Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark" data-source="post: 1342190" data-attributes="member: 5">All actors have options when taking scripts and you only get offered a part when you have the chops to play the role.  Penn turned in two great performances this year, according to almost every critic.Depp is a fine actor but playing a character that is over-the-top is not something that generally gets recognized by the academy unless there is significant growth in the role and the growth is integral to the plot of the film.Nicholson in Cuckoo's Nest (75) is a fair example but let's not forget he had been nominated the two previous years for Chinatown (74) and Last Detail (73).Some similar roles that were nominated but didn't win might include Dustin Hoffman for WAG THE DOG (97), Billy Bob Thornton for Sling Blade (96), or Nigel Hawthorne for The Madness Of King George (94).  Excellent portrayals but do they really challenge the actor to bring more than an extrordinary amount of energy to the part and a unique perspective (arguably, in the case of Hoffman and Depp, for the performance being "novel" because we all know who it is playing the part)?A perfect example of this mindset when roles of both those natures go head to head would be in 1985.  F. Murray Abraham won for his role in Amadeus over his fellow nominee Tom Hulce who played the over-the-top titular character.One could contrast Dustin Hoffman's winning performance depth in Rain Man (88) to Depp's in Pirates in that Hoffman had to rein it in while Depp put it all out there.  More than a few folks believed that Edward James Olmos should have won that year for Stand And Deliver, but I think Hoffman's performance was highlighted even more strongly by Cruise's role in the film.1991's winner, Sir Anthony Hopkins for The Silence Of The Lambs, fits the Depp/Pirates mold but if you look at the competition that year (Warren Beatty for Bugsy, Robert De Niro for Cape Fear, Nick Nolte for The Prince Of Tides, and Robin Williams for The Fisher King) you could make an argument that some of those roles were cut from a similar (outrageous) cloth making it easier to give the nod to Hopkins.You could point to 1992's winner, Al Pacino in Scent Of A Woman when it comes to over-the-top, but the character does show growth and the competition had other obstacles (Robert Downey, Jr. in Chaplin, Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, Stephen Rea in The Crying Game, and Denzel Washington in Malcolm X).  Washington may have deserved it most, but the academy likes to snub actors who play actual people.  Crying Game suffered the same fate as The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense, IMO, having the film hinged on one main twist, and the Academy can be snubby to all involved in a production that revolves around a perceived gimmick.  Eastwood was getting best picture and director, and the Academy doesn't often like to allow a directing-actor to walk away with too many in the same year.  Downey is going to have to a lot more on screen to get the older voters to forgive him for what he does off screen, and it is a real person portrayal.Anyway, that's how I see it but who knows who will carry off the little man when Oscar night comes.  I'm guessing that Penn's double whamy is simply to good to deny despite some folks who would prefer to snub him due to his politics. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification