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Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
Associated Press
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PA. MUSEUM AUTOMATON HAS LINK
TO SCORSESE'S 'HUGO'
by JOANN LOVIGLIO
Associated Press
 | | In this Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 photo, an approximately 210-year-old automaton is shown at The Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia. The mechanized doll, animated by a complex system of spring-driven motors and brass cams, can write three poems and draw four pictures. Martin Scorsese's movie "Hugo," nominated for 11 Academy Awards including best picture, has started most recent wave of interest in the automaton. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) |
PHILADELPHIA
(AP) - An Academy Award-nominated movie is casting a bright spotlight
on an unusual machine at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
The
science museum's 200-year-old automaton is a mechanical doll animated
by a complex system of motors and cams. It can write three poems and
draw four pictures.
Martin Scorsese's movie "Hugo" is nominated
for 11 Academy Awards including best picture. The story has a similar
machine playing a key role.
 | | In this Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 photo, the inner workings of an approximately 210-year-old automaton are shown at The Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia. The mechanized doll, animated by a complex system of spring-driven motors and brass cams, can write three poems and draw four pictures. Martin Scorsese's movie "Hugo," nominated for 11 Academy Awards including best picture, has started most recent wave of interest in the automaton. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) |
The film itself is based on Brian
Selznick's award-winning "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," an illustrated
novel about a Parisian boy and a broken automaton with a secret buried
inside its mechanical memory.
The author visited the Philadelphia automaton while researching his book.
 | | In this Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012 photo, a drawing made by an approximately 210-year-old automaton is shown at The Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia. The mechanized doll, animated by a complex system of spring-driven motors and brass cams, can write three poems and draw four pictures. Martin Scorsese's movie "Hugo," nominated for 11 Academy Awards including best picture, has started most recent wave of interest in the automaton. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) |
A nun, football coach and Marine going to Oscars
DERRIK J. LANG
AP Entertainment Writer
2/23/12
LOS ANGELES (AP) - At least one person on the Oscars red carpet won't have to worry about what to wear: Mother Dolores Hart.
The
73-year-old nun, who left Hollywood in 1963 to join a monastery after
starring in films with the likes of Elvis Presley and George Hamilton,
is among the nominated documentary film subjects slated to attend
Sunday's 84th annual Academy Awards. Hart, who will be sporting her
nun's habit, is chronicled in the short film "God Is the Bigger Elvis."
Rebecca
Cammisa and Julie Anderson, the short's filmmakers, said at a panel
discussion at the motion picture academy's Beverly Hills headquarters
Wednesday that Mother Dolores, who is a voting member of the academy and
attended the ceremony three times before she became a nun, will walk
the red carpet outside the Hollywood and Highland Center on Sunday.
Other nominated documentary film subjects expected to attend the Oscars
include Bill Courtney, the white coach of an all-black, inner-city
high-school football team featured in "Undefeated," and Sgt. Nathan
Harris, a Marine injured in Afghanistan whose emotional struggle to
transition back to life in North Carolina is depicted in "Hell and Back
Again."
 | | An Oscar statuette is seen the red carpet before the 84th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012. The Academy Awards will be held Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles) |
"I would encourage you, if any of you win, to bring them
to the stage," filmmaker and academy documentary branch officer Michael
Moore, who moderated the panel discussion with the nominees, told the
filmmakers. "I know you've been told not to, but as the governor of your
branch, I will be there, and I'll block any security that tries to
prevent it."
It wouldn't be the first time the "Fahrenheit 9/11" filmmaker bucked
academy rules. When he won the best documentary feature trophy in 2002
for "Bowling for Columbine," Moore brought the other documentary films
nominees on stage with him and was infamously met with boos and cheers
when he used his acceptance speech to denounce President George Bush.
Among
this year's features, "Hell and Back Again" by Danfung Dennis and Mike
Lerner and "Undefeated" by T.J. Martin and Dan Lindsay will face
environmental epic "If a Tree Falls" by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman;
West Memphis Three installment "Paradise Lost 3" by Joe Berlinger and
Bruce Sinofsky; and 3-D choreography chronicle "Pina" by Wim Wenders.
 | | Workers assemble signage for a truss that will hang over the red carpet at Sunday's 84th Academy Awards in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) |
The short film "God Is the Bigger Elvis" is up against the civil-rights
profile "The Barber of Birmingham" by Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin; Iraq
War account "Incident in New Baghdad" by James Spione; acid attack saga
"Saving Face" by Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy; and disaster
portrait "The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom" by Lucy Walker.
Several
of the nominated filmmakers lamented during Wednesday's panel that
documentaries are the lesser seen and lesser distributed films among
those nominated for Oscars. Wenders, who presents the work of
choreographer Pina Bausch in 3-D in "Pina," said the technological
evolution is the "secret weapon" to making documentaries feel more
cinematic.
"What we as documentary filmmakers try to do is take
the audience into somebody's world," said Wenders. "When you see a
person in front of you shot in 3-D, it's a different presence. It's a
whole different thing. You can tell your stories in a way that immerse
the audience like never before. I'm convinced this is the future of the
documentary language."
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Written by
JOANN LOVIGLIO
Associated Press
| Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten , or redistributed. |
Photos courtesy of AP Photo
Images created by Matt Rourke, Matt Sayles, Chris Pizzello
Last changed on: 2/24/2012
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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang/.
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