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.

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
  

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?

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)

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.

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:

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.

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.

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: