Thursday, January 22, 2009

Milk Gets Multiple Oscar Noms

I was just looking over the list of Oscar nominations, which were announced today, and I'm thrilled to see that Milk was nominated for eight awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor for Sean Penn and Best Supporting Actor for Josh Brolin. After the film's nearly complete shut out for Golden Globe nominations, this is certainly great news!

It's very exciting, though I STILL have not been able to see the film! Maybe now that it's a multiple nominee it will play in my area? I'm honestly quite surprised that it hasn't been here before this since I don't exactly live in some backwoods area that avoids films with gay themes.

From what I've heard about the movie, it sounded like James Franco deserved a nomination for Best Supporting Actor as well. Overall, though, the film did very well today and I think we can all be very excited about that.

Looking over the rest of the nominees, there are only three performances that I've actually seen this year: Richard Jenkins, nominated for Best Actor in The Visitor; Anne Hathaway, up for Best Actress in Rachel Getting Married, and of course Heath Ledger, posthumously nominated for Best Supporting Actor in The Dark Knight.

All three were very memorable performances, in very different ways. Jenkins, a character actor probably best known for his work as the dead father on Six Feet Under impressed me so much with his quiet but powerful performance. If he wasn't nominated against Sean Penn, I'd be rooting for him. I think I am rooting for Hathaway, who really surprised me with her work.

What can I even say about Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker? I still believe that he was completely robbed of a much deserved win in Brokeback Mountain and if he does win the Oscar next month, I think I'll see it as much as being for that film as for The Dark Knight.

I'm of course rooting for Milk to win everything for which it is nominated, no question. Maybe I'll have a chance to see some of the other performances and nominees before the awards are given out and can form some sort of an informed opinion of who should win all the other awards.

No comments: