Those East Asian countries are pretty easy to confuse
February 25th, 2007 | Tags: entertainment, snark
I only saw about ten minutes of the Academy Awards, which included the award for Best Adapted Screenplay. As you may know, the screenplay for The Departed won. As William Monahan was taking the stage, the narrator said something to the effect of: “Monahan adapted the screenplay for The Departed from the Japanese film Infernal Affairs.”
I’ve always said that Andy Lau is one of the greatest Japanese actors I know, followed closely by Tony Leung. I also think that “Moo gaan dou,” the title by which Infernal Affairs is known in its country of release, totally sounds Japanese. (I’m no specialist, though.)
You don’t have to know much to read a teleprompter, and I suspect that you need to know only a little more to write the script for the Academy Awards narrator. Perhaps a good place to start would be “basic facts about films under consideration for major awards.” I have no particular affection for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — indeed, the only Oscars I care about include hollandaise sauce — but I’m embarrassed for them.
UPDATE2: UPI was repeating this bogus claim, but they’ve fixed it as of this morning. The original UPI text is below:
