Transformed – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

LOS ANGELES – A surreal 93rd Academy Awards, a televised stage show about films that mainly go online, began on Sunday with Regina King, a former Academy Award winner and director of One Night in Miami, who performed for Dinner strutted club set.

“It’s been quite a year and we’re still in the middle of it,” she said, citing the pandemic and the guilty verdict in the George Floyd murder trial. “Our love of movies helped us get through.”

With a little more preamble, Oscar statuettes were handed out, and Emerald Fennell, a first-time nominee, won Best Original Screenplay for Promising Young Woman, a startling revenge drama. The last woman to win this category alone was Diablo Cody (“Juno”) in 2007.

“It’s so heavy and so cold,” said Fennell of the gilded Oscar statuette in an impromptu speech that took up one she wrote when she was 10 and loved Zack Morris on the television series “Saved By the Bell.” “You said write a speech. I’m going to have trouble with Steven Soderbergh, ”she said.

Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller won the adapted script award for “The Father” about the devastation caused by dementia. Another Round, about middle-aged men who want to get drunk every day, won an Oscar for International Feature Film (formerly known as Foreign Language Film). The Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg dedicated “Another Round” to his daughter Ida, who was killed in a car accident in 2019.

“Perhaps you’ve pulled some strings somewhere,” said Vinterberg, fighting back the tears.

At the ceremony, there was a possibility that the night might go down in Hollywood history. People of Color were nominated for all four acting awards – an indication that the film industry has made significant reforms. The academy, with around 10,000 members, is still predominantly white and male, but the organization invited more women and people of color to join its ranks after the intense outcry by #OscarsSoWhite in 2015 and 2016, when the incumbent nominees were all white . This year nine of the 20 nominations went to people of color.

As expected, Daniel Kaluuya was named supporting actor for playing the leader of the Black Panther, Fred Hampton, in Judas and the Black Messiah.

“Bro, we’re out here!” Kaluuya shouted solemnly before getting serious and paying tribute to Hampton (“what a man, what a man”) and ending with the cri de coeur: “When they played divide and conquer, we said unite and ascend.”

Hollywood wanted the TV show’s producers to do an almost impossible hat trick. First and foremost, they were asked to create a show that would keep TV ratings from dropping to alarming lows – while also celebrating films that, for the most part, had little audience relevance. The production team, which included Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (“Traffic”), is also hoping to use the television show to start the theater. This is no easy task when most of the world has been at the box office for more than a year. Ultimately, manufacturers had to integrate live camera feeds from more than 20 locations in order to comply with coronavirus security restrictions.

The Academy of Arts and Sciences for Feature Films had postponed the event, which usually takes place in February, to escape the pandemic. Nevertheless, the red carpet had to be radically reduced in size and the extravagant parties canceled.

Updated

April 25, 2021, 9:14 p.m. ET

For the first time, the Academy nominated two women for best director and recognized Chloé Zhao for “Nomadland”, a bittersweet meditation on grief and the American dream, and Fennell for “Promising Young Woman” for the consequences of sexual assault. The other nominated directors were David Fincher for “Mank,” a black and white love letter to Old Hollywood; Lee Isaac Chung for “Minari,” a semi-autobiographical story about a Korean-American family; and surprisingly Vinterberg for “Another Round”.

Zhao had been hailed for her “nomad land” direction by nearly 60 other organizations, including the Directors Guild of America and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In 93 years of the Oscars, only one woman, Kathryn Bigelow, has ever won. (Bigelow was celebrated for directing “The Hurt Locker” in 2010.) The directing category has also been dominated by white men over the decades, which makes the nomination of Chinese Zhao even more significant.

Netflix was back in the best picture race.

Netflix received its first Oscar nomination in 2014 for The Square, a documentary about the Egyptian revolution. Since then, the streaming giant has dominated the nominations, in large part due to the high spending on price campaigns. It amassed 36 this year, more than any other company, with Mank receiving 10 more than any other film.

But Netflix and its astute price warriors keep snooping in the end.

