Academy Award Nominations
 

Best Actor:

Denzel- Training Day
Will- Ali


Best Actress:
Halle- Monster's Ball

Maybe there is a greater chance that a brotha will win this year... :rolleyes: :confused:

Re: Academy Award Nominations
 

As long as the majority is still picking the winners, I seriously doubt it. Tom Hanks will probably win for Cast Away. Meanwhile, I thought the movie was incredibly boring and could have been about an hour and a half shorter.

I keep my fingers crossed for Will, Halle, and Denzel.

I wish them all the best of luck.

Re: Re: Academy Award Nominations
 

I think we are gonna have to do MORE than finger crossing. LMAO
(prayer, prayer, prayer etc. etc)

It's the truth, but it's a doggone shame. :mad:

African Americans Celebrate
 

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Movi...ors/index.html

African-American nominees celebrate nominations
February 12, 2002 Posted: 3:58 PM EST (2058 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Actress Halle Berry said Tuesday the Oscar nomination of herself and two other African-Americans in the top acting categories is an achievement worth celebrating.

Berry, who has won critical acclaim for her performance in the drama "Monster's Ball," noted that actor Sidney Poitier is scheduled to receive an honorary award the night of the Academy Awards and that Whoopi Goldberg is set to host the festivities. Both are African-Americans.

"So, it will be a really good night for people of color, as well as everybody else, but especially for us," a delighted Berry told CNN.

Actor Denzel Washington, already an Oscar winner for his supporting role in the Civil War drama "Glory," was nominated for best actor for his performance as a corrupt cop in "Training Day." Will Smith was nominated for his turn as Muhammad Ali in "Ali."

It's the first time three African-Americans have been nominated for leading roles since 1972. :eek: :eek:

Smith said he, too, is pleased by the recognition of African-American actors. He noted that Poitier was the last man to win a best actor award "and that was 28 years ago." Poitier won best actor for 1963's "Lilies of the Field."

Said Smith: "I'm really honored and excited to be a part of this point in history."

Smith said the recognition for "Ali" is especially exciting because the film was made with "a 90 percent black cast."

Berry paid tribute to her peers in the best actress category and said hers is a rare spot to be in for a minority.

"Women of color aren't often named, so to be there and not only (to) represent myself -- but ... all of us in a way ... it feels great," Berry said.

The awards will be handed out March 24.

One man's perspective on Monster's Ball
 

I picked this up from the NPHC listside. It is originally from the seeingblack (sp?) site. The commentator seems a bit 'cised:

