By Sandy Cohen, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Two Hollywood veterans, Laurence Mark and Bill Condon, will oversee the next Academy Awards telecast.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Wednesday that producer Mark will produce the Feb. 22 show, while writer-director Condon will be executive producer. It will be the first time either has worked on the Oscars.
“It’s both daunting and the gig of a lifetime,” Mark said. “We haven’t done anything like this before. I’m hoping that’s in some way a plus. We don’t quite know what can’t be done.”
Sid Ganis, the academy’s president, said Mark and Condon are “fresh thinkers” who will bring a new perspective to the show.
“They’re both fun and elegant, and that’s what we want the show to be,” Ganis said.
Mark and Condon worked together on 2006’s “Dreamgirls.” Mark’s other producing credits include “I, Robot” and “Jerry Maguire.” Condon won a screenplay Oscar for 1998’s “Gods and Monsters,” and was nominated for a second for writing 2002 best-picture winner “Chicago,” which he also directed
The first order of business for the pair?
Choosing the Oscar host.
“All doors are open,” Mark said. “The casting of any movie is crucial to the success of the movie, and we believe the same is true with any kind of awards show. The casting of the host is a big deal.”
He declined to offer any hints as to whether a past host would return or a new face would grace the Kodak Theatre stage.
Mark and Condon plan to brainstorm together — and listen to the counsel of the film academy’s staff — to create a show that celebrates movies.
“Not only should the Oscars celebrate excellence in the movies of the year,” Mark said, “but hopefully we can figure out a way to also celebrate the joy, poignancy, laughter and thrills that folks have had at many movies of the year.”
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More