Candidates as Nominees?
Photo: Anne Siegel (Used under Creative Commons License)
George Clooney, who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the legal drama Michael Clayton, told Time magazine before the show that he expected the statuette to go to Ireland’s Daniel Day-Lewis. “For me, it’s like being Hillary Clinton,” Clooney said. “If it weren’t for Barack Obama, it would have been a very good year.”
- Breitbar.com
Really? It seems a bit presumptuous of Clooney to compare himself to Clinton. Who says his performance was the second best of the year?
I think Clooney is more like Chris Dodd: great resume, likeable guy. But the second best actor? Of the year? Hardly. Clooney in Michael Clayton was a paint-by-numbers performance in a paint-by-numbers movie. Much like Dodd, who is perfectly adequate but hardly inspirational, especially compared to some of the other candidates.
Now that the Oscars are over, let’s take a look at the other candidates’ Hollywood counterparts:
Hillary Clinton is… Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett is a wonderful actress, and last summer you’d have thought her a strong contender for best actress (in Elizabeth: The Golden Age). But the movie stunk, and besides, it’s a sequel. A sequel to a movie that’s nine years old. Meanwhile, she also had a shot at best supporting actress (see where I’m going with this?) for her role as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. She lost both.
John McCain is… Diablo Cody
You might say McCain is like Hal Holbrook in that they were both alive for the birth of cinema, but Holbrook lost to Javier Bardem, whose haircut, by the way, makes him kinda look like Fred Thompson.
John McCain is more like Diablo Cody, screenwriter of Juno, who won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Cody is a media darling, and indeed, her bio is a good read. Unfortunately, she’s the most overrated screenwriter in Hollywood. A backlash against her may have started, but too late to keep her from winning. Cody benefited from a dearth of competition in the category of Best Original Screenplay (Lars and the Real Girl? Michael Clayton?), as opposed to Adapted Screenplay, which was actually competitive.
Mike Huckabee is… Julian Schnabel
Kinda looked like he had a chance for a second when he won a Golden Globe for best director, but in retrospect, he was always a long shot. His film, which got shut out at the Oscars, was bit too non-traditional for the Academy, and made very little money. But we’re glad he was nominated, and we hope to see more of him in the future.
John Edwards is… Michael Moore
There’s something a little disenguous about Moore’s brand of populism. It may have worked in 1989 but it feels a little dated. Sicko was an overly simplistic take on a complicated issue. It’s overly divisive at a time when we… oh, you get the idea.
As a side bar, the documentary No End in Sight, which seemed to suggest that the Iraq war was well intentioned but mismanaged, was upset by Taxi to the Dark Side, which was against the war from the beginning.
– Hillel Aron
