“Imagine a category that rewards excellence in blending fact and fiction in in an original manner (this is distinct from Best Adapted Screenplay, which celebrates the adaptation of a previous, distinct work.) … This is a category that doesn’t nitpick the details, but appreciates a film’s attempt to bring together the realms of fiction and nonfiction.” And it might shut the nitpickers up (but probably not).

“Here is the question I’m trying to answer: What will happen to me – an Americanized Russian-speaking novelist who emigrated from the Soviet Union as a child – if I let myself float into the television-filtered head space of my former countrymen? Will I learn to love Putin as 85 percent of Russians profess to do? Will I dash to the Russian consulate on East 91st Street and ask for my citizenship back? … Or will I simply go insane?”

“While we all know about the major controversies underpinning this year’s [awards race] – such as the shameful lack of diversity in this year’s #OscarsSoWhite nominees – no film is immune from its own internal drama. Here’s a look at some of the specific quarrels and criticisms that have plagued 10 of this year’s nominated films.”

Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida): “It’s not a nice feeling, and I also feel a bit embarrassed for my country, which I’m very proud of in most ways. When it happens, and they said Ida is an unpatriotic embarrassment, I think, ‘My movie’s not embarrassing. This is embarrassing.'”

Edward Rothstein: “The historian is starting to be perceived as a pedant. And the ‘Gotcha Game’ – as one critic has called efforts to call out film inaccuracies – is being portrayed as a culturally philistine enterprise. … Actually, if these films didn’t make such claims on history, they would get considerably less attention. History, they insist, matters. But some also claim its mantle disingenuously, in order to give authority to their manipulations. Fact-checking is important because it helps disclose what is being changed and why.”

“The spat began earlier this month, when director Feng Xiaogang lambasted the popularity of a spate of recent Chinese movies based on popular reality television shows. … That hurts genuine filmmaking, he argued, because it draws investor money away from more serious movies.” Arguing back was no less than the People’s Daily (sounding not unlike The Wall Street Journal, actually).

“Slate film critic Dana Stevens takes a closer look at Arquette’s remarkable performance as Olivia, the doughty single mother in [Boyhood,] Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making coming-of-age story.” (video)

Now here’s a good way to celebrate Black History Month: four dozen-and-change movies to revisit or to discover, from all the way back in 1920 (Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates), through the landmarks (Nothing But a Man, Sweet Sweetback, New Jack City, She’s Gotta Have It, Daughters of the Dust) to this decade (Fruitvale Station).

J. Hoberman: “While American Sniper has drawn a large and diverse audience there is no consensus as to what the movie means. Rush Limbaugh hailed it as’an extension of the November elections’ … Jane Fonda saw it as a movie about the psychic cost of war … The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has reported a spike in anti-Arab threats. A French journalist contacted me … to see if I thought the movie’s unexpected popularity was a response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre.”

Richard Brody praises Scott Timberg’s recent book – and then argues that its points don’t quite apply to movies or narrative video and the people who make them.

“It’s a vicious cycle: the confusing scheduling prevents people from finding the shows, so they don’t tune in, so PBS sees no reason to support them.”

“Taxi is Panahi’s third film since he was banned from making films by the Iranian authorities and forbidden from travelling in 2010. It was filmed covertly as the director drove a taxi around Tehran.”

“The hairs are sewn individually into tiny holes — less than a half-millimeter in diameter — of what Hannon calls ‘the finest silk lace you can find.'”

“Ten years ago, the pay channel Showtime broke ground with ‘Weeds,’ about a mom who builds a clandestine pot business. Now more shows are incorporating plots about the pot trade as it evolves in the real-world.”

“In the ‘80s and ‘90s, movies and television shows explored storylines on the fray. They were really weird and strangely lit with cryptic-speaking characters and alternative universes — they weren’t beige and unoffensive.”

“New makeup had to be created because the makeup used in black-and-white films looked artificial.”

“My advice? Don’t teach everyone how to code. Teach them how to identify and understand needs, as well as how to visually express logic. Teach them how technology works, so they can understand the realm of possibility and then envision game-changing innovations. And then create an environment where they don’t even have to think about writing code — where building great apps is as easy as using iTunes. Just drag and drop.”

“Nearly as soon as people began to share the news on Twitter – and possibly drum up fake illnesses to stay home for binge watching on Thursday – Netflix yanked the highly anticipated episodes.”

“Warner Bros. could well set a profit record in 2015 and would be able to grow its earnings over the coming years.”

Female characters comprised just 12 per cent of protagonists in the top 100 grossing films of 2014, the lowest figure for more than a decade, according to a new study.

“In recent days, some commenters have dismissed Williams’s comic moonlighting as the work of a guy who couldn’t stand not to have a camera trained on him, or of a newsman who actually just wanted to be an entertainer. A more charitable view would be that he was an anchor trying to remain relevant in a news environment that, thanks in part to Stewart, was turning him into a dinosaur in a bespoke suit.”

“The idea that what Jon Stewart and his team did was journalism always rankled some journalists, but that’s exactly what it was. At its most fundamental level, the purpose of journalism in a democracy is to build a more informed citizenry. For many Americans, especially younger ones, Stewart fulfilled that task. And it seems to be a duty his successors are eager to take up.”

“Until recently, I’d assumed it was understood that Hollywood would emphasize the ‘story’ aspects of history, and that a distortion of real events, on screen, would hardly constitute a lie. At what point, I wonder, did we start expecting films to tell the truth about the past? And won’t we be in trouble if we do?”

James Poniewozik: “So Stewart wasn’t an actual news anchor. What his show did with comedy was a kind of journalism nonetheless, using satire and some thorough research of source material to analyze the news and analyze its analysis. Any honest media critic knew that Stewart was doing the job better than the rest of us. … Do the same thing in print and you’re an op-ed columnist. Stewart and company simply managed to do it in a format that people paid attention to.”

When the feature is active, such TV sets “listen” to what is said and may share what they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.

“As the title declares, the film is very much a boy’s coming-of-age story, but Boyhood is also about girlhood. Mason has a sister, Samantha, who grows up alongside him over the course of the 12 years it took to make the film.” Her trajectory is, in its way, as telling as his.

“The novel is now in retreat — and not only in Hollywood — as screenwriters and moviegoers turn their gaze to movies based on established franchises, comic books, graphic novels, musicals, non-fiction books and magazine articles, TV shows, memoirs, and biographies.”

“Georgia officials are concerned that the worker shortage will drive filmmakers to other states.”

And in another surprise, Grand Budapest Hotel wins the most awards of the evening.