Streep has record Oscar noms, slim win percentage (AP)

March 2, 2010 by Gossip · Leave a Comment
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LOS ANGELES – Meryl Streep has a record 16 Academy Awards acting nominations, yet her batting average is minor league when it comes to winning.

Streep has two Oscars but also has by far the worst winning percentage among acting recipients who have earned two or more awards.

From her 15 previous nominations, Streep's batting average is .133. If she loses this time with her best-actress nomination for "Julie & Julia" — Sandra Bullock is the favorite for "The Blind Side" — Streep's average will drop to .125.

If Bullock wins, she'll have a perfect batting average — one-for one, since this is her first nomination.

Katharine Hepburn had 12 nominations and won best actress four times, for 1933's "Morning Glory," 1967's "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," 1968's "The Lion in Winter" and 1981's "On Golden Pond." That's a .333 batting average.

Jack Nicholson also has 12 nominations, with three wins (a .250 average), best actor for 1975's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and 1997's "As Good as It Gets" and supporting actor for 1983's "Terms of Endearment."

Also with three wins are Ingrid Bergman (best actress for 1944's "Gaslight" and 1956's "Anastasia" and supporting actress for 1974's "Murder on the Orient Express") and Walter Brennan (supporting actor for 1936's "Come and Get It," 1938's "Kentucky" and 1940's "The Westerner").

Bergman's three wins came from seven nominations, a .429 average. Brennan's came for just four nominations, a .750 average.

Six performers have been nominated twice and won both times: Sally Field, best actress for 1979's "Norma Rae" and 1984's "Places in the Heart"; Helen Hayes, best actress for 1931's "The Sin of Madelon Claudet" and supporting actress for 1970's "Airport"; Vivien Leigh, best actress for 1939's "Gone With the Wind" and 1951's "A Streetcar Named Desire"; Luise Rainer, best actress for 1936's "The Great Ziegfeld" and 1937's "The Good Earth"; Kevin Spacey, best actor for 1999's "American Beauty" and supporting actor for 1995's "The Usual Suspects"; and Hilary Swank, best actress for 1999's "Boys Don't Cry" and 2004's "Million Dollar Baby."

Streep does not have the worst batting average among actors with multiple nominations.

Laurence Olivier had 10 nominations, winning just once (best actor for 1948's "Hamlet"), for a .100 average. Paul Newman was nominated nine times and won once (best actor for 1986's "The Color of Money"), for a .111 average.

With eight nominations and one win, a .125 average, are Al Pacino (best-actor winner for 1992's "Scent of a Woman") and Geraldine Page (best-actress winner for 1985's "The Trip to Bountiful").

The record for Oscar futility among actors belongs to Peter O'Toole — eight nominations, no wins (O'Toole did receive an honorary Oscar in 2003). He's followed by Richard Burton with seven nominations and no wins — sharing a losing cause with O'Toole on 1964's "Becket," which earned best-actor nominations for both men.

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On the Net:

http://www.oscars.org

“Space Tourists” a stellar trip (Reuters)

January 27, 2010 by Gossip · Leave a Comment
Filed under: health, movie news 

PARK CITY, Utah (Hollywood Reporter) – Even us Baby Boomers who got advanced math shoved down our throats in the wake of Yuri Gagarin's trek aboard Sputnik, and couldn't care less about outer space, will be entertained by this spry, melancholy glimpse into the last half-century's race to space.

"Space Tourists'" informative and engaging trajectory should land it on cable somewhere: History and Discovery come to mind as orbit platforms.

If you've got $20 million set aside for your next vacation, you can sign up to hop aboard a Russian rocket and get lifted into the wild not-so-blue yonder. That's what dreamer Anousheh Ansari has shelled out for her lifelong dream vacation. In this wry and inspiring documentary, filmmaker Christian Frei concentrates on her trek to live her dream, from the rigors of the Russian space school located in Star City, somewhere on the dark side of Kazakhstan boondocks, to her eventual re-entry to the boondocks of Mother Earth.

Told through the narration of a young Norwegian man attempting to connect with his Russian heritage, "Space Tourists" is alternately gloomy and balmy: In essence, it visualizes the failure of Communism. We see the ugly ruins of government apartments, which during the Khrushchev we-will-bury-you era, housed thousands of engineers and top scientists. It's now a ghost town, shut down by Gorbachev and creaking toward "Mad Max" ruination.

With its nicely languid story loopings, including a team of scrap metal scavengers who retrieve the re-entry detritus for its precious titanium, "Space Tourists" is a multi-dimensional glimpse into dreams and obsessions. Filmmaker Frei smartly interweaves the pride that many felt because of the space program's accomplishments while visualizing its down-to-earth, economic failings.

Cinematographer Peter Indergand's scopings are expressively accented by the fine editing of Frei and Andreas Winterstein: The images, glorious and crude, butt against each other -- evocative of this Quixotic quest. The film's spare musical score is also ascendant, courtesy of composers Jan Garbarek, Edward Artemyev and Steve Reich.