The Academy Awards are this weekend, so we invited three of our favorite film critics and pop culture queens to talk about the whole shebang: will Kathryn Bigelow break the Best Director glass ceiling? Is Sandra Bullock going to take home a statuette? Was Avatar all that it was cracked up to be? And why was that Vanity Fair Hollywood issue cover so darn white?
Courtney Young, blogger and author of From Madea To Michelle, Maryann Johanson, the FlickFilosopher, and Alison Willmore of the IFC's Indie Eye blog join us in studio to talk about all that and more.
Kate Clinton is back with some thoughts on Tiger Woods' image rehabilitation, sports fever, women's history month, and the Oscars, as well as Jim Bunning's singlehanded choice to deny unemployment benefits to over 400,000 people.
Continuing with our Oscar theme, we bring you the second part of our conversation with whistleblower, anti-war activist, and documentary film subject Daniel Ellsberg. Since the 1960s, Ellsberg has been fighting to stop war and bring government secrets into the open, and he knows firsthand how much power citizens can wield against the government.
Ellsberg is headed to the Oscars himself with the crew of the film, and he sat down with Laura recently to talk about his experience releasing the Pentagon Papers to the press, what's changed from the 60s and Vietnam--and what hasn't.
Oil wasn't discovered in the Niger Delta until the near end of colonial rule. But its discovery, for the people of Nigeria, meant another kind of oppression: money working hand in hand with military rule.
This week's featured documentary, Sweet Crude, looks at the consequences of oil extraction for the people and environment of Nigeria.
Finally, Laura has some words for the U.S. government's supposed "high road" contracting plan.
Avatar ‘s story is simple, but if millions of kids come away from this movie thinking about things like environmental integrity, natural beauty and respect for different cultures, well, I could certainly live with that. I’d love to see Bigelow win best director and I think this would be a good glass-breaker because The Hurt Locker is a tough film, a guy’s movie in many ways, and this would deflect a lot of that ‘she won because she’s a girl, and it was time for a girl to win’ talk that you ladies were discussing. Hollywood is a paradox, at once famously liberal and yet so parochial.
By davidd on March 5th, 2010 at 9:45 am
[...] March 9, 2010 in Uncategorized | by sandeep Ellsberg stopped doing research years ago but someone, somewhere, is citing his classic work on “ambiguity aversion” every day. He dropped out of research to become a policy guy and worked at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. Ellsberg became a dove as he discovered what was going on behind the scenes and leaked the Pentagon Papers. The movie about him, “The Most Dangerous Man in America”, was nominated for an Oscar in the documentary category. The camera picked him out at one point in the telecast. An interview with him can be found here. [...]
By Daniel Ellsberg at the Oscars « Cheap Talk on March 9th, 2010 at 10:39 am