Heath Ledger A Favorite For Posthumous Oscar Win?
The reviews for The Dark Night are coming in, and the reviews for Heath Ledger's performance are overwhelmingly positive. Some people even say that his portrayal of The Joker could very well win an Oscar:
Critics have described the performance as 'spellbinding' and say it is his best ever.The Dark Knight received the rave reviews after critics were shown a preview of the new blockbuster at the weekend.
The Australian actor died of an overdose in his New York apartment soon after shooting the film, in January this year. [...]
Heath was nominated for an Oscar following his performance in Brokeback Mountain in 2006 but missed out on the award to Philip Seymour Hoffman.
In Rolling Stone magazine, critic Emmanuel Levy described Heath in his Dark Knight role: ' can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker.
'It's typical of Ledger's total commitment to films as diverse as Brokeback Mountain and I'm Not There that he does nothing out of vanity or the need to be liked.
'If there's a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976's Network, sign me up.'
Now, I'm going to say something, at the risk of being totally skewered. I agree that Heath was an extremely talented actor and he probably deserved more accolades for his talent than he received during his short life. But there are a lot of other talented actors out there who deserve the same thing. I haven't really heard much buzz on who might be nominated, but there's no doubt that the Oscar field will be packed with talent...people just as talented, or perhaps more so, than Heath.
Don't get me wrong, I mean no disrespect. I haven't seen the trailer, but if Heath's portrayal truly deserves to win then I sincerely hope it does. From everything I've read, it's the best of the Batman movies thus far, and Heath's performance is a huge part of making it so. But I don't want him to win because it was his last completed role and because of sympathy or sentimentality...I want him to win because he deserved it, because anything else would cheapen his memory.
(On another note, does that picture give anyone else the total creeps?)
Follow Technorati