Word: knighting
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...that Academy members are a tad older than the target audience for action-adventures, however elegantly crafted. It's not that Hollywood folk don't get these films; after all, they made 'em. It's that they don't think the grand-scale technical skill lavished on a Dark Knight or an Iron Man is as honorable as the spectacle of two guys talking--as long as one of them is Richard Nixon...
...films and performances that are honored, the Oscars have become more like the Emmys. And why the Academy Awards, which used to be the highest-rated entertainment program of the year, could hit a new low with its Feb. 22 broadcast. Now, if Slumdog were battling The Dark Knight for Best Picture--sort of Dharma vs. Goliath--that would be a can't-miss fight...
...their American brethren, the British Academy voters also gave Leading Actor kudos to comeback king Mickey Rourke for his role in The Wrestler (his expletive-sprinkled acceptance speech getting some of the night's biggest laughs), honored the late Heath Ledger's turn as The Joker in The Dark Knight with a Supporting Actor award, crowned WALL-E best Animated Film and applauded The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with a few of the less sexy awards for production design and make up. (See pictures of the rise, fall and rise again of Mickey Rourke...
...Selick made the film at Laika, the Oregon animation outfit owned by Nike cofounder Phil Knight. The studio formerly housed the facilities of stop-motion producer Will Vinton, who'd done Oscar-winning shorts and The PJs. Knight, a stockholder in Vinton's company, took over the place essentially to please his son Travis, who'd been a junior animator under Vinton. It's the grand gesture of which only zillionaires are capable. A man sees his child merrily playing with model trains, so he buys the kid Amtrak...
Your crotchety, sentimental liberal grandpa - Patrick Leahy, say, or Dan Rather - picked the Oscar nominations again this year. The voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences don't care that you liked The Dark Knight, which is the second biggest dollar-earner in movie history, and which kids and critics alike appreciated less as a live-action comic book than a triangular battle of stern Good, giggling Evil and two faces in between. Except for a Heath Ledger memorial citation (Supporting Actor), the film was shut out of all major award categories, taking seven other doorstop prizes...