Academy Awards

Much is made in entertainment punditry of the Golden Globes' presumed status as a barometer for the Oscars. The Globes are not a bad indicator, but it's worth remembering that both events are essentially popularity contests. The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. has fewer than 100 voting members; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has about 6,000 voters. Both shows involve highly subjective decisions about roughly the same pool of movies and performances. Because the Globes nominates 10 movies, 10 men and 10 women in two categories (drama and musical or comedy)

Can "The Square" put Netflix in Oscar circles? That's one of several questions raised by the company's decision to move into original documentaries with "The Square," filmmaker Jehane Noujaim's nonfiction feature about the Egyptian revolution. On Monday, Netflix announced it had acquired rights to the political film, which centers on real-life protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The movie is considered a frontrunner in the upcoming Academy Award race for best documentary, having won a coveted audience award at the Sundance Film Festival in January and another audience prize at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Academy Award nominees are usually revealed on a Tuesday about four weeks before the big show, which is typically held the last Sunday in February. For 2009, though, the targeted Tuesday -- Jan. 20 -- is Inauguration Day. So the 81st annual Oscar nominees will be revealed Thursday, Jan. 22, and the Academy Awards will be presented Sunday, Feb. 22 -- the earliest Oscars ever. "It didn't make any sense for us to try to compete with [the inauguration] from a news point of view," academy Executive Administrator Ric Robertson said Monday.

In a year when A-listers Will Smith, Matt Damon and Tom Cruise tried to rocket to the stars in big-budget science fiction movies, the actor who has achieved the most powerful liftoff is Sandra Bullock. Her film, “Gravity,” has been in sustained orbit as the top box office moneymaker for two weekends in a row. Now topping $123 million in ticket sales, the Warner Bros. space thriller left Universal Studios' Formula 1 racing pageant, “Rush,” stuck in traffic with about $22 million.

Now that the Oscar field is finally set, Hollywood's most nail-biting, nerve-racking fashion exercise can officially begin. Of course, the dance between designers and stars lasts until the final hours before the Academy Awards, which means it's much too early to say for sure who will wear what on the big night. But there are plenty of clues to be found in previous red-carpet appearances by this year's contenders and presenters.

For anyone who has spent any real time in Los Angeles, the Oscars aren't simply an event -- they are a season, marked by limousines, road closures, early quitting times. Over the years, they've tweaked our rhythms, changed our priorities and altered our escape routes. Whether you love them, shun them or have built rituals around them, they have a significant presence for many.

VANITY FAIR'S cancellation of its legendary Oscar party dramatically changes the landscape of Hollywood's most glamorous evening for the first time in years. When editor Graydon Carter threw his first Academy Awards viewing and post-party at Morton's in 1994, he wanted to inherit the uber-hosting mantle of the late talent agent Swifty Lazar. Instead, he did Swifty one better -- Carter practically eliminated the competition. Vanity Fair has been such a magnet for A-listers that studios don't even bother to compete anymore and throw pre-Oscar parties instead.

Here in Beverly Hills, amid the gurgling fountains of wealth and luxury, the world's most famous women come in disguise, during off hours, by private elevator, using false names, to fight the good fight against the one thing that money can't buy: time. In the weeks before the Oscars, the entertainment industry's biggest night of the year, it's the dermatologists and plastic surgeons they seek -- anxious to look younger, slimmer, more beautiful than usual.

Was that the Academy Awards or the Democratic National Convention? LELAND HAMMERSCHMITT Ojai

The 82nd Oscars most likely will not win an award for smoothest-running show. More than a few stumbles clouded the gala ceremony, drawing angry tweets and complaints from viewers. Many noted that Farrah Fawcett was omitted from the "in memoriam" tribute saluting Hollywood figures who have died in the last year. Veteran film critic Roger Ebert noticed the snub almost immediately. "No Farrah in the memorial," he tweeted. "They have a lot of 'splaining to do." The night's most surreal moment came during the presentation of the short documentary award to "Music by Prudence," about an African singer who has been successful despite her crippling disability.

Tina Fey has said she'd probably never host the Oscars. "I think that's too hard," Fey told the Los Angeles Times, when asked in an interview last May if she'd take the job. "Too many dresses to try on. " The Golden Globes must have easier wardrobe requirements. Fey and pal Amy Poehler, who hosted the 2013 ceremony, have agreed to return to the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. event -- not just next year, but for 2015 as well. The Globes offer other enticements too. The gig pays much better than the Oscars.

