©Courtesy of D23
As always happens on Sundays at D23, the last day of the Convention is dedicated to the fans and to the tribute of the newly elected Disney Legends. During the morning some of the most important artists at Walt Disney Studios and Pixar Animation Studios meet thousands of fans for book signing, photos, and conversation about their iconic work. For example, Pete Docter, director of Pixar masterpieces like Up! and Inside Out, spent the morning at Talent Central meeting his admirers.
The last, spectacular show of the day took place at the Honda Center at 5 pm, the Disney Legends Awards Ceremony. Every year the company celebrates and honors those artists who contributed with their genius to elevate the quality of Disney’s movies, series, and all other shows. This year’s ceremony is filled with incredible stars, popular artists, and a bunch of Academy Award winners among the fourteen people selected for receiving the award: among them costume designer Colleen Atwood, actor Angela Bassett, director James L. Brooks, director James Cameron, actor Jamie Lee Curtis, actor and singer Miley Cyrus, comic-book artist Steve Ditko, actor Harrison Ford.
©Courtesy of D23
Where to start to remember the career of these extraordinary artists? Active since the Eighties, Colleen Atwood has achieved four Academy Awards for costume designing, collaborating with directors like Jonathan Demme, George Miller, Michael Mann, and of course Tim Burton, who started working with since his masterpiece Edward Scissorhands in 1990.
Since her breakthrough performance in Malcolm X by Spike Lee in 1992, Angela Bassett has established herself as one of the most charismatic and valuable actresses in American contemporary cinema. The next year he gained her first Oscar nominee for the stunning performance of Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It. All over these decades, she worked with some of the most important Hollywood authors, creating cult movies like Strange Days by Kathryn Bigelow, Contact by Robert Zemeckis, and of course, the Marvel cinecomics, gaining a second Academy Award nomination for Wakanda Forever.
James L. Brooks is a legendary TV producer, the mind behind cult-show like Taxi and The Simpson, but he is also the director of stunning movies like Terms of Endearment, which in 1983 gave him the Academy Awards as best director and screenwriter, winning also as best movie, best leading actress (Shirley MacLaine) and best supporting actor (Jack Nicholson). Other hits in Brooks’ career behind the camera were Broadcast News and As Good as It Gets, which was performed by Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, both rewarded with another Academy Award.
©Courtesy of D23
James Cameron needs no presentation, he is by far the most titanic director in the history of contemporary cinema. Since his first The Terminator in 1984, he has realized an incredible number of movies that elevated the art of science-fiction storytelling. Aliens, Terminator 2, Titanic, and Avatar are some of the most beloved titles of the last decades, crashing box office records all over the world. He also won an Oscar as best director for Titanic and was nominated for the First Avatar. In 1994 he directed True Lies, which starred another 2024 Disney Legend Award, Jamie Lee Curtis. How many iconic movies has this actress done in her career? Since John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978, she has become one of the most beloved artists by the mainstream audience. Her other iconic movies are Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda, and of course Everything Everywhere All at Once, which granted her the Academy Award as a supporting actress.
Harrison Ford lives through some dilemmas that any other actor in the world would love to have: is more a legend of cinema Han Solo or Indiana Jones? Is there another actor who performed in as many worldwide successes as he did? Since American Graffiti, was realized more than fifty years ago, Ford has played a fundamental role not only in movies but in popular culture. Charisma, irony, and the will to take himself too seriously have made him probably the most beloved actor ever. Honored with the Golden Palm at Cannes, the Academy Award-nominated for Witness by Peter Weir, Harrison Ford is a living legend.
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