OPINION
December 27, 2012
Re “ Moviegoing as endurance test ,” Dec. 22 I don't think longer movies have anything to do with digital. It's because longer movies traditionally win awards. About 40% of the movies that won the best picture Oscar over the last 40 years have been movies more than 21/2 hours in length. (“The Godfather,” The Godfather Part II,” “Dances With Wolves,” “Schindler's List,” “Braveheart,” “Titanic” and “Gladiator,” to name a few). Several films that were nominated but didn't win were longer movies.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 19, 2012 | By J. Hoberman, Special to the Los Angeles Times
The office pools have closed, let the drama begin: Silent film or 3-D talkie, Streep's Thatcher or Williams' Marilyn or maybe Viola Davis? Scorsese again? For me, the most fascinating question is which of the five foreign-film nominees will win. If you picked Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation" — a visceral chamber drama exposing all manner of class, religious and gender fissures in contemporary Iran — you went for the favorite, winner of numerous critics' awards, "a movie you'll love from a country you hate," as the late Bingham Ray jokingly promoted "The White Balloon.
TRAVEL
November 5, 2010 | By Tim Richards, Special to the Los Angeles Times
As I stood on a cracked concrete sidewalk in the Podgorze district of Krakow, I began to understand just what "wrong side of the tracks" meant. Ahead of me was a stark railroad bridge that carried commuters across the Vistula River to the city's historic heart. Beneath it was a pedestrian walkway, claustrophobically low and forbidding. Punctuating the end of the street, it seemed like a grim gateway of sorts, and so it was. Beyond the bridge, past a collection of featureless industrial buildings in various states of repair, was Krakow's newest attraction ?
ENTERTAINMENT
October 22, 2005 | From Associated Press
Poland's supreme court upheld the conviction on bribery charges of Lew Rywin, the Polish co-producer of the Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List." Rywin, 59, was convicted last year of being an accessory to influence peddling. He was found guilty by a Warsaw court of trying to solicit a $17.5-million bribe from a leading newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, in 2002. He has been sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $30,000 in fines.
NEWS
April 22, 2004 | From Reuters
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who won his first Oscar for the Holocaust drama "Schindler's List," has taken on another tragic moment in modern Jewish history as his next project: the 1972 Munich Olympics. Spielberg plans to start production in June and is eyeing actor Ben Kingsley for a role in the drama, which will chronicle the Summer Games devastated by the kidnapping and slaying of Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants, a DreamWorks studio spokeswoman said Wednesday.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 21, 2004
After Kenneth Turan's moving comments on Ken Kesey's undeserved neglect at the March 1976 Oscars, he segues so smoothly into chiding Oscar winner Charlize Theron's failure this year to thank Aileen Wuornos for her crucial contribution that it just about takes your breath away. There may have been similar lapses in the past. I saw "Schindler's List," and if the Oscar recipients said one word of appreciation for the Nazis I sure didn't hear it. The lesson to be learned is obvious: I'd like to thank my late parents, my wife and kids, the pizza delivery man, and the stalwart crew that does my yard.