Tim Gray-Senior Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentNominees for the 93rd Academy Awards are a reminder that Oscar is like a Rorschach test: It means different things to different people.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentWhen the 20th annual Movies for Grownups Awards air March 28 on PBS, the winners will include career achievement honoree George Clooney, who turns 60 this year and whom AARP exec Tim Appelo described as “a slam dunk argument against ageism.”Hoda Kotb will host the event on “Great Performances,” the fourth time that the annual awards have aired, always on PBS.The winners were announced March 4.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentWhen Oscar nominations were announced March 15, mainstream-media headlines focused on the usual topics: best picture, the four acting categories and Hollywood’s current obsession, inclusion. These are all worth talking about, but the MSM virtually ignores one key element every year: The artisans.Those individuals are key to a movie’s success, as everyone in the industry knows.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentSome pundits worry that the Oscar ceremony won’t feel like the real thing, because the late date (April 25) is disorienting and because the show will be divided between two venues, L.A.’s Union Station and the traditional Dolby Theatre. In truth, a fluid date and multiple locations go back to Oscar’s earliest days.The first televised ceremony in 1953 had cameras in both Hollywood and New York, a tactic that continued through 1957.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentTop prizes at the USC Scripter event Saturday went to screenwriter Chloé Zhao and author Jessica Bruder for “Nomadland” as well as scripter Scott Frank and novelist Walter Tevis for Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit.”As in past years, the award goes to both the scriptwriter(s) as well as the writer(s) of the original material.Searchlight Pictures’ “Nomadland” is based on the nonfiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.” Zhao thanked

