Bookworm

2008 Oscar Nominations

Link: OSCAR.com - 80th Annual Academy Awards - 80th Academy Awards - Announced Categories.

Gore Shares Peace Prize for Climate Change Work

"Former Vice President Al Gore, who emerged from his loss in the muddled 2000 presidential election to devote himself to his passion as an environmental crusader, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists." [NY Times]

Doris Lessing - Nobel Prize in Literature

"Ms. Lessing, who turns 88 this month, never finished high school and largely educated herself through voracious reading. She has written dozens of books of fiction, as well as plays, nonfiction and two volumes of autobiography. She is the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature." [Doris Lessing - Nobel Prize in Literature - Books - New York Times]  I have heard of Ms. Lessing, but haven't read any of her books.  If anyone reading this has suggestions of a good first book of hers to start with, please comment! :-)

Academy Awards

• Ellen Degeneres did a good job.  She had just the right laidback tone, wasn't trying to show off, was able to josh the audience without sounding condescending. 
• I really liked the concept of honoring all the nominees, not just the winner.
• The little girl who was in Little Miss Sunshine looked so sweet in that beautiful dress.  I found it humorous when Jaden Smith was striding out to help her give the two "short" awards and she's walking as fast as she can in heels and dress trying to get out there at the same time.  I don't think Jaden was paying attention to that.  He's just a little guy.  It was cute that he goofed up and started moving on to the second award before they'd announced the winner of the first one.
• Seinfeld was pretty funny, joking about how we all want to see the faces of the people who don't win the award.  That practice is a bit mean and I'm guessing that some serious acting goes on when folks put a big smile on their face for the winner.  I'm sure they respect their contemporaries, but of course they wish they had won!  They could always have a camera on each person and just cut away from the non-winners once the name is announced.
• They didn't seem to do quite as much crowd-surfing as normal -- didn't see Oprah (who I'm guessing was there).  I didn't see Pitt, Jolie, Aniston, or Katie Holmes there -- perhaps a wise choice on all their parts to miss the chaotic event.
• The members of the dance troupe that did the shadow puppet poses were really amazing.
• Was I the only one that was clueless as to whether the sound effects chorus was a joke or not?  They can't possibly have been making all those noises to accompany the film clips, could they have?  That was one segment that I could have easily lived without!
• I wonder if part of the "going green" aspect of the show was having fewer camerapeople.  Some of the camera work was really bizarre!  In a way, it gave a bit of visual interest versus just showing the presenter or award winner from one angle, but it was disconcerting to see someone giving a speech while being viewed from the side with a camerman crouched in front of the stage (presumably getting reaction shots).  One time a winner had put the statue on the stage and the camera view went to the statue and away from the winner!  One time the camera, seemingly randomly, went to Jack Nicholson standing off-stage.  When Jennifer Hudson was giving her speech, the camera went to Beyonce's smiling face.  Why?  I know they're co-stars, but shouldn't the winner be entitled to his or her fleeting seconds of screen time? 
• Were there any "real" instruments in the orchestra pit?  I saw the conductor and a guy with a synthesizer and possibly a stringed instrument or two behind them. . .
• Is Jack Nicholson ill?  He's had thinning hair & a comb-over for so long, it was startling to see him with a bald pate.
• Forest Whitaker, who won Best Actor, gets my award for the best speech of the night.  It's ironic that such a seemingly nice and erudite man should be winning the award for playing a cruel dictator. 
• Gwyneth Paltrow looked absolutely stunning.  I liked Kate Winslet's simple, classic dress.  I liked Nicole Kidman's red dress, except that the bow on her right shoulder was really distracting.
• I probably haven't seen any of his movies, but I'm glad that Martin Scorcese won Best Director. 
• The song performances were really great, especially Melissa Etheridge and the Dreamgirls songs.  Did you get the feeling that Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson might have been almost competing to give the best performance?  I think Jennifer has better pipes.  (Speaking of which, isn't it odd that she didn't win American Idol, but has been so successful since?  Perhaps Simon Cowell and the mass-dialing TV viewing public aren't always the final, or best, arbiters of talent and potential?)  I love James Taylor, but either he wasn't wildly inspired last night, or it just wasn't a great song.
• Does Clint Eastwood speak Italian, or was the translation up on a teleprompter?  In such an international year for the Oscars, it was kind of fitting for Marconi's speech to be given in Italian and then translated.
• I agree with whomever chose some of the "worst dressed" choices: Anne Hathaway's dress with the big giant black bow covering the entire bodice was odd.  Kirsten Dunst's dress was definitely odd.  (But they also had Gwyneth as "worst" -- what?  The color of the dress wasn't as pretty in daylight, but onstage, I thought she looked beautiful.)
• I found it ironic, but unsurprising, that when Cameron Diaz walked out, all they could think of to say was, And now, the voice of Princess Fiona in Shrek!  I don't see CD's movies, for the most part, but she's one of the richest (and therefore, by that measure, successful) actresses in Hollywood.  But on this night, she's just a tall girl who does voice-overs. 
• I'm glad Helen Mirren won and I'm more likely to see The Queen now after having seen the snippets during the show.  I was disappointed for Kate Winslet, though.

