CONGRATS JAMIE and MORGAN -- Who else deserves an OSCAR

[CrimsonTide4]

I am sad that I missed history in the making, yet thrilled that HALLE and DENZEL took home an OSCAR. IMO, it was long overdue and DENZEL should be on his 4th or 5th OSCAR.

DENZEL'S SPEECH
Two birds with one night, huh? Oh, God is good, God is great. God is great. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all. Forty years I've been chasing Sidney, they finally give it to me, what do they do? They give it to him the same night. I'll always be chasing you, Sidney. I'll always be following in your footsteps. There's nothing I would rather do, sir. Nothing I would rather do. God bless you. God bless you.

Oh, I want to thank the Academy. You know, when I was in college, first starting out as an actor, they asked each one of us what we wanted to do. I said I wanted to be the best actor in the world. All the students in the classroom looked at me like I was a nut. Life has taught me to just try to be the best that I can be. And I thank the Academy for saying to me that on this given night I was the best that I could be. I want to thank Warner
Brothers and Alan Horn and Lorenzo di Bonaventura for supporting this film. And Antoine Fuqua, a brilliant young filmmaker, African-American filmmaker. I don't know where you are, Antoine, I love you. Ethan Hawke, my partner in crime. So many people. I can't remember everybody, lawyers, doctors, agents. My beautiful agent, Ed Limato. We've been together for so many years. Hometown boy from Mt. Vernon. My beautiful wife. I love you so much. You put up with me, in spite of myself. And my beautiful children at home. I told you, if I lost tonight, I'd come home and we'd celebrate it. If I won tonight, we'd come home and we'd celebrate. Well, we're coming home and we're celebrating. God bless you all.

HALLE'S SPEECH
Oh, my god. Oh, my god. I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It's for the women who stand behind me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox and it's for every nameless faceless woman of color that now has a chance
because this door tonight has been opened. Thank you. I'm so honored. I'm so honored and I thank the Academy for choosing me to be the vessel for which His blessing may flow. I want to thank my manager, Vincent Tirrincione. He's been with me for 12 long years and you fought every fight and you loved me when I've been up. But more importantly you've loved me when I've been down. You have been a manager, a friend and the only father I've ever known. Really, I love you very much.

I want to thank my mom who has given me the strength to fight every single day, to be who I want to be and to give me the courage to dream, that this dream might be happening and is possible for me. I love you, Mom, so much. Thank you. My husband who is just a joy of my life. And India, thank you for giving me peace, because only with the peace that you've brought me have I been allowed to go to places that I never knew I could go. Thank you. I love you and India with all my heart.

I want to thank Lions Gate, thank you, Mike Paseornek. Tom Ortenberg for making sure everybody knew about this little tiny movie. Thank you. Our director Marc Forster, you're a genius. You're a genius. This moviemaking experience was magical for me because of you. You believed in me, you trusted me and you gently guided me to very scary places. I thank you. I want to thank Ivana Chubic, I could have never figured out who the heck this lady was without you. I love you. Thank you. I want to thank Lee Daniels, our producer. Thank you for giving me this chance, for believing that I could do it. And now tonight I have this. Thank you. I want to thank my agent at CAA, Josh Lieberman, especially I have to thank my agents, Kevin, thank you, thank you for never kicking me out and sending me somewhere else. Thank you. Who else? I have so many people that I know I need to thank. My
lawyers, Neil Meyer, thank you. Okay, wait a minute. I got to take 74 years here. I got to take this time. I got to thank my lawyer, Neil Meyer for making this deal, Doug Stone. I need to thank lastly and not leastly, I have to thank Spike Lee for putting me in my very first film and believing in me. Oprah Winfrey for being the best role model any girl can have, Joel Silver, thank you. And thank you to Warren Beatty. Thank you so much for being my
mentors and believing in me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

QUESTION: Who do you think, in the past, deserves an Oscar?

[Way2Much]

oh most definatly Dorthy Dandrige for CARMEN JONES, Danny Glover for THE COLOR PURPLE ( that whole movie was robbed), Diana Ross for LADY SINGS THE BLUES ( im not a huge fan of hers but she played the hell outta that part) SOOOOOOOO many more people i can't think of right now!!

[Honeykiss1974]

Samuel L. Jackson should definitely receive an Oscar!

[Salience]

Nuff said.

[4MYPEOPLE]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to say how distressing it was the other day to read on the AOL discussion board, the most disrespectful comments about Denzel and Halles win. It is one thing to feel that there were other performances more worthy of an Oscar. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but it is another to label posts "The NAACP Oscars" "Fried Chicken and Watermelon Awards" etc. Too often people hide behind their computers and use it as a vessell of hate. We still have very far to go in our struggle against hatred!

