The Academy Has Changed The Rules

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Academy has announced their new rules for the 99th Oscars. There are a few important changes.

To me, the biggest one is that actors can now be nominated twice in the same category. In the past, a performer could only be nominated for one film per category. (Occasionally, you might have someone nominated for both the lead category and the supporting category and this led to more than few instances of category fraud, where a leading performance would suddenly be listed as a supporting performance so that someone could get two nominations.) On a practical level, this means that if Eric Roberts gives two great lead performances this year, he could end up competing against himself for Best Actor. Or, more realistically, he might take all five slots in the Best Supporting Actor category.

AI actors are not eligible to be nominated. So, Val Kilmer will not be eligible for As Deep As The Grave.

AI-written screenplays are always not eligible to be nominated and I’m sure this rule will not lead to any shadowy whisper campaigns once awards season begins. (Hopefully, the sarcasm was noted.)

Best International Feature will no longer be awarded to the winner’s country of origin. Instead, it will be awarded to the film’s director. As well, films that win awards at a select group of international film festivals will be eligible for consideration as well. I imagine this decision was made to get around the politics of the various submission committees. No longer will a Palme d’Or winner be ineligible just because it was made by someone on the outs with their country’s current government.

Here are all the rule changes:

AWARDS RULES AND CAMPAIGN PROMOTIONAL REGULATIONS
APPROVED FOR 99TH OSCARS®

Additional Submission Key Dates Announced

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Academy’s Board of Governors has approved awards rules, inclusion standards and campaign promotional regulations for the 99th Academy Awards®.

For Academy Awards consideration, a feature film must have a qualifying theatrical release between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2026.

Substantive awards rules changes include:

In the Acting category, actors may be nominated for multiple performances in the same category if those performances place in the top five votes, which aligns with achievements in other award categories.
Additionally, in the Acting category, only roles credited in the film’s legal billing and demonstrably performed by humans with their consent will be considered eligible.

In the Casting category, the number of statuettes awarded will increase from a maximum of two to a maximum of three statuettes.

In the Cinematography category, the preliminary voting round will produce a shortlist of 20 films rather than 10-20.

In the International Feature Film category, there are now two ways to submit a film for consideration. In addition to a film being submitted as an official selection by a country or region via the Academy-approved Selection Committees, a non-English language film can now be submitted for consideration by winning a qualifying award at an international film festival as specified in the International Feature Film Award Qualifying Festival List. Qualifying festivals for the 99th Oscars® are the Berlin International Film Festival (Golden Bear for Best Film), Busan International Film Festival (Busan Award – Best Film Award), Cannes Film Festival (Palme d’Or), Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Grand Jury Prize), Toronto International Film Festival (Platform Award) and Venice International Film Festival (Golden Lion).

Additionally, in the International Feature Film category, the film will be credited as the nominee rather than the country or region, and the award will be accepted by the director on behalf of the film’s creative team. The director’s name will be listed on the statuette plaque after the film title and, if applicable, the country or region.

In the Makeup and Hairstyling category, Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch members must attend at least one of the two final branch meetings (roundtables) to be eligible to vote in the preliminary round.
In the Original Song category, the rules clarify a song’s eligibility when based on its placement in the end credits. For songs submitted as the first new music cue once the end credits begin, the video clip must include the last 15 seconds of the film before the credits begin.

In the Visual Effects category, all Academy members must view the three-minute Before and After reels from the Visual Effects Bake-Off to be eligible to vote in the final round.
In the Writing categories, the rules codify that screenplays must be human-authored to be eligible.

For Governors Awards recipients, a minimum of three disciplines must be represented in a given Awards year.

