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  • Behind the Scenes: Mourning Michael Jackson at the BET Awards

    Newsweek | Jun 29, 2009 02:33 PM

    Jamie Foxx (right) and Ne-Yo pay tribute to Jackson at the BET Awards. Photo, Kevin Winter / Getty Images.

    by Allison Samuels

    In between takes of the BET awards Sunday night in Los Angeles, Jamie Foxx continued a dialogue that he’d begun the night before at a BET pre-party. At both events, Foxx lamented how "they" (white America, presumably) had taken Michael Jackson away from us (African-Americans, definitely), and now we’d have to take him back. His tone and sentiment echoed the feeling of the week for many African-Americans as they began to come to terms with the death of the one of the world’s biggest stars. That included me.

    As I sat in the audience at the awards, transfixed by the images of Michael that passed on the screen through the night, I couldn’t help but wipe away tears. When his baby sister, Janet, walked on the stage, her words really hit me like an arrow and put into context what many African-Americans are feeling in the wake of Jackson’s death. Janet Jackson told the audience that her brother was “icon to most—but, he was family to us.’’ And that’s exactly what Michael Jackson was to most African-Americans: family.

    Looking at all those pictures of a younger Jackson before the nose jobs and skin-color change was like looking into my own family’s photo album. The hair, the clothes and the closeness of the Jackson family resembled any black family across the country, and the reason so much pride and an immediate connection was felt when the Jackson’s became international superstars.

    To mainstream America, it may appear strange that the African-American community has in the last few days so defiantly claimed Jackson as their own in the wake of such ambivalent feelings about the pop star in recent years. But in reality, it makes perfect sense. Families disagree and families fall out and they may even refuse to speak to one another for years on end, but the love never really goes away.

    Love was the overall vibe at the pre-awards-show event Saturday night where Foxx led a small group made up of Jill Scott, Macy Gray, Morgan Freeman, and Chaka Khan into an impromptu singalong of Jackson’s classic hit “Rock with You." Some tears were shed while others, like producer Teddy Riley—who arranged and produced Jackson’s hit “Remember the Time”—spoke of the good times he had with the singer to any who'd listen. “I had nothing but love for Michael, and I understood what stardom could do to you," said Riley. “And he was the biggest star of all—so he felt it more than anyone else."

    Jackson’s ascent into mass superstardom after the release of Thriller in 1983 was a surprise to many but not for loyal African-Americans who’d followed Jackson from a beautiful child through his awkward teen years and beyond. While he seemed comfortable and accessible in the cocoon of African-American culture during those times, fame appeared to change Jackson at his core. A skin disease was blamed, as were other ailments in defense of his ever-changing appearance, but African-Americans saw it as a blatant attempt to distance himself from his history.

    In truth, Jackson’s desire to look different in a world that did not then nor now embrace brown skin, kinky hair, and full lips (unless those lips are on Angelina Jolie’s face) was a painful reminder of our own insecurities as a minority group still searching for validation. His tortured view of himself, even in the light of world adoration, gave little hope that total acceptance could be ours. Interestingly enough, nose jobs are now the No. 1 surgery requested by African-Americans when undergoing plastic surgery. And the numbers of blacks receiving plastic surgery has tripled in the last 10 years.

    Jackson’s troubles in recent years involving allegations of molestation also strained the community’s relationship with him. Many believed it was a setup—given that all the accusers were white or non-African-American, not unlike the way they felt about O. J. Simpson. Others just felt embarrassed that Jackson had brought yet another negative image of black men to the forefront.

    I most certainly had a complicated relationship with Jackson. Though his album cover Off The Wall remained on my bedroom door through high school, I, too, ignore Jackson after the release of his mega-hit Thriller. He wasn’t the gorgeous little boy I’d fallen in love with as a child and even adored during his teenage bouts of acne and voice changes. I refused to watch his court battles or follow his highly publicized national interviews that were the talk of the town. I couldn’t bear to look at him and what he’d done to himself and chose to remember him easing on down the road with Diana Ross in The Wiz or rocking his Jheri curl in the "Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough" video.

