HitFix

Roundup: The Oscar champs that aren’t yet national treasures

by: Uproxx authors
I’ve always been interested in the decision-making behind which films are added to the National Film RegistryRebecca Ford looks into the process of selecting films for the National Film Registry — the 600-title list of US films deemed “culturally, historical or aesthetically significant,” and therefore preserved in the Library of Congress. Rebecca Ford looks into the process, and finds that it doesn’t always favor consensus classics or popular favorites: among the 25 Best Picture Oscar winners that haven’t yet made the cut, for example, are “Amadeus,” “Rebecca” and “Forrest Gump.” National Preservation Board chairman Roger L. Mayer says, “This is not a popularity contest. It’s an attempt to tell people about the history of film and the way film portrays history.”[Hollywood Reporter]
Peter Bradshaw looks back over cinema’s various, mostly unsuccessful, attempts to portray the late Nelson Mandela. [The Guardian]

Martin Scorsese, whose movies have been pretty lavishly designed of late,  will receive the Cinema Imagery Award for the Art Directors’ Guild at their awards ceremony in February. [Variety]

Loving these left-field FYC pleas from Nathaniel Rogers and his crew: most recently, “Stories We Tell” for Best Editing, and Tye Sherdian for Best Actor. [The Film Experience]

Jonathan Rosenbaum on why a number of this year’s critics’ favorites, from “12 Years a Slave” to “The Act of Killing,” are — wait for it — overrated. [Jonathan Rosenbaum]

Steve Pond lists 10 dark-horse candidates to watch out for in the Best Foreign Language Film race: I’m totally with him on Belgium’s “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” which I do believe will be nominated. [The Wrap]

My French Film Festival, the world’s only online festival for French cinema, will run for a month from January, with Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Lynne Ramsay on the jury. [MFFF]

Larry Rohter meets Dana Rotberg, the Jewish Mexican director of New Zealand’s Maori-language Oscar submission “White Lies.” At least that category’s opening up. [New York Times]

How Jennifer Lawrence wound up kissing Amy Adams in “American Hustle.” [LA Times]