The Academy Awards' documentary short subject category is often one of the trickier Oscar races to predict. On Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released a shortlist narrowing the field of contenders down to eight films. That should allow office pollsters and prognosticators to get a jump on the race. Three to five films will be announced as the final nominees along with all the other Oscar nominations on Jan. 16, 2014. OSCARS 2014: Full coverage In alphabetical order, with their production companies, the eight films are: “CaveDigger,” Karoffilms “Facing Fear,” Jason Cohen Productions “Jujitsu-ing Reality,” Sobini Films “Karama Has No Walls,” Hot Spot Films “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life,” Reed Entertainment “Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall,” Prison Terminal “Recollections,” Notrac productions “SLOMO,” Big Young Films and Runaway Films Malcolm Clarke, director of "The Lady in Number 6," won in the same category in 1989 for "You Don't Have to Die. " The 86th Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, March 2. ALSO: A record 76 foreign-language Oscar submissions 'Wadjda' first Saudi entry for foreign language race With 'Wadjda' director makes her mark in Saudi cinema Follow Mark Olsen on Twitter: @IndieFocus

Universal Pictures will release "Ted 2" on the same summer weekend that Seth MacFarlane's original film starring the foul-mouthed teddy bear hit theaters in 2012. Hey, if it ain't broke, right? On Wednesday, the studio announced that it would open the comedy sequel starring Mark Wahlberg on June 26, 2015. That Universal is replicating its original "Ted" release pattern makes sense -- the first film, which debuted on June 29 last year, went on to collect a staggering $549 million worldwide.

"Wadjda," a film about a resourceful young tomboy, has been selected as Saudi Arabia's official submission for the Oscars' foreign language category, the first time the country has submitted a film for Academy Awards consideration. That the film, from director Haifaa Mansour, was made at all, let alone screened and submitted for the Academy Awards, is a startling achievement. In a country where the actions of women are severely restricted, Mansour managed to secretly write and shoot her movie.

June Foray, the woman whose voice can be heard coming from Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Cindy Lou Who and many grannies and witches in countless cartoons over the years will be honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences next month with a Governors Award. Foray, who began voice acting at age 12 on radio dramas and graduated to the big screen in 1943 with an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short, will receive the award at the academy's Creative Arts Emmys ceremony Sept. 15 at the Nokia Theatre in downtown L.A. During the course of the actress' 80-year career, she's voiced iconic characters, such as Rocky and his arch enemy Natasha Fatale, as well as the scheming Magica De Spell in the "Ducktales" series, the kindly Granny, owner of both Sylvester and Tweety Bird in the "Looney Tunes" shorts, and the cackling Witch Hazel, who always had it in for Bugs Bunny.

Oscar pretty much gets to take the summer off. The hot months are filled with big-budget blockbuster movies that make or break studios, but few, if any, are contenders for the major Academy Awards categories. Those contenders arrive with the cooler days of autumn when the kids are back in school and the adults start showing up at the cineplex. In the coming weeks and months, heading all the way to the last week of December, the films that the studios believe will appeal to the Academy voters will be vying for attention and buzz.

In the end, the Oscars just couldn't leave Hollywood. After entertaining multiple offers to relocate the event, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday that it would keep the Academy Awards at the theater at Hollywood & Highland, negotiating a new 20-year deal with the CIM Group, which owns the complex. CIM also announced that Dolby Laboratories had signed on as the new name sponsor for the complex's 3,400-seat theater, taking over from Kodak, which had filed for bankruptcy.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the American Cinematheque are celebrating the Academy Film Archive's restoration of 19 films directed by the seminal Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray (1921-92). On Sept. 6 at its Samuel Goldwyn Theatre, the academy is screening the first two installments of the filmmaker's landmark early work, "The Apu Trilogy": the award-winning 1955 “Pather Panchali,” a haunting drama about a young boy named Apu who lives with his poverty-stricken Brahmin family in rural Bengal; and 1956's “Aparajito, which continues the story of Apu and his family.

Today comes word from the folks over at Yahoo that searches for the name "Tom Ford" have spiked 155% in the last month and that the search engine's queries for the fashion designer's name are up ninefold in 2013 compared with the same time last year. In this morning's "what's spiking" email, Yahoo Web trends expert Carolyn Clark suggests the spike could have something to do with Jay Z's song "Tom Ford" (sample lyric: "I don't pop molly, I rock Tom Ford") off the album "Magna Carta Holy Grail," which was released in early July.