awards

Tonight is Oscar Night and I will be watching. I don't recall when I started tuning in to the Oscar shows, but I remember watching them as an undergraduate at NIU in DeKalb, Illinois. It was a good distraction from approaching mid-terms and I think I was still in love with Paul Newman who starred in "Cool Hand Luke" around that time and was the ultimate cool "dude" to me at the time. I also adored Audrey Hepburn and the style she brought to a room of glitter.

I love the movies. I still have a quiet aspiration to write a movie script, while, at the same time, struggling to find the time to write my weekly blog. But I make time for movies. Last night we rented the most recent "Wall Street" movie. I really like Carey Mulligan, the new star from Britain. I loved her in the movie adaptation of the book "Never Let me Go." She should have been nominated for that role this year. But there are good women roles out there for mature ladies as well as the young ones who seem to come out of nowhere and light up the screen (an old metaphor but it still works when it is true).

Great movies are great stories. I don't know how an actor does what s/he does: becomes another person and can "act" as the lights and props and cameras surround them as their inanimate audience. Where do they go in their psyche to become the story? The Greeks knew that stories were cathartic. We, the animate audience, live through the emotions of the actors.

In "The Black Swan", I felt terror and passion as the ballerina went mad and danced with joy. In "The Fighter", I felt the tears and anger of the fighters' mother as she strained to retain control of her sons and her life. When an actor is really good, as Christian Bale is in that same movie, gender doesn't matter: I forget that his character is a man and open up to feel what he is feeling---even if it is a feeling that I have never felt before. And good actors can do just that: take you where you dare not go in real life. Annette Bening, in "The Kids Are All Right" is a lesbian mom, in turmolt for her family. It wasn't hard at all for me to be inside of her character while, at the same time, liking her and wanting to shake her!

It's a ride to be inside of the story and when it doesn't work for me, as it didn't in "Social Network", I want to leave the room. What kept me in the theatre for that movie was the rapsody of words that the script offered to the story. Aaron Sorkin is an amazing writer and I hope he wins tonight for the best script.

I don't need to go to an Oscars party and play at being at the Oscars. I just need a comfortable couch on a late winter night to tease me with celebrity glamour and offer me a taste of being the best at an art I admire and enjoy.

What do you like to do on Oscar night? How do you celebrate? What's the best movie you have seen this year?? And the worst!!