Up for debate today: The talent. The beautiful people. The stars. Without further uh-doo.
- Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart: We expect him to win because everyone says he will.
Best Actor
Nominees: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, George Clooney in Up in the Air, Colin Firth in A Single Man, Morgan Freeman in Invictus, Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker
AKERS: Will Win: No point in debating this, even interior monologue-y. This is Jeff Bridges‘ to lose, and he ain’t gonna.
Should Win: This is only a little more intriguing a question. I’m going Jeff Bridges again. Bad Blake is a great character and a career highlight for Bridges, who doesn’t treat the role as a victory lap. He pours himself in and totally inhabits the character. Clooney is excellent in Up in the Air and worthy of plaudits. I didn’t see A Single Man, so I’m going to just assume Colin Firth acted all British in it. “Morgan Freeman IS Nelson Mandela” went according to plan and, though a solid bit of work and honorable and distinguished, didn’t cause much of a blip in my pulse.
Renner is good, but I didn’t care for his character’s treatment at the hands of the script and my overall impression of him took a hit because of it. Is this a good time to bring this up? Probably should’ve mentioned this when we were actually talking about screenplays. Well, I just didn’t like it when his character takes off his protective suit and keeps it off in the rest of the missions in the movie and does dumb, reckless stuff. That skewed the movie’s efficacy for me, however slightly. Because its inaccuracies are disrespectful to the soldiers, as this WaPo story indicates is a common complaint? Nope. To be honest, when it comes to the movie, I could care less about how the soldiers are portrayed. It’s a fictional movie, not a documentary, people. (And you might say the same thing to me in a minute.) Yet, I felt my intelligence insulted by the laborious paces the script puts the character through. I get it: This is a dangerous place and these people have the most dangerous job on the planet. I’m on board. I’m all in, baby. So don’t go and artificially ramp up the dramatic tension as if you haven’t done enough already. Trust me as a viewer to figure the danger out for myself. Especially when you’re insinuating that this story is straight outta Baghdad. It’s either ripped from the headline obituaries or it’s a fantasy war movie. Can’t be both. Sorry, Jeremy Renner, that you got some of that on you. (I cannot wait to see your response to this left-field rant, Herrington.)
