The nominees have been announced for the fourth annual Scream Awards, held every year by Spike TV. The decisively more “fan-friendly” award ceremony (compared to the Oscars) honors films from the sci-fi, fantasy, horror and comic-book genres of movies, TV shows and comic books. The awards are described as, “the first and only global event of its kind,” to honor those genres.

The Scream 2009 nominees were chosen by the Advisory Board of Hollywood and Genre Leaders, a list which this year includes the likes of Wes Craven, Roland Emmerich, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Eli Roth and Zack Snyder, plus many more. The event will be taped on Saturday, October 17th this year at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles, and will air on Spike TV ten days later on Tuesday, October 27th (check for local times).

Along with the awards, the show will also be airing some exclusive, world premiere of footage of some of the most anticipated movies of 2010! Presenters and musicians for the event are to be announced shortly.

TVN Entertainment, one of the leaders in Video On Demand (VOD) technology, will be presenting eight 2009 Oscar winners and nominees, some of them day-and-date with DVDs.  The movies include Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, and others.

So why is this a big deal?  Because although studios embraced VOD with devices such as the VUDU and the Roku with access to thousands of Netflix titles and cable/satellite companies’ on demand services, they wouldn’t always allow rentals or even purchases day-and-date (when DVDs are released for sale and rental).

Oscar Night 2009 is upon us with first-time host Hugh Jackman. Join us as we give almost-live coverage!

To start the awards, Jackman provided viewers with a solid opening that was effective and not too over-the-top. Then we moved right into the ceremony with five previous Best Supporting Actress winners coming on stage to say something nice about of this year’s five nominees. Tilda Swinton who was last year’s winner was the quarterback for this segment and she had the honor of announcing the winner.

On the surface, David Fincher is riding high on the commercial and critical success of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but if you delve beneath the surface things don’t appear to be that rosy for the director.

For the last couple of years the Fight Club director has been trying to make a film based on the graphic novel Torso, which features real life hero Elliot Ness after he took down Al Capone. However, Paramount Pictures has recently let the rights lapse, even though it has garnered the attention of stars like Matt Damon and Casey Affleck.

The reason for this?

The high cost of Benjamin Button.

It’s Oscar Nominations 2009 Day!

The Oscar nominations were released this morning for the 81st Annual Academy Awards. Already, we’re seeing feedback and debates over this year’s picks, much of relating to the most popular movie of 2008: The Dark Knight.

In this Weeks Weekend Movie News Wrap Up::

Clint Eastwood drives to the top of the box office with Gran Torino; Ewan McGregor is Pierce Brosnan’s Ghost; Sienna Miller will not be visiting Nottingham; Morricone is not a Basterd; Moore, Neeson and Seyfried know Chloe; the Joker may have the last laugh in Batman 3 and Farrell, Weir and Harris are on their Way Back.

Short Version: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a technical masterpiece that plays like a dream in motion – but it’s a dream that drags on just a bit too long.

Screen Rant Reviews The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film adapted from the 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, about a man who is born old and proceeds to age in reverse until his death. The film adaptation takes this interesting premise and stretches it out (way, way, out) into a lengthy meditation on the nature of life, death, and everything human that is crammed in between.

It’s that time of the week again. Sunday is here and therefore we must be due a Weekend Movie News Wrap Up. This week we look at the box office as well as:

No Cleo for Hugh Jackman; Mars attacks G.I. Joe; Thor lands in present day and Zombie unleashes a look at Michael Myers in Halloween 2.

We’ve all been there – we’ve paid for our overpriced movie tickets, purchased our popcorn and drink of Coke priced as if I had a double shot of Jack Daniels in it, made our way into the inevitably packed screening and made our way to our seat. But we soon forget about those troubles and settle in to watch a movie that hopefully makes that all go away.

But just as we’ve settled in comfortably to relax and watch what we’ve paid too see, we hear some ignorant fellow moviegoers start talking, either on their phones or to the people next to them, ruining our movie viewing experience.

The 2009 Golden Globe Nominations have been officially announced and it looks like The Dark Knight has been almost totally snubbed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

That’s right folks, The Dark Knight received just one nomination: a Best Supporting Actor nod for Heath Ledger’s groundbreaking (and freaky) turn as The Joker. No Best Director nomination for Chris Nolan; no Best Screenplay nomination for Chris and Jonathan Nolan; no Best Original Score nomination (although Dark Knight composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard are both nominated in that category for work on two other films).

Here we have the new international trailer for the The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – it’s not much different than the first trailer if you saw that in theaters, but it does include some new footage.

We haven’t really covered this movie yet here on Screen Rant other than in my recent post on new movie posters, and there are a lot of folks that don’t know much about it. In that post are the two brand new posters for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; one featuring Brad Pitt and the other, Cate Blanchett.

Today we have a pile of new posters we’ve been collecting throughout the week from a variety of sources.

These include the final poster for The Spirit, the first posters for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and new posters for Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Lost: Season 5, Red Sonja, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

That’s a lot of posters!