Academy has honorary Oscar for Altman
Robert Altman, one of five directors who hold the record for most Academy Award nominations without winning, is to take home an Oscar this March.
Altman, who had best-director nominations for MASH, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts and Gosford Park, will receive an honorary Oscar at the March 5 awards.
Altman’s work “has repeatedly reinvented the art form and inspired filmmakers and audiences alike,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Wednesday in announcing the award.
Altman, 80, is considered one of movie-making’s boldest innovators, with an unconventional style that separates him from other Hollywood filmmakers.
His films feature huge ensemble casts, overlapping dialogue and tracking shots lasting minutes at a time.
He is also known for the cutting satire in films such as MASH and Nashville and the understated commentary of films like Gosford Park .
In losing all five times he was nominated for an Oscar, Altman joins the company of Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, Clarence Brown and King Vidor, all directors who are five-time losers.
“Altman’s innovation, his redefinition of genres, his invention of new ways of using the film medium and his reinvigoration of old ones,” all made him a candidate for an Oscar, said Sid Ganis, academy president. “He is a master filmmaker and well deserves this honour.”
Altman began his career in documentary, industrial and educational movies, moving into feature films with the low-budget The Delinquents in 1957. After working in television, he shot to fame with MASH, an anti-Vietnam film thinly disguised as a tale set during the Korean War.
His other movies include McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Popeye and the dark Hollywood satire The Player.
Altman’s latest film, A Prairie Home Companion, based on Garrison Keillor’s radio show, is scheduled for release June 9.
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