Oscars

Jenna Barnett 2-09-2024

'Barbie,' Warner Bros.

The greatest single line in cinema of the past 12 months was delivered inside of a Barbie Dreamhouse.

Gareth Higgins 4-25-2019

From Cloud Atlas, “perhaps the most underrated film of the decade.”

WHEN I STARTED writing this column a decade ago, the Oscars were about to address The Dark Knight not being nominated for Best Picture by expanding from five to 10 possible nominees. Only two Marvel Universe movies had been released, iPads didn’t exist, movies were still mostly shot on film, and #MeToo wasn’t known outside activist circles.

Today, as I write my final regular column for the magazine, the expanded nominations system has delivered one of the least plausible Best Picture awards in memory (Green Book), 22 Marvel movies have been released, people make films on iPads, watching cinema on a phone is second nature, and a new era of respect and accountability is dawning in the entertainment industry and elsewhere.

Image via Hamberg Media School / RNS

The Academy Award nomination was a cause for celebration throughout the country. President Uhuru Kenyatta tweeted after the 90th Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles on March 4: “You have won our hearts as a nation … Keep telling our stories through your camera and you will win next time.”

Kimberly Winston 2-27-2017

Image via RNS/Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

With his win for portraying a drug dealer with a father’s heart in the film Moonlight, Mahershala Ali became the first Muslim to take home an acting Oscar.

Ali, 43, won in the Best Supporting Actor category on Feb. 26, topping much bigger names, including Jeff Bridges, nominated for Hell or High Water, and Dev Patel, nominated for Lion.

Da’Shawn Mosley 2-22-2017

Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

“Here at NASA, we all pee the same color,” says Harrison.

But this scene never happened. Harrison never took a crowbar to a “Colored Ladies Room” sign. He never solved Johnson’s dilemma of having limited accessibility to a legal bathroom. Harrison’s action is a fabrication framed as history, one that could easily be recognized as an insidious white savior narrative created and advanced by the white people who made the film.

Da’Shawn Mosley 12-21-2016

Image via Disney - ABC Television Group/flickr.com

Let us not forget the impact that D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation had on America when it was released in 1915. An adaptation of the novel The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, there’s little doubt in my mind that the film’s racist depictions of African Americans and affirming depictions of Klansmen formed and hardened the discriminatory beliefs of many white people in the U.S., making them further believe that black people were undeserving of fairness, respect, and freedom. The Birth of a Nation is a prime example of why we need new stories, told from the perspective of identities that are generally ignored and denigrated.

Da’Shawn Mosley 10-31-2016

Image via Moonlight Facebook.

There are some works of art that become landmarks in a person’s life. The person knows who they were before they encountered the art, but not who they are afterward, and among the pieces of themselves that have scattered to the floor they find new elements, new additions to their identity. Moonlight is undoubtedly one of my landmarks. It is my Washington Monument, my Statue of Liberty. It is all of that and more.

the Web Editors 2-29-2016

Screenshot via Gossip Cop

In a powerful introduction to an even more moving song from Lady Gaga, Vice President Joe Biden appeared at the Oscars Feb. 28 in a plea to “change the culture” and ensure that “no abused woman or man…ever feel they have to ask themselves ‘what did I do?’” 

the Web Editors 2-23-2016

Image via USC Annenberg

Just before Hollywood’s most glamorous — and this year, controversial — night of the year, a new study shows just why the Oscars are so monochrome. This is the first-ever exhaustive analysis of film, television, and digital streaming services for issues of diversity and inclusion. Conducted by Stacy L. Smith of the Media, Diversity & Social Change [MDSC] Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the study reveals how exclusive of women, people of color, and the LGBT community those platforms are.

Image via Catholic News Svc/Twitter

Possibly hoping for divine intervention ahead of next month’s Academy Awards, Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio met with fellow environmentalist Pope Francis. Speaking Italian, DiCaprio kissed the pontiff’s hand on Jan. 28 and offered a “grazie” [thank you] “for granting me this private audience with you.” Then, switching to English, he gave the pontiff a book of paintings by Early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose works meld fantastic imagery with reality.

the Web Editors 1-14-2016

For the second year in a row, every Academy nominee in an acting category is white.

Forget Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation. Or Michael B. Jordan in Creed. Or Bernicio Del Toro in Sicario. Or Will Smith in Concussion.

The 93% White, 76% Male Academy wasn't interested.

Straight Outta' Compton was also lauded as a potential best picture nominee, but was only nominated for Best Original Screenplay, which was written by two white writers. Similarly, only Sylvester Stallone was nominated for Creed, a film with a black lead actor and a black director.

Cindy Brandt 2-24-2015
Red carpet illustration, Fulop Zsolt / Shutterstock.com

Red carpet illustration, Fulop Zsolt / Shutterstock.com

The biggest event of Hollywood industry has just wound down. The rich and glamorous have walked down the red carpet in their designer gowns, the famous people took home trophies, and the Oscars are over for another year.

It is a lot of fun to “ooh” and “aah” over celebrities. I love to dole out opinions on red carpet fashion choices and chuckle at Twitter making fun of Matthew McConaughey’s facial hair. But overall, I think celebrity culture is quite unhealthy. Too much power and fame seems to corrupt even the best of us, and being in the spotlight for too long takes its toll on the human psyche. We should be fostering meaningful relationships with one another instead of developing a system that makes it possible for the celebrity to crave constant attention and for the crowd to follow blindly in an unthoughtful, mob-like fashion.

