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By T Cooper and Adam Mansbach
$11.64
By Daniel Ellsberg
$11.56
$18
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
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Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: A look at the Oscar-nominated docs and other political movies, and more on the hacktivist collective Anonymous.
Posted on Mar 1, 2013
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Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: A look at the Oscar-nominated docs and other political movies, and more on the hacktivist collective Anonymous.
Posted on Mar 1, 2013
READ MORE 
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Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
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By Robert Scheer — What was Michelle Obama thinking? What if the card for “Zero Dark Thirty” had been lurking in that best picture envelope Sunday?
Posted on Feb 26, 2013
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Sunday night’s Academy Awards had a very special guest on hand: Michelle Obama. The first lady, dressed in a silvery, shimmery evening gown by designer Naeem Khan, made a surprise live appearance from the Diplomatic Room of the White House at the end of the Oscars to help Jack Nicholson hand out the evening’s final and biggest award, best picture.
Posted on Feb 25, 2013
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Hollywood often fails to recognize the truly great talent in its midst.
Posted on Feb 22, 2013
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AP/Warner Bros. Pictures/Claire Folger
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By Carrie Rickey — If an extraterrestrial landed on Earth, “Argo,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Django Unchained,” “Lincoln,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Zero Dark Thirty” each would be an excellent introduction to the American character. In the aggregate, they make up a composite portrait of the country.
Posted on Feb 22, 2013
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By Amy Goodman — The Academy Awards ceremony will make history this year with the first-ever nomination of a feature documentary made by a Palestinian.
Posted on Feb 20, 2013
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Photo by Tomás Dittburn, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
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By Emily Wilson — In his latest film, Larraín continues his examination of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, this time looking at the campaign to oust him.
Posted on Feb 15, 2013
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Seth MacFarlane, the man—not to mention the voices—behind the animated TV show “Family Guy” and the film “Ted,” will be hosting the 85th annual Academy Awards. Here’s what you can expect.
Posted on Oct 1, 2012
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Rick McKee, Cagle Cartoons, The Augusta Chronicle —
Posted on Feb 26, 2012
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The Huffington Post
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This year, Sacha Baron Cohen can thank the Academy Awards for giving his latest politically flavored comedy, “The Dictator,” some excellent free publicity. Not that he didn’t engineer it himself.
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AP / Damian Dovargane
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By Carrie Rickey — In the beginning it was called the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and/or Sciences. While its ostensible purpose was management-approved mediation, its implicit goal was to pre-empt actors, writers and directors from organizing, as carpenters, musicians and electricians had done in 1926. Statuettes were an afterthought.
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AP / /Matt Sayles
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A bad strain of foot-in-mouth syndrome that apparently favors film directors has struck again. In the spring, we watched Lars von Trier’s ill-conceived Hitler joke get him summarily ejected from the Cannes Film Festival, and now ... (more)
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AP / Evan Agostini
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Screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman made his name in lights with his Academy Award-winning script for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but six more years in showbiz have apparently dimmed his Oscar afterglow, given the details on his latest project that The Wrap served up.
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AP / Mark J. Terrill
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You’d think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would be cool with Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin’s stolen Oscar kiss, as it involved two demonstrably straight men locking lips for the sake of filmed entertainment, but audiences at home ...
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foxsearchlight.com/blackswan/
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The tone of this Daily Beast article—starting with the title, “Crazy Chick Flicks”—is a tad flip with a touch of lad mag, but the idea that several actresses who’ve played women not fully in command of their mental faculties does hold up under scrutiny ...
Posted on Feb 1, 2011
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imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — It begins sometime in early December, in a screening room near you, with a handful of middle-aged men and women impatiently awaiting the start of a new movie.
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imdb.com
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With “The King’s Speech” sitting comfortably atop this year’s heap of Oscar-nominated films, it’s not surprising that there might be some grumbles from critical corners about the movie’s actual merits. But in this case, a couple prominent voices ...
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imdb.com
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Score 12 for “The King’s Speech.” Even with the recently retooled Academy Awards format, which includes 10 contenders for best picture, the quirky story of a verbally challenged King George VI nailed a dozen nominations in this year’s Oscar lineup.
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Flickr / 200MoreMontrealStencils (CC-BY)
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How do you give out an Oscar to someone who doesn’t want to come and get it? That’s the quandary the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is facing, as Jean-Luc Godard, French New Wave auteur and one of this year’s honorary Academy Award recipients ... (continued)
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We were as willing as anyone to write off this year’s Oscars for all the botched humor, predictable awards and desperate attempts at getting kids to watch (Taylor Lautner! Urban Dancing!), but we owe the Academy for bringing this mind-blowing little piece of genius to our attention.
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Hajo de Reijger, The Netherlands —
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imdb.com
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It was the first Iraq war movie to really break through, and now “The Hurt Locker” has won six Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, marking the first time an Oscar for directing has gone to a woman. The movie opens with a quote from Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges. (continued)
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Judith Ehrlich discusses her Academy Award-nominated documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
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The Motion Picture Academy has assembled an impressive slate of feature-length documentaries this year, from the inside story of the Pentagon Papers to an on-the-ground look at Burma’s Saffron Uprising. Here are the trailers for all five extraordinary films.
