Skip to main content

The ‘He’ and the ‘She’ Oscar


This year’s Oscar race may well lend itself to a gripping screenplay. We have a man and his former wife pitted against each other with nine nominations each for their respective films. James Cameron’s 3D extravaganza, Avatar, has netted nine nods, including those for Best Picture and Best Director. Avatar - which sunk its creator’s earlier record grossing, Oscar winning, Titanic with an earth-shattering show at the box-office - may well fly away with an attractive booty when the Academy Awards are announced later.
Facing the Goliath of a Cameron is his ex, the David of a Kathryn Bigelow, with The Hurt Locker that has grabbed nine noms as well, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Known for springing surprises, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may well decide to create a bit of history by putting Bigelow on the pedestal. She is only the fourth woman to get the Best Director nod, and if she clinches the actual trophy, she will be the first among the fair (or stronger?) sex to do so.

America and the Americans are in that wonderful mood to initiate a new order. We saw that when Barak Obama was elected President. The Academy’s 6000-odd members may want to do something as remarkable, and Bigelow can be the beneficiary.

Apart from this marital drama that someone in India’s Bollywood may be tempted to turn into a Pati, Patni and Woh movie, the Woh here being Mr Oscar, the nomination screen did not have any great fireworks.

Quentin Tarantino’s Jewish fantasy, Inglorious Basterds walked away with eight nods, Best Picture and Best Director included. Jason Reitman’s Up In The Air won six – Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for George Clooney among them.

The question that arises now is whether the Academy’s decision last June to expand the list of best picture nominations from five to 10 has fulfilled a long standing need to open this category to diverse genres. Yes, more variety can be seen this season. Films such as A Serious Man, The Blind Side, District 9 and An Education may have found it tough to enter the Oscar arena in the past.

On the flip side, no documentary or musical or foreign language work, for example, got the nod. And, despite the longer list, Clint Eastwood’s Invictus and designer-turned-director Tom Ford’s A Single Man got the snub. Spanish master Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces failed to make it, and, sadly, not even in the foreign lingo section.

The five foreign language nominees are Germany’s The White Ribbon, France’s A Prophet, Peru’s The Milk of Sorrow, Argentine’s The Secret in Their Eyes and Israel’s Ajami.

India’s Harishchandrachi Factory (in Marathi) could not make it. Neither could AR Rahman, who is now being hailed as the Mozart of Madras. Well, well, that is an enormous halo to carry.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...
Post a Comment
Read more

US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war

Friday, July 31, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, report said on Thursday.Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said."We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official said. "We should probably reassess our priorities."The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda ...
Post a Comment
Read more