tmbt: oscar best

The most beautiful thing about the 2009 Academy Awards was the way that they presented the acting awards, for starters. To have an ensemble of those that have come before you salute your work and then embrace you into the ranks for their honor proved to be a most touching and appropriate change. In this year’s Oscar ceremony we saw more than I have ever seen it, a sense of true community. And this change of presentation was just the beginning.

We saw a host of leading ladies defer to acting royalty Meryl Streep, the return of a near-lost Mickey Rourke, the rise of the underdog Slumdog, and honoring of stellar careers of work in the leading acting awards of Kate Winslet and Sean Penn.  We saw award recipients honor their non-American home countries as several languages called out from the podium as highlighted by Penelope Cruz‘s acceptance for best supporting actress. We heard a call for more humanity in the speeches of Sean Penn and Milk writer Dunstin Lance Black in the denouncement of Prop 8. And we saw the honoring of Jerry Lewis for his lifetime’s work for muscular dystrophy.

We don’t often see the best of Hollywood. We are reminded of the vanity and the madness again and again in the media and though most little girls do, indeed, practice speeches in the bathroom mirror while holding a shampoo bottle as a make-shift golden statuette, we seldom feel very connected. Tonight, we saw commonality, inspiration, and compassion. It was the Oscars and it really was pretty beautiful.

~ Heather 

~ by HeatherArtLife on February 22, 2009.