> I Take No Pride In Berry's Oscar Nomination
> By Miles Willis
>
> As an African-American man, I find nothing to be proud of in actress Halle Berry's recent Academy Award nomination. I haven't even seen the film, so it's not that I don't think her performance deserves to be so recognized. Nor is the significance of her nomination, and its potential for opening up more doors and attitudes for black actresses, lost upon me.
I simply find the premise of "Monster's Ball", in which a character played by one of our most prized beauties, falls in love with a racist white prison guard, played by an actor named Billy Bob no less, who led her late husband to his execution, deliberately insulting. With its profanely incongruous and utterly implausible scenario, the plot of this film is a sneering, in-your-face taunt to all black men.
Imagine the seething indignation that a Jewish man might feel while watching a story in which the widow of a Nazi concentration camp victim has an intimate relationship with the SS officer that shoved her husband into one of those ovens at Auschwitz!
And for Ms. Berry, "Monster's Ball" is unfortunately just the latest screening, at least since 1992's "Boomerang", in which we must endure seeing her in the throes of passion with white men. Her character boldly exposed her breasts to a white man in the movie "Swordfish", another `got down' with an old white senator
in "Bullworth", and had two white men, husband and lover/co-conspirator, in playing "The Rich Man's Wife".
Of course portraying Dorothy Dandridge required Berry's character, as Dandridge once described her own romantic/marital relationships, to 'throw (herself) at white men.' It seems that that's all Hollywood will throw at Ms. Berry. I don't think
that it's mere coincidence.
The motivation behind this phenomenon is clearly rooted in the legacy of slavery. Many plantation owners were notorious sexual predators who forced themselves upon slave women and girls of their choice at their leisure, and their men were powerless to stop it. On today's plantation, Hollywood confirms that `old times there (truly) are not forgotten' as they recreate those longed-for days of unrestricted dalliances with their chattel by casting the best looking black actresses with white actors.
At the same time they marginalize black men, both in front of
and behind the camera, into cinematic inferiority and insignificance, denying them access to the opportunity to tell passionate tales of black people in love.
Except for the all-black film adaptations of "Carmen" and "Porgy and Bess", the latter having been referred to by some black sctors as a `coon show', Dandridge, always near the top of any list of all-time most beautiful African-American women, never had an on-screen black lover, or an off-screen one for that matter, since only white men could advance her career. Lena Horne never played opposite white actors, but felt compelled to marry a white man just so that she could more fully enjoy the accoutrements of her show business celebrity.
Fast forward to 1992 with Whitney Houston who starred in the movie, "The Bodyguard". As one of the most successful pop singers in history, with cover-girl looks and proven cross-over appeal, she could have made a romantic drama with Denzel, Wesley, Morris, etc that would surely have been a box office smash.
Instead, Hollywood produced a big budget heavily promoted blockbuster in which Whitney's character takes a white man as her protector and lover. I felt snubbed and disrespected, having
to just stand by and let `Massa' take my woman for himself, just like before.
Now let's flip the scenario as we consider the country music vocalist Leann Rimes. She is a beautiful, successful recording artist who surely will act(?) in movies someday. But can you imagine her first role being analogous to Whitney's, that of a singer with a black bodyguard/lover? It's inconceivable! Why? I think its because the media has so successfully demonized black men that the movie industry would run the risk of offending white male viewers with such a pairing. But they obviously have no such concerns about our sensibilities.
Angela Bassett, a critically acclaimed and enchantingly beautiful actress, was Robert De Niro's character's girlfriend in a recent movie ("The Score"). Thandie Newton's character in the second "Mission Impossible" movie was shared between two white characters. Even the original super-sister Pam Grier
had a white lover in "Foxy Brown".
The main purpose of the movie industry is to create fantasy, and it's pretty obvious whose fantasies Hollywood [is] trying to satisfy. I want to go to big-budget, action-packed, exciting, romantic, heavily-promoted and critically acclaimed movies and
see beautiful black women with guys who look (at least somewhat) like me, so that I can fantasize about them being with me, just like the white men do when they go see movies with beautiful white women like Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts. Obviously Hollywood could care less about what black men would like to see.
The sex scene in "Monsters Ball' is so graphic that according to Berry herself, her husband walked out of the theater. I feel you there, Eric.
I don't even want to see it. And we must remember that when the movie industry finds that a particular type of movie is successful, it makes a whole bunch more just like it. So you can bet that if Halle wins an Oscar for "Monster's Ball", and maybe even just because of the acclaim her portrayal has generated, we can expect to see more movies with fine black women gettin' down with mangy, white redneck 'billybobs' that
> de-humanize and execute their black men; after all, vicious racists need love too. I find that prospect truly monstrous.

This morning I heard that Vanessa L.Williams turned down the role in Monster's Ball. I didn't hear the actual report, but that was interesting.

Halle DESPERATELY wanted the part, according to Halle.

Re: One man's perspective on Monster's Ball
 

Thanks for the info Steeltrap. Once again I have comments-a-plenty concerning this piece, but hence I think it would be a whole other thread.
But I will say the following: I think these types of movies could be "the industry's" way of saying " SO BLACK MEN, YOU WANT TO SNATCH UP ALL OF OUR WHITE WOMEN, WELL WE CAN SNATCH UP YOURS TOO! "
To me, that sounds just as crazey as some of the examples used to prove the article's point.

I didn't read the whole article. But Halle knew what she wanted, she went after it. She wants that Academy award.

I apologizefor the double post but did that article say that Dandridge didn't have an on- screen lover or a off-screen lover?

Harry Belafonte was her love interest in Carmen Jones and she was married to one of the Nicholas Brothers in real life, right?

I dunno.:confused:

You're correct. Dandridge and Belafonte were love interests in Carmen Jones, and Dandridge's first husband, and father of her child Harolyn was Harold Nicholas.

I think the author was conveniently forgetting those facts :rolleyes: because DD did have some Caucasian on-screen lovers and off-screen (Otto Preminger, the director, and her loser husband Jack Denison).

OK I get it, so black men can go after all the white women they want in real life but black women can not like white men in movies? That is so ridiculous. That whole article was ridiculous. HOw are you going to argue about amovie you haven't even seeen because of what you assume is the premise?

What a SHODDY piece of dare-I-say journalism.:rolleyes:

http://www.plaudersmilies.de/happy/xyxthumbs.gif My sentiments exactly!!

My votes go to Halle in Monsters Ball she was excellent. The role was another leap for Halle as an actress; it too showcased her talent.

And Denzel in Training Day, great acting and a surprising change for him. The thug look was working' on him too. MMM MMM MMM :)

YEAH!!!!:mad: What she said!!!!!!!!!!!