Hallelujah! The Oscars are over, and that means that we can get back to the business of finding new ways to connect the dots between Twilight, Hunger Games, the Kardashians and Justin Bieber. All kidding aside, however, the opportunity to pay attention to movies on a more generalized basis – as in, what you want to watch now, and just plain enjoy – is a welcome change to the drama surrounding the 2012 awards season.

The other great thing about the end of awards conversations is being able to talk about more than five or ten movies, and more specifically, movies we’re personally interested in. This week’s Buzz on Blu features not one but two of Celebuzz’ Top Ten films of 2012, and also features a couple of others that fall squarely into the fun-stuff, female-centric wheelhouse that we just plain get excited to see.

Take a look at this week’s picks for Buzz on Blu, and let us know which of them excites YOU the most!

Anna Karenina (Universal Studios Home Entertainment)

The One-Liner: Keira Knightley reunites with her Atonement and Pride and Prejudice director Joe Wright for this sumptuous adaptation of the classic novel by Leo Tolstoy, also starring Jude Law and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Picture Perfect? On Blu-ray, this film absolutely shines, offering a phenomenal range of colors that are presented with spectacular clarity and sharpness.

What Else Is There? Several featurettes explore the adaptation of the source material and the production of the film, albeit only superficially, while a commentary track offers a fairly prosaic overview of Wright’s creative and technical choices.

How Badly Do I Want It? A film maligned (fairly or not) for its bold vision of the source material, owning it is up to how much you may already like it, but if you haven’t seen Wright’s latest, it’s at least worth renting to check out.

Fun Size (Paramount Home Entertainment)

The One-Liner: Nickelodeon star Victoria Justice stars in this hilariously nightmarish story of a teenager whose plans to attend the biggest party of the year are stymied when she gets stuck babysitting her little brother.

Picture Perfect? Colorful and fun, the movie looks terrific in high definition, preserving the film’s vivid day-glo aesthetic.

What Else Is There? A gag reel and a small collection of fun featurettes explore the production about as deeply as, quite frankly, its target audience is interested in, which isn’t deep at all.

How Badly Do I Want It? A sort of Hangover/ Project X for the teen girl set, this may be mostly rewatchable for that specific audience, but it’s otherwise something at best worth a rental.

Holy Motors (Vivendi Entertainment)

The One-Liner: Leos Carax‘ oddball masterpiece follows an “actor” who literally becomes other people throughout the course of a day, crossing paths with Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue in the process.

Picture Perfect? Although the transfer on Vivendi’s Blu-ray faithfully preserves the pictures captured by Carax’ digital cameras, the overall quality is slightly less than immaculate, offering solid but unexceptional presentation of the film.

What Else Is There? Two featurettes go beyond the typical EPK stuff that viewers usually experience, albeit to effect of underscoring how unusual and complex Carax’ film actually is.

How Badly Do I Want It? This is a movie that fully appreciates upon multiple viewings, and if nothing else offers so many individually-fascinating vignettes, that it deserves to be bought and supported – so AT LEAST rent it.

The Master (Anchor Bay Entertainment)

The One-Liner: The choice for Celebuzz’ favorite film of the year, Paul Thomas Anderson’s massively ambitious, insightful and sensitive portrait of the complex relationship between a delinquent seaman (Joaquin Phoenix) and a philosophical cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Picture Perfect? Shot in 65mm, the film looks phenomenal, although it’s possible that current technology lacks even the resolution to fully represent the substance and depth of the images which Anderson captures.

What Else Is There? 20 minutes of deleted scenes actually showcase much of the action that is alluded to in the final cut, offering viewers a new perspective on Freddie and Dodd’s relationship, while a 1946 documentary by filmmaker John Huston reveals where Anderson got some of the key ideas for his film.

How Badly Do I Want It? Like every other PTA movie, this is a work of art that only grows in complexity with each viewing, making it a must-have for any filmgoer interested in both entertainment and art.

