Oscar Talk

Demographically I guess I'm not supposed to watch or care about the Oscars, aka "The Women's Superbowl," but my supposed profession kinda obligates me to it. But thanks to the impossibility of making a living on my supposed profession, I'm tragically behind on this year's nominees. I haven't seen any of the Best Picture hopefuls. I was pretty psyched to see Downey Jr. nominated for Tropic Thunder though. He doesn't stand a chance, but the fact that a performance like that could get nominated gives me a little more faith in the Academy. Having The Dark Knight up for Best Picture would have given me even more, but I've never been accused of optimism.

I can't imagine anyone taking the statue over Mickey Rourke, but like I said I'm way behind. Based on impressions, perhaps Sean Penn could win it, but come on. Rourke's performance was one of those rare things where not only does it seem like the part was created just for him, he went above and beyond his already-perfect type and delivered physically and emotionally. It would have been easy for a lot of actors to overdo it in the daughter scenes (ahem, Evan Rachel Wood), but he always kept it honest. I don't know much about Rourke, so I could be wrong about this, but it seemed to me that he also added all the wheezes and internal rumblings we heard in the silence as we followed The Ram down hallways and in his trailer. And apparently he gained like 20 pounds of muscle for the part, which is another one of those things where I think "sure, I could do that too if I had the time and money for a trainer for months before production." But you've gotta have the heart and dedication in addition to time and money. At least he didn't almost kill himself trying to lose weight. That's a trend I could do without.

And we have Heath Ledger. I was absolutely riveted by his Joker from the get-go, and I've had a hard time figuring out how much of that was his performance (undeniably good) and how much was the tragedy of both his passing and the fact that we'll never know where he could have taken the character in future installments. Every scene he was in left me with a feeling of "what the fuck is he going to do next," a real anxiety and fear for anyone standing too close to him. That part of it was all Heath and no buzz. He's a great example of an actor that doesn't care at all what he looks like in front of the audience, or what they think of him. It's all character. That's a valuable piece I could take away for myself.