But because the system is already in place, this mechanism within culture to put people on pedestals for us to blindly adore — when Christians begin to share art and ideas publicly, we have seamlessly co-opted the same model to create a niche Christian celebrity culture.

Adam Ericksen 2-24-2015
Oscar statue karenfoleyphotography / Shutterstock.com

Oscar statue karenfoleyphotography / Shutterstock.com

“Sean Penn’s ‘Green Card’ comment may have ruined the entire Oscars.”

That was the headline from the Huffington Post. I didn’t watch the Oscars, but I’m always curious about pop-culture scandals. What could Sean Penn have said that was so egregious that it threatened to ruin “the entire Oscars?”

Penn delivered the award for Best Picture, which went to Birdman. After Penn opened the card, he took an awkward moment to gather his thoughts about how he would introduce the winner, whose director happened to be his long-time friend Alejandro Iñárritu.

That’s when Penn delivered the scandalous introduction, “And the Oscar goes to … Who gave this son of a bitch his green card? Birdman.”

Lisa Sharon Harper 1-07-2015
Actor David Oyelowo and Director Ava DuVernay on the set of ‘Selma.’ Photo court

Actor David Oyelowo and Director Ava DuVernay on the set of ‘Selma.’ Photo courtesy Lisa Sharon Harper/Sojourners.

In the first moments of SelmaI feel butterflies rise in my stomach as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (David Oyelowo) practices his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech while trying to tie his ascot. Butterflies rumble in my soul. I am almost fearful as we step into the world of Selma, because I am a student of the Civil Rights era. The movement’s lessons have shaped my life. I feel like I am about to meet my heroes.

So, King fiddles with his ascot in Oslo, Norway, and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) comes close to comfort him, and little girls descend into the bowels of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., and butterflies rise and my soul sits at attention. I know what is coming: hell … and glory.

The film still haunts me. Every performance is nuanced, textured, and humanizing. Director Ava DuVernay’s technique is breathtaking. Her eye translates words into feelings into images — moving images that never leave you. Brutality and reverence occupy single frames. At once, the audience is horrified and awe-struck. I have no doubt Selma should win Oscars.

It is an amazing film, but it doesn’t haunt me because of its excellence. As I sat in the dark watching the movement unfold before my eyes, it was not the past that haunted me. It was the present.

RNS photo courtesy David James/Disney-DreamWorks II.

Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln in the film ‘Lincoln’. RNS photo courtesy David James/Disney-DreamWorks II.

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln will probably nab a few of its 12 nominated Academy Awards when the Oscars are handed out on Sunday — a sign that Americans never have and probably never will tire of our 16th president.

Abraham Lincoln’s face is etched in stone on Mount Rushmore and his brooding statue sits enshrined in a Greek-style temple in Washington. His succinct Gettysburg Address (about 270 words) took all of about two minutes to deliver, yet remains this nation’s most famous speech 150 years later. His assassination lifted him to mythic status — a martyr who earned his place in our pantheon of national heroes.

We just marked the 150th anniversary of his Emancipation Proclamation, but that necessary action wasn’t enough. Spielberg’s film revives Lincoln’s second act, in 1865, to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery through a divided Congress. It wasn’t the only injustice Lincoln worked to correct.

In his recent book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews, Brandeis University Professor Jonathan D. Sarna recounts an important but little-known event in 1863 in Lincoln’s quest for full civil, religious, and human rights for all Americans — this time, for American Jews.

Cathleen Falsani 2-22-2013

Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty

This week, in the run-up to Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony, we've been taking a look at each of the Best Picture nominees, the stories they tell, and the spiritual questions (and answers) they offer.

In today's final installment, we turn our attention to Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty.

Joshua Witchger 3-07-2012

With Super Tuesday out of the way, take a look at some of McSweeny's more eccentirc exit poll findings. Make your favorite YouTube videos mirror the aesthitic of the Oscar-winning film, The Artist. See some amazingly small apartments and ask yourself, 'How much space do you really need in your house?' And take a listen to some new music from Sufjan Stevens/ Rosie Thomas, Jeff Tweedy's teenage son Spencer, and an 8-bit rendition of The Smiths (aka Super Morrissey Bros). Read today's "Links of Awesomeness" for these links and many others...

Joshua Witchger 11-21-2011

http://youtu.be/cJRBNbuaonc

Awesome tweet of the day: The father of liberal theology, Fred Schleiermacher, was born today in 1768. “Born” and “today” are just metaphors, of course. (via @shipofools) Plus interfaith bridge building, an extensive interview from U2, Jana Riess is Flunking Sainthood, Pakistanian cell phone censorship, Oscar-worthy documentaries, urban farming, Malawi introduces an anti-farting law (seriously, see above) and more.   

 

Logan Isaac 3-09-2010

I am not a movie buff by any standard, but somehow I suspect I am not the only one who was more than a little surprised at the reception of the latest war movie at Sunday's Oscars.

Gareth Higgins 2-02-2009
With the bad economy leaving people without a lot of extra money, many of us have been hunkering down at home with a movie and homemade popcorn.