Many of you have probably spent the past few weeks since the last major televised award show (for the record, that would be the Grammys, held way back on January 31) suffering withdrawals…but fear not, the Academy Awards are coming Sunday to satisfy your insatiable hunger for those oh so meaningful thank you speeches. What should you expect when the action starts in the Kodak Theater? Read on to find out.

The four-day Valentine’s Day/Presidents Day double-feature weekend is shaping up to be a record breaking one at the box office. Yesterday, Valentine’s Day (the movie, not the holiday, which is tomorrow — yes, I know this is all very confusing) made about $15 million at the box office. If Valentine’s Day (the movie) becomes a popular date night activity on Valentine’s Day (the holiday), then there is quite a good chance the movie will earn up to $60 million over this four-day holiday weekend.

As a great portion of the population now enters a deep period of post-football season mourning, there is a dawning realization that Sundays are now wide open again. Fortunately, Hollywood has grand plans for you, as the Valentine’s Day/President’s Day weekend mash up has become a favorite weekend for Hollywood to debut shiny new products. Unfortunately, by far the shiniest film to debut over this upcoming four day holiday weekend, Valentine’s Day, doesn’t offer much new.

It was another early morning in Hollywood today as Anne Hathaway helped announce the 2010 Academy Award nominations. This years Academy Awards are notable in that the Best Picture category has expanded to 10 nominees for the first time in over half a century. Click the link here for the full list of nominees, but here are my instant thoughts:

A glance at my watch indicated it was just before 1am on the first Saturday night/early Sunday morn of the Sundance Film Festival. The setting was downstairs at Ciseros restaurant on Main St in Park City, which had been rechristened for the week as the Island/Def Jam House of Hype aka The Film Lounge, one of the hottest party spots/ gifting lounges during the festival

Chris Ryan‘s Sundance “Party List” has become an essential tool of festivalgoing, the directory all the cocktail parties, premiere parties, gifting suites, press opportunities, and after-hours events taking place in Park City this year. (Yes, there are movies, too.) This year, Bing has sponsored the list, complete with iPhone and Blackberry apps. Mediaite’s Jonathan Furhman talks to Ryan about the list and what happens when the Party King of Sundance goes corporate.

There has been much written about and discussed since the Big Late Night TV Shakeup of 2010 has commenced. No doubt we will all remember where we were on the day we heard the news that Jay was bumping Conan from the 11:35 pm time slot. As a fully-fledged member of Team Conan, let’s just [...]

On the big screen, watching The Hurt Locker was a visceral, intense and ultimately unforgettable movie-going experience. It’s not an easy movie to watch, but it’s one of the best of the year — and that’s already showing up, again and again, in awards season. It may even show up at Oscar time.

Did everyone go to the movies last weekend? Sure seems like it – the box office numbers were off the charts, with a three-day U.S. total of $278 million, shattering the previous record. Yes there was Avatar, pulling them in for the second weekend straight — in the business this is what we call a film that has “legs”, and Hollywood hasn’t seen legs this nice in a long long time — but for boffo B.0. like that, there needs to be more. And there was.

Hollywood puts more cinematic gifts under your Christmas tree than at any other time of year (outside of the big summer movie season, but these are Oscar bait). But how does a movie-goer determine what is the must-see film to put at the top of the list? It’s all about the buzz — and the film to beat at the box office during the last days of 2009 is Avatar. I think perhaps you have heard of this movie.

Since 2004, Universal Studios film executive Franklin Leonard has been compiling a list of the top 100 unproduced screenplays of the year. He named this list the “Black List.” The list is compiled the good old fashioned way in Hollywood – by lots of insiders (executives, financiers, agents, assistants, you name it) – and every year, it’s a hotly-anticipated light shining on all sorts of gems that are just waiting to be Oscar contenders.

the aughts

This is not my list of what I think are the 10 best movies of the decade. You can look to Roger Ebert and his brethren for that. Instead, this is a list of the movies that I know I will still be watching and re-watching 10 years from now whenever they show up on cable. Or whatever has replaced cable in 10 years.

Sure, a few male moviegoers are going to willingly tag along as dates with their female companions to see the next installment of Hollywood’s brand-new powerhouse franchise, and many single men of all sexual orientations will be lining up at theaters. But none of those men matter. Twilight is powered by girls, specifically teenage girls — and they are taking it right to the top.

Welcome to my brand spanking new column. You may be asking yourself, who is Jonathan Fuhrman, why does he have a new column, and why should I care. It’s okay, I ask myself versions of that first and last question all the time (and I still don’t have a good answer). In any event, here [...]