There are no categories for animals in the Academy Awards, though last month, the Academy announced on X, "The Oscar for bestest boi goes to Messi from Anatomy of a Fall." Esquire magazine recognized this grave injustice last year, when it gave Jenny the Donkey from "Banshees of Inisherin" the first annual Best Animal Actor award. Here's their breakdown of animal actors this year. We want to know, what was the most iconic animal performance of all time.
John Williams is among 19 new members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The 92-year-old composer has won five of the 53 Oscars he was nominated for, and also conducted the Boston Pops for more than a decade and has composed classical concertos. Here's a story from ABC on Williams and the other 18 inductees to the Academy of Arts this year, which included composer Terence Blanchard, novelist Alice McDermott and artist Matthew Barney. We want to know, which is your favorite of these (some answers are movies and others are franchises where more appropriate).
I interviewed Michelle Yeoh a few years ago about #StarTrekDiscovery and I mentioned offhand that I'd written an article about what seeing her use her accent on the bridge of a starship meant to me.
She stopped and said "Wait, that was YOU?"
And then proceeded to talk about how much that article had meant to HER and how it contributed to the success of the show.
A few years ago, Obama humiliated Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner. People laughed AT Trump. He was publicly humiliated. His racist blood was boiling. Tonight, Jimmy Kimmel publicly humiliated Trump at the Oscar’s. The audience cheered when he said it was “past your jail time”. I wish more people would do that. It’s Trump’s weakness. #Oscars #TrumpForPrison
"Oppenheimer" is nominated for 13 Oscars this year and Christopher Nolan is a frontrunner for Best Director. Here's @IndieWire ranking of his entire filmography, from his debut in 1998 to today. Which of his 12 movies is your favorite (this poll is in order of IndieWire's preference, with "Dunkirk" as the publication's top pick)?
The fact that ANY non-white straight male story gets even made is nothing short of a miracle in that ecosystem. (and then to put marketing $$ behind AND campaigned - oh boy)
And hollywood is going to get even more risk averse.
In short, Please shout of loud from the rooftops about movies you love. Stories centering women, PoC, Queers, mixing genres and tones and themes, critiquing the empires - celebrate them like the miracles they are. They almost never get made.
When a Jewish man protests your hijacking his Jewishness & the Holocaust to justify your occupation, & your response is to (loudly, repeatedly & falsely) tell everyone that what he has actually done is renounced his Jewishness, guess what?
You are hijacking his Jewishness to suit your occupation.
#Artists4Ceasefire / Oscar Winner Jonathan Glazer Said What No One Else Dared to Say
“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst… Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza.” --- Jonathan Glazer
The global condemnation of Israel's actions in Gaza following the events of October 7th seems to have shaken the confidence of many Israelis who still believe they are on the right side of history. Rather than provoking self-reflection, this widespread criticism appears to be causing most of them to double down on self-pity and the dehumanization of Palestinians.
Noa Tishby is back, and she appears to have descended into genocide denialism or, at best, has become an apologist for genocide.
"If you call for a #ceasefire without calling for the release of the captives - you are advancing #Hamas' agenda and casting doubt on Israel's right to self-defense"
Her attempts to justify, downplay or explain away Israel's brutal actions in Gaza, which have been widely condemned as disproportionate and barbaric by the international community, are deeply troubling. By dismissing well-documented human rights violations and the suffering inflicted on Palestinian civilians, she is engaging in a form of historical revisionism that whitewashes state violence against an oppressed population.
Others recognize that Israel's expectation that the world will remember October 7th but forget everything that happened since then, or anything since 1948, is simply pathetic. Israel's persistent brushing aside of Palestinian suffering and denial of historical realities is making it increasingly isolated, even among many of its traditional allies and supporters in the Jewish diaspora who were horrified by the barbarity on display in Gaza. Fewer and fewer are willing to reflexively identify with or defend Israel's actions these days.
Aaaaah Nimona is up for an Oscar this year which is probably why Netflix just put the entire film up for Free on YouTube 😒.
Nimona is fantastic and deserves to be seen by as many people as want to view it - but that feels like a cheap stunt by Netflix (and it will probably backfire).
…Emma Stone on her role in Poor Things where she plays an adult woman with a mind of a child, kinda like the woman who gave the response to the state of the union Thursday night. #Oscars2024#Oscars
The 95 Best Picture Oscar winners: some statistics
So, I have now watched all 95 winners of the Best Picture Oscar. My preferences are clear, but I thought I might do a bit of comparison between them all.
With 13 Oscar nominations, all signs point to #Oppenheimer as the star of the 96th #AcademyAwards. But a historian – whose research has revolved around the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing – explains why they are disappointed by the award-winning film.
“Yet again, the dominant narrative of the bombs chugs along,” writes Naoko Wake of Michigan State University. And the victims aren’t shown.
A blue plaque on Ruskin Terrace in the West End of Glasgow marking the birth place of the actress Deborah Kerr. Born in 1921, she was the first Scot to be nominated for an acting Oscar, and she appeared in films such as From Here To Eternity and An Affair to Remember. In 1994, she was given an Academy Honorary Award for her dedication to acting.
I finally finished Poor Things and, wouldn't you know, it grew on me. Or maybe it was just Emma Stone's amazing acting that finally reached me. There were some funny moments, some great cinematography (particularly when she and Max were walking down the lane and it showed each with the background leaves and tree kaleidoscope blurry), and even some touching moments.