    As the days go by and the funeral of Jackson occurs, the outpouring of African-American grief will be on full view: grief over a riff that seemed to grow wider over the years and grief for the loss of a family member that we never had a chance to make peace with. But more than anything else for me, it will be grief based on a heartfelt love that never fully went away.


  • 10 Best Picture Nominees?! Who Would've Made The Cut

    Sarah Ball | Jun 24, 2009 01:22 PM

     

    Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences President Sid Ganis announced this afternoon that the Oscar race for Best Picture—a race traditionally between five films, at least since World War II—will double the number of contenders starting with this year's presentation.  "Having 10 best picture nominees is going [to] allow academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize," Ganis said.

    It also makes room for more commercial picks, as recent Best Picture races have included few box-office hits and thereby hooked fewer viewers into the ceremony's broadcast.  In 2008, 2007 and 2006, respectively, the five nominees for the top Oscar grossed a cumulative $70 million. Compare that to earlier this decade, when the five grossed upwards of $130 million.  In doubling the field of contenders, you can fit movies like The Dark Knight or Wall-E that resonated both critically and commercially.

    In the spirit of this new announcement, we're going to get all revisionist on cinema history.  Who might've made the cut in the last five years, if ten films were nominated?

    77th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees:

    • The Aviator
    • Million Dollar Baby
    • Sideways
    • Finding Neverland
    • Ray

    Woulda-beens:

    • Closer
    • Hotel Rwanda
    • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    • Maria Full of Grace
    • Vera Drake

    78th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees:

    • Crash
    • Brokeback Mountain
    • Munich
    • Good Night, and Good Luck
    • Capote

    Woulda-beens:

    • Walk the Line
    • The Constant Gardner
    • Cindarella Man
    • A History of Violence
    • Junebug

    79th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees:

    • The Departed
    • Little Miss Sunshine
    • The Queen
    • Babel
    • Letters from Iwo Jima

    Woulda-beens:

    • Pan's Labyrinth
    • Little Children
    • Dreamgirls
    • Borat
    • Notes on a Scandal

    80th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees:

    • No Country for Old Men
    • Juno
    • Atonement
    • Michael Clayton
    • There Will Be Blood

    Woulda-beens:

    • The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    • Lars and the Real Girl
    • Into the Wild
    • Away From Her
    • Gone Baby Gone

    81st Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees:

    • Slumdog Millionaire
    • Frost/Nixon
    • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    • The Reader
    • Milk

    Would-Beens:

    • The Dark Knight
    • Doubt
    • Wall-E
    • Revolutionary Road
    • Rachel Getting Married

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  • The Case of 'Slumdog Millionaire' and the Endless Headlines

    Sarah Ball | Apr 27, 2009 05:20 PM

    This week, we'll swap April for May -- making "Slumdog Millionaire" a nearly five-month-old release, something you'd never guess by the headlines.  Not a week goes by that the '09 Best Picture isn't atop entertainment sites' "LATEST" queues and sidebars, for all manner of good and evil.  Last week, we watched captivated as the father of the film's eight-year-old star Rubina Ali was accused of trafficking his daughter for a six-figure sum -- to undercover journalists. Then we heard that "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?", the game show that forms the basis of the film's storyline, will be revived on American televisions for a summer run -- perceived by some as a network nod to the film's popularity. And this week, we were elated to find out that Freida Pinto and Dev Patel are officially dating, per an exclusive interview that Patel's mother gave to the UK's Daily Mail.  This all comes months after other, bigger "Slumdog" headlines and controversies, covering everything from the use of language in the film and the questioned compensation of its child actors, to its mixed reception in India or the glaring lack of fairytale endings in the real Mumbai slums, to the lack of Oscar nominations for its non-white stars.

    What gives?  The film grossed $300 million worldwide, but that's not extraordinary for a popular film or even a Best Picture.  Just as many people saw "The Departed" as saw "Slumdog;" many, many more people saw "Gladiator" and "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King."  Those films also nabbed top honors at the Academy Awards.  And yet, their related headlines petered out around the time the Vanity Fair party closed its bar.