[Honeykiss1974]

Originally posted by 4MYPEOPLE
Hello everyone. I just wanted to say how distressing it was the other day to read on the AOL discussion board, the most disrespectful comments about Denzel and Halles win. It is one thing to feel that there were other performances more worthy of an Oscar. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but it is another to label posts "The NAACP Oscars" "Fried Chicken and Watermelon Awards" etc. Too often people hide behind their computers and use it as a vessell of hate. We still have very far to go in our struggle against hatred!

DAG!!
JUST BECAUSE 2 AFRICAN AMERICANS GET AN OSCAR (OUT OF HOW MANY OSCARS THAT WERE WON BY NON-AFRICAN AMERICANS?????????) SOME FOLKS WANT TO NAME CALL???
Really......................

[Virtual Violet]

[i]QUESTION: Who do you think, in the past, deserves an Oscar? [/B]

Angela Basset and Laurence Fishburne for "What's Love Got to do With It?

Angela Basset for

Malcolm X
Waiting to Exhale

Denzel Washington for:

Cry Freedom
Malcolm X
The Hurricane
Devil in a Blue Dress
Philadelphia
Remember the Titans

Al Freeman, Jr. for Malcolm X and Down in the Delta

Morgan Freeman for

The Forgiven
Shawshank Redemption
Driving Miss Daisy


Samuel L. Jackson for Jungle Fever

Alfre Woodard for Down in the Delta

Debbie Morgan for Eve's Bayou


Spike Lee for Malcolm X

Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg (Steven Spielberg too) for The Color Purple

...I'm sure I can think of more (to edit later?)

[DELTAQTE]

But I'm very weary also.

I cried like a baby when Halle won, hers was the most heartfelt speech of the night. And when she gave respect to the past and present, that just about did it for me.

I think Denzel's speech "two birds with one stone huh?" was a jibe to the academy. They both gave great performances, but has anyone thought that it was overkill?

Whoopie hosts the awards

Tribute to Sidney Poiter and his honorary oscar

Halle Wins

Denzel Wins

Does anyone think that the academy did this to shut us up? Are we going to have to wait another 40 years before we are given this nod again?

I'm waiting for comments


QTE

[DableST_1]

Originally posted by DELTAQTE
But I'm very weary also.

I cried like a baby when Halle won, hers was the most heartfelt speech of the night. And when she gave respect to the past and present, that just about did it for me.

I think Denzel's speech "two birds with one stone huh?" was a jibe to the academy. They both gave great performances, but has anyone thought that it was overkill?

Whoopie hosts the awards

Tribute to Sidney Poiter and his honorary oscar

Halle Wins

Denzel Wins

Does anyone think that the academy did this to shut us up? Are we going to have to wait another 40 years before we are given this nod again?

I'm waiting for comments


QTE

SOROR,
I am SO HAPPY that someone eles feels the same way I FEEL!!!! I don't know if anyone remembers but I believe it was last year when EVERYONE was raising HELL b/c Washington didn't get an oscar for Hurricane, and then he gets an OCSAR for acting like a THUG in Training day????
COME ON NOW........... (don't get me wrong, I loved the Movie) and Halle gets one for Monster Ball?? OUt of all the movies she's done...... MONSTER BALL??????
I remember in 95 when the NAACP was asking all African Americans to Boycott the OScars (does anyone else remember that).....So to answer your QUESTION YES!!! They gave us that award to SHUT US UP. I mean movies like Hurricane, Malcom X, What's Love Got to do with it, Color Purple (just to name a few) DESERVES an Oscar. And it is ABOUT time Sidney got an oscar!!!!

[DELTAQTE]

Well you know soror that Sidney already has an Oscar for "Lillies in the Field" and I was GLAD that he got honored, but why tonight?

I just went on the AOL board and you are right, they are saying some of the most racist comments on the board. But at the same time, they are dissing her for not claiming to be half white and that she disrespected her white mother for not claiming that part of herself.

My friend who is a actor told me that in 2002-03 there really aren't any black acting roles coming up that are Oscar worthy. Laurence Fishburne is tied up with "The Matrix", Angela Basset doesn't have any huge roles coming up, Jada is doing "The Matrix", etc.


He also said that his actress friend in the biz said that the vote was spilt between Spacek and the older woman(forgot her name) which pushed Halle ahead for the win.


QTE

[Salience]

Originally posted by DELTAQTE
I think Denzel's speech "two birds with one stone huh?" was a jibe to the academy. They both gave great performances, but has anyone thought that it was overkill?

Whoopie hosts the awards

Tribute to Sidney Poiter and his honorary oscar

Halle Wins

Denzel Wins

Does anyone think that the academy did this to shut us up? Are we going to have to wait another 40 years before we are given this nod again?

