Why does this keep happening? Especially in Best Actor, there’s this STACK. Last year, two actors turned in Oscar-worthy roles, but only PSH won.
This year, since the first instant I heard about the movie, way back over the summer, I knew without doubt or question that Forest Whitaker would win. I didn’t even bother paying attention to any other roles or movies.
Then, late November, I realized that Peter O’Toole had made a movie, and things shifted. This is a man who has been nominated for something like 8 or 11 leading-man Oscars, and not won a single one. One of the most talented men to ever stride across film in its entire history, and the biggest loser in the entire history of Oscar. He’s also rapidly approaching 80: a hard-drinking, hard-smoking, hard-living young Turk whose pals and contemporaries and drinking buddies (with the exception of Michael Caine) are all long dead. I want to see Peter win an Oscar. But just as he raged against his “Lifetime” fakeOscar a few years back, I detest the idea of him winning a pityOscar.
In any case, just as last year I was cheering for PSH because he’d more than put in his overtime and completely deserved it for that role—while simultaneously cheering equally as hard for Joaquin because this was the role of his lifetime; the best thing he had ever done and is likely to EVER do in his entire life—again, I’m an equal mess. In fact, more of a mess, because I’d seen both nominated performances by this time last year, and this year, I’m running on empty.
So, down to the wire, my heart is screaming for Peter while my logic says it goes to the black man starring in the biopic of the dictator (and for none of those reasons; the movie honestly looks fantastic, and in analogue with Joaquin’s Cash, King of Scotland is likely the best thing Whittaker will ever get his mitts on). Same race, different runners, different year. Difference is, Peter O’Toole has more talent in a single slivering cheekbone than Hoffman in his whole body. I said it. But Whitaker could take it on talent. And of course, this is just par for Peter’s track record of being nominated opposite and losing to giants (Ben Kingsley’s Gandhi, DeNiro for Raging Bull, Brando as the eponymous Godfather, Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch, etc.). That trend will continue as Whitaker stymies O’Toole.
The rest of the nominees here are a joke-assemblage. Just the keeping-up of appearences. Bah.
