Several USC Alums in Oscar Race
Photo/Todd Wawrychuk/AMPAS
Robert Elswit ’75 is nominated for achievement in cinematography for There Will Be Blood. Jason Reitman ’99, the director of Juno, is one of five nominated for achievement in directing. John Knoll ’84, along with three colleagues, is nominated for achievement in visual effects for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
Elswit and Knoll are alums of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Reitman is a USC College grad who took courses at Cinematic Arts.
James Newton Howard DMA ’69 in piano performance, is nominated for best original score for Michael Clayton. This is the USC Thornton School of Music graduate’s seventh Oscar nomination. Another best original score nominee, Marco Beltrami ’93, studied in USC Thornton’s scoring for motion picture and television program. He was nominated for the film 3:10 to Yuma.
In addition, ’98 Cinematic Arts MFA production grad Adam Hyman was the co-producer of a nominated documentary, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. USC Annenberg alumna Talleah Bridges (M.A. broadcast journalism, ’02) and Megan (Parlen) Schwartzman (M.A. broadcast journalism, ’05) served as liaisons on that film.
Jack Lewis Jr., a ’94 Cinematic Arts writing MFA graduate who was deployed to Iraq with a detachment of the Army Reserves in mid-2004, wrote a story that is part of the film.
Operation Homecoming derives its source material from a collection of essays, e-mail messages, poems and letters from soldiers and their families.
The New York Times called one of those messages, Lewis’ moving and emotional Road Work, the book’s “most heartbreaking story.”
Road Work tells of an elderly Iraqi man and his son hit by an armored vehicle in a head-on collision with American soldiers.
“This whole experience has been evolving pretty rapidly and in some very unexpected directions,” said Lewis, who appears in the film in an on-camera interview. “When I wrote my e-mails, I just wanted to let everyone know that we were OK and things were going along.”
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USC in the News
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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