Last year the company’s hopes were based on The Irishman. Not even one of his 10 nominations was able to convert into a win. In 2019, Netflix pushed “Roma”. It won three Academy Awards, including one for Alfonso Cuarón’s direction, but lost the Grand Prix.

On Sunday, Netflix had two nominees, “Mank” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7”. These films competed with Zhao’s “Nomadland,” a contribution from Searchlight, a division of the Walt Disney Company. The other nominees for best picture were “Sound of Metal”, “Minari”, “Promising Young Woman”, “Judas and the Black Messiah” and “The Father”.

There was nothing usual about the show.

Soderbergh wasn’t your usual Oscar producer, which may make him the perfect pick for this very unusual year. He and his production partners for the event, Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins, avoided Zoom and implemented enough protocols to allow nominees a mask-free environment.

In the run-up to Sunday, Soderbergh repeatedly referred to the show as a three-act film. The television station’s staff included filmmaker Dream Hampton “Surviving R. Kelly” and veteran writer and director Richard LaGravenese (“The Fisher King”). Moderators were referred to as “performers”. These included Zendaya, Brad Pitt, and Bong Joon Ho, last year’s best director winner.

The ceremony usually included performances of the five pieces that were nominated for best song. Not this year. These were brought from the main stage to a preshow that allowed them to be performed in their entirety.

That year, however, the academy decided to hand out two honorary Oscars during the main show. (Since 2009, honorary statuettes have been awarded during a non-televised fall banquet.) The non-profit film and television fund that draws technicians for a nursing home and retirement village for aging and sick “industrial” people (actors, executives, choreographers, lighting) , Cameramen), received one. Founded in 1921 by stars like Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, the organization also offers a wide range of other services to Hollywood seniors.

The second went to Tyler Perry, whom the Academy described as “a cultural influence that goes well beyond his work as a filmmaker.” Perry, of course, began his entertainment career as a playwright. Since the end of his popular nine-film series “Madea” in 2019, Perry has focused on producing TV shows such as “Bruh”, “Sistahs” and “The Oval” for BET. He owns a studio in Atlanta.

The Dolby Theater, home to more than 3,000 people and which has hosted the Academy Awards since 2001, wasn’t the epicenter of the television broadcast. That year, an Art Deco Mission Revival train station in downtown Los Angeles served as the main venue and only the nominees and their guests attended.

Naomi Levine, who in the 1970s as executive director of the American Jewish Congress became the first woman to head a large Jewish advocacy group and who later played a key role in New York University’s transformative expansion into a high-profile institution, died on January 1 14 at her home in West Palm Beach, Florida. She was 97 years old.

The death was confirmed by her daughter, Joan Kiddon.

Ms. Levine, who grew up in the Bronx in the 1930s, initially aspired to become a teacher in a public school. But as she said, after an oral exam she was turned down for having a lisp and choosing to pursue the law instead. She attended Columbia Law School, which soon included prominent women such as pioneering feminist politician Bella Abzug, labor attorney Judith Vladeck, and federal judge Constance Baker Motley among fellow students in the 1940s.

In the 1950s, Ms. Levine joined the American Jewish Congress as an attorney on the Law and Social Action Commission. There, often in collaboration with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, she wrote pleadings on key Supreme Court cases, including Brown v Board of Education, which reduced segregation in public schools, and Sweatt v Painter, who declared the “segregated but equal “successfully questioned doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson.

In 1963 Ms. Levine helped Rabbi Joachim Prinz write “The Issue is Silence”, a speech that expressed his solidarity with the civil rights movement and which he gave shortly before the famous “I Have a Dream” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered speech at the March in Washington. She later taught a law and racial relations class in policing at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

During her lawyer career, Ms. Levine was often surrounded by men. “I knew I deserved to be there because I was so smart and often smarter than everyone else in the room,” she once said. “And if I shut up I could do a lot.”

In 1972 Ms. Levine was named executive director of the American Jewish Congress, a position that brought her visibility and influence. In an interview with the New York Times earlier this year, she reflected on the women’s movement and the balance of responsibilities between spouses.

