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Published on Wednesday, Jan 23, 2008
Notes from Oscar nomination Tuesday . . . •
Oscar and Ohio. Two very veteran performers from Cleveland have received their first Oscar nominations: Hal Holbrook and Ruby Dee.
How veteran? Holbrook will be 83 on Feb. 17, a week before the awards are handed out.
Although Holbrook faces brutal competition, including Javier Bardem and Philip Seymour Hoffman, he could end up as the oldest winner of an acting Oscar in a competitive category.
But wait . . . •
Dee's Long Career. Dee would take the oldest-acting-winner title if she gets the Oscar for best supporting actress; she is nominated for her performance in American Gangster.
References differ on whether she was born in 1923 or 1924 — in October, regardless of the year — but either way, she is older than Holbrook and any previous winner.
Like Holbrook, she has also had a distinguished career across media, often in collaboration with her husband, Ossie Davis, before his death in 2005.
So what has taken the academy so long?
•
Who Holds the Age Title? Current title-holder Jessica Tandy was 80 when she picked up her best-actress award for Driving Miss Daisy; George Burns was also 80 when he won a best-supporting-actor award, but Tandy was about six months older.
If you count honorary acting awards, Myrna Loy will keep the title. She was almost 86 when given a special Oscar in 1991.
•
More Ohio-Oscar. Paul Thomas Anderson, the California-born son of local legend Ernie ''Ghoulardi'' Anderson, has three nominations from There Will Be Blood: as its director, one of the producers and the writer of its adapted screenplay (loosely taken from the book, Oil!, by Upton Sinclair). And the movie has eight nominations in all, including a best-actor nod to Daniel Day-Lewis.
The academy especially likes Anderson as a writer, having nominated him for his scripts for Boogie Nights and Magnolia.•
Where Can I See These Things? Most of the major movies are still making the theater rounds; the Cedar Lee in Cleveland has a virtual Oscar fest with Atonement, Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Savages and There Will Be Blood; you can also find Atonement, Juno, No Country for Old Men, Sweeney Todd and Charlie Wilson's War in the Akron area.
Persepolis, an animated-movie nominee, is due in Northeast Ohio on Feb. 1.
•
What Can I Watch at Home? Films already on DVD are La Vie en Rose (best actress, Marion Cotillard), Away From Her (best actress, Julie Christie), Eastern Promises (best actor, Viggo Mortensen), Ratatouille, Surf's Up (both for best animated film) and documentary nominees No End in Sight, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience and Sicko.
A fourth documentary nominee, War/Dance, is due on DVD in April. Other Oscar titles coming to DVD
are Michael Clayton (Feb. 19),
In the Valley of Elah (Feb. 19), Elizabeth: The Golden Age
(Feb. 5), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Feb. 5), Into the Wild (March 4) and Gone Baby Gone (Feb. 12).
•
Oscar Falls. While movies open year-round, fall and winter are still the best time to get Academy Award attention. Of the five best-picture nominees, three opened in December 2007, and one each in October and November.
•
Most Nominated Film Not Up for Best Picture. The big Oscar contenders are all up for best pic: No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood (eight apiece), and Atonement and Michael Clayton (seven). Ratatouille follows with five nominations, though none for best picture. (It is up for best animated film.) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Juno trail with four each, making Juno the least-nominated best-picture contender.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly did not get a best-picture nomination, but its director, Julian Schnabel, is up for best director. The motion picture academy noted this is the second year in a row that an American director is nominated for a foreign-language film. (Last year, it was Clint Eastwood for Letters From Iwo Jima.)
Schnabel's nomination is his first. And the academy called this . . .
•
A Big Year for First-Timers. Three of the five directing nominees are new, as are several writers.
Nine of the 19 acting nominees are getting their first nods (although the other 10 include six Oscar winners). Newcomers are Viggo Mortensen, Casey Affleck, Hal Holbrook, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page and four of the best-supporting-actress nominees: Ruby Dee, Saoirse Ronan, Amy Ryan and Tilda Swinton.•
More Oscar Trivia. From the motion picture academy: The best-director nomination for Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) is the third time that two men have been nominated for the same film. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins won for West Side Story; Warren Beatty and Buck Henry were nominated for Heaven Can Wait, but did not win.
Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) is the fifth performer and first woman to be nominated twice for playing the same character. (She also starred in 1998's Elizabeth). The others are Bing Crosby (Going My Way/The Bells of St. Mary's), Paul Newman (The Hustler/The Color of Money), Peter O'Toole (Becket/The Lion in Winter) and Al Pacino (The Godfather/The Godfather Part II).
Blanchett, also nominated for playing one aspect of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, is the second performer nominated for playing a member of the opposite sex. The first, Linda Hunt, won a best-supporting actress Oscar for The Year of Living Dangerously.
(Speaking of trivia, this week's Trivia Time answer is: The Archies performed Sugar Sugar. I'll announce a winner later.)
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. Contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
Notes from Oscar nomination Tuesday . . . •
Get the full article here.
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