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“Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I’ll end up drinking your milkshake,” - U. S. Senator Albert Fall in 1924.

“I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!” - Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood

I love movies. I get it honest my father former Patrick County Teacher and Principal Erie M. “Erie-sistible” Perry can watch Turner Classic or American Movie Channels and tell you every actor, actress and movie you never heard of. With him you get the feeling that a movie not made in black and white is not a real movie. At his house Saturday morning is time for Gene Autry and/or the Sons of the Pioneers. Can you sing “Water…Water.”

So they gave away the Oscars on Sunday and Hollywood got to self-congratulate themselves and wax eloquently on their wacky political views, etc. While high school grad George Clooney might think he knows more about foreign policy than PhD. Condoleezza Rice I think he should “Shut up and act.” This was a year of dark movies and anti-heroes, but it was a year of great acting. Each year I think there are fewer and fewer good, well acted films produced. So here is what I think about the winners and losers.

Best actress nominees:
Cate Blanchett, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
Julie Christie, “Away From Her”
Marion Cotillard, “La Vie en Rose”
Laura Linney, “The Savages”
Ellen Page, “Juno”

Cate Blanchett was born to play Queen Elizabeth I. Laura Linney is a good actress who deserves the accolades she gets. Julie Christie was expected to win, but the French actress Marion Cotlillard received the award. It is hard not to wish that Ellen Page had won for Juno, a movie about teen pregnancy. Page, age 21, from Canada gave a breakthrough performance as Juno, who gets pregnant after having sex once with her boyfriend. She keeps the baby and plans to give it away to a childless couple including Jennifer Garner, who is very convincing in the role.

Best supporting actress nominees:
Cate Blanchett, “I’m Not There”
Ruby Dee, “American Gangster”
Saoirse Ronan, “Atonement”
Amy Ryan, “Gone Baby Gone”
Tilda Swinton, “Michael Clayton”

This was a strong group of women’s roles. Tilda Swinton was strong in Michael Clayton and deserved the win, but the other ladies were equally good. Cate Blanchett was expected to win for playing Bob Dylan. Ruby Dee, age 83, played Denzel Washington’s mother in American Gangster, a movie with incredible performances that did not get recognized. Dee deserved a nomination just for the scene where she slapped Washington’s character Frank Lucas. Ronan was the young lady who started all the trouble in Atonement. Amy Ryan was excellent in Gone Baby Gone. I came to dislike her character, which made her performance was worthy of the award.

Best actor nominees:
George Clooney, “Michael Clayton”
Daniel Day-Lewis, “There Will Be Blood”
Johnny Depp, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
Tommy Lee Jones, “In the Valley of Elah”
Viggo Mortensen, “Eastern Promises”

George Clooney is a good looking dude who I hear plays a mean pickup basketball game. In Michael Clayton he gave one of his best performances. I think that a guy like Clooney does a good job if you forget he is George Clooney. Something Tom Cruise only occasionally gets. There were some tremendous and dark performances. I like Johnny Depp. Would he not be a great Civil War soldier? Hailing from Kentucky, they should slap a mustache on him and he could play Basil Duke or John Hunt Morgan. Depp sings and plays the revenge obsessed barber in Sweeney Todd and that is a stretch for any actor. Viggo Mortensen, “The King of the Rings”, gave a good low key performance as a not very nice Russian mafia hit man in Eastern Promises.

The “I see dead people” line of this year comes from Daniel Day Lewis quoted at the beginning of this article, who received the Oscar, his second, in There Will Be Blood. Director and screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson has said that the lines came straight from a transcript of a 1924 congressional hearings over the Teapot Dome scandal, in which Sen. Albert Fall was convicted of accepting bribes for oil-drilling rights to public lands in Wyoming and California.  In explaining oil drainage, Fall’s described it this way, “Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I’ll end up drinking your milkshake.”
The performance I really liked was Tommy Lee Jones as the father of a murdered Iraqi war veteran. Jones was strong in No Country For Old Men as the sheriff who figures out what is going on, but it too late to save anybody. Al Gore’s former college roommate deserved the Oscar too.
 

Best supporting actor nominees:
Casey Affleck, “The Assassination of Jesse James”
Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men”
Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Charlie Wilson’s War”
Hal Holbrook, “Into the Wild”
Tom Wilkinson, “Michael Clayton”

I think that this was the strongest group in the whole shebang. Javier Bardem as the assassin in No Country for Old Men received the award for his evil character with a bad hairdo. Casey Affleck gave a great performance in The Assassination of Jesse James for which he was nominated and in Gone Baby Gone directed by his brother Ben Affleck. Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton was outstanding and I think should have won. Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the best character actors working today, (See Capote or Red Dragon for examples), was nominated for Charlie Wilson’s War, a movie that is very relevant with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Holbrook, who I once saw in person portraying Mark Twain, was the sentimental choice for Sean Penn’s Into The Wild.

Best Picture nominees:
“Atonement”
“Juno”
“Michael Clayton”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

Best Director nominees:
Julian Schnabel, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
Jason Reitman, “Juno”
Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton”
Joel and Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”
Paul Thomas Anderson, “There Will Be Blood”

No Country For Old Men received the Best Picture and Best Director deservedly, but these movies along with There Will Be Blood are not my father’s westerns. There are no singing cowboys. There are evil psychotic characters, who portray a much more realistic few of human foibles. Juno is the only movie with redeeming human beings in this category, but had no chance in a shootout. No Country to me was like a realist western sat in today’s time period. Drugs and money instead of robbing the stagecoach.

Original screenplay nominees:
Diablo Cody, “Juno”
Nancy Oliver, “Lars and the Real Girl”
Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton”
Brad Bird, “Ratatouille”
Tamara Jenkins, “The Savages”

Adapted screenplay nominees:
Christopher Hampton, “Atonement”
Sarah Polley, “Away From Her”
Ronald Harwood, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
Joel and Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”
Paul Thomas Anderson, “There Will Be Blood”

Juno received the award deserved it. I thought it was one of the funniest and clever of the year. The Coen brothers won for No Country based on Cormac McCarthy’s book of the same name.

All in all a year of dark films and anti-heroes, but I think almost always playing a bad guy is a lot more fun for the actors. This was a year you did not take your grandma to the movies, but if you want to see some great acting it was a very good year.