Emma Stone

Thanks to Stone's help, Jacob Staudenmaier and his date arrived in style.

You know the old saying about how it’s an honor just being nominated? It is. An Academy Award nomination is a win no matter the final outcome on Oscar night. For one thing, it guarantees a major boost in profile and an upgrade in the caliber of roles an actor gets offered. There’s no way, for example, that any Oscar nominee will accept the sorts of roles you’re about to see below.

After months of hype and controversy, the big night is finally upon us. The red carpet has been rolled out, the votes have been cast, and host Jimmy Kimmel has rehearsed all his best Matt Damon jokes. At last, the 89th Academy Awards have arrived.

It’s that time of the year again where we must set aside our personal opinions and favorites to try and guess which movies the Academy will deem the most culturally significant. A lot had changed since our initial Oscar predictions last December. Manchester By the Sea is no longer a Best Picture frontrunner, a race dominated by La La Land with Moonlight shortly behind. The days of calling Natalie Portman a Best Actress shoe-in last fall feel like a distant dream, and Lion and Hacksaw Ridge might just lend this year’s Oscars some surprising upsets.

The letter reads, in part: "How much more can you punish them for living honestly and openly?”

It’s been close to a year since we learned True Detective and Beasts of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga had officially set a Netflix return to direct Jonah Hill and Emma Stone in new dark comedy series Maniac, which at long last is finally moving forward. Reports suggest that production will take place later this year, potentially setting a 2018 premiere.

Just when pundits had begun to reduce the Oscar fracas to a two-horse race between toe-tapping populist favorite La La Land and critically-adored downbeat character piece Moonlight, a possible spoiler has come out of nowhere. Last night, the 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild Awards gave Hollywood’s union of performers a chance to recognize some of their own whom had done outstanding work over the past year. The most coveted award of the ceremony is the prize for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Motion Picture, regarded by some as a bellweather for Oscar night, and it went to unexpected contender Hidden Figures.

PopCrush editors Samantha Vincenty and Matt Donnelly on their Oscar picks and snubs, favorite movies of 2016 and the politics of winning an Academy Award.

The signature image of Damien Chazelle’s La La Land — the one that adorns all of its posters and trailers, and this post as well — is of its two stars, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, dancing in the hills of Los Angeles. It’s a striking visual: Gosling in his dark wool (not polyester) suit, Stone in her canary yellow dress, each with one arm pointed skyward behind them and the other crossed and pointing to the ground. In this single pose, they’ve essentially diagrammed their characters’ entire journeys over the course of the film: They come from different worlds, meet, and send each others’ lives careening off in new directions, with the city of Los Angeles serving as the glittering backdrop to their romance.

'La La Land' and 'The Night Manager' won big, and 'Moonlight' took Best Motion Picture, Drama. Check out all of the 2017 Golden Globes winners.