On Demand has free “featurettes” for movie fans during awards season

The Academy Awards are coming up fast, but for movie fans who want to start the party early, On Demand is offering an insider’s look at what goes into the making of award-winning films. Free On Demand “featurettes” delve into the motivations, methods and character traits that make artists like Daniel Day-Lewis, Ang Lee, James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, Helen Mirren and others winners of the movie industry’s highest honors.

Skyfall

Award-Winning Actors: Visit with three masters of their craft, all former winners for Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn and Forest Whitaker. These masterful actors weigh in with insights into why they chose certain roles, their deep feelings about acting and how they created these iconic characters. Day-Lewis talks about working on There Will Be Blood while Penn discusses the challenges of his character in Milk, while his costars weigh in on how this great actor inhabits his characters. And Whitaker delves into the complexity of playing Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.

Award-Winning Actresses: Three of Hollywood’s most celebrated actresses — all former winners for Best Actress — talk about their craft. Hilary Swank discusses Million Dollar Baby and her director/costar Clint Eastwood weighs in on how she became an athlete for the role. Helen Mirren engages with insights about how she evoked Queen Elizabeth in The Queen. And Gwyneth Paltrow reminds us how and why Shakespeare in Love became such a big winner, with costar Ben Affleck describing the complexity of the multiple parts she had to play in one movie.

Award-Winning Directors: Three legends of the directing business reveal some very private and surprising feelings about the projects they choose, and what drives them and inspires them. Ang Lee discusses the universal theme of Brokeback Mountain. James Cameron reveals the unusual way he sold the concept of Titanic to Fox and Kathryn Bigelow weighs in on what it took to get The Hurt Locker made and why the film works.

Other titles include:

The Contender Countdown: A cinematic montage of some of this year’s award contenders, mashed up, mixed up and set to music.

Meet the Contenders: A pulse-pounding visit to the sets of nominated films Argo, The Sessions, Flight and Moonrise Kingdom. Meet the stars, directors and crew from a viewpoint that few get to see.

This Year’s Nominees: Movies On Demand provides film fans the opportunity to catch up on many of this year’s contenders in advance of the awards. Some of the year’s biggest nominated hits such as Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Frankenweenie, The Sessions, Marvel’s The Avengers, The Master, Anna Karenina, Prometheus, Skyfall, Flight, War Witch, Moonrise Kingdom and others are currently available or coming soon to On Demand.

Free On Demand content can be located by searching the On Demand menu and looking for categories Movies, Awards, Awards Season, Movie Collections, Trailers, Free Extras or HD On Demand/HD extras.*

In addition, the movies discussed in the features above, along with 100 of the most celebrated movies of all time — including many Best Picture winners — are available On Demand on digital cable until March 18. Titles on this list include: Forrest Gump, The Hurt Locker, Titanic, The Departed, The Godfather, There Will Be Blood, Slumdog Millionaire, Saving Private Ryan, Brokeback Mountain, The English Patient, Milk, The Last King of Scotland, Million Dollar Baby, The Queen and Shakespeare in Love.*

Titles, dates and availability may vary. Not all services are available in all areas. HD not available in all areas. For full listing of available titles, check your onscreen guide, your cable system website or go to the inDemand website.

*Location of content varies by cable system

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Skyfall: © 2012 Danjaq, LLC, United Artists Corporation, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. Credit: François Duhamel