Do you know which Best Director nominee donated $25,000 to the DCCC? Which nominated actress once worked at the Pentagon? What celeb once said: "If there weren't blacks, Jews, and gays, there would be no Oscars"?
Sunday is Oscar Night, but that's no reason to put politics aside. After all, it's one of Hollywood's most political evenings -- why shouldn't we wear our partisan stripes as well?
Whether you're rooting for a favorite flick, just channel-surfing through, or watching to make fun of the outfits, make your Oscar-viewing a little more entertaining with Screening Liberally Oscar Trivia. Host your own Oscars party (or join ours in New York), and enjoy! The rest of the quiz below the fold.
A version of this post originally appeared on TakePart.com
Since the Academy Awards coincide with Black History Month, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight the top 10 black actors who have won Oscars for Best Actor/Actress in a Leading Role. So Hollywood--which harbors, aids and abets, politically-correct, identity-politics-spouting, hand-out giving, limousine liberals--can finally shut up about the so-called "racism" and all the other fake "isms" they claim exist and need to be addressed. Here's the list of black Academy Award Winners for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Leading Role, in chronological order.
1.1963:Sidney Poitier wins for his role as Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field, becoming the first African-American actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.
1964-2000: Lots of white winners.
2. 2001: Denzel Washington wins for his role as civil rights luminary and martyr Malcolm X in Spike Lee's Malcolm X, wins for his role as Rubin Carter, the real life legendary boxer, convicted of a crime he didn't commit, who overcomes the racist criminal justice system, police corruption and brutality, and proves his innocence through his persuasive and passionate autobiography in Hurricane, for his role as the corrupt, criminal, violent, lecherous cop, Alonzo Harris, in Training Day
3. 2001: Halle Berry wins for her role as Leticia Musgrove in Monster's Ball, becoming the first (and only) African-American actress to win Best Actress.
2002-2003: Some more white people.
4. 2004: Jamie Fox wins for his role as Ray Charles in Ray.
The final in our five-part series looking at the Best Picture nominees, Telaroli takes a look at the hidden class politics of Atonement.
With lush photography and a beautiful cast, Joe Wright's Oscar nominated Atonement is being advertised as an epic romance, and while romance does weave itself in and out of the plot, it doesn't really get to the heart of the film.
From the opening shot, a long line of animal figurines representing all of the jungle and the natural order of things, it's clear that instead of love, this is a movie about class. For in England, the natural order of things, no matter how unnatural it may seem, is their rigid class system.
After the animal kingdom parade ends we meet Briony, a young girl with a gift for writing but without anyone to give her or her writing much attention. A quick conversation with Robbie (James McAvoy), the handsome gardener, subtly reveals that Briony has a crush on him. When Briony later asks her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) why she no longer talks to Robbie, it's obvious that she isn't doing so out of concern for her sister's relationship with Robbie, but out of her own selfishness.
Cecilia, without any hesitation, tells Briony that they "move in different circles, that's all," and in fact they do. Robbie's mother works for Cecilia and Briony's family as a housekeeper and cooke, leaving Robbie to grow up with the family. And even though the girls' father paid for his education he was always on the outside looking in. Despite his education, the story begins with Robbie working as the gardener, trying to get money for medical school, his attempt to climb a bit higher on the societal ladder. His feelings are for the older sister and as he daydreams of Cecilia in the bathtub, a military plane flies overhead, a reminder of his status in life and a view of things to come.
From here we follow Cecilia, Robbie and Briony into a fateful night that changes all of their lives. Before dinner, the two from different circles finally declare their love for each other. Unfortunately for them, a confused Briony interrupts their physical and emotional declaration. Later in the evening, when everyone is walking through the woods, Briony , out of both jealousy and not wanting to cross class lines, tells the police that she saw Robbie raping her cousin Lola.
The real culprit, the much richer chocolate magnate Paul Marshall, is of course never suspected, as it makes more sense to both Lola and Briony that the man who runs in a "different circle" would be the appropriate choice considering the crime. Even Cecilia's pleas to the police and her mother that Robbie is innocent and Briony isn't to be trusted aren't enough to outweigh their prejudice against the lower man.
We continue our weekly look at the Best Picture nominees with the case for Michael Clayton, as presented by Kia Franklin, Civil Justice Fellow with DMI and contributor to their TortDeform blog.
"Make believe it's not madness."
That's what's scribbled on the wall of the hotel out of which Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), a lead partner in a mega class action lawsuit, escapes. The day prior, he had been arrested for losing it at a videotaped deposition, performing a painful strip tease/rant for opposing counsel, and then running naked into a parking lot. It quickly becomes clear that the partner, Arthur, has begun making the case against their client, U North, a chemical company accused of knowingly releasing cancer-causing products into the market.
Michael Clayton has come to clean things up.
