A nun, football coach and Marine going to Academy Awards
By Derrik J. Lang, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --At least one person on the Oscars red carpet won’t have to worry about what to wear: Mother Dolores Hart.
The 73-year-old nun, who left Hollywood in 1963 to join a monastery after starring in films with the likes of Elvis Presley and George Hamilton, is among the nominated documentary film subjects slated to attend Sunday’s 84th annual Academy Awards. Hart, who will be sporting her nun’s habit, is chronicled in the short film “God Is the Bigger Elvis.”
Rebecca Cammisa and Julie Anderson, the short’s filmmakers, said at a panel discussion at the motion picture academy’s Beverly Hills headquarters Wednesday that Mother Dolores, who is a voting member of the academy and attended the ceremony three times before she became a nun, will walk the red carpet outside the Hollywood and Highland Center on Sunday.
Other nominated documentary film subjects expected to attend the Oscars include Bill Courtney, the white coach of an all-black, inner-city high-school football team featured in “Undefeated,” and Sgt. Nathan Harris, a Marine injured in Afghanistan whose emotional struggle to transition back to life in North Carolina is depicted in “Hell and Back Again.”
“I would encourage you, if any of you win, to bring them to the stage,” filmmaker and academy documentary branch officer Michael Moore, who moderated the panel discussion with the nominees, told the filmmakers. “I know you’ve been told not to, but as the governor of your branch, I will be there, and I’ll block any security that tries to prevent it.”
It wouldn’t be the first time the “Fahrenheit 9/11” filmmaker bucked academy rules. When he won the best documentary feature trophy in 2002 for “Bowling for Columbine,” Moore brought the other documentary films nominees on stage with him and was infamously met with boos and cheers when he used his acceptance speech to denounce President George Bush.
Among this year’s features, “Hell and Back Again” by Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner and “Undefeated” by T.J. Martin and Dan Lindsay will face environmental epic “If a Tree Falls” by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman; West Memphis Three installment “Paradise Lost 3” by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky; and 3-D choreography chronicle “Pina” by Wim Wenders.
The short film “God Is the Bigger Elvis” is up against the civil-rights profile “The Barber of Birmingham” by Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin; Iraq War account “Incident in New Baghdad” by James Spione; acid attack saga “Saving Face” by Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy; and disaster portrait “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom” by Lucy Walker.
Several of the nominated filmmakers lamented during Wednesday’s panel that documentaries are the lesser seen and lesser distributed films among those nominated for Oscars. Wenders, who presents the work of choreographer Pina Bausch in 3-D in “Pina,” said the technological evolution is the “secret weapon” to making documentaries feel more cinematic.
“What we as documentary filmmakers try to do is take the audience into somebody’s world,” said Wenders. “When you see a person in front of you shot in 3-D, it’s a different presence. It’s a whole different thing. You can tell your stories in a way that immerse the audience like never before. I’m convinced this is the future of the documentary language.”
Steve McQueen Shows Wartime London Through A Child’s Eyes In “Blitz”
It was a single photograph that started Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen on the journey to make "Blitz." As a Londoner, the German bombing raids on the city during World War II are never all that far from his mind. Reminders of it are everywhere. But the spark of inspiration came from an image of a small boy on a train platform with a large suitcase. Stories inspired by the evacuation are not rare, but this child was Black. Who was he, McQueen wondered, and what was his story? The film, in theaters Friday and streaming on Apple TV+ on Nov. 22, tells the tale of George, a 9-year-old biracial child in East London whose life with his mother, Rita ( Saoirse Ronan ), and grandfather is upended by the war. Like many children at the time, he's put on a train to the countryside for his safety. But he hops off and starts a long, dangerous journey back to his mom, encountering all sorts of people and situations that paint a revelatory and emotional picture of that moment. SEARCHING FOR GEORGE AND FINDING A STAR When McQueen finished the screenplay, he thought to himself: "Not bad." Then he started to worry: Does George exist? Is there a person out there who can play this role? Through an open casting call they found Elliott Heffernan, a 9-year-old living just outside of London whose only experience was a school play. He was the genie in "Aladdin." "There was a stillness about him, a real silent movie star quality," McQueen said. "You wanted to know what he was thinking, and you leant in. That's a movie star quality: A presence in his absence." Elliott is now 11. When he was cast, he'd not yet heard about the evacuation and imagined that a film set would be made up of "about 100 people." But he soon found his footing, cycling in and out of... Read More