As most people know or should know, the Oscars are an industry phenomenon--predominantly by, from, about and for the multibillion motion picture industry. Tactics and results are parallel to the labyrinth of lobbyists, influence peddling, block voting, and horse trading that make people hold their noses when they watch Congress in action (or inaction). As a Columbia University trained journalist and professional writer and a film devotee, I've been compiling my own private list of the films and the people I believe should win the Oscars and would win Academy Awards in a more perfect world.
This list makes no attempt to predict who, in fact, actually will win but it's safe to say there is almost no correlation--especially for the films of 2009--between "should" and "will." My tastes and this list are tilted far more toward independents and brave, often little noticed "foreign" films (I prefer to think of them as movies without borders) than anything the industry that is Hollywood would ever sanction.
About Me
- Marilee Strong
- I am an award-winning journalist and author specializing in the dark wide of human nature at the intersection of human trauma. My latest book is In The Name of the Children, co-written with former FBI agent Jeff Rinek who has spent a lifetime pursuing those who prey on children in cases so challenging they may take many years to untangle. My 1998 book A Bright Red Scream, which Time magazine called “richly reported and achingly well-written,” was the first book to investigate the distrubing and little understood phenomenon of self-mutilation and its relationship to childhood abuse and trauma. I am a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism where I was awarded the school’s highest honor, called the Traveling Pulitzer Fellowship. I have been interviewed extensively on local and national news and talk programs, from NBC’s Dateline and other tv networks including MSNBC and the BBC.