rHodas: Viola Davis, Alexander Payne Celebrate Oscar Nods

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Viola Davis, Alexander Payne Celebrate Oscar Nods

Directors of 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' and 'A Separation' also revel in their Academy Awards recognition.
By Kara Warner

Viola Davis in "The Help"
Photo: DreamWorks

As Academy Awards nomination day rolls on, so do the excited and deliriously happy reactions from the nominees.

You can almost see and feel two-time nominee Viola Davis smiling via her statement. "It's an honor to be nominated a second time. It is a personal accomplishment and triumph for women and women of color," Davis said of her Best Actress nomination for "The Help." "I'm so glad the film has been recognized. It was a labor of love from the moment it was conceived, and it is rewarding to see the impact it is having."

Davis was previously nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in 2008's "Doubt."

What were the biggest shocks and snubs from this year's Oscar nominations?

Triple-nominee Alexander Payne, who's up for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on "The Descendants," took the time to shine the spotlight on his collaborators on the film, particularly his editor and fellow nominee, Kevin Tent. "There's no denying that Oscar nominations for one's film are exciting, if only for the joy they give to everyone who worked so hard on the film," Payne said in a statement. "I'm particularly happy for the recognition of my longtime editor Kevin Tent. He really deserves it."

"I'm deeply honored that the Academy recognized 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' as well as Max von Sydow," director Stephen Daldry said of the film's Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor nominations. "The entire team behind our film felt the enormous responsibility in taking on this project, and it is deeply humbling to have the Academy recognize it in this way."

Steven Spielberg also chimed in about nominations for a film he directed ("War Horse") and one he produced ("The Help"). "I am thrilled with our multiple nominations for 'The Help' and 'War Horse.' It is the first time that I have experienced two Best Picture nominations in the same year," Spielberg said in a statement. "One is a high honor. Two is humbling but very exciting. It is a tribute to all those who joined with Stacey Snider and our DreamWorks Studios team to develop and make these two films with stories that we passionately felt we had to make."

Multi-talented writer/director/producer Asghar Farhadi was also very happy to have scored his second Best Foreign Language Film nomination, along with a Best Original Screenplay nod, for the critically acclaimed film "A Separation." "This is cheerful news for me and for the family of cinema in Iran, specially the nomination for the Best Original Screenplay," Farhadi said in a statement. "It seems that although people speak different languages around the world ... there is one common universal language which everyone understands: The Language of Cinema."

Fun fact about the film's Best Original Screenplay nomination: It is the first screenplay written in Farsi to receive a writing nod.

See the complete list of Oscar Nominations.

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