Columnist Nate Bloom , an Oaklander, can be reached at [email protected].
Oscar time
The 87th Academy Awards are being presented on Sunday, Feb. 22 (5:30 p.m., ABC). Here are the Jewish nominees in all but the technical categories. Best supporting actress: Patricia Arquette, 46, “Boyhood.” As reported in 2011 by the Telegraph, a British newspaper: “The classic middle child, the mother hen, was brought up to question authority, to believe that anything was possible, even religious harmony: her father was Muslim [by conversion], her mother Jewish, and she was sent to a Catholic school. She was harshly disabused of that idea when, at the age of five or six, a teacher told her that she couldn’t take communion because ‘your mother is Jewish and she’s going to hell.’ ‘You know what,’ responded the young Arquette, who until that moment had wanted to be a nun, ‘I think your Jesus and my Jesus are different.’” (While sincerely religious-spiritual, Arquette doesn’t follow any organized religion. Her sister, Rosanna Arquette, 55, is the most “Jewish-oriented” sibling.)
Best director: Bennett Miller, 48, “Foxcatcher.” Best original screenplay: Dan Futterman, 47, “Foxcatcher” (with E. Max Frye). Anya Epstein, 44, Futterman’s wife, is the granddaughter of the late Philip Epstein, co-winner of the 1943 screenplay Oscar for “Casablanca.” Best adapted screenplay: Graham Moore, 33, “The Imitation Game”; best documentary, feature length: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel, 44 (the nephew of the late film critic Gene Siskel), “Finding Vivian Maier.”
Best live-action short film: Oded Binnum and Mihal Brezis, both Israeli, for the French-Israeli film, “Aya,” about a young woman waiting at an airport who has an unexpected encounter with an arriving passenger.
Best original score: Hans Zimmer, 57, “Interstellar,” and Gary Yershon, 60, “Mr. Turner.” Yershon, an English composer, often works with “Turner” director-writer Mike Leigh, 71. He wrote a klezmer-infused score for Leigh’s 2005 play about Jewish family life, “Two Thousand Years.” Best original song: Diane Warren, 58, “Grateful” from “Beyond the Lights.” This is the seventh Oscar best-song nomination for Warren. One of her biggest hits, “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” (1998), also got an Oscar nomination.
Best cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, 51, “Birdman.” Born and raised in Mexico, Lubezki now lives mostly in the States. This is his sixth nomination. He won last year for “Gravity.” Another Latin American Jew, Argentine Damián Szifrón, 39, is the director and writer of “Wild Tales,” a Spanish-language film nominated as best foreign film nominee. It is a black comedy consisting of six discrete shorts that have all have violent, O. Henry-like plot twists. The last short takes place at a Jewish wedding. “Tales” is not only a critical hit, it is a worldwide box-office smash and Szifrón has been signed by a major American talent agency. Also worthy of note: “Ida,” a Polish-language, best foreign film nominee about a nun who sets out to learn about her Jewish parents who died in the Holocaust.
Footnote of interest: This is not the first year that more than one Latin American Jew received an Oscar nomination. In 1986, three were up for Oscars: the late Aida Bortnik as well as Susana Blaustein Muñoz and Hector Babenco. Bortnik, an Argentine, was nominated for her screenplay for “The Official Story,” the first Argentine movie to win for best foreign film. It was about the brutal Argentine military dictatorship (1976-83), which disproportionately persecuted Jews. Muñoz’s documentary (“The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”) was about mothers whose adult children disappeared during the same dictatorship — and Babenco, a Brazilian whose father was Argentine, was up for best director for “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (about Brazil’s military junta).