Saturday, November 14, 2009

Corman, Bacall and Willis Get Oscars Tonight

Indie legend Roger Corman, Actress Lauren Bacall and Cinematographer Gordon Willis are receiving their Oscar trophies tonight.



For the first time, since the award was instituted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in 1948, the honorary Oscars will be presented in a separate ceremony from the televised 82nd Annual Academy Awards, to be broadcasted on March 7, 2010.

Together with John Calley, this year's Irving J. Thalberg Memorial Award winner, the three honorary Oscar winners will also receive their statuettes during the private Academy's inaugural Governors Awards event at the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood & Highlands center tonight.  Jonathan Demme, Angelica Huston, Quentin Tarantino and past honorary Award recipient Kirk Douglas are among the presenters.


Roger Corman with Vincent Price

Roger Corman, widely known as the "King of B movies" for his low-budget features, is also known as the mentor of movie legends: Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, James Cameron, Jack Nicholson, Charles Bronson, Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro.  Corman's former company, New World Pictures, was the U.S. distributor for the films of international cinema greats: Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Francois Truffaut and Akira Kurosawa.


Lauren Bacall with husband Humphrey Bogart

A Star of more than 30 films, Lauren Bacall is best remembered for her roles in "The Big Sleep," "Key Largo," "Dark Passages," "How to Marry a Millionaire," "Designing Woman" and "The Mirror Has Two Faces."  She was married to actors Humphrey Bogart and Jason Robards.


Gordon Willis on the set

Cinematographer Gordon Willis is a legendary visual stylist in cinema.  Nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness" by his fellow cinematographers,  for his preference for shooting in the dark, he is best known for his work on the Godfather series and his collaboration with Woody Allen on Annie Hall, Manhattan and Zelig.

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