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (Universal Studios Home Entertainment)

The One-Liner: Adelaide Clemens stars in this video game-adaptation sequel, about an 18-year-old who finds herself battling evil forces that “threaten to trap her in a nightmarish landscape forever.”

Picture Perfect? Thanks in no small part to the film’s murky look, the Blu-ray fails to inspire much excitement, and in 2 or 3D, the film just doesn’t look particularly great; that said, it’s mostly faithful to the original elements.

What Else Is There? Only one featurette is included in the set, and it offers few if any meaningful background details about the making of the movie.

How Badly Do I Want It? We suppose if you’re a video game fan, this is a film worth renting, but otherwise this is probably best skipped, especially since the fantastic Top Gun 3D Blu-ray came out just a couple of weeks ago, and is already worth revisiting.

Which of these films are you most excited to won? Let us know in the comments section below!

Everyone’s office has that one movie fan that always wins the Oscar betting pool, who wears their newly-won gift card to Outback Steakhouse like a badge of honor.

No one wants to lose to that guy. In an effort to prevent your resident watercooler handicapper from earning another victory notch for his cubicle wall, here are the movies Celebuzz suggests that you see before Oscar night.

In the build-up to Awards season, some movies beat the drum louder than others.

Films like Argo and Les Miserables come out of the gate designed for all the attention, and get it – if their box office grosses are any indication. Other releases take the less-is-more approach, relying on word of mouth – and just being damn good movies – to attract Oscar’s spotlight.

Those are the films we’re highlighting today. So stop everything you’re doing and put them in your eyes now.

Which of these movies have you seen? Which ones do you think have the best shot at Oscar? Drop your reviews in the comments below.

2012 was a remarkable year for movies – not just financially, but artistically.

Even as The Hunger Games and The Avengers and Skyfall and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 broke records and brought in historic revenues, some of the industry’s most talented actors and filmmakers further solidified their place in the Hollywood firmament, even as newcomers introduced the world to artistic voices that deserve to be heard.

All of which made a Top Ten list that much more difficult to whittle down. Nevertheless, Celebuzz assembled an in-no-particular-order collection of films that deserve recognition at the end of year, and which we believe may stand the test of time long after their competition had disappeared from our collective memories.

As arbitrary as choosing Number Four from Number Five might be, we did elect a few titles for the top of our list, starting with The Master. Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film was a revelation – a challenging, unique work of art that came to the screen without compromise, and which reminded us what the word auteur truly means.

Meanwhile, Leos Carax’ Holy Motors and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained also ranked high as favorites, for their equally singular charms, and similar artistic integrity. On the other hand, films like 21 Jump Street and The Hunger Gamesalso unexpectedly joined their ranks as crowd-pleasers that don’t skimp on intelligence or emotional resonance as they engage our most primal instincts to be entertained.

Make sure you read through the gallery above for a full list of Celebuzz’ favorite films of 2012, where we mount a defense for each of them and challenge readers to check them out. In the meantime, check out our video recap of the year’s best and most memorable, and then let us know: what was your favorite film of 2012? Let the debate begin in the comments section!

Transformation is always a common quality that great actors seem to share, but in 2012, the one that seemed to dominate the year’s best performances was reinvention.

While Matthew McConaughey revived his career with a series of terrific – and different — turns in movies big and small, his Magic Mike co-star Channing Tatum proved that he could hold his own not just as a heartthrob, but as a bona fide actor.

Meanwhile, even the famously gifted Leonardo DiCaprio showed a different side of himself, having a bit of fun as a gloriously cruel plantation owner in Django Unchained, even as The Master‘s Joaquin Phoenix reminded viewers that he doesn’t simply play his characters, he becomes them.

Celebuzz has assembled a shortlist of the year’s best male performances, taking into account not just great acting, but the context of their work – what they’ve done in the past – and where they’re doing it.

Which is why Michael Sheen’s over-the-top turn as Aro in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 stands side by side with Phoenix and DiCaprio’s work: the gifted English actor gave such a flourish to his role that it stood out even more.

