hollywood heavyweights

Ellen Degeneres made for a legendary host at this year's Oscars. Since I can remember, this is the one television broadcast that I so look forward to... and nothing has changed since. Its not so much the celebrity element, but it is the whole atmosphere that sucks me in.... when the winners are announced and the orchestra soars...all senses are heigtened and flung into the heavens. When the verbal carthasis of speeches squeeze past vocal cords paralysed from ecstacy...and the overflowing tears of shock, surprise, joy and sheer gratitude.....its an overwhelming sight. Hahah .. a little dramatic you may scoff... but seriously..... to watch icons like Clint Eastwood present Ennio Morricone with an Honorary Oscar for music acheivement, Spielberg and Francis F Coppolla giving Martin Scorcese his award for Best Director and the likes of Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Babra Streisand and Robert Redford honoring each others work throughout the decades. These are the people who breathed life into characters like Annie Hall, who brought us priceless movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Godfather, The Unforgiven... I could go on and on and on. The first movies I watched in the cinema with my parents was the Indiana Jones trilogy.... I mean Steven Spielberg's gift to tell a story, be it science fiction or not, is unparalleled. With him, you're either taking flight on bicycles with E.T., or running helter-skelter with dinasours, or trying to grapple with the possibility of time travel.....ABSOLUTE GENIUS.
The forementioned are only a few that represent the old-school of Hollywood, they are the real drama kings and queens. To me, I think, Woody Allen, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks are icons not because they wear Prada, or Armani or because they graze the cover of Cosmo, or TIME.....instead they are celebrated and remembered because to us they are the characters they play...characters we fall in love with,characters we identify with and for that moment we feel just a little less alone, characters who will touch our hearts and make us cry, make us laugh... make us hope that a little of that silver screen magic will transcend reality. We don't know them any other way.
For 2 hours, they whisk you away to The Bridges of Madison County, or to the Village in New York, out into space or you find yourselves confined in one room for 3 hours or so with 12 Angry Men. They made movies that inspired, provoked thought and stirred emotion.... and they did it in style!!!! And to see a 76 year old Clint Eastwood making 2 movies about the same story simultaneously, telling the story from both sides... seriously..... how awesome is that...(The Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima).

There are movies and then there are movies...... those epic displays of cinematic pyrotechnics.
There are actors and then there are actors...... those legends whose gift to tell a story precede their own physical existence.