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I am extremely excited that we have two sisters going for best supporting actress.  Man its been a long road since Baby Boy for Taraji P. Henson but she has been killing every role she has been in and seemed like she always got better with each film she has been in.  

Now the funny thing for me is Robert Downey Jr. being nomnated for best supporting actor for his role in Tropic Thunder.  I remember when the story came out when he was going to be in blackface for the role in this comedy.  And I know that I didn’t see Oscar nomination in his future for that role but he has been collecting nominations throughout the award season and I cant hate cause Tropic Thunder was a funny ass movie.

And listen to what Viola Davis had to say about her nomination

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Best Supporting Actress:

Amy Adams – Doubt

Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Viola Davis – Doubt

Taraji P. Henson – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler

Best Actor:

Richard Jenkins – The Visitor

Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon

Sean Penn – Milk

Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Mickey Rourke –  The Wrestler

Best Actress:

Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married

Angelina Jolie – Changeling

Melissa Leo – Frozen River

Meryl Streep – Doubt

Kate Winslet – The Reader

Best Supporting Actor:

Josh Brolin – Milk

Robert Downey Jr – Tropic Thunder

Philip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt

Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight

Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road

Best Motion Picture:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frost/Nixon

Milk

The Reader

Slumdog Millionaire

For the rest of the Nominations click here

Let me start this off by saying no disrespect to Heath Ledger. But does he really deserve an Oscar for his role of The Joker? Now i know we are a week or so away from the nominations coming out but this has been coming up for a while now and as we get closer to the date i felt the need to think about it for a bit

Was The Dark Knight a good movie? yes.. Did it change the way we look at superhero movies? once again yes.. Did Heath ledger put on a great performance? yes .. and no.. This is a classic case of us using death to overblow what someone was or were to become.

Ill admit when i first heard he had been cast for the role i was shocked. No way could he be the best choice for the role. But when the movie came out and i saw it I felt not only did they make the right choice but with his death it made it clear that we will never see the joker on screen again. I say that partly because he gave an awesome performance but also because once he passed away it become an all time great performance. Anyone that would try to play the role after him would be unfairly held to a standard that would be highly overvalued because of Heath’s Death.

This has been great for not only for the team behind The Dark Knight, but The Academy Awards as well. The Dark Knight went from just being a summer blockbuster to damn near Titanic based off of his death and the added buzz that it added to his performance. And The Academy well they havent had this kind of buzz in the mainstream since maybe Denzel and Halle both took home Oscars back in 2001. Lets be real can anyone out there name who won the past few best actors other than Jamie Foxx for his role as Ray Charles? Ratings have been down cause no one has heard of the movies, and even after they win nobody really cares to see the film.

Its almost the perfect storm for him to win. In this internet day and age we have all become prisoners of the moment. By that i mean that the latest thing is the greatest thing. I knew when i saw Training Day that Denzel had nailed it. His character was complicated. Was has he bad? Yes, but you also saw a lot of layers in his perfomance. He was conflicted in the movie went through some things. With Heath’s performance you just got crazy from begining to end, which he did a good job at, but it was straight forward no depth as they say. Yeah i said depth.

Bottom line is if he is nominated i will root for him to win, hell just so i can say i saw one of the movies that won a damn award. But would i put it up there as one of the greatest performances of all time?…..No.. If we are gonna judge the Dark Knight as a normal film, which is something we have to do when we start talkin oscars ,then it falls well short on what other actors brought to the table. Cant put it up there with Denzel in Training Day, doesnt come close to Sean Penn in Mystic River, Tom Hanks in Forest Gump, Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Hell anything Daniel Day-Lewis has done.

I could go on and on so while Heath Ledger put on a good performance and is this was a tragic story lets not let that get in the way of reality. But i cant blame the Academy if they do give it to him because its good for business and it gives us regular folks a chance to tune in and actually care about the Oscars again. As for the next Batman villian i guess we can always dust off The Govinator as Mr. frezze!!!

In a bittersweet moment at last nights Golden Globe awards.  The late Heath Ledger won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture.  Director Chris Nolan accepted the award in Ledgers behalf:

After Heath passed on, you saw a hole ripped in the future of cinema — but with the extraordinary response to his work that we’ve seen all over the world, I, for one, start to be able to look a bit less at that gap in the future and a little bit more at the incredible place in the history of cinema that he built for himself with his talent and with his dedication to his artistry. For any of us lucky enough to work with him, I think for any of us lucky enough to have enjoyed his performances, he will be eternally missed. But he will never be forgotten.

I am just glad that the voters looked past that this is a superhero movie and actually gave this award to Ledger because damn it he deserved it.  Hopefully the usual lame ass Grammy’s gets it right as well.