Oscar honors Louisiana

In theaters Friday: A Dark Truth, Texas Chainsaw 3D
New on Blu-ray: Cosmopolis, Little Birds

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for its 85th Annual Academy Awards this morning, and Louisiana has once more received a good deal of recognition.

Louisiana-set drama, Cannes Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival winner Beasts of the Southern Wild scored four nominations: Best Picture, Best Director for Benh Zeitlin, Best Adapted Screenplay for Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar, and Best Actress for Quvenzhane Wallis—the youngest star to ever receive such recognition from Oscar.

Wallis was only 6 years old when Beasts was shot, and Zeitlin tells 225 she even fibbed on her application to audition. Wallis was just 5 years old when she read for the now iconic role of Hushpuppy in the Louisiana-set drama. And yet the director was already impressed by the way she handled herself and stuck up for what she believed in during their first meeting about the film.

“There was a moment when she was supposed to throw a water bottle at the other actor [during the reading],” Zeitlin says. “She turned to me and said, ‘That’s not right,’ and wouldn’t do it. I knew then we’d found our Hushpuppy.”

Read my original review of Beasts and interview with Zeitlin here.

Also filmed in Louisiana last year was Quentin Tarantino’s slave-turned-bounty hunter action flick Django Unchained, which received 4 nominations, including a nod for Best Picture. 225 interviewed Baton Rouge-based costumer Mollie Gates about her work on Django last year, and you can read that story here.

For a complete list of this year’s nominees go here.