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by Roger Ebert
Osama bin Laden is dead, which everybody knows, and the principal facts leading up to that are also well-known. The decision to market “Zero Dark Thirty” as a thriller therefore takes a certain amount of courage, even given the fascination with this most zero and dark of deaths. (The title is spy-speak for “half past midnight,” the time of bin Laden’s death.)
(AP Photo/ Newtown Bee, Shannon Hicks)What’s different about the Newtown Massacre? Not very much. On top of the Columbine tragedy, “The Dark Knight Rises” shooting and so on and so on, it still doesn’t even have its own Twitter hashtag. I haven’t had the heart to look for any theme music that has been drummed up for cable news.
The Oscars are the most important way the American film industry can honor what it considers the year’s best work. But for millions of movie lovers all over the globes, they are something else: A show.
That’s why I suspected last June that Quvenzhané Wallis might win a nomination. The pride of Hounduras Elementary School in Houma, LA, has now become, at nine, the youngest nominee in history for Best Actress. Her story is even better: She was five when she auditioned for the role, and six when she performed it.
