Greg Kinnear

The most unappealing part of the Oscar season--besides the sniping text messages from Mickey Rourke--is observing how the echo chamber created by critics (and bloggers) ends up affecting the mindset of actual Academy Award voters. It seems like fewer and fewer movies and performers are invited into the inner circle each year, probably because so many are written off as non-contenders by the cognoscente before they even in theaters. Don't worry! We're here to rectify that injustice. You won't find these people mentioned on any Oscar prognostication websites, but here are four of our favorite under-the-radar performances from 2008.

Greg Kinnear, Ghost Town

Ricky Gervais' attempt to headline a movie in America bombed so badly that he was already making jokes about it at the Emmy Awards during the film's opening weekend.  read more »

FLASH OF GENIUS
RUNNING TIME 119 minutes
WRITTEN BY Philip Railsback
DIRECTED BY Marc Abraham
STARRING Greg Kinnear, Lauren Graham, Alan Alda, Dermot Mulroney

Equally sincere but without much entertainment value, Flash of Genius is another of those movies about honest, ordinary citizens fighting the powerful system of corporate corruption. This time little David is Dr. Robert Kearns, a professor of mechanical engineering in Detroit who invented the “intermittent” windshield wiper. The corporate Goliaths who stole and marketed his invention, cheated him out of his patents and falsely claimed the credit for his ideas were the Ford Motor Co.  read more »

Irina Aleksander is sad to report that the parents of charmingly kooky socialite Arden Wohl have separated, and dad Larry has been spotted around town with a woman who is not his wife Denise.

Ms. Aleksander also stopped by Barneys on Monday evening for a book party celebrating Graydon Carter's new tome, Vanity Fair: The Portraits, A Century of Iconic Images, where she asked champagne-sipping guests like Barry Diller, Richard Meier, and Fran Lebowitz how the latest financial news would affect the city.

George Gurley headed to the Soho Grand to hang out with the stars of the new film Ghost Town, where he found James Lipton gruff, and Greg Kinnear and Ann Dexter-Jones characteristically sunny. She loves orchids! And her kids!

And Spencer Morgan speaks to one of the partners of beleaguered downtown club The Box, whose liquor license is up for review. In this city, hell hath no fury like a neighbor who can't sleep!  read more »

The new warmhearted comedy Ghost Town, starring Ricky Gervais and Téa Leoni, has all kinds of comforting messages about life and death. Turns out if you get hit by a bus but still have unfinished business on Earth, you get to resolve all your issues with loved ones before a beam of light appears and you fade out blissfully on the way to the next world.

After a Cinema Society screening on Monday, Sept. 15, everyone at the Soho Grand’s courtyard restaurant seemed under the spell of this sweet, hilarious movie. So we decided to bum everyone out by asking if Armageddon was right around the corner.  read more »

Charismatic Freeman, Kinnear star in Benton’s latest.  read more »