random thoughts...going nowhere and ending nowhere...
in the best actor category...tommy lee jones for 'for the valley of elah'....imo i thought he gave a much better performance in this film than in 'no country for old men'.......his face is so expressive conveying emotions and feelings that in 'the valley of elah' there are so many instances and scenes where there's very little or nothing said by his character...that you know just by looking at his face and his body actions what he is feeling and thinking......sad to say every other actor in this category, including tommy, is going against daniel day-lewis....and this year the golden boy is going to be his alone...
'the valley of elah' is not a perfect film, but a good film never the less given the performances by tommy lee jones and susan sarandon...i thought the last minute or two of the film was kind of heavy handed...and should have been handled differently given the nature of tommy lee jones' patriotic character.....
[sp]at the end of the film tommy lee jones' character takes the tatterred american flag that his murdered son brought back from iraq and hosts it up a school yard flag pole upside down, as in the sign of distress.....to me that scene would have worked alot better if he had just flown the flag the way it was suppose to be....[/sp]
i would have loved to have seen 'le scaphandre et le papillon' (aka the diving bell and the butterfly) nominated in the best foreign film category....i'm not quite sure what's up with julian schnabel's recent comments about not wanting the film put in that category....according to an interview with the director, in the los angeles times calendar section, dated december 22 2007...the reason given for it not being nominated was...
"And though the movie was made in French, with a French cast (and was Golden Globe-nominated as best foreign-language film), it is ineligible for best foreign-language film at the Oscars because its screenwriter is British and two of its producers are American."
that makes more sense....another arcane rule that the academy goes by..is julian schnabel just hoping to gather more votes, through sympathy, from the other members of the academy who are lucky enough to vote in that category??....(remember director's are the only ones allowed to vote in this category)....if he's hoping to generate votes through sympathy...i'm afraid that he's going to find he's not going to get the director's oscar that way, because the competions too tough this year for him to overcome.....