I added my voice to the many that believed British actor David Oyelowo and director Ava DuVernay should have been awarded nominations for Selma. The film itself, which tells the story of how Martin Luther King Jr campaigned and worked with Lyndon B Johnson (played by Tom Wilkinson) to secure equal voting rights by organizing a march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama, is up for an Oscar for Best Picture. But Oyelowo and DuVernay both in their roles as actor and director take the story to another level, making this film urgent, soul-stirring and still deeply relevant, on the back of protests in the US and around the world about equal…
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What The Academy Did Next
After Thursday morning’s announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees, there has been a lot of backlash, more so than usual. There’s no pleasing everyone, so it goes, but this year it feels the backlash is rightly so. It seems that it’s a case of one step forward, two steps backwards – all the solid steps taken last year to recognize and nominate a diverse range of actors and characters feels as if it’s been undone this year. It’s more than a disappointment that David Oyelowo is not among the Best Actor nominees. He gave a performance he was destined to play. Both he and director Ava DuVernay worked on the…
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How to Score a Foreign Language Oscar Nomination
As the Oscar race slowly starts building up, so countries have been submitting their films for consideration into the best foreign language category. South Africa hasn’t had a nominee in this category since Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi won it in 2006. This year, a film shot entirely in the language of Venda has been selected by the local committee, for consideration. It needs to make the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ long-list and then short-list to become one of the 5 nominees. Elelwani (which means ‘to remember’ or ‘recall’) was made in 2012, but released in January 2014. It earned Florence Masebe, a well-known TV star taking on her first…
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Entertainment Express: Oscars, Outkast, Jack White, Kings of Leon, Boston Marathon
Happy Earth Day! Be extra kind to Mother Nature today. * The Oscar-winning tag-team of Neil Meron and Craig Zadan will be back producing next year’s Oscars show for a third time. Even more impressive is the list of things the men behind Chicago and Hairspray will be working on until then – the TV musical Peter Pan Live!, a new MTV comedy series, Happyland, a movie version of Pippin, a musical based on the Beach Boys catalogue, and Monster High, based on the Mattel franchise. Such slackers. * Continuing their comeback streak, Outkast will headline the BET Experience in LA in June, adding another slot to their 40-date reunion tour (on top of the just-announced Austin City…
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Jared Leto’s Oscar-Nominated turn in Dallas Buyers Club
30 Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto goes into this weekend’s Oscar ceremony as the frontrunner, without a doubt, to win Best Supporting Actor. His return to the big screen after a 6-year absence has been rewarding not just for Leto himself, in the Oscar-nomination he now has, but for audiences too, who have been moved by his portrayal of Rayon, the kind and empathetic light to Matthew McConaughey’s daring and reckless Ron Woodroof. Dallas Buyers Club is based on the true life of Woodroof, a rodeo rider who becomes HIV + and decides to find his own way to get the meds he needs to survive, unapproved by the…