    Maybe we can source this sustained enthusiasm to the Brits. It was their News of the World journalists, posing undercover as child-shoppers, who started the Rubina rumors. And their Daily Mail journalists who somehow coerced Mama Patel into revealing her son's relationship status.  And their country that spawned the directorial and writing talent (half of it, at least) behind the film.

    Or maybe it's China!  The film's early April debut in that country netted the best opening (nearly $3 million) of a non-Chinese or non-American film in a decade, according to Box Office Mojo. 

    Or maybe it's just a captivating film.

    What do you think?


  • Jon Meacham Wins Biography Pulitzer!

    Sarah Ball | Apr 20, 2009 03:51 PM
    NEWSWEEK Editor Jon Meacham won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography on Monday afternoon for "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House."  Click here to read an excerpt, or here to download his interview with NEWSWEEK ON AIR about the book, which was selected by the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of 2008. While Meacham was in his home state of Tennessee, Newsweek Managing Director and Washington Post Co. Vice President Ann McDaniel, had this to say:

    It gives me great pleasure to announce that Jon Meacham has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for biography for his best-selling book "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House." The Pulitzer Board described Jon's book as "an unflinching portrait of a not always admirable democrat but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life."

    You can read an excerpt from Meacham's award-winning book here, and you can read his Newsweek columns, cover stories and essays here.

    The other arts winners are as follows, per the Associated Press's full list:

    • Fiction: "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout

    • Drama: "Ruined" by Lynn Nottage

    • History: "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family" by Annette Gordon-Reed

    • Poetry: "The Shadow of Sirius" by W. S. Merwin

    • General Nonfiction: "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" by Douglas A. Blackmon

    • Music: Double Sextet by Steve Reich, premiered March 26, 2008 in Richmond, VA (Boosey & Hawkes)


  • 8 Reasons Why the Oscars Bombed This Year

    Ramin Setoodeh | Feb 23, 2009 12:30 AM

    Was it just me, or were the Oscars like the longest episode of "American Idol" ever? First, Ryan Seacrest interviewed all the contestants—oops, make that nominees—on the red carpet. Then, the stage was suspiciously similar to the circular "Idol" platform, and the live show began with a musical number from host Hugh Jackman. The first winner was announced by a panel, though unfortunately Paula Abdul wasn't on it. And at some point in the evening, Jackman appeared with Beyonce, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens to cover a strange assortment of Broadway tunes.

    That latter number was awfully schizophrenic, and it only made sense when we learned that it was directed by the king of excess himself, Baz Luhrmann. The flashy, uneven choreography summed up the entire evening. This year was the Academy's biggest push to make the Oscars young and more relevant. Too bad they failed, even worse than when they tapped Jon Stewart as host. Throughout the telecast, my BlackBerry buzzed with messages from friends, all in their 20s, about how un-hip and un-young and unwatchable the Oscars felt.

    It's not the Academy's fault the show was so predictable—nothing could stop "Slumdog Millionaire"'s unstoppable march to victory. At the same time, what the heck was going on onstage? It felt as though MTV executives tried to hatch a new Oscars, with two strange parents: the old Oscars and the Tonys. Needless to say, the result was a weird-looking baby.

    Without further ado, let's get rid of the envelopes, please. Here are the eight strangest moments of the strangest Oscars of all time.

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  • Our Critics Call the Oscars: The Reckoning

    Patrick Enright | Feb 23, 2009 12:21 AM
    Last week, our critics Devin Gordon and Ramin Setoodeh went head to head to pick the winners in the top categories at the Academy Awards. Now that Hollywood's big night has ended, here's the final tally. And the winner is ... drumroll, please ... Mr. Setoodeh! He correctly picked the winner in seven out of the eight categories, with Mr. Gordon a close second, at six out of eight. (Though, to be fair, Setoodeh hedged a little bit in his Best Picture pick.) More
  • The Angry Professor: My (Failed) Attempt to Interview Jerry Lewis