Then of course there’s the dark horses, those off-the-radar turns that earned accolades in critical circles but skirted mainstream attention because of subject matter that was simply too sophisticated for most.

Who made the list? Check out Celebuzz’ gallery of Favorite Male Performances above, and then below the trailer for Django Unchained, let us know whose acting impressed you the most. Or even better, who you think should have made this list that didn’t!

With less than a month until 2013, the new year’s slate of films is already starting to breathe down 2012′s neck. Which means it’s time to roll out some year-end nostalgia for those movie moments that made 2012 a memorable one at the box office.

From Hunger Games to Twilght, Batman to Bond, this year delivered plenty of memorable scenes worthy of our hard-earned allowance money. Celebuzz has selected 16 scenes from this year’s theatrical releases that best define 2012.

This feature kicks off a series of articles on Celebuzz looking back on the year in film. This is not necessarily a list of the year’s best films – that’s on the way – rather, this is a list of scenes that best represent why going to the movies this year was worthwhile.

What are your favorite movie moments from 2012? List them off below!

As if the Church of Scientology didn’t have enough trouble already, what with the end of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ marriage and the muckraking epic article about their union in Vanity Fair. Now comes a little art house movie, one that made just $736,311 on five screens when it opened over the weekend, yet could be the biggest PR disaster of all for Scientology.

The Master, a thinly veiled biographical drama about a self-help guru much like L. Ron Hubbard who founds his own religion in the 1950s, seems poised to be a solid hit. Though it opened in a very limited release over the weekend, it scored a record-breaking $147,262 per-screen average in those five theaters, which suggests a strong buzz about the film that bodes well for its fortunes as it moves into wider release. Plus, the movie has critics raving — over the direction of Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) and the performances of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams — making The Master the year’s first awards frontrunner and guaranteeing that it’ll be the subject of conversation for the next six months.

And that could be bad news for Scientology, already reeling from Cruise’s divorce and other PR nightmares. For an organization heavily dependent on its association with prominent Hollywood folk like Cruise and John Travolta, a group whose litigiousness often scared away anyone who might say anything negative in print or on film, the release of The Master suggests that both Scientology’s sway over Hollywood and its ability to intimidate naysayers and defectors is on the wane.

Just how potentially embarrassing is ‘The Master’?

The Master tells the story of a Hubbard-like character named Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), a science fiction author who launches his own faith, one that promises self-improvement through the use of “processing,” a series of questions intended to uncover inner trauma and resolve issues that have lingered in past lives. The movie depicts him as a charismatic demagogue who buys his own line of con artistry and lashes out when confronted with the contradictions in his belief system.

The Master’s release comes on the heels of Maureen Orth’s Vanity Fair article detailing claims that the Cruise-Holmes marriage came about only after the Mission: Impossible star auditioned several actresses as possible brides, settling for a time on Iranian-born actress and church member Nazanin Boniadi. It’s an account that’s been confirmed by Crash director Paul Haggis, Hollywood’s most famous Scientology defector, who says he is a friend of Boniadi’s. Over the weekend, an eight-page cease-and-desist letter to Vanity Fair was revealed, threatening legal action and calling the story a regurgitation of old falsehoods. The magazine is standing by Orth’s reporting.

“There’s no question that the movie comes at the worst possible time for the church,” wrote Tony Ortega, editor of the Village Voice and a Scientology expert who has been writing about the organization for 17 years, in an e-mail to Celebuzz. “Scientology is literally splitting apart as David Miscavige’s controversial tenure as church leader reaches a kind of breaking point. He’s trying to get more and more money from fewer and fewer people, and many longtime, loyal members are now breaking away to form an independence movement. That would be enough of a crisis for Miscavige, but the Cruise-Holmes divorce made things exponentially worse because it brought so much media attention to what’s been going on. And now, The Master is going to reach potentially millions more, and many of those audience members will naturally want to learn about the real figures behind its characters. They’ll turn to the Internet for that information, which will only increase interest in news stories about Scientology and its problems.”

