Quick Takes - Dec. 28, 2010

The Oscar race is officially on.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Monday that it has mailed out nomination ballots to the 5,755 of its members who will be voting for the Academy Awards for 2010.

Each year a few hundred movies hope to qualify for Oscars, but only 10 will be nominated for best feature film. Their producers and distributors began jockeying for position as far back as the summer, but only now can votes begin to be cast.

Nominations will be unveiled Jan. 25, with the winners to be announced Feb. 27 in ceremonies at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

—Reuters

Cuba fetes Alicia Alonso

Cuba has honored the celebrated ballerina and National Ballet director Alicia Alonso with its top award for arts instruction.

The 90-year-old prima ballerina assoluta received this year’s National Prize for Artistic Teaching at a ceremony Monday in a wood-floor studio at the ballet’s headquarters in Havana.

Alonso told admirers, journalists and dance students that “the most wonderful moment in life is when one can teach others what one has learned.”

Alonso rose to stardom with the American Ballet Theatre. She has led the Cuban National Ballet for decades, despite being nearly blind.

—Associated Press

‘Swan’s’ Portman is expecting

Actress Natalie Portman is engaged to a ballet dancer and choreographer she met during the production of her newly released movie, “Black Swan.” She is expecting her first child with him, People magazine reported Monday.

Benjamin Millepied, a native of Bordeaux, France, is a principal dancer and choreographer at the New York City Ballet. Portman, 29, plays a New York ballerina in “Black Swan.”

—Reuters

Assange to pen autobiography

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he’s being forced into penning an autobiography to keep his organization from going under.

New York publishing house Alfred A. Knopf confirmed Monday that it had struck a deal with the 39-year-old Australian to bring out his autobiography, whose publication date has yet to be determined.

Assange, speaking to the Sunday Times of London, said the deal would bring in more than $1 million, with $800,000 from Knopf and an additional $500,000 from U.K. publisher Canongate. But he said he only agreed to it because he was under financial pressure.

“I don’t want to write this book, but I have to,” he said. “I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.”

Assange shot to worldwide prominence on the back of a series of spectacular leaks of classified U.S. material, including the ongoing publication of some 250,000 classified State Department cables.

But with the international attention came international legal problems. The U.K.-bound activist is currently fighting extradition to Sweden, where he faces sex crimes allegations, and has said he fears moves to indict him in the United States on espionage charges. He’s previously said that most of his organization’s money goes to fighting off legal and technical attacks.

Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards declined to comment on the specific figures mentioned by Assange, but confirmed that a deal had been in place since “prior to the holidays.”

—Associated Press

‘Traviata’s’ in soprano’s blood

Edita Gruberova was barely out of her teens when she first sang the role of Violetta Valery in Verdi’s “La Traviata” in the tiny provincial theater of the Czech town of Banska Bystrica. Now a 64-year-old grandmother of three, she sang it again last week in Vienna, explaining that she loves the part as much as ever and thinks age only enhances her performance.

While her representatives said that would be Gruberova’s last performance as Violetta, the diva was less explicit when pressed in an interview, saying the possibility of another reprise “depends on the offer.”

One thing is for certain: Her career is far from over. Despite the odiousness of “life in the hotels, and trips, and baggage and airplanes and taxis,” Gruberova said she is giving no thought to retirement. “Because when you are standing on the stage or a concert podium,” she said, “and the audience breaks out in applause and ovations, there is nothing more beautiful.... This is my therapy.”

—Associated Press

Hugh Hefner is engaged at 84

Hugh Hefner got engaged to Playmate Crystal Harris on Christmas Eve, announcing on Twitter that he’d given her a ring.

Harris, 24, met Hef on Halloween 2008 and was Playmate of the Month in December 2009. Hefner, 84, chose his first Playmate of the Month in 1953.

This will be his third marriage.

—Christie D’Zurilla