Doha Tribeca Film Festival Awards 2009

Team Qatar by Liz Mermin (top); Hiam Abbass in Najwa Najjar’s Pomegranates and Myrrh (bottom)

Doha Tribeca Film Festival Executive Director Amanda Palmer and Robert De Niro handed out two audience awards, worth US$50,000 each, at the festival’s closing night gala on Nov. 1. Coincidentally, both winning films were directed by women.
British filmmaker Liz Mermin’s documentary Team Qatar, which chronicles the creation of that country’s first debate team, was awarded Best Festival Film, while Palestinian Najwa Najjar’s debut feature, Pomegranates and Myrrh (talk about a poetic title), was chosen the Best Arab Film.
Starring Hiam Abbass (who deserves a best actress Oscar nod for Lemon Tree), Pomegranates and Myrrh revolves around a Palestinian woman torn between being faithful to her [...]

Martin Scorsese’s Oscar Nominated Actors

Martin Scorsese
20 Acting Nominations
(s) supporting category
(*) Academy Award winner
Martin Scorsese: Top Oscar Directors for Actors
 
1974

Ellen Burstyn Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore *
Diane Ladd (s) Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
 
1976

Robert De Niro Taxi Driver
Jodie Foster (s) Taxi Driver
 
1980

Robert De Niro Raging Bull *
Joe Pesci (s) Raging Bull
Cathy Moriarty (s) Raging Bull
 
1986
Paul Newman The Color of Money *
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (s) The Color of Money
 
1990
Joe Pesci (s) Goodfellas *
Lorraine Bracco (s) Goodfellas
 
1991

Robert De Niro Cape Fear
Juliette Lewis (s) Cape Fear
 
1993
Winona Ryder (s) The Age of Innocence
 
1995
Sharon Stone Casino
 
2002

Daniel Day-Lewis Gangs of New York
 
2004

Leonardo DiCaprio The Aviator
Cate Blanchett (s) The Aviator *
 
2006
Mark Wahlberg (s) The Departed

Martin Scorsese: Top Oscar Directors for Actors

Unless things change dramatically (and no, I’m not referring only to environmental chaos and apocalyptic wars), 30 or 40 years from now Martin Scorsese is going to be the best remembered name of the current top-five Oscar directors for actors. (The others being William Wyler, Elia Kazan, George Cukor, and Fred Zinnemann.)
In addition to having the most recent career — cultural amnesia is invariably a factor — Scorsese is the single director among the top five whose films can been categorized as belonging to a particular genre. Better yet, Scorsese’s forte is that much-revered tough-guy cinema.
And ain’t Scorsese’s men tough.
His first male muse, Robert De Niro, becomes a hero after slaughtering unsavory figures from the New York underworld in [...]

MEET THE FOCKERS – Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro

Meet the Fockers (2004)
Direction: Jay Roach
Screenplay: John Hamburg and James Herzfeld; from an original story by Herzfeld and Marc Hyman
Cast: Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Owen Wilson
 

 

THE DISPLEASURE OF THEIR COMPANY
Four of the six principals in the Meet the Fockers cast — Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, and Blythe Danner — have among themselves five Academy Awards and an additional ten Oscar nominations for acting, one Tony win and six additional nominations, and numerous other acting awards and nominations from around the world.
What to do with all that honor and prestige? Throw them into the fetid garbage dumpster of a Ben Stiller flick about chopped-off foreskin, babies that say [...]