Under Eligibility (Rule Two) regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence, the Academy reserves the right to request more information about the nature of the use and human authorship.
Awards submission deadlines and additional key dates are as follows:

Thursday, August 13, 2026: First submission deadline for Animated Short Film, Documentary Feature Film, Documentary Short Film and Live Action Short Film categories

Thursday, September 17, 2026: First submission deadline for General Entry categories, Animated Feature Film, Best Picture and Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry (RAISE) form

Wednesday, September 30, 2026: Submission deadline for International Feature Film

Thursday, October 8, 2026: Final submission deadline for Animated Short Film, Documentary Short Film and Live Action Short Film categories

Wednesday, October 14, 2026: Submission deadline for Music (Original Song)

Thursday, October 15, 2026: Final submission deadline for Documentary Feature Film

Wednesday, November 4, 2026: Submission deadline for Music (Original Score)

Thursday, November 12, 2026: Final submission deadline for General Entry categories, Animated Feature Film, Best Picture and Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry (RAISE) form

January 8 – 10, 2027: Casting, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound and Visual Effects voting events (bake-offs)

Film Review: Rambo: First Blood Part II (dir by George Pan Cosmatos)

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Three years after blowing up the town of Hope, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is …. workin’ on the chain gang…. (I hope you sang it.) However, Colonel Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna) has a suggestion for Rambo. He can get a full pardon if he infiltrates Vietnam and investigates what might be a POW camp….

So begins 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II!

When viewers first met John Rambo in 1982’s First Blood, he was a drifter who was obviously uncomfortable with dealing with other people. Haunted by both his experiences in Vietnam and the way he was treated when he returned to his own country, Rambo was someone who largely wanted to be left alone. He was the ultimate outsider. When he asked Brian Dennehy’s Sherriff Teasle where he could get a cop of coffee, Teasle told him to go over the border and have his coffee in Canada. (Is there anything more insulting than to tell a Vietnam veteran to go to Canada like a draft dodger?) Rambo was someone who could take care of himself. He was someone who knew how to survive in the wilderness. But, in the first movie, he was not superhuman. Rambo was considerably banged up by the end of First Blood. The other thing that is sometimes overlooked is that, as far as his time in Hope was concerned, Rambo never deliberately killed anyone. The only person who died in First Blood was a sadistic police officer who was so determined to get a shot at Rambo that he accidentally tumbled out of a helicopter. When Rambo fought, it was in self-defense. Rambo had plenty of opportunities (and, by today’s cultural standards, reasons) to kill Sheriff Teasle and his deputies but he didn’t. Things are a bit different in the sequel. Rambo: First Blood Part II transforms Rambo from a relatively realistic character into the comic book action hero that everyone knows today. Rambo’s gone from being a hulking drifter to being a muscle-bound warrior.

The film doesn’t waste any time getting Rambo out of prison and over to Thailand. The obviously duplicitous Murdock (Charles Napier) tells Rambo that his mission is solely to take pictures and not to engage with the enemy. (You may be wondering why anyone would recruit Rambo for a mission that doesn’t involve engaging with the enemy and it’s a fair question.) Soon, Rambo is in the jungles of Vietnam, meeting up with a rebel named Co (Julia Nickson), and heading up river with a bunch of pirates. Needless to say, Rambo is soon engaging with the enemy.

Rambo: First Blood Part II is an undeniably crude film. Clocking in at 96 minutes, the film makes it clear that it doesn’t have any time to waste with characterization or debate. Sylvester Stallone rewrote James Cameron’s original script and he gives a performance that has little of the nuance that was present in the first film. And yet, the film has an undeniable hypnotic power to it. It’s pure action. Rambo exists to blow up his enemies, whether it’s with a gun or an explosive arrow or the missiles fired from a stolen helicopter. Because the bad guys are all arrogant sadists who exist to remind American viewers of the humiliation of its first military defeat, there’s an undeniable pleasure in watching them get defeated by one motivated warrior who refuses to be held back by the paper pushers in charge. Murdock tells Rambo not to rescue any POWs. Rambo responds by machine gunning Murdock’s office. It’s pure wish fulfillment and it is cathartic to watch. It’s perhaps even more cathartic to watch today, after the twin traumas of the COVID lockdowns and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Murdock becomes a stand-in for every incompetent bureaucrat who ever let America down. The Murdock who tells Rambo not to rescue any Americans is little different from the men who told business that they had to close and who tried to dictate whether or not people could leave their homes. The Murdock who was prepared to leave American behind is the same person who did leave Americans behind in Kabul. Rambo’s anger is the anger of everyone who values freedom above obedience.

