The 97th Academy Award nominations have been announced and, sorry, Pamela, you’re not on the invite list. But take comfort, you’re in very good company.
Every year brings the inevitable snubs when Oscar puts together its dance card. Wags and critics in various circles this season were predicting that Pamela Anderson (“The Last Showgirl”) or Daniel Craig (“Queer”) or Margaret Qualley (“The Substance”), among others, might squeeze onto the list.
But if any of those inarguable talents is feeling the sting of omission, know that you’re still good enough.
Pamela Anderson won critical praise but no Oscar nomination for “The Last Showgirl.”
(Roadside Attractions)
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Just listen to this abbreviated list of luminous actors whose names have never been uttered as part of the early-morning roll call: Meg Ryan, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Grant, Glenn Ford, Donald Sutherland …
Donald Sutherland!?! Yes, the actor whose career spanned some six decades and included such titles as “MASH,” “Don’t Look Now,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “Pride & Prejudice” never walked the Oscar carpet as a nominee. Perhaps the biggest insult came in 1981 when “Ordinary People” picked up nominations for best picture (winner), director (Robert Redford, winner), actress (Mary Tyler Moore) and supporting actor (Timothy Hutton, winner). Even Judd Hirsch was nominated for supporting actor. But no Sutherland, arguably the heart of the film.
The academy did try to make amends, handing Sutherland an honorary Oscar in 2017. But those “thanks for playing” trophies don’t count — outright nominations in competitive acting races only, please.
How could Ryan be overlooked for “When Harry Met Sally”? Bruce Willis for “The Sixth Sense”? Jeff Daniels for “Terms of Endearment” or “The Purple Rose of Cairo”? Mel Gibson for “Braveheart” or “The Year of Living Dangerously”? Even Jennifer Lopez for “Selena” or “Hustlers”?
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If nominated, Ryan would have been up against the winning Jessica Tandy for “Driving Miss Daisy.” Other nominees that year were Pauline Collins (“Shirley Valentine”), Isabelle Adjani (“Camille Claudel”), Michelle Pfeiffer (“The Fabulous Baker Boys”) and Jessica Lange (“The Music Box”) — all wonderful performances. But 35 years later, which role still resonates in popular culture (“I’ll have what she’s having”)?
Richard Gere has never earned an Oscar nomination, but his “Chicago” co-star Catherine Zeta–Jones won supporting actress for the Rob Marshall film.
(David James / GC Film LLC)
Not that the Oscars should be a popularity contest, though it sometimes feels that way.
And if it were, surely Monroe, one of the reigning queens of 1950s Hollywood, would have been tapped for any number of performances that have been elevated by time and reappraisal. Besides her obvious iconic comedy roles in “Some Like It Hot” and “The Seven Year Itch,” even more dramatic turns in “Bus Stop” and “The Misfits” might have garnered notice from a more attentive academy. And voters did choose to give nods to her male co-stars in “Hot” (Jack Lemmon) and “Bus” (Don Murray).
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Then there are those whose mere presence can lift the material to award-worthy regard. Peter Sarsgaard, Catherine O’Hara, Alfred Molina, Kevin Bacon, Thandiwe Newton, Mia Farrow, Parker Posey, Ewan McGregor … nope, not a single nomination here.
If you expand the conversation to those who have been nominated but never sealed the deal with Oscar, the oversight can be even more startling.
This includes the obvious — eight-time bridesmaid Glenn Close, the “Susan Lucci of the Oscars” — as well as Golden Age legends — Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Charlie Chaplin, etc. The list of the robbed goes on. Later matinee idols (and talented actors) who ended careers empty-handed run the gamut from Doris Day (the top box-office star in 1960, ’62, ’63 and ’64), Deborah Kerr and Lauren Bacall to Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum and Montgomery Clift.
Glenn Close, left, and Amy Adams in 2020’s “Hillbilly Elegy.” Close has eight nominations, Adams six, but neither has won … yet.
(Lacey Terrell / Netflix)
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Sometimes it’s a simple matter of bad timing. In his first outing, eventual eight-time nominee Peter O’Toole saw his towering “Lawrence of Arabia” performance go up against Gregory Peck’s beloved Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It was Peck’s fifth and final nomination, and he landed the prize. O’Toole never did.
All film buffs have personal favoritees they think have been shamefully ignored. In my mind are three exquisite actresses who danced with Oscar multiple times without taking the gold man home: Jane Alexander, Joan Allen and the late, incomparable Gena Rowlands.
Between 1971 and 1984, Alexander was nominated four times; her performances in “All the President’s Men” and “Kramer vs. Kramer” remain master classes today. Allen had a creative burst from 1996 to 2001 with three noms (“Nixon,” “The Crucible,” “The Contender”). Shockingly, Rowlands was nominated only twice, for “A Woman Under the Influence” and “Gloria.” The academy tried to atone in 2015 with an honorary trophy. You know where we stand on that.
Some previous nominees whose absence from the winner’s circle could (and should) be rectified when that next, hopefully great role comes along: Annette Bening (!), Sigourney Weaver, Samuel L. Jackson, Amy Adams, Michelle Williams, Debra Winger, Mark Ruffalo, Miranda Richardson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Travolta, Naomi Watts, Laura Linney, Tom Cruise …
You read that right. One need only rewatch Cruise’s “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Magnolia” and even “Tropic Thunder” to know he has the acting chops and deserves a walk to the podium (though in his case, it could be a high-speed run).
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John Travolta was nominated for his performance in “Saturday Night Fever,” but lost to Richard Dreyfuss for “The Goodbye Girl.”
(CBS Photo Archive / CBS via Getty Images)
When Travolta got the first of his two nominations for “Saturday Night Fever,” his competition included Burton in “Equus,” on his seventh and final nomination. Both lost to Richard Dreyfuss in “The Goodbye Girl.” That same year, a little-known actor drew critical notice for a small, raw performance in “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.” Richard Gere wasn’t nominated for that film, or for “Days of Heaven” or “An Officer and a Gentleman” or “Chicago” or anything that followed.
So what can he and this season’s shutouts cull from all this?
Simple: The Oscars are a crapshoot. Sometimes you win, more often you lose … and sometimes you don’t even get in the game.
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20.
Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world.
The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.”
“This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”
The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build.
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An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology.
(Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland)
Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.”
“AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”
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Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon footprint associated with AI models. The Large Nature Model is hosted on Google Cloud servers in Oregon that use 87% carbon-free, renewable energy. Anadol says the energy used to support an individual visit to the museum is equivalent to what it takes to charge a single smartphone.
Anadol believes AI can form a powerful bridge to nature — serving as a means to access and preserve it — and that the swiftly evolving technology can be harnessed to illuminate essential truths about humanity’s relationship to an interconnected planet. During a time of great anxiety about the power of AI to disrupt lives and livelihoods, Anadol maintains it can be a revolutionary tool in service of a never-before-seen form of art.
“The works generate an emergent, living reality, a machine’s dream shaped by continuous streams of environmental and biological data. Within this evolving system, moments of recognition and interpretation emerge across different forms of knowledge,” a news release about the museum explains. “At the same time, the exhibition registers loss as part of this expanded field of perception, most notably in the Infinity Room, where visitors encounter the 1987 recording of the last known Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, a now-extinct bird whose unanswered call becomes part of the work.”
“It’s very exciting to say that AI art is not image only,” Anadol said. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience — meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”
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