Thoughts on the Winners

I love the Academy Awards. I believe that I have only missed watching one year since I started watching the year John Wayne won the Best Actor award for "True Grit". I remember this because I was in love with Glen Campbell at the time and he was in "True Grit". I was nine years old. It was the first movie I remember seeing at a movie theater, this one was the Delsea Drive-in in Vineland. We didn't stay for the double feature, as I recall: "The Sterile Cuckoo".

Anyway, I have not seen "Slumdog Millionaire" but I think there seems to be uniform agreement that it's a pretty good movie. I'm happy it won, and I'm pretty sure that seeing it will validate my feeling of never wanting to visit India.

Loved that Penelope Cruz won for "Vicky Cristina Barcelona". I really enjoyed the movie, and she was great. Also happy for Kate Winslet. She is a lot like Meryl Streep in that even if the movie isn't great, she always is. And she has a lot of depth. Good choice.

Heath Ledger. Such a sad story, such a great performance. I do not believe it was a better performance than he gave in "Brokeback Mountain". That is the performance that I will always remember him for. Beautifully understated it was, pretty much the antithesis of The Joker. Both wonderful realizations of totally different characters. I hear his work in the new Terry Gilliam movie is equally compelling.

I have never been a huge fan of Sean Penn. But I loved what I saw in the scenes for "Milk" and do want to see the film. I was rooting for Mickey Rourke, the man who came from nowhere with a great comeback performance. Dog lover and not afraid to show it. And the star of one of my favorite movies, "The Pope of Greenwich Village". He had a great small part in Robert Rodriguez's "Once Upon a Time in Mexico", a movie that I highly recommend. Great entertainment. I hope he gets some good roles and he sticks around for a while.

No more time today. I just love the movies.