Posted on Feb 2, 2010
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Who knew that, among his many talents, Stephen Colbert possesses the astonishing power of clairvoyance? Watch in awe as he successfully predicts the lineup of Oscar winners ... and reveals the true identity of Kate Winslet’s father.
Posted on Feb 24, 2009
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The 81st Academy Awards ceremony was a politics-free affair, except for a predictably superficial nod at the economic collapse and two acceptance speeches for “Milk,” one from screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, the other from best actor Sean Penn.
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AP photo / Matt Sayles
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Lest he miss an opportunity to speak his mind, Sunday night’s Best Actor Oscar winner took a moment on the podium to encourage those who voted last November for California’s Proposition 8, the anti-gay-marriage initiative, to rethink their choice. Turns out the Academy is actually made up of commie, homo-loving sons of guns. Update: Video
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altfg.com
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As “Slumdog Millionaire” continues to rack up critical accolades (not to mention awards-season promotional blitzes), the film has also drawn crowds to its setting in the slums of Mumbai, India. But does this kind of attention represent a welcome boon for tourism or a form of exploitation—“poverty porn”—for a city still recovering from last November’s terrorist attacks?
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telegraph.co.uk
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Well, the Academy has spoken, picking this year’s Oscar nominees, and they couldn’t be safer or more boring ... except for those categories in which “Milk” figures in somewhere. At least that’s what the San Francisco Chronicle’s completely unimpressed critic Mick LaSalle thinks.
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By Amy Goodman — On the Sunday following Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney told the truth. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said regarding plans to pursue the perpetrators of that attack: “We have to work the dark side, if you will. We’re going to spend time in the shadows.”
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Truthdig
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Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer interviews documentarian Alex Gibney about his 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a compelling examination of the circumstances that led Americans to commit torture.
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Now that Fidel Castro’s got a bit more time on his hands, documentary überdirector Michael Moore has a suggestion for how he might spend his first official weekend out of office—as long as he’s got a penguin suit handy.
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By Andy Borowitz — The satirist reports that the justices have applied their electoral wisdom to the Academy Awards.
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theage.com.au
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Ellen DeGeneres opened this year’s Academy Awards ceremony by celebrating its newfound diversity, and she pointed to the bigoted rants of Michael Richards, Mel Gibson and Tim Hardaway: “If there weren’t blacks, Jews and gays, there would be no Oscars ... or anyone named Oscar, when you think about it.”
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“An Inconvenient Truth” took home two Academy Awards on Sunday, one for best documentary and the other for Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up” (best song). In case you missed it, here’s a video summary of Al Gore’s night at the Oscars.
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By Sheerly Avni — And the award for “Best Proof That Hollywood Is Out of Touch”: No one made a single reference to the troops fighting and dying in Iraq.
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Claire Joseph
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Claire Joseph —
In 1986, Teri Garr wore a dress made of “mood-ring” material; most of the gown displayed blues and purples, but Garr’s crotch, armpits and other warm bits turned orange. (Above, a Claire Joseph original on loan for this year’s Oscars night.)
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In a Truthdig interview with Sheerly Avni, Gore Vidal weighs in on this year’s Academy Awards competition, Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and Truman Capote’s Proust complex.
Posted on Mar 3, 2006
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Vidal photo: Zuade Kaufman/
Illustration: Karen Spector
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By Sheerly Avni — In a Truthdig interview, America’s most celebrated man of letters weighs in on this year’s Best Picture nominations and recalls his own encounters with Truman Capote. (Or, listen to an expanded podcast version.)
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By Sheerly Avni — In a Truthdig interview, America’s most celebrated man of letters weighs in on this year’s Best Picture nominations and recalls his own encounters with Truman Capote. (Or, listen to an expanded podcast version.)
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Karen Spector
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Sheerly Avni picks the brains of smart cinephiles for Truthdig’s special coverage of the Academy Awards.
Vidal on Film
Sheerly Avni-“Gore Vidal on ‘Capote,’ ‘Brokeback Mountain’—and Why ‘Match Point’ Is the Best Picture of 2005”
Worthy, but Not Great
Sheerly Avni-Renowned film critic David Thomson speaks with Avni about this year’s crop of issue-driven movies.
Pity the Fool
Sheerly Avni -Paul Provenza, director of the gleefully obscene “The Aristocrats,” explains why Hollywood doesn’t get the joke.
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Lucy Gray
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By Sheerly Avni — The renowned film critic talks about this year’s crop of small, issue-driven movies, and why “the liberal faction in Hollywood are much better at going to parties and raising money than actually making challenging films.”
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From jkrweb.com
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OK, all you expatriates probably already knew this, but Truthdig didn’t: “The Daily Show” runs on CNN International outside the U.S.
Think about that: Millions (perhaps billions) of foreigners get Jon Stewart’s version of America on a relatively straight-news-oriented channel. Depending on how you feel about Stewart’s sensibility, that’s either wonderful or troubling. (This snippet of news comes near the end of a hilarious article about Stewart’s upcoming gig at the Oscars.)
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