Rambo kills a lot of people in the sequel but none of them are American. He’s a patriot, albeit an angry one who will never forgive his country for not caring about its veterans as much as they cared about it. “Do we get to win this time?” Rambo ask Trautman and it’s a moment that, like much of the movie, is both crudely simplistic but is powerful in its refusal to be complicated. Rambo: First Blood Part II is a fantasy but it’s also a plea to be allowed to succeed. Forget the rules. Forget the regulations. Just allow the people to win.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985, dir by George Pan Cosmatos, DP: Jack Cardiff)

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: A Futile and Stupid Gesture (dir by David Wain)

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I was recently trying to remember if I had ever seen a truly great (as opposed to just good) film about a comedian. The closest I could come up with was the original Fame but, while that film does feature Barry Miller as an aspiring comedian, he’s only a part of the ensemble. He’s not the sole focus of the film and his most memorable moment is when he get taunted by Richard Belzer and then bombs on stage.

Why do movies about comedians often seem to fail? Some of that is because they star people who aren’t necessarily believable as comedians (The Comedian) and they try to cover up that fact by including way too many shots of people laughing uproariously in response (Man of the Year, the HBO television series I’m Dying Up Here). Another major problem is that comedians themselves tend to be a bit difficult to take when they’re not on stage. Having to spend 90 to 120 minutes hanging out with a group of emotionally closed-off people who won’t stop trying to be funny can be exhausting. It’s really not as surprise that many movies (Lenny, Funny People, Joker) about comedians tend to portray them as being seriously damaged people. Punchline is an interesting example of a film that managed to feature not only a miscast and not particularly funny star (Sally Field, in this case) but also a group of comedians (led by Tom Hanks) who come across as being a real chore to hang out with.

All of that brings us to 2018’s A Futile And Stupid Gesture, an exhausting biopic about National Lampoon-founder Doug Kenney. The film establishes itself from the start by featuring a gray-haired Martin Mull as who Doug Kenney would have grown up to be if he hadn’t died mysteriously at the age of 33. While Mull narrates, Will Forte (who was so brilliant in Nebraska) plays the youngish Kenney. Meanwhile, a host of 21st century comedy all-stars play the comedy all-stars of the 1970s, with only Joel McHale’s Chevy Chase and Nelson Franklin’s PJ O’Rourke making much of an impressions. Our narrator mentions that most of the actors don’t look like the characters that they’re playing because this is the type of movie where the fourth wall is repeatedly broken. A lot of people credit Adam McKay with making it trendy to break the fourth wall. In reality, it was Michael Winterbottom with 24-Hour Party People. Either way, it’s one of those things that’s been done so many times that it no longer feels the least bit subversive. A Futile and Stupid Gesture is so extremely stylized (here comes another fantasy sequence!) that it actually feels more desperate than clever.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture is a tiring film, largely because everyone in the movie is such a quip machine that you get sick of listening to them after the first few minutes. The film makes the argument that Kenney’s refusal to stop making jokes was because of the trauma of losing his brother when he was younger but that still doesn’t make the film’s version of Kenney any less exhausting as a character. To be honest, though, just about every character in the film is exhausting. So many famous lines are uttered that I was ready to throw a shoe at the television by the time Michael O’Donoghue (Thomas Lennon) said, “I don’t write for felt.” Between this film and Saturday Night, I’ll be very happy to never see another movie featuring someone playing Michael O’Donoghue.

It’s a shame it’s not a better film because one does get the feeling that the film was coming from a place of love. Director David Wain has directed some funny movies and he was one of the people behind Children’s Hospital, one of my favorite shows. I wanted to like this film and I feel a little bit guilty that I didn’t. But, in the end, it’s hard not to feel that maybe a better tribute to Doug Kenney would have been to have filmed Bored of the Rings.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Super Shark!

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties. On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday. On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 2011’s Super Shark!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Super Shark on Prime, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there happily tweeting. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

See you there!

