| AP |
Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis may be bummed that “Nanking,” his documentary about the atrocities committed against Chinese citizens and troops following China’s fall to Japan in 1937, didn’t get nominated for an Academy Award this year (it made the short list), but he’s got a pretty good reason: It’s not about George W. Bush.
“One Academy voter told me that if I could have found a way to blame Nanking on George Bush, I’d probably have an Oscar,” Leonsis told a crowd of Georgetown students gathered in Gaston Hall on Thursday night. He, along with his college roommate and “Nanking” producer Michael Jacobs, had returned to his alma mater to screen “Nanking” and take questions afterward (the movie debuts in Washington on Feb. 12).
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Leonsis has a point: Several of the finalists in the Academy’s “Documentary Feature” category — “Sicko,” “No End in Sight” and “Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience” — either allude to President Bush or the unpopular war in Iraq.
Still, Leonsis would likely agree with much of the criticism leveled at Bush. “This is an anti-war film,” Leonsis told the crowd, and he received the loudest applause of the night when he added, “Nothing good happens when an army attacks and occupies a foreign land.”
The movie was praised by attendees but Leonsis had to offer a bit of full disclosure: “We both got C’s in our history class, so consider this a late entry to get our grades up.”
Although Leonsis won’t get an Oscar, “Nanking” was accepted to the Sundance Film Festival. And, as Leonsis noted, “It’s harder to get into Sundance than it is to get into Georgetown.”