Poincare Proof

"Over a period of eight months, beginning in November, 2002, Perelman posted a proof of the Poincar� on the Internet in three installments. Like a sonnet or an aria, a mathematical proof has a distinct form and set of conventions. It begins with axioms, or accepted truths, and employs a series of logical statements to arrive at a conclusion." [The New Yorker: Fact]

This caught my eye because Mr. Perelman was offered/awarded the Fields medal (which I know from A Beautiful Mind to be the most covetee award in mathematics); if you're interested in the subject, this New Yorker article would be interesting to you.

Brief Oscar Observations

• The only movie I saw in the theater last year was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire -- somehow this was not nominated for Best Picture. We also saw, on DVD, March of the Penguins, which did win for Best Documentary.  How cute was it that the people accepting the award all had penguins and even whistled "thank you" in penguin.  Gotta love geeks. :-)
• It's often noted that talented comedic actors and actresses don't win awards (or get nominated) for comedies most of the time, but finally do get them when they act in dramas.  Comedies are seen as more lightweight, less challenging, perhaps? (Renee Zellweger, Bill Murray, Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon are all recent nominees/winners that come to mind)
  
• Why did so many women wear black dresses?  Is it because we're still at war?
• I like Michelle Williams, but disliked her dress and makeup choices.  The dress was the color of a yellow-orange Crayola crayon and her lipstick was way too dark.
• Felicity Huffman looked wonderful in her black dress with plunging neckline.  I don't think I'm interested in seeing the movie she was nominated for, but I loved her in Sports Night and am glad to see her recognized for her talent.
• I can't believe a song called "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" won an Academy Award. (And despite the fact that I am not a rap fan, I couldn't get it out of my head!!)  Granted, it seemed like a slow year for song nominees.  Dolly Parton really sold her nominated song with her enthusiastic performance -- I loved that all these fancy Hollywood folks were clapping along with a country song -- but the song itself wasn't all that exciting.  The song from Crash was ok. 
• Jon Stewart was funny.  A few of his jokes bombed, but the pretaped humor segments were well-written and poked fun harmlessly.  My favorite off-the-cuff joke he made was when he said (after rap song mentioned above was performed live and won the award) that obviously the way to reach the Academy was through interpretive dance.  *giggle*
• I thought the Western spoof segment was tasteless and not appropriate for prime time TV on a major network.  They took snippets of old Westerns and made it look as if there'd been homosexual elements in the old movies (not just in this year's Brokeback Mountain).  The show was rated for viewers 14 and over, so at least parents had some guidance in this regard.

British Playwright Wins Nobel Prize in Literature - New York Times

"Harold Pinter, the English playwright, poet and political campaigner whose work uses spare and often menacing language to explore themes like powerlessness, domination and the faceless tyranny of the state, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. . ." [NY Times] 

Not sure how I missed this story -- now a week old!

2005 Webby Awards

"One of the more charming idiosyncrasies of the Webby Awards, the annual awards for achievement in Web creation, requires that recipients use five words, and five words only, to make their acceptance speeches. So after a night full of award innuendos and one-line haiku at Gotham Hall in Manhattan, the 550 people in attendance were wondering how Al Gore, the loquacious former vice president, would respond to his lifetime achievement award.  He did not disappoint. "Please don't recount this vote," he said."  [NY Times]

This year's Webby winners

Pulitzer Prizes

Fiction: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Nonfiction: The Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Poetry:  Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser
A 2004 interview with the poet
A few of his poems here

More winners in the arts

Journalism and Photography winners
The feature photography winner's work is extremely moving.

Oscar Nominations

are posted here.  Despite the fact that I saw none of the nominated movies, I'll probably update this post with my picks at a later date.