Hey, How 'Bout Those Awards

I "watched" (left on in the background while I screwed around on the computer) the Academy Awards last night. Not the entire show; I missed the beginning and the first few awards, but generally saw the rest.

Milk Was Great
Sean Penn deserves that Oscar. Of course, I haven't seen any of the other nominees--I'm sure they were all great--but Sean Penn elevated an already outstanding movie. And I'm not just saying that because I live in the Bay Area.

Non-Shocking Ledger Win
I'm not against it, necessarily; Brolin didn't have quite enough to do in Milk to make his performance Oscar-worthy, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is going to get like, 15 more Oscars over the years, so it's valid. It is strange, to me, how many of the actors were nominated for playing well outside the "norm". Downey as an Australian as a black guy, Ledger as the Joker, Hoffman as a (apparently) pedophilic priest, and Brolin as that crazy bastard that shot Harvey Milk. I mean, maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but there is a distinction between great acting and great mimicking. Or, to be more specific, between great acting and a role that has such an obvious lightning rod element (Downey being in black face, for example) that you have to actually look HARDER to evaluate whether the actor actually acted well.

Not that Ledger, or Downey, or any of these guys did not act well. I'm just saying it can be difficult to look past the Joker make-up and crazy voice and say, "Was Heath Ledger the best supporting actor in 2008?"

Actors Describing Actors
The whole "former winners introduce current nominees" thing was interesting. At times, I thought it was really well conceived. Shirley McLaine's description of Anne Hathaway was particularly good; she spoke right to her and had that "grand dame of Hollywood" attitude that made it sound as if she really thought Hathaway was great and wasn't just reading prepared material. And watching DeNiro describe Sean Penn was pretty great too. Others were a bit leaden (it would appear that, unlike other Best Actresses, making Angelina Jolie misty-eyed is a more formidable task than mortal man can hope to achieve).

In Summation
WALL-E is the most underrated (by Academy nominations, anyhow) movie of the year.