Song of the Day: El Chacal by Carlos Puebla

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With today being May Day, it seems appropriate that today’s song of the day should be this blistering attack on Che Guevara, a racist and misogynistic sociopath who far too many people view as being a hero just because his face looks good on a t-shirt.

Scenes That I Love: John Woo’s Face/Off

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 77th birthday to director John Woo, the man who did the most to popularize the idea of the slo mo of doom!

Today’s scene that I love comes from Woo’s 1997 film, Face/Off. In this scene, Nicolas Cage and John Travolta purse each other in speedboats. The action is wonderfully over-the-top. Throughout this film, Cage and Travolta both do what they do best in this scene and so does John Woo.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Wes Anderson Edition

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Texas’s own Wes Anderson! It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Wes Anderson Films

Bottle Rocket (1996, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)

Rushmore (1998, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)

Moonrise Kingdom (2012, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)

Asteroid City (2023. dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)

Thoughts On The Culture — 5/1/26

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The last time I wrote about my “thoughts on the culture,” I wrote about the Olympics, the senatorial primary between James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett, and the controversy over the BAFTA awards. I can remember that, shortly after I scheduled the post, the Iranian War started up and I had to quickly amend my post to mention it.

In my mind, it seems like that all happened a year ago. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the date of the post and I saw that it was published on March 2nd. A lot can happen in two months! With our current news cycle, a week can feel like a month and a month …. well, you get the idea.

It’s May Day!

It’s the first of May. For centuries, May Day was observed as a time of rebirth and a celebration of nature. It was the true Earth Day. Then the communists decided to take it over and turn into a celebration of their totalitarian ideology. International Workers Day, as it is officially known, is a day largely celebrated by people who are rich enough that they don’t have to work. Since 1992, this day has also been known as Worthy Wage Day. Again, the majority of the people celebrating have never actually lived paycheck-to-paycheck. My father, on the other hand, definitely valued each paycheck that he got and he considered unions to be a “pain in the ass.”

In the 1950s, The United States responded to the communist takeover of May Day by establishing two new holidays, Law Day and Loyalty Day. To be honest, both of those sound like communist holidays as well. It’s easy to imagine George Orwell imagining a mandatory Loyalty Day.

(Speaking of Orwell, I recently read a review of Andy Serkis’s adaptation of Animal Farm. Apparently, Serkis added a third act where a piglet named Lucky leads a revolution against the pigs. That’s the culture of 2026. It’s Animal Farm, with a happy ending and an anti-capitalist message.)

According to Checkiday, today is also Theraputic Massage Day so remember that if you’re feeling overwhelmed. You’ve earned a break.

Cole Thomas Allen Is a Dork

Last Saturday, a California teacher and avid Bluesky user named Cole Thomas Allen attempted to assassinate Donald Trump and his cabinet at the White House Correspondents Dinner. He failed, though the fact that he got near the ballroom with a gun is alarming. Also alarming is that, culturally, we’ve reached the point where this type of violence and potential violence is just shrugged off.

That said, the most memorable thing about Cole Thomas Allen is just how dorky he appears to have been. To be honest, all three of the men who attempted to assassinate Trump have come across as being incredibly dorky. I mean, Lee Harvey Oswald was definitely a nerd but even he looked like James Bond compared to Ryan Wesley Routh. As for Allen, he was apparently planning on dying in his attack and he couldn’t even pull that off. Instead, he was arrested and forcibly undressed before being sent off to jail. He left behind a manifesto that read like a Bluesky timeline and a selfie of himself wearing black pants, a black shirt, and ludicrously wide red tie, as if he wanted to make sure that the Secret Service had an easy target at which to fire.

Seriously …. loser!

Speaking Of Losers, How Is Maduro Doing?

I was recently trying to remember when Nicolas Maduro was removed from Venezuela. Again, due to our hyper news cycle, It seems like it happened a year ago. But actually, it was on January 3rd of this year. Maduro is in prison right now. Apparently, for a while, his cellmate was Tekashi 6ix9ine, the rapper who is so stupid that he failed his court-mandated GED test. I’m no fan of Maduro but that really does seem like cruel and unusual punishment.

