Day: January 23, 2024

NEW YORK — After a tumultuous movie year marred by strikes and work stoppages, the Academy Awards showered nominations Tuesday on Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic, “Oppenheimer,” which came away with a leading 13 nominations.

Nolan’s three-hour opus, viewed as the best picture frontrunner, received nods for best picture; Nolan’s direction; acting nominations for Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt; and multiple honors for the craft of the J. Robert Oppenheimer drama.

But the year’s biggest hit, “Barbie,” came away with a nominations haul notably less than its partner in Barbenheimer mania. Greta Gerwig’s feminist comedy, with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales, was nominated for eight awards, including best picture; Ryan Gosling for best supporting actor; and two best-song candidates in “What Was I Made For” and “I’m Just Ken.”

But Gerwig was surprisingly left out of the best director field. Gerwig was nominated for best director in 2018 for her solo directorial debut, “Lady Bird.” At the time, she was just the fifth woman nominated for the award. Since then, Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”) have won best director. Before those wins, Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker,” in 2010) was the only woman to win the Oscar’s top filmmaking honor.

Both Martin Scorsese’s Osage epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein riff “Poor Things” were also widely celebrated. “Poor Things” landed 11 nods, while “Killers of the Moon” was nominated for 10 Oscars.

Lily Gladstone, star of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” became the first Native American nominated for best actress. For the 10th time, Scorsese was nominated for best director. Leonardo DiCaprio, though, was left out of best actor.

The 10 films nominated for best picture were: “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Poor Things,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “The Holdovers,” “Maestro,” “American Fiction,” “Past Lives,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest.”

Lead nominees “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Poor Things” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” made for a maximalist quartet of Oscar heavyweights. Nolan’s sprawling biopic. Gerwig’s near-musical. Scorsese’s pitch-black Western. Lanthimos’ sumptuously designed fantasy. Each utilized a wide spectrum of cinematic tools to tell big, often disturbing big-screen stories. And each — even Apple’s biggest-budgeted movie yet, “Killers of the Flower Moon” — had robust theatrical releases that saved streaming for months later.

The Associated Press notched its first Oscar nomination in the news organization’s 178-year history with “20 Days in Mariupol,” Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing chronicle of the besieged Ukrainian city and of the last international journalists left there after the Russia invasion. It was nominated for best documentary, along with “Four Daughters,” “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” “The Eternal Memory” and “To Kill a Tiger.”

“20 Days” is a joint production between The Associated Press and PBS’ “Frontline.”

The nominees for best international film are: “Society of the Snow,” (Spain); “The Zone of Interest,” (United Kingdom); “The Teachers’ Lounge” (Germany); “Io Capitano” (Italy) ; “Perfect Days” (Japan).

The nominees for best animated film are: “The Boy and the Heron”; “Elemental”; “Nimona”; “Robot Dreams”; “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

Oscar season has reunited “Oppenheimer” with its summer box-office partner, “Barbie.”

Historically, blockbusters have helped fueled Oscar ratings. Though the pile-up of award shows (an after-effect of last year’s strikes ) could be detrimental to the Academy Awards, the Barbenheimer presence could help lift the March 10 telecast on ABC. Jimmy Kimmel is returning as host, with the ceremony moved up an hour, to 7 p.m. Eastern.
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Nairobi, Kenya — Being the preferred choice of footwear for many, flip-flops – typically made of plastic or rubber – break easily and often aren’t disposed of properly. Therefore, millions of them end up in oceans, waterways, dumpsites, and landfills all over the world. 

Ocean Sole, a Kenya-based company, has found creative and functional ways to reuse the hundreds of thousands of discarded flip-flops that arrive regularly at their warehouse located in Karen, about 45 minutes from Nairobi’s city center.

Joe Mwakiremba has been working for the company for about 10 years. He says the company was “founded on the premise of cleaning our ocean and waterways [while] at the same time employing lots of artists from high-impact communities in Kenya.” 

He told VOA that flip-flops are generally collected from weekly beach cleanups and other places.  

At Ocean Sole, they usually weigh the material and pay collectors about 18 cents per kilogram. Then, to prepare them for carving, they are first hand-washed, one flip-flop at a time.

“The next stage for our smaller and medium-size sculptures, we have a die cut machine that would punch out a template of a giraffe, a lion or a rhino. Those templates are joined together with glue and carved out into that respective animal,” he notes. 

For life-size pieces, the company reuses an additional material. 

“The big piece like this couch I am sitting on, the inside of it is polystyrene. Polystyrene comes from shipping companies; they use it as insulation. When it’s worn out, they toss it away, so we carve out our big-size sculpture like the giraffe behind me using that material and pad it using the flip flops around it,” he expressed.

Using a machine, the pieces are then sanded before being cleaned again and readied for shipment. 

In 2023, the company said it recycled 750,000 flip-flops. This year it aims to recycle one million. 

Florence Auma is an artist who has been working for the company for 14 years. Auma told VOA she had to learn the art of carving from scratch. 

“I came into this company, washing flip-flops. I started with washing, then I started with blocking, then I am the first female carver in this company. Now, I am happy because I have many skills in this company,” she says.

Skills, she says, that have allowed her to be able to carve just about anything — like coasters — and to travel the world to showcase her talent. 

Mwakiremba told us one of the largest pieces the company made was a life-size car for a Honda dealership in the United States. They spent three months on the project, using 2,500 flip flops.

Ocean Sole is now collaborating with a design artist from Uganda who now lives in Finland and founded a studio there, in one of their biggest projects to date.

It’s a project they had planned to work on together in 2019 but had to pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lincoln Kayiwa – who has used material such as ceramic, granite, wood, and glass — has decided to try something new with flip flops. 

He recently traveled to Kenya to finalize a furniture project to be launched in April during Milan Design Week — Salone del Mobile — in Italy. 

To cook up this kind of project, Kayima told us he wanted to combine different elements, including a unique design concept with a meaningful product combined with his Ugandan and Finnish cultures — and that of Kenyans at Ocean Sole.

“The project itself has 14 pieces; you are just seeing three of them … of course it’s a win-win situation; the more flip-flops are used, that means the more flip-flops are being taken out of the environment. For me that’s the meaning of sustainability,” the Alvar Aalto University graduate said.
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Being the preferred choice of footwear for many, flip-flops — typically made of plastic or rubber — break easily and don’t get disposed of properly. Millions of them, therefore, end up in oceans, waterways, dumpsites and landfills all over the world. A Kenya-based company has found creative and functional ways to reuse them. VOA Nairobi Bureau Chief Mariama Diallo visited their warehouse located in Karen, about 45 minutes from the city center, and has this report. Camera: Amos Wangua
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