    Newsweek | Feb 22, 2009 01:25 PM
    By Marc Peyser
     
    My Oscar prediction: no matter how long Kate Winslet burbles and beams at her little gold man tonight, she's won't get the evening's biggest ovation. That honor will go to Hollywood's longest-serving court jester, Jerry Lewis. Tucked in among all the other coronations, Lewis will be given the royalest of treatments: the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Never mind that this is something of a consolation prize—the Academy has never bestowed an actual Oscar on the man in his six decades of work— Hollywood is still delirious over having him for the evening. My guess is that he'll commandeer a good 10 minutes of camera time, wherein he will: A) cry; B) bellow, "Hey, Lady!" at least once; and C) remain utterly emotionless at the mention of the name Dean Martin, his longtime comedy partner and almost-as-longtime enemy, who Lewis believed pushed him out of their comedy spotlight.
     
    Far be it for me to tarnish such a joyous occasion, but I have two words for those tuning in to see Lewis honored: Be afraid. Actually, make that three: Be very afraid. This is, admittedly, an irrational thing to say. Lewis hasn't self-destructed on camera for almost two years now, since he referred to an audience member as a "f-g" during the 18th hour of his 2007 Labor Day telethon. (He called cricket a "f-g game" the next year, but that doesn't count; he was in Australia.) But I base my fear on more personal experience. I have been terrified of Jerry Lewis for 13 years, ever since the first—and last—time I met him.
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  • Ready, Set, Oscars

    Mark Coatney | Feb 20, 2009 07:01 PM
    For completists, see our entire Oscars oeuvre here. For the more visually minded, check out Us Magazine's Oscars 2009 coverage. See you Sunday night!

  • The Envelope: Our Critics Call the Oscars

    Sarah Ball | Feb 19, 2009 07:00 AM

    Last month, we brought you our Golden Globes critics' picks, in which NEWSWEEK's television and cinema gurus squared off to see who could correctly predict the most wins (Ramin Setoodeh and Joshua Alston took the honors on the film and TV fronts, respectively). Now, we've got a rematch of Setoodeh and his vanquished rival Devin Gordon--and there ain't much daylight between 'em. That goes with the times, though; very few of the awards pundits are predicting major surprises. Even this Envelope post, which loosely toys with some upset theories, calls the Best Picture race "all sewn up." For the sake of our attention spans on Sunday night, let's hope for at least one unscripted moment. 

    Meanwhile, if you want a hard-numbers take on how the evening might unfold, check out our piece on how to statistically game your Oscar pool.

    Graphic by Dan Lee and Monica Parra.

  • Keep Losing Your Oscar Pool? The Fool-Proof Way to Win

    Sarah Ball | Feb 18, 2009 09:30 AM
    It has not been fully appreciated how deliciously ironic—and yet how appropriate—two of this year's Oscar nominations are. The first is, of course, Kate Winslet's sixth nomination, for her role in Nazi drama "The Reader," which comes after her send-up of the Academy's Holocaust obsession on BBC show "Extras." And the second is Robert Downey Jr.'s supporting nomination for his "Tropic Thunder" turn, a role that was intended to lampoon the robotic way Oscar gets doled out.

    But if the Academy is so gosh-darn predictable, to the point of being able to laugh at, and simultaneously confirm, its own predictability, then why did I lose my Oscar pool last year?

    Because I was operating on some fallacious logic, that's why. During early February, the movie buff's equivalent of March Madness, theories about how to game your Oscar pool run rampant: the Academy never picks comedies, an actor playing a character with a disability will win, Holocaust movies are a sure thing ("Never bet against the Jews," as my aunt put it), nominees listed first on the ballot have a better chance. By the conventional wisdom, a perfect Best Picture lock might be something like a three-hour, $100 million-earning drama, directed by a big name and starring grizzled, veteran actors in WWII-era Berlin.

    That might sound like "Valkyrie," but there's a reason the Tom Cruise drama isn't up for a statuette: the conventional wisdom on the Academy is wrong. The real, tried-and-true way to game the system involves calculating the weight of the Golden Globes and guild wins, those awards given out by the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild of America, the Producers Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America.

