By the end of the weekend at this year’s Oscars, one of eight nominated films will be added to an eternal list of Academy Award-winning Best Pictures. This year’s nominees run the gamut of genres. There are two films detailing modern scandals (Spotlight, The Big Short), two “based on true story” historical set pieces (Bridge of Spies, The Revenant), one little international indie film (Brooklyn), a deep emotionally wrenching drama (Room), a film about someone lost in space… again (The Martian), and a kick ass action thrill ride (Mad Max: Fury Road). Are these the actual best films of 2015? Well, that depends on personal preference and opinion. Based on box office, this year’s nominees weren’t close to being the most popular films. Only one — The Martian — finished in the top 10 grossing films of the year, and only three total were in the top 21.

So if the eight nominees aren’t your cup of tea, here are the Top 10 films of 2015 NOT nominated for Best Picture…

A pair of featurettes have been released for Anomalisa, the stop-motion animated drama from Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation) and Duke Johnson (Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole, Moral Orel).

The new videos are brief, running only a minute long each, and introduce the film’s two main characters, Michael (played by Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and The Theory of Everything star David Thewlis) and Lisa (played by The Hateful Eight and Fast Times at Ridgemont High star Jennifer Jason Leigh).

You can read more about the movie and watch the videos below.

A video was released recently offering a small making of peek at the upcoming stop-motion drama Anomalisa, which is written by Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovich writer Charlie Kaufman, and co-directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson, who’s known for his stop-motion TV work directing an episode of Moral Orel, the stop-motion episode of Community, and multiple episodes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole.

The movie follows an author on a business trip who meets a woman who might just be the escape from his increasingly boring life he’s been looking for. Hopefully the video below is just a tease of a much, much longer making of featurette we’ll get to see on the movie’s Blu-ray release.

I know, “What’s a “put pilot”? It’s not a commonly known term, but it means that a network guarantees that a TV pilot will get air time, or else they’ll owe lots and lots of money. So that’s good news for Horrorstör, a novel written by Grady Hendrix about a haunted furniture super store that’s just been given a put pilot commitment from FOX. So, it’s pretty much guaranteed it will air on TV.

More on this below.

It’s no secret that writer/director/producer Guillermo del Toro is always one of the busiest guys working in movies. Constantly (or so it feels) we’re hearing about a new project he’s developing, or getting an update on one of the many things he’s been developing over the years. Today comes word on the latter.

Del Toro has Pacific Rim coming out soon, which will hopefully be bathing in piles of money so immense they dwarf the creatures he put on the screen in that movie. After that is Crimson Peak, the ghost movie with a strong cast he plans to begin filming in February of 2014.

But what about a pair of movies del Toro has been developing for a long time now, a new take on the tale of Frankenstein and an adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut’s classic, Slaughterhouse-Five? He has plans for both of those very much in progress.

With her star distinctly on the rise, if it hasn’t already gone through the roof, actress Carey Mulligan has now become one of the biggest names in the acting game.

Variety is reporting that both The Coen Brothers and Spike Jonze have tapped the actress to star as the female lead in their respective next pictures. For the pair of brothers, she’ll star opposite Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis, and opposite Joaquin Phoenix in Jonze’s next project.

The great Gary Oldman has joined the cast of Kung Fu Panda: Kaboom of Doom. The movie is a sequel to DreamWorks’ animated hit, Kung Fu Panda, which brought in over $630 million worldwide when it was released in 2008.

Oldman will be voicing the role of the Peacock, who helps Po (Jack Black) to discover the location of some enemy bandits on his way to finding other pandas and learning about where he comes from. The Peacock, like most kung fu masters, has more to him than first appears.

It would be difficult for anyone to find an odder pairing than screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and the bumbling hero in Kung Fu Panda, but according to reports, that’s a match that has occurred recently.

Apparently Kaufman was brought in by DreamWorks to pen some touch-ups to the existing script for Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom, the sequel to the surprise animated hit of 2008. Kaufman’s spit-shine of the script, written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, is completely out of the realms that he usually works within.

Kaufman is best known as the writer of two of my own personal favorite movies, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He also wrote Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Synecdoche, New York, which he also directed.

Amazon is currently offering some great deals right now for movie fans of the digital age with their Video On Demand service. In their Digital Movie Sale you can purchase digital copies of some movie favorites for only $5.99 — buy the movie, then watch it instantly through the VoD player and all your purchases will be stored in your Video Library for future viewing. You can also download it to your Windows PC to watch them offline (or if you have TiVo DVR, you can send it there to watch on your TV).

If you’d rather try out some rentals On Demand, there’s also a deal on Digital Movie Rentals with newer movies, like The Dark Knight, available now for only $1.99 for a 24-hour viewing period.

We’ve gone through and selected a few movies that are definitely worth the price if you don’t yet own them, along with some picks for top rental. Check out some of these great titles available in the list below. Amazon lets you preview over 2 minutes of each selection, so click on the links to check that out.

Ghostbusters
There’s not much that needs to be said about this one. Everyone knows it, everyone loves it. It’s the classic sci-fi comedy in which the group of Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson will come to you and rid you of any ghostly issues you may be having. A must-own.

Synecdoche, New York
Directed by Charlie Kaufman
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Tilda Swinton
Rated R
Release Date: October 24, 2008 (limited)

On a personal level, I consider Charlie Kaufman the most talented working screenwriter in Hollywood. I don’t think I am alone in this thought. His resume is one of impressive and envious of anyone in the past however many years you want to use to quantify it. It is one thing to craft a story with intelligent structure and dialogue. It is another thing altogether to create entire universes that have a distinct taste and smell to them. When you sit down to watch a Kaufman scripted film, there is an expected level of chaos and disorder. Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind — all of these films have a wildly imaginative subject and scope, which is exactly the reasons we love them so much.

Synecdoche, New York marks Kaufman’s directorial debut and to the general movie-going public it will amount to little more than a confusing movie with a confusing title. Fans of his work will draw pretty much the same conclusion. On one hand it is an almost unapproachably pretentious movie with a title that is difficult to pronounce (‘si-NEK-duh-kee’, by the way). On the other hand it is a movie that sort of transcends explanation. That’s not a movie critic cop-out, it just has many, many layers beyond its face value.