According to Ortega — who gave the church another bit of bad news last week with his decision to quit the Voice and turn his Scientology columns into a book — the current crisis goes back much further than the unflattering Tom Cruise stories of recent months. “Scientology has been in serious trouble since 2009, when the Tampa Bay Times released its devastating series, ‘The Truth Rundown,’ which featured former high-level church executives speaking out for the first time,” Ortega told Celebuzz. “In the three years since, we’ve learned even more about the shocking conditions at Scientology’s international base in California, where officials who have fallen from favor are kept in appalling conditions, according to court testimony.”

But recent weeks have provided such a perfect storm of bad news for Scientology that some Hollywood observers wondered if distributor Harvey Weinstein — who knows better than anyone in Hollywood how to milk a controversy for silver at the box office and gold at the Oscars — had moved The Master’s release date up a month from its initial October berth just to cash in on Scientology’s current PR woes. The Weinstein Company has denied such a motive, insisting that it’s just taking advantage of positive buzz for the film generated at Venice and other recent film festivals.

The Weinstein Company reportedly received some anonymous threats over the film’s impending release but did not take them seriously. There have been no threats of legal action from the church, perhaps because Anderson’s screenplay has changed all the names, some of the details, and invented some characters and events out of whole cloth, allowing the distributor legal cover. Or perhaps the church realizes that ignoring the film is a smarter strategy than calling attention to it. “I’d be really surprised if the church filed a lawsuit over the movie,” Ortega told Celebuzz. “As you saw in the letter to Vanity Fair, they make a lot of threats, but that didn’t stop [Vanity Fair editor] Graydon Carter from publishing Maureen Orth’s story.”

Is Scientology avoiding threats because filmmakers and studios are no longer afraid of the church? Back in the early ’90s, the church was vigilant about policing potentially unflattering content in movies and TV shows; even a single proposed joke at Scientology’s expense could provoke a campaign of harassment, as the makers of the 1991 John Candy film Delirious discovered. By 1999, however, Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy could make a movie, Bowfinger, that mercilessly lampooned Scientology (fictionalized in the film as a cult called Mindhead), without suffering any repercussions. The church ignored that film, which was soon forgotten. That seems to be the strategy it’s taking today with The Master.

Ortega told Celebuzz that such a strategy is “playing it smart,” but Mike Rinder, the former chief spokesman for Scientology (who left the church in 2007), said it’s a sign of confusion and desperation. “The organization (read Miscavige) is probably troubled by The Master because they tried to stop it and couldn’t,” Rinder told Celebuzz in an e-mail. “In my estimation (and I have NOT seen the movie) based on the statements of Paul Thomas Anderson, the church would have been much smarter to take him at his word — that this is a movie ‘inspired by’ events in L. Ron Hubbard’s life and use it as a springboard to promote to people the real story of the life of L. Ron Hubbard.”

But that’s not the approach the church is taking, either with Vanity Fair or the Weinstein Company. Instead, Rinder said, the organization is either pouting or blustering. “The Weinsteins may receive a similar letter,” noted Rinder, “but it will [present] no more of a threat than the empty bleatings sent to Vanity Fair. The only difference being that they won’t sue Vanity Fair because the story is true, and they won’t sue the Weinsteins because the story is NOT true (and you cannot defame a dead person….). Miscavige and Cruise have lost all credibility.”

He added, “Sooner or later the media would realize that the threats from the church were all bark and no bite. As time has gone on, David Miscavige the leader of the church, has become increasingly ensconced in a bubble of sycophants. And thus his inability to understand the ramifications of his actions that create one public relations disaster after another. From sending “squirrel busters” with cameras on their head to try and harass and intimidate former members, to denying on national TV that they engage in “disconnection” to writing increasingly shrill “threat letters” that are now the subject of derision, Miscavige is in a tailspin that I think it is too late to pull out of.”

In any case, It’s not likely that an awards contender and art-house box office hit like The Master will drop off the radar any time soon. And its presence will only exacerbate what Ortega said “is the biggest crisis in the church’s 60-year history, and it shows no signs of slowing down.”