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentPresenters and honorees at the April 4 SAG Awards are likely to air political views, which inevitably will inspire public indignation: “Why should anybody listen to you people?” Naysayers often see this as a 21st-century liberal conspiracy, but actually, it was the U.S.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentEvery film presents unique production problems, and Searchlight’s “Nomadland” had a high degree of difficulty. Writer-director Chloé Zhao and her team wanted total authenticity as they filmed nomads who travel from job to job in the U.S.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentHulu’s “The United States vs Billie Holiday” won the top prize and Aaron Sorkin (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”) was a double winner in AARP Magazine’s annual awards, while “This Is Us” and “The Queen’s Gambit” were saluted in AARP’s first TV honors.The winners:Picture/Movie for Grownups: “The United States vs.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentPete Docter, director and co-writer of Pixar’s “Soul,” appraised his co-workers by saying, “This team is crazy good.”The film entailed four years of production and hundreds of workers. “I think most of the team were excited to stretch outside the box of what people might expect from an animated movie.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentOscars are a time capsule. Though pundits may quibble about nominees or winners, one thing is beyond question: The film choices reflect the year in which they were released.For example, in 1946, “The Best Years of Our Lives” hit a nerve as people were trying to rebuild their lives after WWII.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentSound people had a tough year. Like everyone else in the industry, they found less film work.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentHollywood has always adapted to world changes, and Oscar campaigning this year has effectively adjusted to COVID. But one part of the awards season is missed more than the others: seeing a contender on the big screen.Studios have delayed several big-scale films, including “Dune” and “West Side Story,” until later in 2021.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentAfter the Oscar-nominated “The Hunt” (2012), writer-director Thomas Vinterberg reunites with actor Mads Mikkelsen for “Another Round,” an Oscar contender in multiple categories, including international film. Mikkelsen is a potential first-time Oscar nominee as a man who experiments with three friends to see if they will function better by increasing their blood alcohol level.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentWhen Oscars are handed out, it’s possible best picture, director, writing and all four acting wins will be for films about real people.The odds of this sweep seem slim. But this past year has been all about unexpected events, so anything is possible.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentMoviegoers think they understand the life of a screenwriter. Thanks to “Sunset Boulevard,” “In a Lonely Place,” “Barton Fink,” “The Player,” “The Muse,” “Seven Psychopaths,” “Adaptation,” “Trumbo,” “Mank” and others, the image is clear: Scripters are friendless, cynical people hunched over a solitary keyboard, plagued by self-doubt and studio interference.Of course Pixar is the exception to every rule.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentLiv Ullmann has been an international star since 1966’s Ingmar Bergman’s arthouse hit “Persona”; indeed, she is best-known for her collaborations with Bergman, acting in 10 of his films, and directing two of his screenplays; he was also the father of her daughter, author Lin Ullmann.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentAside from being well-made and effective as a movie, Warner Bros.’ “Judas and the Black Messiah” has a goal: to counter decades of government lies about the Black Panther Party.The party was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966, and ceased operations in 1982. The film, which started streaming Feb.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentFilmmakers need to be a bit psychic. They work on projects for years, not knowing if the fickle audience will connect with the themes and topics when the film eventually opens.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentIn a video toast, Morgan Freeman praises Cicely Tyson as an “icon, a pioneer whose life and work tell the story of America, bravely and boldly.”His tribute was part of AFI’s 21-day salute to the best film and TV work of 2020, with the build-up starting Feb. 5.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentLance Henriksen has played more than 250 roles in the past 50 years. But Variety’s Peter Debruge wrote that the actor “gives the performance of his career” in “Falling,” the writing-directing debut of Viggo Mortensen.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentSony Classics awards contender “The Father” takes place inside a London apartment, and production designer Peter Francis says, “We weren’t just designing a set; it was an integral part of the storyline.”When Florian Zeller began adapting his 2014 play into a film, he resisted suggestions to “open up” the work by moving some scenes outdoors.Zeller tells Variety, “While I was writing the script, I drew a layout of the apartment, as if it was a main character.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentSidney Poitier — who turns 94 on Feb. 20 — has received virtually every showbiz award possible: An Oscar, Grammy, Golden Globe, plus Life Achievement Awards from AFI, BAFTA, NAACP Image Awards, SAG and Kennedy Center Honors, to name a few.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentFilm history is filled with notable directors who made a Western after establishing themselves in other genres. That list includes Robert Altman (“McCabe and Mrs.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentThings always gets intense in Oscar season, and voters may feel overwhelmed by the huge numbers of contenders (streaming and sometimes in theaters) that are hoping for some love.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentAwards season contender “News of the World” is a departure for director Paul Greengrass after such high-adrenaline contempo movies as his Jason Bourne trio and “22 July.” He reunites with “Captain Phillips” star Tom Hanks in Universal’s Western about Captain Kidd, a man delivering the news to towns in Texas, accompanied by the orphan Johanna.

Tim Gray Senior Vice President“Minari,” from Plan B and A24, is writer-director Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical tale of a Korean-American family starting a new life in 1980s Arkansas. The characters, played by Steven Yeun, Yeri Han and Yuh-jung Youn, among others, live in a small mobile home on isolated patch of land; one of the challenges was to convey both the sense of home and the vast, green area.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentWith six nominations each, “Da 5 Bloods” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” led nominations for AARP The Magazine’s Movies for Grownups Awards, with Regina King recognized for both her acting (“Watchmen”) and directing (“One Night in Miami”).“Miami” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” also scored well, with five nominations each.The org this year added categories in television/streaming; best series contenders are “Perry Mason,” “Succession,” “Ted Lasso,” “The Crown” and

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentGong Li became a star in Zhang Yimou’s 1988 “Red Sorghum,” her film debut. Since then, she has headlined dozens of films from China, Hollywood and elsewhere; she says the new “Leap” offered her “the hardest role I’ve ever played, but the best role.”The film, directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan, is China’s submission for Oscar’s international film category.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentIs this the year a documentary finally gets a best picture Oscar nomination?When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in 2009 expanded the top category to 10, then-prez Sid Ganis expressed hope the noms would include animation, international films and docs. Since then, the first two groups have made the grade, but no docs.

Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentAmerica doesn’t have a system of knights or dames, as Britain, Australia and New Zealand do. If there were such a system, Cicely Tyson would have undoubtedly been honored.