Well, let's get right to it. The Oscar nominations were announced this morning. Here's the list: http://www.imdb.com/oscars/nominations/
And here are my thoughts:
Who? The Latino actor finds himself alongside Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the Best Actor category. What a thrill! He beat out DiCaprio, Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon, among others, for his role in the little-seen A Better Life, director Chris Weitz's (About a Boy) tale of a Mexican immigrant in L.A. The only work I've ever seen of Bichir's (who mostly does Mexican films) is as Mary Louise Parker's boyfriend in Weeds. I need to see this, quick!
Of the twenty acting nominees, nine are first-timers, which is about on par as far as that annually goes. Congrats to the finally-nominated Gary Oldman!
Among the many comments I've read today in regards to the nominations (on The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Movieline), a consensus is that Albert Brooks was snubbed for Drive, Ryan Gosling was snubbed for all of his 2011 performances, George Clooney is overrated, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a pile of doodoo.
I do think it's strange that the Academy only nominated nine films, instead of ten. Surely there wasn't one more film they could have thrown in there... With its 48% Rotten Tomatoes review ratings, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close just many be the most critically-reviled movie ever to be nominated for Best Picture. But Stephen Daldry movies always get nominated for something, even when they're not that good (Billy Elliott, The Hours). And I'm not at all buying that the Academy yet cares for or appreciates good comedy, despite the bone they threw Melissa McCarthy and the Bridesmaids screenwriters. Given the chance to nominate the universal hit/critically-acclaimed Bridesmaids for Best Picture or nothing, they chose nothing!
I'm ambivalent on this one. I like Jonah Hill and think he's funny and even kind-of liked his spooky, pathetic Cyrus. And I thought Moneyball was terrific. I like to see an actor change pace, go against type. I'm not entirely sure this performance was that compelling, though. It was a flat character and Hill didn't really do anything with it. He just kind of sat there and stared blankly at Brad Pitt and took forever to say his lines. Put it to you this way: In this category, you should want your Supporting Actor to steal scenes, to not go away. You want to miss them when they're not on screen. I can't say Hill met any of those expectations.
Okay, the Best Original Song category is a joke. Two nominees! There were only two good songs this year written for films? Why even have this category? Sergio Mendes! The other guy from Flight of the Conchords for his song in a Muppets movie! A damn joke!
Two performers who haven't been nominated since 1988 (Max von Sydow, the legendary Swedish actor, and Glenn Close), one who hasn't been nominated for his acting since 1989 (Kenneth Branagh), more late-career Martin Scorsese love, a Spielberg snub, no Joseph Gordon-Levitt or screenplay nomination for 50/50, no Madonna, a second acting nomination for an actress nobody knows (Janet McTeer), and a complete ignoring of the extremely well-received Young Adult, despite past Academy appreciation for Charlize Theron, scribe Diablo Cody, and director Jason Reitman.
Woody Allen's nominations are now at 23, though he hasn't won since his was awarded Best Original Screenplay for 1986's Hannah and Her Sisters.
Hugo led all films with 11 nominations, followed by The Artist with 10. My favorite non-nominee response, however, the funniest?
Why, that would be the wonderful Albert Brooks.
Just after the nominations were read this morning, he tweeted the following:
"I got ROBBED. I don't mean, the Oscars, I mean literally. My pants and shoes have been stolen..."
A few minutes pass. And then:
"And to the Academy: 'You don't like me. You really don't like me.'"
Oh, well. I'll be back in three or four weeks with my predictions.
Having just finished Anne Tyler's 1982 classic Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, I can honestly say that Tyler writes perfect books. I've praised her before on here, but I can't really say enough about her. So I went hunting for information (in the form of interviews, etc. ) about her and have found very little, due to the fact that she doesn't do book-tours, very, very rarely allows interviews, doesn't lecture or teach, reputedly, has never ever met her longtime editor, and has maintained a swathing cloak of privacy. Here is what I do know, however:
- she lives in Baltimore, where most of her books are set. She was born in Minneapolis, the eldest of four, to a chemist father and a social worker mother. A portion of her childhood was spent in Quaker communities in the mountains of North Carolina.
- she went to Duke University and was married to Iranian psychiatrist Taghi Modarressi for thirty-five years until his death in 1997; they have two daughters.
- she worked as a bibliographer in the library at Duke and worked in the law library at McGill University before moving to Baltimore to write.
- 1988's Breathing Lessons won the Pulitzer Prize and was named best novel of the year by Time Magazine.
I'll have more to say about Tyler, I'm sure, when her novel The Beginner's Goodbye, her 19th, comes out in April.
Today's American Masterpiece takes its inspiration from William Carlos Williams' 1921 poem "The Great Figure."
The Great Figure
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems
Four Seas Company, Boston, 1921
Williams was a friend of the Precisionist painter Charles Demuth. Precisionism could also be referred to as "Cubo-Realism." It's a descriptive form, propelled by geometric simplification. Precisionist works are usually stripped of detail and tend to be based on sharp-focus photography. Along with fellow Pennsylvanian Charles Sheeler, Demuth was the major figure in the American-based Precisionism.
During the 1920s, Demuth began a series of abstract portraits of American artist-friends (including Eugene O'Neill, Georgia O'Keeffe, Wallace Stevens). The portraits were not physical resemblances, but rather paintings that contained images associated with the respective artists: words, phrases, shapes, figures.
In Demuth's work, we see fragments of the Williams poem: wheels, the gold '5', the sense of motion, lights, what may or may be not be the bulky body of the fire truck, the blackened night. We even see bits of the poet's name: 'Bill,' 'Carlo...'
Williams' own inspiration for his work was seeing a fire truck rush past him on Ninth Avenue in New York City on a hot summer day.
Here's a link to the painting (and commentary) from the MET's website: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/49.59.1
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