Anderson, who directed Cruise’s Oscar-nominated performance in 1999′s Magnolia, reportedly screened The Master for the actor as a courtesy. No word on what Cruise thought of the film.

UPDATE: (Tuesday, September 18, 10:30 AM ET) Amy Scobee, a former top church insider who left Scientology in 2005 after 27 years, told Celebuzz she thinks The Master is a major concern for the church (“I think it worries them greatly,” she said in an e-mail), but that Hollywood no longer finds the organization intimidating. “They are a laughing stock in Hollywood and they have lost respect,” she wrote. “No one likes a bully, which they are to the ‘t,’ and people are no longer afraid to speak up, thanks to the numerous defectors and media outlets that weathered the storm of retribution. We lived and kept speaking out. And were not worried about being sued (though threatened several times) because what we’re saying is true and can be easily proven. They would definitely not want to go legal and get all their dirty laundry out in the open even more.”

A long-in-the-tooth franchise found its way to the top of the box office even as a highly-anticipated, original work broke records in limited release.

The fifth installment in director Paul W.S. Anderson’s indefatigable zombie-action series, Resident Evil: Retribution, earned the Number One spot with a modest $21.1 million – and average of just over $7,000 per screen.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson, on the other hand, brought in a record-breaking $147,262 on each of only five screens, for a total of $736,311 during The Master’s limited-release opening weekend.

What else brought people to theaters over the weekend?

Although Andrew Stanton’s first live-action effort, John Carter, failed to attract moviegoers, the filmmaker’s newly-enhanced Finding Nemo 3D brought in some $17.5 million in receipts, landing at Number Two behind Resident Evil.

After two weeks at Number One, The Possession tumbled to Number Three with a haul of $5.8 million. With a reported budget of $14 million, the film has performed well, earning more than $41 million in just three weeks.

Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy’s Lawless came in at Number Four, earning $4.3 million for a cumulative haul of $30.2 million.

And the oddball animated movie ParaNorman earned $3.039 million, which was just enough more than The Expendables 2’s $3.03 million, to claim the Number Five spot.

Although The Master’s weekend gross set a new bar for per-screen average, the film opened at Number 18. But as the critically-acclaimed drama, which stars Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, expands to other cities and more theaters in the coming weeks, it should be interesting to see how the film performs with mainstream moviegoers.

In the meantime, watch the theatrical trailer for The Master below:

“A force of nature” is a description thrown around freely — and reductively — by performances and films that are big, over the top and out of control, but there’s something truly elemental about the relationship between Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s characters in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master.

As the id and superego in eternal conflict, the irrepressibly primal beast and the trainer who loves its wildness as desperately as he wants to tame it, Phoenix’s Freddie Quell and Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd form a perfect circle of visceral and philosophical energies. And it’s this febrile, unpredictable conflict which makes The Master such a remarkable, ferocious experience, not just one of the best films of the year, but a singular achievement that doesn’t just earn its divisiveness but outright demands it.

What exactly is ‘The Master’ about?

In 1950, Phoenix’s Quell is a restless Navy seaman with an aptitude for creating unique, often dangerous cocktails out of random household substances – say, flash powder, paint thinner and the dregs of a bottle of gin that comes complete with its own hangover. Hoffman’s Dodd is “The Master,” the leader of a, yes, Scientology-like organization whose wife Peggy (Amy Adams) vents the passion and outrage that he suppresses as a tenet of “The Cause.”

When happenstance throws the two men together on a long boat trip to New York, an unexpected friendship develops. But the two men’s opposing natures soon challenges their almost subconscious bond as Dodd advances his cultlike philosophy and Quell attempts to find his place within it.

Although countless superlatives can and deserve to be heaped on Anderson’s latest, perhaps the most important is unpredictable. When every other film seems so perfunctory, so expected, anything different is welcome, but in the case of The Master there’s not a single moment that pays off in a familiar way, or feels like it can be anticipated.

