Artists Behind Oscar-Nominated Songs Won’t Perform
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Oscar is breaking with tradition when it comes to its nominated songs.
Leslie Unger, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said Wednesday the artists behind the year’s five nominated songs will not perform during the Oscar telecast.
Instead, the nominated songs will be showcased with clips from the films that featured them.
Up for an Oscar in the original song category are Randy Newman’s “Almost There” and “Down in New Orleans” from “The Princess and the Frog,” ”+” from “Paris 36” by Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas, Maury Yeston’s “Take It All” from “Nine” and “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart” by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.
The Academy Awards will be presented March 7 at the Kodak Theatre and broadcast live on ABC.
‘Hurt Locker,’ ‘Hangover,’ ‘Up’ Win Editing HonorsBEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — The war story “The Hurt Locker,” the bachelor bash “The Hangover” and the animated tale “Up” have earned top honors from the American Cinema Editors.
The group honored “The Hurt Locker” for best editing on a dramatic feature film, while “The Hangover” won in the comedy or musical category and “Up” took the animation award.
“The Hurt Locker” won out over four other nominees that included sci-fi blockbuster “Avatar.”
Also among winners Sunday night was the dolphin-slaughter investigation “The Cove,” which won for best edited documentary.
Television winners includes “30 Rock,” ”Dexter” and the TV movie “Grey Gardens.”
Prison Thriller Dominates Spanish Film AwardsMADRID (AP) — The prison thriller “Cell 211” has won eight trophies at the Goya Awards, Spain’s version of the Oscars.
Among others, the box-office hit about a prison riot took statuettes for best film, best adapted screenplay and best director for Daniel Monzon at a ceremony in Madrid on Sunday night.
Alejandro Amenabar’s historical drama “Agora” starring Rachel Weisz won seven trophies in categories including best special effects, wardrobe and original screenplay.
Spanish actress Lola Duenas won the best actress prize for her role as a woman who falls in love with a man with Down syndrome in “Me, too.” She beat out Penelope Cruz, nominated for her performance in the Pedro Almodovar film “Broken Embraces.”
Luis Tosar won best actor honors for his role as the inmate who leads the jailhouse riot in “Cell 211”.
Berlin Film Follows Muslims Struggling with Crises
By Geir Moulson“
BERLIN (AP) – A first-time German director’s film about Muslims struggling to come to terms with unwanted pregnancy, homosexuality and other challenges to their beliefs debuted Wednesday at the Berlin film festival.
“Shahada,” or “Faith,” is one of 20 movies in the festival’s main competition. The first feature film from Burhan Qurbani, a 29-year-old German Muslim, it is competing alongside offerings from more established figures including Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer.”
Qurbani said the movie is meant as “a call to dialogue.”
Set in Berlin, it has three interlinked episodes – following the daughter of an imam who turns radical following an illegal abortion; a young Nigerian who struggles, in the end successfully, to reconcile his faith with feelings for another man; and a policeman racked by guilt over an accident in which he shot a woman.
“I wanted to show in my film that Muslims and Islam are not only one face, Arabic, (with a) beard, but it’s really colorful,” the director said of the variety of characters in his film.
Qurbani said his aim was to explore “stories that take our figures to the extreme limit of what is bearable for them.”
The Berlin festival’s top Golden Bear prize and other winners will be announced Saturday.
FCC chairman Calls for Ultra-High-Speed Broadband
WASHINGTON (AP) – The nation’s top telecommunications regulator says he wants 100 million U.S. households to have access to have ultra-high-speed Internet connections by 2020.
Speaking in Washington on Tuesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said those connections should be 100 megabits per second, several times faster than most home connections now. He also wants the U.S. to establish testbed networks to experiment with even higher broadband speeds.
Both proposals will be part of a national broadband plan that the FCC will deliver to Congress next month. The plan was mandated by last year’s economic stimulus bill.
Adobe: Flash 10.1 for Smart Phones Out My Midyear
NEW YORK (AP) – Adobe says it is still on track to launch the latest version of its Flash Player for smart phones in the first half of the year.
Adobe Systems Inc. was planning to demonstrate Flash 10.1 at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, this week.
Flash is used to play Web videos and games. Mobile systems that will work with the full Flash Player include the BlackBerry, Google’s Android, Palm’s WebOS, Windows Mobile and Symbian, used on Nokia’s smart phones.
The San Jose, Calif. company says Flash 10.1 will also work on many tablet-style computers.
But Apple’s iPad and iPhone are still off the list.
Adobe also plans to unveil its AIR software for mobile devices. It builds Internet applications that can be opened without a Web browser.
Stuntman and actor Bobby Hoy dies at 82LOS ANGELES (AP) – Bobby Hoy, a stuntman and actor known for his way with horses in Westerns like “Bonanza” and “The High Chaparral,” has died. He was 82.
His wife, Kiva, tells the Los Angeles Times that Hoy died Monday of cancer at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.
From 1949 to 2005, Hoy acted and performed stunts in more than 150 productions, including the films “Spartacus,” ”Operation Petticoat” and “The Defiant Ones.”
Hoy co-founded the Stuntmen’s Assn. of Motion Pictures, which helped professionalize stunts, according to its Web site.
Besides Kiva, his wife of 22 years, Hoy is survived by a son, Christopher.
