Oscar for Eastwood, the actor?
He growls and scowls for the duration of the two-hour movie, and his is a polarizing, openly bigoted, racist, crusty character with, as it turns out, a heart not so far underneath.
If you walk into "Gran Torino" knowing that -- or better yet, embracing it -- you might really feel drawn to the movie, as we did, and Clint Eastwood's compelling performance in it.
Does that mean the iconic Eastwood deserves an Oscar nomination for his work here? Never mind that he's said, not so definitively, that this could be his last acting gig.
The question has kept critics and bloggers busy lately, with folks like the Village Voice's Michael Musto, Variety's Anne Thompson, InContention's Kris Tapley and a few others saying that not only will Eastwood be nominated but he'll win.
Over Sean Penn? Over Frank Langella and Mickey Rourke?
We're still, at this point, casting our vote for Penn, no matter what kind of dustup he might be causing by airing his personal politics. We see Langella as a strong second choice but think Rourke, despite the riveting performance he gave as an on-the-ropes grappler in "The Wrestler," won't appeal to enough Academy voters to put him on top.
(We like Jeff Wells' recent post at HollywoodElsewhere that says he's perhaps more taken with "the idea" of Mickey Rourke than with the actor himself. Don't we all love a glorious comeback from a notorious badass?)
Encyclopedic awards guru Tom O'Neil points out that several A-list actor/directors like Eastwood have hit pay dirt for their behind the camera efforts without ever having won an actor trophy. In fact, "no actor who's won an Oscar for directing has ever prevailed in a performance category." That includes Robert Redford, Warren Beatty and Woody Allen. O'Neil thinks Eastwood, already a four-time Oscar winner for directing and producing, will continue that run, and we agree.
Go here to check in on a crop of current Oscarologist picks, including ours, and see how many people have now jumped on our Richard Jenkins bandwagon. Copiers!
Clint deserves the Oscar over Penn and Rourke. If he doesn't get it, then the academay is just full of Liberal ideologues with their hyper-sensitivities on stereotypical humor. For god's sake, are there any more real men left in American cinema?
Posted by: Mario | February 21, 2009 at 03:49 PM