Overkill? Never, overkill implies that there has been a glut of African-Americans winning. The whole point of this thread is that there haven't- many talented actors/actresses have been ignored.

Whoopi does not count as an African-American for me. Anyone who thinks blackface is funny is out of my family. Plus, she's hosted before and she's a Hollywood "darling," for whatever that's worth. Plus, she was the first Af-Am woman to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and it was for the same type of award that Hattie McDaniel won HER award for.

Sidney's award was right on time.

Denzel and Halle were awarded to shut us up, and it WILL be another 40 years before Best Actor/Actress nods come our way again. In the meantime, maybe Latinos will get a break. Edward James Olmost deserved multiple Oscars. They'll probably give something to J-Ho, err I mean Lo, but she is mediocre at best. Yeah, Sal's in a militant mood today, listening to Michael Jackson's new one!

As a side note, Halle did mention the Creator in her speech. Someone said only Denzel did, but Halle mentioned "Him." Just an aside.

[DELTAQTE]

Whoopi does not count as an African-American for me. Anyone who thinks blackface is funny is out of my family


So I guess Whoopi got the "OJ boot" from you huh?



QTE

[DableST_1]

Originally posted by DELTAQTE
Well you know soror that Sidney already has an Oscar for "Lillies in the Field" and I was GLAD that he got honored, but why tonight?

I just went on the AOL board and you are right, they are saying some of the most racist comments on the board. But at the same time, they are dissing her for not claiming to be half white and that she disrespected her white mother for not claiming that part of herself.

My friend who is a actor told me that in 2002-03 there really aren't any black acting roles coming up that are Oscar worthy. Laurence Fishburne is tied up with "The Matrix", Angela Basset doesn't have any huge roles coming up, Jada is doing "The Matrix", etc.


He also said that his actress friend in the biz said that the vote was spilt between Spacek and the older woman(forgot her name) which pushed Halle ahead for the win.


QTE

Yeah I forgot about Sidney getting an Oscar for "Lillies in the Field" thanks for bringing that to my attention.

[CrimsonTide4]

Thanks to Soror DeltaQuarius, I found this article about the Academy Awards.

Don’t Applaud Hollywood Yet for Denzel, Halle, and Will
by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, The Hutchinson Report

Film critics, industry flaks, and even some Black entertainers have tumbled over themselves shouting the praises of Hollywood for picking three Blacks for its top awards. They repeatedly toss around the words “history-making” to describe the feat. It isn’t. In 1973, Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield in Sounder, and Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues were nominated for the leading awards. And during most of the 1990s Blacks have often been nominated for best acting and supporting acting roles.

Five have won Oscars for supporting roles.

If Denzel Washington, Will Smith, or Halle Berry win the big prize for their roles in "Training Day," "Ali," and "Monster’s Ball," Hollywood will hail them as the enduring poster pinups for racial diversity in the film industry. But that means skating past much of Hollywood’s shabby history in dealing with Blacks.

It’s been nearly four decades since Hollywood crowned Sidney Poitier as best actor for his role as Homer Smith, the happy-go-lucky traveling laborer, who cheerfully helped nuns build a small church in Lilies of the Field in 1963.

Academy voters have taken the heat for the industry’s racial blind spot. Moments after the Academy announced this year’s picks, Academy Award nominee, Angela Bassett, claimed that most of the nearly 6,000 Academy voters were aging, white males, and blasted them for their racism.

An industry spokesperson quickly shot back that this was guesswork, and that no one knows or cares what the racial identities of the Academy voters are, and that their vote for Smith, Washington, and Berry proved that the voters are race-neutral. But Hollywood isn’t. In the 74 years that the Academy has showered its top awards on its leading lights, exclusive of the Poitier best male actor award, Blacks have fared dismally on and after Oscar night in Hollywood:

Barely two percent of the nearly 300 Oscar awardees have been Black. Hattie McDaniel, who won the best supporting actress award for her role as a maid in "Gone With The Wind" in 1939, was barred from the “whites only” premier of the film in Atlanta.

Only one Black has been nominated for a best film director award.
No Blacks have been nominated for a best film writer award.
Blacks are still grossly underrepresented in the Directors and Writers Guilds, and the 4,000-member union local that includes decorators and property managers.

Then there are the parts that garnered much critical praise for Washington, Smith, and Berry, and that got them their Academy nods. The roles of Washington, as a foul-mouthed, rogue cop, Smith as the clowning Ali, and Berry as a sexually lustful widow skirt the thin line between knockout dramatic excellence and reinforcing the stereotypes of Black males as buffoonish, menaces to society, and Black women as high-strung, and hot-bodied. Washington and Berry recognized the problems with their roles, but in interviews in the New York Times and the trades, bristled at the notion that they were pandering to these stereotypes.

