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The King's Speech is classic awards bait, as sidwich noted earlier, not that I think The Social Network necessarily towers above it. Nice to see that David Fincher, the director of the latter, received recognition for his skill in keeping Sorkin's yackety-yack from getting on your nerves too much.

The Acocella talk to which Quiggin refers took place some time ago. BT had a discussion and the thread is here.

Please tell us about anything you see!

The American Film Institute will be showing the films of Ginger Rogers. Sorry I'll miss this. (I thought the autobiography revealed quite a bit, myself.)

Thanks for the review. Good reading, and it sounds as if there was good listening at the concert.

puppytreats, I don't know if the following observations qualify as "insights" but they might at least be a springboard for discussion. It's true that movie stars, at least on the distaff side, have to be thin, but even actor-thin isn't the same as dancer-thin, and it doesn't surprise me that both women lost weight for their roles. As to the difference in training time, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Blunt seems to be more of a leading lady in her picture whileNatalie Portman carries most of "Black Swan" and not quite as much in the way of "dancing" was expected of her. Portman's rigorous training was no doubt rigorous enough, but emphasis on said rigors was also part of the publicity campaign for the movie and Portman's Oscar campaign.

Thanks for posting, Cygnet. I think Pesci and Holden come off better than Sir Larry, what with his firmaments, and all.

It's all set - Streep is invading the Falklands. With Broadbent and Head in support, this could be fun. I hope Phyllida Lloyd has learned something about moviemaking since Mamma Mia, good dumb fun though it was.

Comments on Price by Anne Midgette in The Washington Post's blog. BBC News audio slideshow of John Barry's music.

I agree.

Yes. The quotes around "fame" in this context are definitely appropriate. Millepied isn't famous in any meaningful sense. We here on BT know who he is and readers of the celebrity magazines who take an interest in Natalie Portman know who he is. That's about it, for now. Bart, I would suggest that many of your questions were more directly applicable back in the days when Baryshnikov was flogging perfume and his own clothes line. Sorry, but I think that's an insult to both Millepied and Portman, not to mention those showgirls, whose work was honest and entertained many people. Such speculations are perhaps best left to the gossip columns. I also note that you hearken back to the bad old days when a man whose wife was more famous to the public was in some way emasculated. ("Mr. Portman-Millepied," eh?) Personally, I wish them both the best. They're a most attractive couple. 'Nuff said. (Portman's not quite a superstar just yet, though.)

Thanks for those recollections, richard53dog. She had such a wonderful creamy sound. Yes, a sad week in music, MakorovaFan. I tend to like Moonraker and On Her Majesty's Secret Service best of Barry's Bond scores. Out of Africa, Robin and Marian...too many. Impossible to think of Body Heat without its score, I hate the overused term "evocative" but there you are. He's up there with the great movie composers, as you say. RIP.

Thank you, Pamela. One of my favorite singers. Bjorling sang on the first opera recording I ever bought, with Nilsson in Turandot.

Thank you for that wonderful description, yiannisfrance. I enjoyed reading that.

The Best Foreign Language Film category has its oddities because films are nominated by country. (There is in addition a strong bias toward movies of European provenance.) No doubt the Academy is remiss in that department but when the Oscars first began there was no recognition of foreign films at all, so baby steps. Thank you for that clip. That's true of many non-English speaking actors - I think of Penelope Cruz, whose presence and affect are quite different and much more powerful in her Spanish-language films. I don't believe de Oliveira has ever been nominated but cannot say for certain. Sort of off topic, but I remember when The Motorcycle Diaries was nominated for Best Song (and Best Adapted Screenplay; it wasn't nominated for Foreign Language Film because it was a multinational production and could not be credited to one country). Antonio Banderas and Carlos Santana had previously taken the stage to butcher "Al Otro Lado Del Río" and when Jorge Drexler accepted his award he sang a few bars (as if to say, "It goes this way, clowns." Gael Garcia Bernal wouldn't show up at the ceremony because of the treatment of the song.) As sidwich notes, "The King's Speech" is classic Oscar fodder, good of its kind If You Like That Sort of Thing. I thought "The Social Network" was fearfully overrated but if you think about it there's not much to choose between them, I guess. In other words, I'm finding it hard to care this year.

Some used to think they were, actually. The term was originally "actor" for both sexes and didn't seem to cause any great confusion. I have no particular dog in this fight, merely pointing out that usages are changing, and for a performer to prefer to be called "actor," period is not unusual these days.

Thanks for your review, miliosr. I remember the original "True Grit" as poor and sight unseen I'm sure this new one is an improvement. I would disagree respectfully about many of those revisionist westerns, which paved the way for a new realism in the genre.

Many prefer to be called plain "actor" rather than "actress" -- nobody calls female flyers "aviatrixes" any more, and "waitress" is also falling out of use. "Actress" can be more convenient in some contexts, but identifying women simply as actors is increasingly common now, as on the Charlie Rose show, for example. (If your doctor is a woman, she might bristle at the idea that she should really be called a doctress.) In theory there is really no reason for the Best Actor/Actress categories to be separate, but the practice won't go away any time soon. There aren't as many meaty Oscar-bait roles available to female stars as for their male counterparts, and without the separate category representation of women as film acting award nominees would probably fall. So it's here to stay. "Best Female Actor" sounds a tad cumbersome, but I'm people would get used to it eventually. Fortunately for Portman, there isn't much competition in the Oscar Best Actress category this year and she looks as close to a sure thing as we usually get. (Which is not to say that her fellow nominees gave bad performances, just that given the way these things go she is the likely choice.)

Thanks for telling us about it, Helene. I too am fond of that concerto.

Thank you for starting the topic, Mashinka. In charity towards Bloom, his may have been a case of too much, too soon, and being given opportunities he wasn't ready for.

Yes, at the very least we might have seen him in conflict about it, contemplating the potential, even likely, grim fate of his family, but I don't remember that he was, much. There was a happy ending of course, but it could easily have been otherwise.

The Oscar nominations are out.

I hadn' t thought of that but I think you're right. I would add that Huckleberry Finn also makes sense for high school students for other reasons. Huck is relatively close to them in age and Twain's writing, like Jane Austen's, has a very high entertainment quotient - much easier to introduce American literature to kids via Twain rather than, say, Dreiser (although I read Dreiser in high school, too).

Thanks, Rosa. I'm currently dipping into "Cleopatra" by Stacy Schiff.

Thank you for telling us about it.. The location issue must be challenging for the orchestra as well as its fans.