So this week, it's time to update you on the latest awards and Oscar news as we continue to approach the upcoming awards season, which actually begins starting next month ... all of the various awards organizations will begin giving out their honors, and of course all of the results will be posted here.
But so far, no awards organizations give their awards quite this soon, but there is some film and awards news to pass along. And finally this week, the schedule for some of the major awards organizations and when they will be giving their awards for the 1999 film year. And there are updated predictions for who will get nominated for Oscars in the major categories, only a couple of changes since my first predictions a couple of weeks back in this column.
First up, some news from some of the other awards organizations. Legendary actor Sidney Poitier has been named this year's recipient of the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. Poitier will be the 37th recipient of the award, established in 1962, and will receive his honor at the Sixth Annual televised SAG Awards, live on TNT on March 12, 2000.
The 1999 American Society of Cinematographers Board of Governors Award will be given to Warren Beatty for his extraordinary contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking. Beatty will receive that honor at their awards ceremony on February 20.
Twenty-five more films were added to the National Film Registry this past week, including classics such as A Streetcar Named Desire, Gunga Din, Laurea, My Man Godfrey, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Ten Commandments, and one of the most recent selected, Spike Lee's immortal classic Do the Right Thing.
And now to news specifically about the upcoming 72nd Annual Academy Awards ... with first-time submissions from Bhutan, Nepal and Tajikistan, a record-breaking 47 countries have submitted films for Academy Award consideration for best foreign film.
Among the highest-profile submissions are Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother, released last weekend by Sony Pictures Classics, which is also handling Denmark's Mifune from Soren Kragh-Jacobsen.
USA Films is also handling two submissions: Rosetta, a drama by the Belgian directing team Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Three Seasons from Vietnamese director Tony Bui, which USA released this year under its October Films label.