In candid moments, some film industry executives admit Hollywood’s disgraceful racial past but say that the industry is doing much to make amends for it. And, there have been some positive changes. More Black male actors than ever have made a huge splash on the screen in non-racially stereotypical roles. They have strong box office appeal, and are generally accepted by much of the film going public. In 1999, the Directors Guild of America struck the name of filmmaker D.W. Griffith from its annual award to its top film director. Griffith was dumped for making the grotesque, racially slanderous film, Birth of a Nation in 1915 that played a colossal part in poisoning racial attitudes toward Blacks for much of the 20th century.

These are welcome steps by the film industry. But they don’t negate Hollywood’s refusal to create more opportunities for Blacks. It’s not a matter of begging Hollywood to open wider its racial doors. It’s a matter of dollars. In the four decades since Poitier copped the top award, the Black movie going audience has soared. Blacks purchase an estimated one-fourth of all movie tickets in the United States and have helped shore-up the at times sagging box office take for the film industry.

It took the threats of advertiser boycotts, demonstrations, and stockholder challenges by Black activists to get TV executives to at least make a paper promise to hire and promote more minorities on and off screen. But film executives refuse to make any such promise. They say time, talent, and perseverance will bring racial diversity to their industry. They, of course, said the same thing in 1963, 1973, and throughout the 1990s, when Blacks were nominated, and even won, awards. But the promised total racial remake of Hollywood hasn’t happened. If Halle, Denzel, and Will’s name are called out as winners when the envelopes are opened on Oscar night, there’s little reason to think that remake will happen this time either.

http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/...rticle_ID=9909

[CrimsonTide4]

From today EUR

STREETWATCH
Oh, What A Night!
This year's Oscars were too good to be true. Everything
happened exactly the way it should-including the situation with
Will Smith. He and Jada left the ceremony, left the dream-come-true moment of hearing his name announced among the Best Actor nominees, left Oscar history in the making-to tend to their baby girl who was sick with a 103 fever. Their daughter is okay.
This Streetwatch is dedicated to Will and Jada.

There was so much to comment on, we just numbered
them as they came to mind.

1) Did we really need Tom Cruise justifying acting post 9/11? He looked silly and pretentious, with his braces and his nominated
ex-wife staring a hole through him in the front row. Woody Allen's
NY speech, the NY film, the moment of silence and Whoopi's embroidered ode to the NYPD and NYFD at the end were perfect.
Tom's speech was over-the-top. Can the Pentagon victims get some love?

2) Ryan O'Neal was supposed to be minutes away from dying
last night, but rumors of his impending death from Leukemia were greatly exaggerated-We love remissions.

3) All of Gweneth Paltrow's people should be fired. Where were
they to tell her: a) stop slouching; b) we all can't wear our breasts out like that; c) the raccoon eyes were last year; d) the Miss Celie hairstyle isn't flattering; e) we all can't wear our breasts out like that. She shlepped on stage with the gait and carriage of a barnyard animal. Speaking of which...

4) Cameron Diaz's hair. It looked like she just had wild "Monster's Ball" sex in the limo before hitting the red carpet. She must've had the same hair stylist as...

5) J-Lo.

6) Donald Sutherland and Glenn Close, two distinguished, well-respected actors, were reduced to doing bumpers? Whose brilliant idea was this? They were a classed-up version of Kid Capri in the ol' Def Comedy Jam days.

7) Ian McKellen looked like a pedophile sitting there with his baby of a boyfriend. He's the gay, British R. Kelly with his own little "Lolito." Disturbing.

Now ...the personally satisfying moments. How perfect was
the following sequence of events:

8) Oprah has "a feeling" about Halle and Denzel, forgoes her Oscar-night tradition of watching at home in her pajamas while on the phone with Gayle, and actually flies out to LA for the Vanity Fair party.

9) Halle Berry, absolutely stunning in the most beautiful dress in the room, wins, cries, struggles up the stairs, cries, eventually mentions Oprah in speech.

10) Cut to Vanity Fair party: Oprah cries a false eyelash onto the table watching Halle in her moment.

11) Julia Roberts in Newsweek last month: "I can't fathom a world where I have an Oscar and Denzel Washington does not."

12) Julia Roberts presents Denzel Washington his Best Actor Award.

13) Denzel acknowledges the path forged by Sidney Poitier.

14) Sidney Poitier happens to be in the house fresh off of the best Oscar speech ever made.

15) Poitier's Honorary Award just so happened to be presented to him by Denzel Washington.

16) Vivica A Fox's name comes out of Halle Berry's mouth during the 2nd best Oscar speech ever made.

17) Cut to Vanity Fair party: Vivica is sitting with hubby Six-Nine watching Halle accept her award, hears her name, grabs her man's arm and begins to weep as hard as Halle.