Michael Clayton is a fixer for Kenner Bach and Ledeen, a reputable international law firm in New York City. He's the guy who bills his time under "Special Projects," if he bills it at all. The guy who everyone knows is valuable, but no one knows why. What kinds of special projects does Clayton take on? Quelling a big client's budding scandal before it goes public, using his connections and creativity to help straighten out the crooked, and making sure as few people are involved in the process as possible. As valuable as he is for what he does, at one point he makes it clear that he's "not a miracle worker, [he's] a janitor."
In a conversation in the jailhouse where Arthur is being held, Arthur faces the fact that he's been spending a significant portion of his working life defending a company that has knowingly harmed hundreds of families and killed at least 468 people.
A sheer callousness toward human life pervades No Country for Old Men, an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture. That the film takes place in 1980 is perhaps no coincidence; the moral void of the Reagan Administration provides a perfect backdrop for this kind of inhumanity and begs an analysis of the film through the filter of the Reagan years.
Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), the film's sort-of-hero, is a fine example of the rugged individual. Off hunting in the Texas desert, he stumbles onto a drug deal gone horribly wrong (where was Nancy?!). Half a dozen men and their dogs lie dead on the ground or in cars. But Moss is looking for the loot. He finds one man nearly dead, pleading for water, but ignores him, finds the money ($2 million) and makes his getaway.
Elsewhere, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is killing. That's what he does in this movie. With an eerie calm, he aims his air-gun - normally used on cattle - and slaughters people like, well, cattle. Hotel clerks, businessmen, chicken farmers, bounty hunters, they all get the same treatment. He is after the money and will kill whoever gets in his way. At the risk of mixing my 1980s movie metaphors, it's clear that for these characters, greed is good.
But the money is not Chigurh's only motivating factor; he clearly enjoys toying with his prey. In a memorable scene at a gas station, Chigurh asks the lonely and unsuspecting owner what the most was that he had ever lost in a coin toss. Chigurh denigrates the man's very worth as a human being to his face, and we await the demise of another innocent victim. But the coin toss comes up in the owner's favor and Chigurh spares his life. Life under the Reagan Administration was similarly chancy for the most vulnerable Americans. In 1981, Reagan cut in half the budget dedicated to public housing and Section 8 housing vouchers for low-income people, sending hundreds of thousands into homelessness. During the Reagan years, the number of people living in poverty grew by 25 percent in comparison to the previous administration.
We continue our weekly series on the Best Picture nominees with this impassioned case for Juno as the best film of 2007.
Today, I have decided. After much thought and consideration, much anguish over personal allegiances and previous beliefs I have decided to make my endorsement. Today, it is with great honor and awe that I endorse Juno for the Best Picture Award. I do this not only for its artistic achievements (which were so impressive that I was forced to award it the title of Mad Good) but also for the important contribution that is has made to the advancement of liberal ideas.
Over the five Fridays left until the Academy Awards, we'll be taking the opportunity each week to look at the five Best Picture nominees from the perspective of a progressive activist or commentator. This week, an essay inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, by Jay Hazen, host of Reading Liberally Denver.
Family businesses.
With a little spit and polish, even the filthiest, vilest snake oil salesmen become the mirrors we wish to see ourselves through. Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), the protagonist of There Will Be Blood, is a family man. He cuts across the sparse townships and broad plains of the American west in search of oil.
In the oil industry of Plainview's day, a clever pitch is an important way to stick your foot in a door. He smiles and wears finery when coming to a new town on rumors of oil. He keeps his quiet, contemplative son in tow as a sign that he, like the earnest huckleberries he's out to swindle, values his family more than any wealth or resource.
He is quite a persuasive salesman.
But once Plainview has a rapt audience willing to sign over their land for pittances, there is little incentive for him to continue offering carrots. Promises of money for schools and civic development peter out. Plainview turns his attention to the clockwork tapping of a drillbit quietly, persistently coaxing open the earth.
The oil comes in a rush. It burbles into shallow pools and spurts into the sky. Whether his workers are dipping buckets to fill up open-air pits of the stuff or pouring it neatly into barrels, it soon dominates the railroad depot in his biggest find yet.
The town is hostage to the only industry it has. The industry doesn't care where the stuff comes from, or how. And Daniel Plainview lords over the poor and superstitious lot beholden to him with all the inevitable superiority of a man whose time has come. All because of his family business.
There Will Be Blood tells the story of an ambition large enough to grind a small corner of the world to dust under the heel of a family man. Plainview transforms himself over several years from a desolate miner to a minor oil baron. He crafts an image of himself as a meticulous and conscientious man no different than the simple farmers he swallows whole. As his ego swells, he lurches out of his corner of California swinging, eager to bludgeon railroads and Rockefeller alike.
Daniel Plainview is clearly an oilman. He has coveted it. He has found it. He has used it to amass a fortune, kicking aside with contempt anyone who encroaches on his proprietary madness or inquires about the people in his life. He is an empty shell of a man who runs on bile and savagery for no other reason than to prevent anyone else from getting there first.
Yes, this is a film about avarice and cruelty. It is about oil, but more importantly it is about the importance we attach to vital resources. That importance is enough to make the best man bend and
the worst man filthy rich. And now we are more than covetous of oil; we depend on it.
STATE BLOGS