    Statistics professor Iain Pardoe, of the University of Oregon, has written extensively on a mathematical model he's used to generate odds before the show, measuring down to the tenth of a percent the chance that a movie, actor or director will win. Going back through Oscar history, he created a formula based on guild wins, Golden Globe wins, previous Oscar nominations and previous Oscar wins, the best predictive factors. Sorry, placement on the ballot has little predictive power. Pardoe calls the common belief among aficionados that the first nominee in a category has a better chance of winning than those lower in the list a "seemingly systematic pattern that is probably just chance variation." (Aside from his degree and blog about the history of Oscar predicting, Pardoe's also got the credentialing power of victory: he was a winner at his local video store last year. "I can't remember how many free rentals I got, but it was quite nice to win," he says.)

    By Pardoe's measurements, "Slumdog Millionaire" leads the Best Picture pack, with a 60 percent chance of winning, despite its lack of professional actors, a big budget or an I'm-on-suicide-watch ending. His other picks: Kate Winslet will take the Best Actress statue (a near lock at 92 percent); "Slumdog" director Danny Boyle will win for directing (an 81 percent chance); and Sean Penn, not Globe winner Mickey Rourke, will take the top actor award (with a 42 percent chance of winning).

    Yes, it's number-crunchy and nerdy—a slightly staid, less thrilling way to cinch whatever kitty your pool puts up. But who among us couldn't use some (almost) guaranteed prize money this year?
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  • The Gold Digger: Watch Viola Davis in 'Doubt' -- Without Leaving Your Couch

    Ramin Setoodeh | Jan 30, 2009 04:00 PM
    The most curious thing about this year's Oscars won't be if "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" upsets for Best Picture (nah, it doesn't have a shot). It'll be who will take home the gold in the Best Supporting Actress race. The Golden Globe went to Kate Winslet for "The Reader." The SAG went to Kate Winslet for "The Reader." And the Oscar won't go to Kate Winslet for "The Reader," since she's nominated in the lead, not supporting, category. That means the Academy will have to choose from five unpracticed-at-giving-a-speech-at-the-podium names.

    Actually, it's more like two.
     
    The supporting-actress race is shaping up to be a smackdown between Penelope Cruz (the frontrunner from last summer for "Vicky Cristina Barcelona") and Viola Davis (for "Doubt"). Cruz has the Weinstein company in its corner, as well as a previous Oscar nod for "Volver" and the whole gorgeous-beauty-in-a-Woody-Allen-movie factor. Davis is in a movie that seems to be more adored by the Academy (four acting nominations!). Plus, she holds her own against Meryl Streep. But, eh, she's only in the movie for one really long scene. Miramax is trying to hush those doubts -- no doubt! -- by posting a seven-minute clip that showcases almost all of Davis's performance.  Watch it here.

    Oh no, Penelope! How are you going to fight back?
     
    For the sake of equal airtime, we'll post the 44 second scene where you kiss Scarlett Johansson:


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  • Zakaria and Boyle Talk "Slumdog"

    Sarah Ball | Jan 30, 2009 10:21 AM

    NEWSWEEK International Editor Fareed Zakaria and "Slumdog Millionaire" director Danny Boyle chat about the Indian protests surrounding the Oscar-nominated film -- here's an excerpt:

     

    ZAKARIA: Do you think part of the resonance and appeal of the movie stems from people's fascination with India, and Mumbai in particular?


    BOYLE: I think so. That's one of the reasons I wanted to make the film. I didn't want to make the film because of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." I have to say, though, I've rethought [the importance of India to the film's appeal]. Although that is an element in it, for the public it's the universality of the story. People want to root for Jamal. It doesn't matter where he comes from.

     

    Great Q&A and really interesting subject -- check it out.

