Results tagged “Motion Picture Arts”

• Perhaps the big surprise (besides Juno getting nominated for Best Director and Best Picture) was Ruby Dee for her work in American Gangster (its only other nomination was for art direction)

THEATER: Wolf Lane Productions presents Victims of the Zeitgeist (The Tragedy of Martin Luther King, Jr.), written & directed by Ellwoodson Williams. The production "offers an exciting and telling insight into just who Martin Luther King, Jr., was as leader and simply as a sensitive and intelligent human being who loved life and who had a sense of humor, a deep understanding of the human condition - its strengths and weaknesses - and a profound belief in justice."

After Letterman announced his show's comeback with new episodes, writers' strike or no writers' strike, the leaders of late night all followed suit.

It's the itch we can't scratch - the Academy Awards. We make sure we see the announcements at 8:30AM and then rush to work, thinking about the nominations while on the train. This morning, Academy President Sid Ganis and Mira Sorvino (who isn't doing anything else, anyway) announced the nominations. As expected, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, and Capote earned many nominations, and Crash made a surprising showing with Best Picture, Best Director and even a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Matt Dillon. Other surprises/interesting things:

It's official: Jon Stewart will host this year's Oscars telecast. Which means the Academy of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to go for crowd-pleasing ('specially in liberal Hollywood) political commentary, versus another year of cruel but insightful wisecracks from Chris Rock. Hmm, Gothamist likes Jon Stewart, though we downgraded him after the frat-party audience atmosphere of the Daily Show started to detract from the show, but he is better than Whoopi Goldberg again. Actually, we don't care as long as Bruce Vilanch is kept away from the writers' room and Steven Colbert is involved in the telecast - can you picture it, a "Colbert Report" on the evils of Hollywood?

Media boo-boos:

Oscar Commentary
Oscar is celebrating its 75th anniversary, I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary of watching Oscar.

If the Oscars do go on tonight, I'll be glad because then everyone can shut up about it. It may seem strange for me to say this, given my love for movies and the Oscars and how I generally live for movies and love the day the Oscar nominations come out...but there's no Best Picture film I'm really behind this year...the only category I'm interested in Original Screenplay, and it's highly doubtful Almodovar or the Cuaron brothers will win. And after the litany of prizes and awards shows so far, I could care less about the acting categories and wondering if this is Harvey Weinstein's year. Just shut up already.

Tania and I had been discussing Dick Clark earlier today and I felt he was a consummate professional, infinitely smarter and classier than Nancy O'Dell and Lisa Ling during the pre-show...Virginia Heffernan agrees