Film academy announces annual Governors Awards recipients

Actor Jackie Chan poses for the cameras at the announcement of the beginning of production for the science fiction action film “Bleeding Steel”, which has been billed by producers as the biggest budget Chinese film ever shot in Australia.

Jackie, 62, won praise from the Academy for his “distinctive worldwide career”, which has seen him star in, write, direct and produce movies in his native Hong Kong, as well as achieve box office success around the globe. The star of the classic kung fu comedies The Legend of Drunken Master, Project A and Police Story has just been declared a recipient of one of this year’s Governors Awards, the honorary Academy Awards bestowed every year to cinema’s greatest trailblazers.

Thankfully, the Academy realized they’ve made a huge mistake, and Chan, along with acclaimed film editor Anne V. Coates, casting director Lynn Stalmaster, and documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, will receive an honorary award at the Governors Awards this November.

Yes, it’s long overdue, but finally, the creative works of Jackie Chan will be recognized by the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Among her many credits: Lawrence of Arabia, Murder on the Orient Express, The Elephant Man, Out of Sight and 50 Shades of Grey. He has since gone on to star in global hits including the “Rush Hour” series, “Shanghai Noon”, “Shanghai Knights”, “Around the World in 80 Days”, and the “Kung Fu Panda” movies.

The eighth annual Governors Awards will be presented November 12 at the Hollywood & Highland Center. Chan has never been nominated for an Oscar and doesn’t make the kind of movies that generally would be nominated.

Stalmaster, a one-time stage and screen actor from Omaha, Nebraska, began working in casting in the mid-1950s. His casting assignments for more than 500 films, which includes In The Heat of the Night, The Graduate, Tootsie and The Right Stuff, also features such notable names as Jon Voight, Richard Dreyfuss, Jill Clayburgh, and John Travolta. Starting with 1967’s exploration of a hospital for the criminally insane in Titicut Follies, Wiseman’s focus lingered on a number of American institutions in such films as Law and Order, Public Housing, Hospital and National Gallery.