“I still feel a little guilty about being away from home too much, and if my daughter got sick, I would stay home and take care of her – I wouldn’t expect my husband to,” said you. “Young girls think differently today and they are right.”

She summarized her view as follows: “Women’s library is probably right, but it’s not my style.”

In 1978 Ms. Levine left the American Jewish Congress and, eager for a new challenge, accepted a position at NYU. She was hired to help the troubled institution realize its ambitions of becoming a top university.

At the time, NYU was not the respected academic institution it is today. It was poorly furnished and, with its crumbling campus buildings and drab dormitories, was difficult to attract students. Ms. Levine began leading the university’s indictment toward change as the principal fundraiser, and she quickly found herself gifted at the strategic art of raising money.

She raised more than $ 2 billion over the course of two decades. Towards the end of her tenure, she raised around $ 300 million a year. In 1985 she launched an unprecedented $ 1 billion fundraiser that earned her some skepticism. However, when the feat was accomplished a decade later, the initiative was hailed as one of the most ambitious such endeavors in higher education.

By the beginning of the 21st century, NYU had reinvented itself and its expansion through Lower Manhattan continued to accelerate. A 2001 New York Times article headlined Ms. Levine, who was then senior vice president, “The Dynamo At The Heart Of The NYU Fundraiser”; The article noted that the phrase “Clear it with Naomi” had become commonplace in university administration.

“It is impossible to exaggerate Naomi’s contribution to transforming NYU,” said John Sexton, the university’s president from 2002 to 2015, in a telephone interview. “Anyone who knows the generative forces that took NYU from its nadir, which is at the beginning of its arrival, to its booth in 2000 and beyond, knows that it was one of the main generators of those forces.”

After retiring as the university’s principal fundraiser, Ms. Levine founded the George H. Heyman Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at NYU, where she also taught a graduate course on Ethics, Law, and Corporate Governance in Nonprofits. ”She retired in 2004.

Ms. Levine’s commitment to social issues remained a career breakthrough, perhaps most personally expressed at Camp Greylock, the summer camp for girls in the Adirondacks, which she ran from 1955 to 1971.

A mail boat would bring copies of the New York Times to the warehouse, and Ms. Levine moderated current affairs discussions with campers in a dining room. She reluctantly closed the camp to concentrate on her work at the American Jewish Congress. Many campers who still proudly call themselves “Greylock Girls” have grown into leading companies in the fields of law, business and medicine.

“Regardless of age, she wanted these girls to know that they can and can be anything,” said Ms. Kiddon, her daughter. “She believed she could empower these girls for life.”

Naomi Ruth Bronheim was born in the Bronx on April 15, 1923. Her father Nathan was a salesman. Her mother, Malvina (Mermelstein) Bronheim, was a hospital secretary. When Naomi was a girl, she helped prepare a pot of flank cholent stew on Friday night to prepare for the Sabbath, and her mother sewed clothes for the family.

Naomi attended Hunter College High School and graduated from Hunter College with a BA before enrolling at Columbia Law School, where she became the editor of the Law Review. In 1948 she married Leonard Levine, an accountant who had fought in Normandy in the third wave; He died in 2001.

In addition to her daughter, two granddaughters and one great-granddaughter survived Mrs. Levine.

After Ms. Levine retired, she was awarded a presidential medal by NYU in 2005. She remained on the board of directors of the school’s Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life and also advised the Taub Center for Israel Studies.

A few years ago, Ms. Levine moved to West Palm Beach where she began writing a memoir called History and Me. She also founded a book and film club at the Kravis Center (which her daughter referred to as “Lincoln Center for West Palm Beach”), where members discussed social issues. After seeing “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) they talked about racism in America; After Adam’s Rib (1942) they shared their views on sexism and gender inequality.

Ms. Levine hoped to show the 1933 film version of Little Women one day. In 2016, she told the Palm Beach Daily News that Katharine Hepburn’s idiosyncratic portrayal of the main character, Jo March, inspired her when she saw the film as a girl.

“She wanted to break free of being an ordinary woman,” said Ms. Levine. “That influenced my thinking.”