Oscar nominations in the USA

This video is about one of the rather rare instances when United States governmental crimes were mentioned during the Oscar awards ceremony in Hollywood: Michael Moore attacking George W. Bush because of the Iraq war in his Academy Award acceptance speech.

By David Walsh in the USA:

The 83rd Academy Awards nominations—the worst of times, the best of times

26 January 2011

The Academy Award nominations for 2010 were announced Tuesday morning at a press conference in Los Angeles. The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony will take place February 27 at the Kodak Theatre, also in Los Angeles, co-hosted by actors James Franco and Anne Hathaway.

The King’s Speech, directed by Tom Hooper and featuring Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush, gained the most nominations for 2010, 12, including nominations in nearly all the leading categories.

The Coen brothers’ True Grit [see also here] gained recognition in ten categories, while Christopher Nolan’s Inception and David Fincher’s The Social Network were each nominated for eight awards.

Two films that provided some sense of contemporary American life, The Fighter [see also here] and Winter’s Bone, received seven and four nominations, respectively.

The Academy Awards process, like a good many social events in the US at this point, has a largely ritualistic character. Very little is left to chance, either in the nomination process or the ceremony itself.

The last time controversy was permitted to rear its head came in March 2003, only days after the launching of the US-led assault on Iraq, when documentary filmmaker Michael Moore denounced George W. Bush, calling him a “fictitious president,” and declared, “We are against this war.” Since that time, the awards ceremony has run as smoothly and tediously, sometimes as unendurably, as clockwork.

Let the Academy know what you think. Vote now in our 2011 Documentaries Oscar Opinion Poll! Here.

94% of Oscar voters are white, 77% are male: here.