorial achievements from the world of film and television.  The list of nominees included familiar titles from the awards circuit, such as Argo, Life of Pi, Brave, Frankenweenie, Homeland and Breaking Bad, along with some less-talked-about documentary fare and non-scripted television series.  Hit the jump to check out a list of the winners from the 63rd annual American Cinema Editors Eddie awards.

We’ve got three new featurettes for you today from a variety of pictures:

• Silver Linings Playbook – A 30-minute “making of” featurette that gets to the heart of mental illness as portrayed by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence in the Oscar-nominated David O. Russell film.
• Stoker – Commentary on the characters of Park Chan-wook’s dark family portrait drama that stars Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode.  Stoker opens in limited release March 1st.
• Olympus Has Fallen – Behind-the-scenes of Antoine Fuqua’s latest actioner starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman.  Olympus Has Fallen opens March 22nd.

Hit the jump to watch all three featurettes. 

Is an Argo Best Picture win now inevitable?  The 2013 British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA Awards) were handed out this evening, and director Ben Affleck’s thriller continued its domination of awards season by landing the Best Film and Best Director prizes.  The BAFTAs have always been an important bellwether for predicting Oscar, but they may be even more in tune with the Academy this year as a rule change allowed the entire BAFTA voting body to vote on every award (like the Oscars), instead of writers only voting for screenplay, actors only voting for acting, etc.

Les Miserables won the most BAFTAs of the night, taking home four trophies including Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway (duh) and Best Production Design (over Anna Karenina? Really?).  The winners actually lined up pretty closely with my current Oscar predictions, though most were surprised to see David O. Russell take home the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar over Lincoln and Argo.  Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence were also overtaken in Best Actress by Emmanuel Riva for Amour, who has emerged as a strong possibility in a tough category.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

Last week, BAFTA premiered special posters for their Best Picture nominees.  Today, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences had followed suit by teaming up with Gallery1988 and various artists to create posters for this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees.  There are some impressive posters, and I’m curious to see if they’re going to go on sale at some point.  The Academy’s website lists the dimensions and type of production (screen print), which leads me to believe that these might be available for purchase some day.  I’m sure there are plenty of readers who would love to get their hands on Mark Englert‘s print for Django Unchained. [Update: Gallery1988 has tweeted the following: "G1988 x The Academy. Official. 2/14 - 2/17. More soon." so it looks like you should get your wallets ready, and keep an eye on their official website.]

Hit the jump to check out the posters.  The Academy Awards will be held on February 24th at 7pm EST on ABC.

Current Best Actress Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence was recognized as Outstanding Performer of the Year at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF).  Whether it was her memorable debut in The Poker House, her first Oscar-nominated role in Winter’s Bone, indies like The Beaver and Like Crazy, or her star-making turns in last year’s The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook (for which she has received her second Oscar nomination), the 22-year-old from Kentucky is proving herself to be one of Hollywood’s most talented young actors.  Collider was there to cover and attend the event, and we’ve compiled the highlights of what she had to say, both on the press line and during the Q&A.

While there, Jennifer Lawrence talked about what this past year has been like for her, how she got her start in acting, why she’s never taken any acting lessons, what the experience of making her first feature film The Poker House was like, what spoke to her about the character of Tiffany when she read the script for Silver Linings Playbook, why she doesn’t like to read her scenes ahead of time, working with Bradley Cooper again on the Depression-era drama Serena (due out in theaters in September), what made her hesitate about taking on the role of Katniss Everdeen for The Hunger Games franchise, what it was like to revisit the character for Catching Fire, what she learned from working with Jodie Foster on The Beaver, why she fought for the role of Ree in Winter’s Bone, her desire to direct, and the fact that she’s a bit less terrified of this award season.  Check out what she had to say after the jump.