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Movie Quote of the Day – The Reader, 2008 (dir. Stephen Daldry)
Michael: Have you spent a lot of time thinking about the past?
Hana: You mean, with you?
Michael: No. No. I didn’t mean with me.
Hana: Before the trial I never thought about the past. I never had to.
Michael: And now? What do you feel now?
Hana: It doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter what I think. The dead are still dead.
Michael: I wasn’t sure what you’d learned.
Hana: I have learned, kid. I’ve learned to read.
Auteur of the Week: Stephen Daldry
Stephen Daldry is pretty much the John Cazale of directors. (Google John Cazale if you don’t get what I mean by that). He’s directed three films and has been nominated for Best Director by the Academy for all three films. Only two of them were nominated for Best Picture, but it’ quite possibly Billy Elliot was thisclose to getting one of those five slots in 2000. Odds are if the Weinsteins hadn’t had a film out that year (Chocolat) that they aggressively campaigned for, it would have. What I love the most about Daldry as a director, and I think this comes from his background as a theater director, is the strong performances he gets out of his actors. I dare you to find one bad, or even “just okay” performance in one of his films. You’ll be hard-pressed to find one. He has director five Academy Award nominated and two Academy Award winning performances. That’s pretty good for a guy who’s only done three feature films so far.
Anne Hathaway Set To Announce Oscar Noms
She will join Academy President Tom Sherak to announce this year’s Oscar nominations on Feb. 2.
What the Critics Choice Awards Mean to Oscar
In many ways the Critics Choice Awards are just as good, if not a better gauge of how the Oscars are going to go than the Golden Globes. Granted, there are no Academy members who vote for either of those award shows (unlike the guilds, where there are some crossover members with the Academy.)
the diary of a film history fanatic 