This year, the Academy's Acting Branch was praised for its global orientation, for nominating not only American actors of color, such as Will Smith, Forest Whitaker, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, but also actors of foreign nationalities, such as Adriana Barraza from Mexico and Rinko Kikuchi fro Japan, both for “Babel.” Here is a current report on the status of black actors, reflecting this year's results.

Peter Jackson's third installment “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” in the trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” swept the Oscars in 2003, winning in each and every category of its 13 nominations.

Feb 25, 2007–Adaptations of English-language novels dominated the 2007 C?©sars, the French national film prizes that were handed out yesterday (Saturday) in Paris. Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley, a retelling of the second version of D.H. Lawrence's erotic classic Lady Chatterley's Lover, and actor-turned-director Guillaume Canet's Ne le dis ?† personne (Tell No One), based on the novel by American writer Harlan Coben, won Best Film and Best Director respectively. Chatterley received five awards and Ne le dis ?† personne four.

Feb 25, 2007–If “Little Miss Sunshine” wins the Oscar tonight, it will be one of the least commercial successful Best Pictures. The Fox Searchlight movie, which was released in the summer and came out on DVD in December, had grossed less than $60 million at the box-office.