The Road to Oscar....

[jjkrkwood]

14 Oscar nominations for this years feel good movie La La Land, including Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Picture.... It's gonna be a hard one to beat.... but Well deserved.

 

And an uplifting bit of news, THERE ARE BLACK NOMINEES THIS YEAR...

 

At least Hollywood has learned to promote diversity. Listen Up Mr President. !

[+ quoththeraven]

14 Oscar nominations for this years feel good movie La La Land, including Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Picture.... It's gonna be a hard one to beat.... but Well deserved.

 

And an uplifting bit of news, THERE ARE BLACK NOMINEES THIS YEAR...

 

At least Hollywood has learned to promote diversity. Listen Up Mr President. !

 

And an Asian nominee, Dev Patel.

[Whitman]

And an Asian nominee, Dev Patel.

A terrific performance in a very moving film.

 

I was surprised to see Dev Patel nominated in the supporting category--he's the lead--but I know the Academy rules on this allow for flexibility, and I have since read that Lion producer Harvey Weinstein probably wanted to sidestep the Gosling-Affleck race for Best Actor, and thought Patel would have a better chance in the supporting category.

 

P.S. Sunny Pawar, the boy who played young Saroo Brierley (Patel's character) is also amazing. See this movie!

[mike carey]

And an Asian nominee, Dev Patel.

A nomination that is of considerable interest in Australia.

[+ oldNbusted]

I have to admit I'm pleasantly surprised that Moonlight is getting some recognition. I went to see it when it opened last Fall because I assumed it would disappear quickly without a lot of comment or notice (it was only playing in two theaters in the area, now it's in fifteen) and I thought it was incredible. Roger Ebert described movies as machines that generate empathy and I think Moonlight has that nailed.

[mike carey]

And an Asian nominee, Dev Patel.

I was surprised to see Dev Patel nominated in the supporting category--he's the lead--but I know the Academy rules on this allow for flexibility,

A nomination that is of considerable interest in Australia.

A sort of sequel to this story. I've just watched the second part of an Austalian Story program on Luke Davies, the screenwriter for the film Lion. Dev chased down the director of the film, Garth Davis, and Luke to try to get the role, before the screenplay was finished. The doco included footage of Davies talking to the birth mother of Dev's character in India while he was writing the screenplay, and of the real Saroo and his adoptive mother with them in India.

 

Luke's story is also a redemption story to some extent. He had been a heroin addict for 10 years, and in the previous episode of the show he had said that if you can't remember the last time you used, you haven't overcome your addiction. One of the things his addiction gave him was Hep C (his last use was 27 years, 3 months and some days ago, since you asked). He had been becoming increasingly ill during 2015 while he was writing. He was, however, able to get screen writers guild health insurance that enabled him to receive treatment for his Hep C (preexisting conditions anyone) that ultimately cured him of the disease.

 

Luke wrote a novel Candy about his years of addiction, which was made into a film in 2006 (with Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish and Geoffrey Rush) and also won the Prime Ministers Poetry Prize in 2012.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-15/how-lion-screenwriter-luke-davies-overcame-drug-addiction/8508396