John Lopez

Ah, Cannes. Behold: the cerulean sparkle of the Cote d'Azur, the endless waft of chain-smoked Gitanes over the Croisette, and the wheeling-dealing on private yachts filled with the flotsam and jetsam of European film. At least, that's how I imagine it from the corner booth of my local coffee shop...

As if the fleets of limos and drunken starlets in sequined minis stumbling down Sunset Boulevard's less seedy corridors weren't enough, the traffic jams at the closed off corners around The Not-The-Kodak-Anymore Theater have confirmed it -- it's Oscar weekend. All around town fragile egos are ringing like crystal bells...

Honestly, with the snubbing of Albert Brooks and Tilda Swinton for two of 2011's most exciting films -- Drive and We Need To Talk About Kevin -- it's hard to get excited about the Oscars this year. The overwhelmingly unadventurous slew of nominations for Spielberg's War Horse and Scorsese's Hugo...

Sunday was a painfully beautiful day for a hung-over walk in Park City. Set in a bed of flawless blue, the sun refracted joyfully off slopes washed white by fresh snowfall and volunteers in neon safety vests, shoveling out paths for fest goers. Thankfully, the quality of the scotch I'd...

Well, it wouldn't be Sundance if you didn't miss a movie or two, or three. The price of partying is that you oversleep your alarm clock with reckless abandon and miss those early morning Eccles screenings of hot fest films, such as Saturday's Celeste and Jesse Forever with Andy Samberg...

I admit, my completely unplanned Sundance excursion gave me pause: would the catchy notion of letting the universe dictate my snowy path through Park City be just that, a catchy notion? Driving to the airport, I realized I didn't even have a deck of cards to play solitaire with alone...

It's midnight and I'm doing my laundry with just enough time to pack a battered carry-on and catch an REM cycle before jetting out of Los Angeles on a crack-of-dawn flight to Park City. 12 hours ago --scratch that, 6 hours ago -- I had no idea whether or not...

While the Academy follows its own bizarre, out-of-touch, crotchety rationale in making its Oscar picks, who knows what space logic the Hollywood Foreign Press Association employs in choosing the Golden Globes? Sure, you could just chalk it all up to bribery, but like that crazy ex-girlfriend who still drives you...

You know the refrain by now: the Golden Globes are about as relevant as your drunk uncle's political insights at Christmas dinner. Ricky Gervais' triumphant return as host after torching Hollywood royalty with his acetylene tongue last year just confirms it. Even the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is willing to...

Let's just be honest: 2011 hasn't been the best year for film. Sure, that's a perennial refrain heard loudest in December, and usually you can discount it as the rarified rant of critics and snobs. This year, though, moviegoers are backing up that feeling of malaise. According to the

The glitterati's gladiatorial combat for Oscar has officially commenced: the Gotham Independent Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review all handed out their end-of-year kudos this week and the Indie Spirit Awards announced their nominations. The crystal balls of Oscarologists everywhere have been sorely...

If great art holds a mirror up to society, The Ides of March holds that mirror up to politics and tilts it back at a flattering 15-degree angle: everyone looks thinner, jaws jut just a little bit more, and you can barely see the hairlines receding. With George Clooney as...

It's an immutable Hollywood law: with Labor Day behind us, movies suddenly have to get serious again. In fact, power-players and stars have already descended upon the Toronto International Film Festival in search of Oscar red meat, whether it's Viggo Mortensen as an uber-sexy Sigmund Freud in A Dangerous Method...