Reels

Photo: Georges Biard / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 On the night of February 24, 2008, the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles held its breath over one envelope. Inside that envelope sat the name of the year’s Best Picture, the final verdict of the eightieth Academy Awards. Two brothers from Minnesota sat in the audience, … Read more

Photo: Colleen Sturtevant / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 On the night of September 8, 2007, a Toronto theater audience rose to its feet. The ovation was for a small American comedy that had cost barely seven million dollars. Its screenwriter was twenty-nine years old and had never written a produced film before. She had … Read more

Photo: Joe Ross / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 Los Angeles, 1998, and Peter Jackson walked into New Line Cinema carrying a film nobody else would finance. His showreel ran about half an hour, packed with creatures, castles and armies built inside Wellington workshops. The project was The Lord of the Rings, the novel Hollywood … Read more

Photo: Andrek02 / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 On the night of March 24, 2002, the Academy Awards unveiled a category that had never existed before. Best Animated Feature had been created that very year, after decades of cartoons being honoured only in side categories. Three films waited for the envelope: a Pixar tale about monsters, a … Read more

Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 On the night of April 14, 2008, a superhero premiered in Sydney while his creators waited on the numbers. The Greater Union theatre on George Street had dressed itself for a celebration nobody felt certain about. Outside, the red carpet belonged to a character most moviegoers … Read more

Photo: William Morris Agency (management)/Photo by Maurice Seymour, New York / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain On the first morning of filming, Jamie Foxx sat in a makeup chair and let strangers take his sight away. A prosthetic pair of eyelids, modeled on Ray Charles himself, was fitted over his own eyes and sealed. When he … Read more

Photo: David Shankbone / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 On the night of February 25, 2007, the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood held its breath over one envelope. Inside that envelope sat the Best Director result, the prize Martin Scorsese had chased for three decades. Five times before, the Academy had nominated him for directing and … Read more

Photo: David Shankbone / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 The airport loudspeaker kept calling flights that Greg Focker no longer believed he would catch. His bag sat open beside him while uniformed officers turned his whole weekend into paperwork. Two days earlier, he had arrived on Long Island carrying an engagement ring and simple hope. … Read more

Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 On the afternoon of May 20, 2009, the Grand Théâtre Lumière at Cannes fell unusually quiet. The competition screening that day was a war film eleven years in the making. Delegates had queued before dawn for a director famous for making talk dangerous. Its director, Quentin … Read more

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, where Remy’s story unfolds.Photo: Benh LIEU SONG / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain On June 22, 2007, the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles hosted a premiere for a most unlikely star. The guest of honor stood barely a foot tall, wore no clothes and had a long pink tail. He was … Read more