     

     

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  • Four of a Kind: The Academy, "The Reader," and "Rare, Extraordinary Circumstances"

    Sarah Ball | Jan 28, 2009 03:30 PM

    Read the below-reproduced statement from the AMPAS, announcing that the full four producers of "The Reader" -- rather than the customary three -- will be listed as the nominees in the Best Picture category.  Two of those producers -- Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack -- died during the post-production.  This is the second time in a week that "The Reader" is associated with upending Academy precedent; when Kate Winslet nabbed a surprise Best Actress nomination for her role in the film, beating out herself in "Revolutionary Road," it marked the first time that a Golden Globe winner's performance in the Drama category wasn't even nominated for the Oscar.  And here's the Academy:

    Because four producers were listed on the credits form submitted for Oscar® consideration and Academy rules allow for only three producers – except in “a rare and extraordinary circumstance” – to be nominated and potentially receive Oscar statuettes, a meeting of the executive committee was necessary. In the end, the committee determined that the circumstances of “The Reader” – in which the two original producers (Minghella and Pollack) both died partway through the process – met its definition of “rare and extraordinary” and that all four submitted individuals should be named as nominees.

    For a bit about each departed director-turned-producer, read (1.) Frank Gehry's essay from our Periscope section, about Gehry's old friend Sydney and the Renoir-like quality of "The Interpreter;" or (2.) David Ansen's remembrance of Minghella's "rare sensitivity," conveyed in films like "The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain."  Pollack was 73; Minghella was 54.

     

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  • Golddigger: Tap-Dancing Gene Kelly Does Not A 'Best Picture' Make

    Patrick Enright | Jan 27, 2009 03:37 PM


    Golddigger, NEWSWEEK's Oscars blog, continues with Patrick Enright's Academy Awards reality check.

    Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences offers a whole host of well-earned awards to films, actors, directors and writers. And every year, the Academy completely screws up and hands out a couple of Oscars to performances and movies that in no way deserved them. Herewith, our list of the most noteworthy of those missteps -- feel free to tell us how right (or how wrong) we are in the comments:

     

    Angelina Jolie, for 1999's "Girl, Interrupted"

    Sure, it's just a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, but Angie still didn't earn it. She was fine playing a mental patient, but how tough is that really? And when you're up against Chloë Sevigny in the brilliant "Boys Don't Cry," well, you should throw out the "It's an honor just to be nominated" line and walk home empty-handed.

     

    "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956)

    It's not as though the rollicking adventure flick starring David Niven and legendary Mexican actor Cantinflas isn't a good time. But Best Picture? When the competition includes Yul Brynner's "The King and I"; James Dean's final film, "Giant"; and Cecil B. DeMille's legendary "The Ten Commandments"? No, really, "The Ten Commandments." Here's a question: Which of the four has held up best in the last half-century? If you said "80 Days," you're as wrong as the Academy was.

     

    John Ford, for 1941's "How Green Was My Valley"

    The Academy's probably kicking itself for this one—Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," which lost Best Picture and Best Director Oscars to John Ford's flick, is No. 1 on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movies of all time and widely considered the best film ever made. "How Green Was My Valley"? Not on the list. At all. Sorry, John, but you didn't earn that golden statuette.

     

    "An American in Paris" (1951)

    "How can Gene Kelley prancing through Paris with Leslie Caron not be worth the Best Picture Oscar?" you ask? Easy: when it's competing against the phenomenal Marlon Brando-starring adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire." Not only did "Streetcar" launch the career of one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, it's riveting from start to finish. Give "American in Paris" the Best Score prize, but save the big one for a movie with some weight.

     

    Kevin Costner, for 1990's "Dances With Wolves"

    Costner's ponderous, "Look, Native Americans are people too!" western has its charms, and its place, but Kev didn't deserve the Best Director Oscar, and not just because he beat out cinematic legend Martin Scorsese, nominated for "Goodfellas." "Dances" marked his first time behind the camera, and it shows. The next two films he helmed, "Waterworld" and "The Postman," reflected his, um, lackluster directing talent.

     

    Al Pacino, for 1992's "Scent of a Woman"

    Al's deserved plenty of Oscars in his career—for "The Godfather," "Dog Day Afternoon," "Glengarry Glen Ross"—but it's a travesty that the only one he's won is for his much-mocked "HOO-ah!" role in Chris O'Donnell vehicle "Scent of a Woman." Just because he was snubbed by the Academy six (!) previous times doesn't mean he should win for drivel. "Look, I'm driving a sports car and I'm blind!" Seriously?