As one scene gives way to the next, beginnings and endings approach and retreat, and conventional arcs deteriorate. Complemented by Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood’s alternately dreamy and punctuative score, emotional arpeggios dissolve into discordant interludes, and the audience is left to determine the tone of each scene according to their interpretation of events, and their sympathies to those involved.

Although (as mentioned above) Scientology is a convenient and not inaccurate point of reference for Dodd’s “Cause,” it’s virtually irrelevant in the face of his relationship with Quell. Dodd is a man who seeks order, clarity, understanding and above all else control – of himself, others and the world around him. Quell, by comparison, is an animal who prizes freedom above all else, and even the pretense of being domesticated or repressed is met – subconsciously – with physical and emotional revolt.

Phoenix’s performance is revelatory. His posture gnarled up like a wiry question mark, the actor sleekly prowls through the affluence and respectability of his counterpart’s world. But Anderson cleverly sometimes makes him the question and other times the answer, and Phoenix’s purity of expression – an unhinged, raw and indelible articulation of base desire – is at once pitiable and terrifying, but palpably recognizable, even as it’s coming from a place that seems beyond the consciousness of an actor who’s fully submerged in his role.

Hoffman has a magnificent gift for theatricality that never loses believability, and that’s precisely what Dodd needs to be a convincing philosophical figurehead. His actorly seriousness augments the character’s showmanship, but playing a self-described “hopelessly inquisitive man” who has looked via Quell into the abyss of his own soul and seen the black primal nothingness of his most rudimentary impulses, Hoffman finds emotional truth in Dodd’s intellectual dishonesty.

The polarity of the two central characters is only strengthened by the qualities each shares with the other – Dodd’s loss of composure, not to mention the ugly expression of his temper, and Quell’s purely intuitive and yet fully measured construction of the “potions” he creates to deal with the noise of the civilized world.

Dodd is a man whose vision can’t bear the weight of its own ambition; Quell can’t countenance the betrayal of his beliefs, but also can’t escape his nature. As Quell seems to capitulate to another member of The Cause’s criticisms of a new book by beating his disappointment out of the poor man, Dodd pecks away at chinks in his own armor and then lashes out at a follower trying to fill them in with her faith.

Much has rightly been made of Anderson’s decision to shoot the film in 65mm and exhibit it (where possible) in 70mm, but it’s less important what format he used than how he used it. The pure, intuitive elegance of his images is invigorating to look at even when it’s not moving: like Stanley Kubrick, Anderson favors one-point perspective and a sort of stylized simplicity, both of which are as disorienting and confrontational as they are immersive.

It creates a sense of uncertainty and even danger that feels unlike any other movie in recent memory. The length of shots, and the perspectives from which they’re aimed, suggest tragedies and triumphs that either come at unexpected moments or not at all, making the story feel like two lives observed, not to be too grandiose about it. Even with all of Anderson’s musical and cinematographic accouterments, the performances and the narrative structure feels completely unaffected by the demands of conventional storytelling.

And so, with the combination of this and his 2007 film There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson has become not just ‘a’ but perhaps the quintessential American filmmaker. His celebration and skepticism of his characters’ ideals embody the foundations of American culture – individualism, self-determination, cooperation, compassion, selfishness, leadership and servitude, commingling in healthy and sometimes not so healthy ways. Flag-waving proclamations would be superfluous; it feels as if Anderson has unearthed the soul of a nation, expressed through undeniable humanity.

How that idea resonates with audiences – even those who admire Anderson’s work – feels oddly irrelevant, since The Master is itself a commanding force that razes expectations and defies conventional understanding. And after two viewings from this critic, the film still remains a mystery that feels less like it needs to be solved than accepted.

That, after all, is what drives Quell: because he can’t control – much less understand — himself any better than anyone else might, the only thing left for him to do — and demand from others — is to embrace those roiling contradictions and complexities. Whether you question it or simply accept it, what makes The Master quite so amazing is that it’s the first film in a long time that there’s only more and more about it to uncover.