Names and faces

Actor John C. Reilly hosted an event Friday evening honoring the animated-feature Oscar nominees at the Beverly Hills, Calif., headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Frozen is up against The Croods, Despicable Me 2, Ernest and Celestine and The Wind Rises. Academy members cast their final ballots at the beginning of the week, and Disney’s Frozen is said to be the favorite in the animation category. Earning more than $980 million worldwide, Frozen is the highest-grossing original animated release ever and marks the first time a woman, Jennifer Lee, has co-directed one of the studio’s features. Reilly turned Friday’s question-and-answer session with the nominees into a comedic affair. The funny actor, who voiced the title character in Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, tried to speak botched French to the filmmakers of the French-Belgian production Ernest and Celestine and read a synopsis of Despicable Me 2 that he pulled from Wikipedia. The Despicable Me franchise has led to spinoff The Minions with characters voiced by Sandra Bullock and Jon Hamm. “What am I, chopped liver?” joked Reilly of not getting a part in the film, which is currently in production.

Vandals targeted the former Brooklyn, N.Y., home of filmmaker Spike Lee and the house next door after a video of the director’s humor-laced rant against gentrification went viral. Someone spray-painted “Do the Right Thing” on the brownstone next to Lee’s family home in the Fort Greene neighborhood Friday. That’s the title of one of Lee’s best known movies. The Lee family house had part of the title written on the side of the stoop. The vandalism happened three days after Lee criticized gentrification of the black, working-class neighborhood during a Black History Month speech. Lee said gentrification had little regard for people who “have a culture that’s been laid down for generations.” “Why did it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better? Why’s there more police protection in BedStuy and Harlem now?” he demanded, using local shorthand for Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. “Why’s the garbage getting picked up more regularly? We’ve been here!” Lee’s half brother Arnold, who lives in the house that was hit by vandals, told the New York Daily News that Lee “needs to stop mentioning the house in his comments.”

Front Section, Pages 2 on 03/02/2014

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