Film Experience Blog

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

10 comments:

Henry said...: If you ever do a rewind to 1992's Best Picture race with the new rules in place, please include the blurb on how Malcolm X was snubbed. Hell, Denzel was snubbed for Best Actor that year! Still the best performance of his incredible career. I will not argue about this.; 5:37 PM
DH said...: I agree with Henry on both points. This is the period Spike Lee was at his peak, and The Oscars completely ignored him.; 6:29 PM
lawyer tony fernando said...: Is this a way to tell us that you have dyed your hair?; 6:29 PM
Jim T said...: "Is this a way to tell us that you have dyed your hair?"

Or that you're moving to Washington?; 7:19 PM
Anonymous said...: Both Oscars he won were not well deserved. I am very sorry to say it but he should have only won for Glory, if necessary.; 7:37 PM
Anonymous said...: I agree, Although I LOVED training day, I though Tom Wilkinson should have won in 01. But Denzel should have won for Malcolm X; 7:46 PM
Devin D said...: The more I think about it, the more Ethan Hawke's nomination in 2001 pleases me. Well deserved, though I agree with the thinking that he was carried to the shortlist on Denzel's back - by the critics, media, and all that jazz - simply because the film was otherwise less than oscar-friendly.; 5:35 AM
Unknown said...: Hawke's position in "Training Day" was a bit like Jamie Foxx's in "Collateral". They both played the actual lead in the film, but were largely ignored in favour of a star playing the exceptional villain role to their rather ordinary guy roles. And they both were nominated ion the supporting category.
I actually thought Hawke did as fine a job as he ever did in "Training Day", in the last third actually putting on the worn-out, determined look of one Nick Nolte, when he goes to get his revenge on Denzel.

But I digress... Denzel was great in "Malcolm X", but he deserved to win for "Training Day" as well. Not to mention for "The Hurricane", which was a mediocre movie, but what a performance!; 8:17 AM
NATHANIEL R said...: asokan. agreed on both counts when it comes to hawke.

and Denzel definitely deserved the win for Malcolm X. But i think he's great in Training Day and I've never fully understood the resistance to that win.; 10:18 AM
Henry said...: Hey, I love Training Day as much as the next person. In fact, I just recently popped it into my DVD player for a Friday-night movie marathon (I guess the theme would be "cuss as much as possible" because it had a couple of Tarantino films in there too) and I still marvel at Denzel's fiery performance. He owns the screen whenever he's on it.

But Malcolm X is on a different level. It's a full character. One of the few times where I could actually say, "That's not Denzel. That's Malcolm." He becomes the character. He owns the character. He owns the film (which is also masterful), right from the start. How they dismissed this for Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (which made the loss sting even more and be all the more perplexing) is one in a litany of egreigious Academy mistakes over the years.; 12:18 PM