     

    Cher, for 1987's "Moonstruck"

    It's Cher. 'Nuff said.

     

    "Shakespeare in Love" (1998)

    Why do people like this movie again? Oh, right, because they're stupid. Think that's unnecessarily harsh? Perhaps, but even fans of the fluffy Gwyneth Paltrow period dramedy have to admit that "Shakespeare" isn't nearly as good as any of the other nominees: "Elizabeth," "Saving Private Ryan," "The Thin Red Line" (better than "Ryan," and by far) and "Life Is Beautiful." This one's perhaps the least-deserving Best Picture winner ever.

     

    Marisa Tomei, for 1992's "My Cousin Vinny"

    The year 1993 was clearly not a good one for the Academy. Nor were the '90s a good decade, come to think of it ... Tomei was fine in silly Joe Pesci comedy "Vinny." Nothing to write home about. Judy Davis in "Husbands and Wives"? Brilliant. Stunning. Genius. This should have been a gimme. Maybe the voting members were afraid Pesci would come around and break their kneecaps if they didn't pick Marisa?

     

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  • Mr. Oscar, Tear Down This Wall! Andrew Stanton on How Animated Films are Pigeonholed -- and How Wall-E is Every Man

    Sarah Ball | Jan 23, 2009 11:40 AM

    We talked to 'Wall-E' director Andrew Stanton last week about his film and the increasing blurring of the line between animation and live-action movies -- plus, what makes the gun-wielding probe EVE a sleek, feminine mynx in WALL-E's eyes.  Excerpts:

    You talked about 'breaking the glass ceiling' in your speech after winning Best Picture from the L.A. Film Critic's Association.

    Well, when we were starting out on "Toy Story," we just felt like animation was in such a box. You gotta remember that back then, everybody felt that, in the industry and outside it, if it was animated, that meant it had to be a musical, that meant it had to be typically some sort of fairytale, had to have some happy village in it and some villain and there were just all these unnecessary conventions put on it. And I would see my favorite reviewers of movies suddenly dumb down and say, "Good for kids," and that would be the review. It just frustrated the heck out of me and everybody else. So we felt, well, we're just going to have build a better movie prove that that isn't the case.

    So "Wall-E" was born.

    What people say we've been doing with "Wall-E," we've been doing since the beginning. But I guess the grooves are so deep in people's thinking that it took a film that pretty much didn't follow any convention for people to just finally get it. In a weird way, I don't feel like our philosophy or our tack on our filmmaking is any different on this one than it has been on the others.

    What does it take to smooth over those grooves, to break down the barrier? Winning awards?

    Wearing people down with good films. And to even think that it's segregating other artists -- pick a branch, but I know everybody always associates it with actors -- you know, yeah, agreed, we're not going to hire as many actors, but we're always going to be hiring actors. You can't replicate great acting. So I just don't get the fear.

    The animated category was initially supposed to empower animated films
    -- does it now serve to ghettoize them?

    It's just a sign that times have changed. Because from the live action side, animation -- and computers in general -- are being used as a tool in so many movies now. The line is just getting so blurry that I think with each proceeding year, it's going to be tougher and tougher to say what's an animated movie and what's not an animated movie. And what I'd love is to get to the point where someone just goes, 'I don't care.' Because I've been at the 'I don't care' point a long time now.

    Are you okay with not breaking the glass ceiling at the Oscars?

    I've never seen so much buzz about anything we've done like this. All the reviews that have been amazing. And I'll be okay if it doesn't break another glass ceiling. I already get how people feel. That's really, really satisfying.

    People say, if not this movie in the Best Picture category, then no movie.


    It kills me to hear that. Because I've been such a reverent fan of movies since I was a little kid, and I think I'm lucky that I work in San Francisco so I feel like I still am almost more of a fan than an actual filmmaker, and I just have always wanted to believe, no matter how naïve it is, that the best films will make it to the attention of the Academy in their proper place. And I still want to believe that.

    Eve has gotten some blog buzz as the one of the best-written female characters of the year. Since she goes around blowing things up, what feminizes her?


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