A Trip Through Time

This week, I started reading through the Shattered Lens archive. I started with our very first post, Arleigh’s review of Avatar. I’m currently worked me way through to September of 2011. It’s been interesting to read and to see how much the culture has changed over the past 14 (going on 15) years. When we started this site, DVDs were still a big deal. My first year of reviews are filled with excited anecdotes about the movie theaters that I loved to visit. Most of those theaters are gone now.

It made me a little bit sad to see how enthusiastic I used to get about certain films. I couldn’t wait to see Black Swan and Sucker Punch. I used to eagerly look forward to the Marvel movies. The Oscars used to be the center of my life. I used to watch my favorite trailers over and over again. I still do get excited about some movies. I still look forward to any new film from Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Andrea Arnold, Joel Coen, Richard Linklater, Joseph Kosinski, and a handful of others. But the Marvel films no longer enchant me. Every trailer has the same flat Netflix look it. Every mainstream movie seems to feature the same collection of stock characters and the same mind-numbingly banal outlook. Meanwhile, the indie films have become just as predictable, their moments of subversion carefully choreographed so to not ruin any potential streaming deal. The knowledge that every film will quickly be available for me to watch at home has taken the thrill out of planning a night with a movie.

The more time passes, the more I find myself ignoring new releases so that I can enjoy films from the pre-streaming era. I guess that’s just a part of getting older. Every generation thinks that the generation that comes after them is full of heathens who are destroying the culture.

Spencer Pratt Is Running For Mayor Of Los Angeles….

….and his first commercial was surprisingly effective. In fact, my twitter timeline is full of people who are convinced he’s going to win. Of course, my twitter timeline is also full of people who thought Gary Johnson was going to win in 2016. As for my opinion, I’m torn. On the one hand, I don’t think I would vote for Karen Bass, not after what happened during the January 2025 wildfires. David Lynch died as a result of having to leave his home due to the fires. As far as I’m concerned, that’s reason enough to vote against Bass. But Mayor Spencer Pratt sounds like it would be a better TV show than a reality. Fortunately, I don’t live in Los Angeles so I don’t have to vote for anyone running over there.

(I am looking forward to President Pratt’s 2044 inaugural ceremony.)

Things Are Going To Get Easier

I watched the 1979 classic Over the Edge this week so, of course, I’ve got this song stuck in my head.

Is that it?

I guess that’s it! Whatever you celebrate, enjoy the first of May!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 1.3 “The Hot Grounder”

Posted on April 30, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, the police commissioner is suspected of murder!

Episode 1.3 “The Hot Grounder”

(Dir by Bill Duke, originally aired on October 5th, 1984)

After the police commissioner’s wife is blown up by a car bomb, all the homicide detectives hide out in the bathroom because they don’t want to get assigned the case. Captain Cain still manages to track them down and gives the case to Hunter and McCall. When McCall asks Hunter why he didn’t do a better job hiding, Hunter replies, “I’m too tall!”

Hunter and McCall soon come to suspect that Commissioner Crenshaw (William Windom) had his wife killed. Because Crenshaw was being blackmailed with photographs of him with another man, his wife was threatening to divorce him. Despite all of the evidence against Crenshaw, the police chief (Jason Bernard) tries to protect him. Hunter and McCall find themselves suspended from the force. They still manage to prove Crenshaw’s guilt. Crenshaw goes to prison and Hunter and McCall get their badges back.

This episode felt like a rough draft. I enjoyed the humor at the start of it. All of the detectives trying to hide felt very realistic. Dryer was always obviously still getting comfortable with the role when this episode was shot but his jokes were well-delivered. That said, the mystery itself felt half-baked and William Windom was not particularly believable in his role. By the end of the episode, Hunter had been reduced to repeating, “Works for me,” over and over again.

This episode didn’t really work for me. It was obvious that the show was still trying to figure out who Hunter and McCall were and how they would react to each other. As such, their chemistry felt off in this episode and the end result was forgettable.