Fan Fare

No more nudity for Kate Winslet?

Kate Winslet, who is nominated for an Oscar for best actress in ”The Reader,”  has been happy to take her clothes off for the sake of her art. 

But those days may be over.

“I think I won’t do it again: a) I can’t keep getting away with it, and b) I don’t want to become ‘that actress who always gets her kit off,’” Winslet told Time magazine, in a profile that ran on its website on Thursday.

The comment comes the same day the Los Angeles Times ran an article looking at Winslet and fellow Oscar nominee Marisa Tomei, who plays a stripper in “The Wrestler” and who has also not been shy about shedding her clothes.

The LA Times wrote that, “Winslet would appear to have no equal among A-list actresses in her fearlessness about displaying her body.”

“Stretching from her career-making role in “Titanic” to “Iris” to 2006′s steamy “Little Children” — for each of which she received an Oscar nomination — Winslet has bared at least some skin in service to the film’s story,” the article said.

Name your favorite in the Oscar movie race.

After months of watching movies, listening to punditry and seeing critics’ picks, the Oscar race has rounded the final corner and is in the home stretch. Nomination ballots are due at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this week, and the world’s top film awards will be given out on Sunday, Feb. 22, in Hollywood.

Most Oscar watchers favor ”Slumdog Millionaire” to take the best motion picture award and its director Danny Boyle to win the directing trophy. Danny gives it the thumbs up. After all, ”Slumdog” has scooped up nearly every other award in sight this Oscar season, and it is clearly a crowd pleaser with an overall U.S. box office slowly inching upward to the $100 milion mark.

But is it really the best movie? Does it have the artistry and cinematic appeal of rivals “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Frost/Nixon”? Can it match the hope and inspiration of gay themed “Milk” with Sean Penn in an award-winning performance? Is it missing the weightiness of Holocaust-era drama “The Reader” led by star Kate Winslet?

Will the popular appeal and critical success of “Slumdog,” the rags-to-riches tale of an Indian boy competing for love and money on a TV game show, be enough to sway Academy Award voters. Now may be your last chance to weigh-in here. How would you vote?

Would Kate Winslet win awards for her speeches?

British actress Kate Winslet keeps picking up awards for her 2008 film roles and admits she is struggling with her acceptance speeches.

On Sunday, she won best supporting actress from the Screen Actors Guild for her role as a German woman with a Nazi past in “The Reader,” adding to her double win at the Golden Globes a few weeks ago.

“I’m a bit lost for words, I’m sorry,” she said in her speech on Sunday. But she actually came off better than at the Globes, where she gushed her way through her speeches, especially after winning best actress for her role as a frustrated suburban wife in “Revolutionary Road.”

Backstage on Sunday, she joked with reporters: “I don’t have to make another speech do I? I am so bad at this..Clearly I am still learning.” She said that winning comes as a shock and “just takes her breath away.”

For the Oscars on Feb. 22, Winslet will by vying for best actress for her “The Reader” role, in which she has an affair with a teenage boy and bares herself in several intimate scenes. But her breath will really be taken away if she wins the Academy Award over multi-award winning actress Meryl Streep, who took best actress from the Screen Actors Guild for her role as a vindictive nun in “Doubt.”

Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino”: Oscar roadkill

It was perhaps the biggest snub of the Oscar nominations, actor/director Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” was overlooked by voters at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with no — zero — nominations. Or, was it?

(For a slideshow of nominees, click here, and for a list of nominees, click here.)

For weeks, as the road to Oscars’ Feb. 22 ceremony in Hollywood has laid out in front of award watchers, critics and industry groups have continually turned their heads as “Gran Torino” drove by — no Golden Globes or Broadcast Critics Choice awards, no nominations by producers, directors, actors or writers guilds. You could see the roadkill on the highway.

Yet, Eastwood is a favorite of the Motion Picture Academy voters. He has won two best director and best film awards (“Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby”), but never won for acting. He was the star of “Gran Torino,” and the movie and his performance have earned mostly good reviews. Moreover, the film has been a hit with moviegoers who vote with their dollars at box offices ($78 million and climbing). As a result, many award watchers believed Academy voters would make Clint’s day. But they didn’t. And the question is, did they get it right or wrong?

“The Reader,” which has been seen by few people, earned a nomination for best picture over “Gran Torino” and Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor” – a well-respected actor but hardly a household name — was nominated over Clint for best actor. Was that right?

In other surprises, Leonardo DiCaprio was shut out of the best actor category after turning in a strong performance in dark drama “Revolutionary Road,” and that film, which also starred Kate Winslet, also failed to make it in the best film and best director category with its filmmaker Sam Mendes (Winslet’s husband). Winslet did, however, land in the best actress race for “The Reader.”

And what about Batman movie “The Dark Knight.” It was 2008′s No. 1 movie at box offices, but was shut out of best director (Christopher Nolan) and best picture. The movie’s nominations — except for supporting actor for Heath Ledger – came mostly in technical categories like makeup, visual effects and sound-editing.