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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SAG Awards – Of Eddie and Julianne and Uzo and Kevin
By the actors, for the actors. I do so enjoy watching the Screen Actors Guild Awards because the appreciation the actors show for the love they’ve received from their peers is just priceless. There are almost always tears. And they’re not just from the actors themselves. It was hard not to be moved by Uzo Aduba’s emotional acceptance speech, where she reminded us she had planned to quit acting after her OITNB audition, or recall how good Mark Ruffalo was in The Normal Heart, even if he wasn’t there to accept his award in person. As a big Orange is the New Black fan, I was thrilled to see the show score two wins,…
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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…
