The News: All-Positive Friday!

Stacey Andree and Laurel Hester in the 2007 Academy Awards short-lister Freeheld

By S.T. VanAirsdale

As per tradition, some of today's more upbeat movie news of note from around New York:

--While the Oscar quasi-cognoscenti are tuning up their station wagons for the long, grueling drive ahead, in some cases ranking films no one has seen yet, a rare tidbit of encouraging, honest-to-goodness Oscar news floated over the Reeler HQ transom on Thursday: Cynthia Wade's Freeheld made the next-to last cut for a Best Documentary Short nod at next year's awards. A Brooklynite whom we caught up with prior to her film's Sundance '07 premiere (it claimed a Special Jury Prize there, too), Wade spent 10 weeks in New Jersey capturing the story of Laurel Hester, a terminally ill detective lieutenant who fought the Ocean County Freeholders for the right to pass her pension along to her domestic partner Stacie Andree. Evidently the Oscar nomination was in Wade's long-term advocacy plan from the start; we'll know how it all turns out in mid-January. Wish Wade luck -- she and this project deserve all they can get.

--The only two close-ups that ever really shook me are those of Harriet Andersson's long, anguished waking in Cries and Whispers and Cloris Leachman's long, anguished resignation in The Last Picture Show, so the ongoing Close-Up Blog-a-Thon probably isn't for me. Not like it needs me: The House Next Door has all the latest updates, including founding editor Matt Zoller Seitz's terrific essay on Raising Arizona's mysterious, climactic grenade-pin pull.

--Over at The Film Experience, Nathaniel R celebrated National Coming Out Day with a list of pretty much every big-name homo in cinema. We salute Nathaniel's diligence, but... David Hyde Pierce? Really?

--This has nothing to do with New York, but you have to agree that word Simon Pegg will portray Scotty in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek belongs in a positive news round-up.

Posted at October 12, 2007 5:12 AM