Another year, another Academy Award nominations announcement. And as usual, not an Asian name or face in sight. The best we could do was Russell, the chubby Asian kid in Disney/Pixar's Up, which was one of the ten(!) films nominated this year for Best Picture. You're carrying the banner for us, Russell!
Up was also nominated for Best Animated Feature, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Sound Editing -- all well deserved, in my opinion. But I was at least also hoping for a Best Animated Short nomination for Partly Cloudy, directed by Pixar animator Peter Sohn. Alas, no love.
One other bit of Asian representation comes in the form of a Best Documentary Feature nomination for Burma VJ, about the 2007 Buddhist monk uprising against Burma's military regime, and one video journalist's efforts to keep the world informed about the state of affairs inside the closed country.
And that's about it! I guess we could show a little love to Star Trek and its four nominations. I like John Cho as Sulu, and I like that movie. So yay for that.
Frankly, I'm not really surprised at the lack of any kind of Asian representation at what's supposed to be Hollywood's biggest night. In fact, Asians at the Oscars are the rare exception -- an anomaly at the party. That's Hollywood. Read the full list of Academy Award nominations here.
And hey, while we're on the topic, another non-surprise: Vanity Fair's "New Hollywood" issue completely lacks diversity.
UPDATE: I'm informed that Kavi, nominated for Best Live Action Short. The director is a white guy, but the film is a story about modern day slavery in India, filmed in Hindi, on location with an Indian cast and a lot of local crew. So, that's one more, sort of.
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