Walk the Unknown White Male Line

Ok. I FINALLY saw "Walk The Line". It's ok, in that better-than-a-tv-biopic way. Though not better than, say, "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers." I'm not a Johnny Cash fan to begin with, so this had a hard row to hoe for me. Plus, I saw it on a plane. And I dozed off at one point. However, Joaquin Phoenix does a really good job as Johnny Cash and, though I sort of don't want to admit it, Reese Witherspoon does pull out ALL of her best tricks as June Carter. She does quite the job as an actress portraying an actress, who is acting for Johnny. My only hesitation in their performances is that I didn't see them age during the 20+ years that the film traces. But considering how I am not a country music fan, I wasn't completely turned off by the numbers, which were well produced by T. Bone Burnett. The sound mix was a bit odd, though, as you could tell that Witherspoon was dubbed in later, whereas Phoenix sounded 'live.'

Anyway, now that I've seen it, I feel qualified in 'passing judgement' regarding Witherspoon's Oscar chances. I LOVED Felicity Huffman in "Transamerica," which I just saw a second time this week. However, I can see why one might cast their vote at Reese W., as she nearly steals the flick away from Phoenix, and she doesn't even enter for nearly a half hour into it! Say what you will about the gossip surrounding her unlikeable work habits, the girl can act!

On a completely unrelated note, I saw "Unknown White Male" a couple of weeks ago. It's a documentary about a (VERY handsome) man who completely lost his memory (retrograde amnesia) and his re-introduction to his 'old life.' Oddly enough, what could have been fairly dramatic, was just dull. The director is an old friend of his and, basically took advantage of the situation. However, he didn't give us enough of a look into the man's personality to really care about him - before or after the amnesia hit. It also raises more issues than it cares to address. For instance, the admitting nurse talks about how good looking he is, which one assumes why they worked so hard at finding SOME connection to his identity. If he had been a poor black man, I would kind of guess that he would have been sent back out into the streets. Also, the structure of the film is just... fishy. At the time, I was wondering why no one from his recent past were included. The film just focusses on OLD friends from 20 years ago. Roger Ebert has written a commentary which expresses some doubt as to the authenticity of the documentary itself. As the characters lacked any real 'heart' I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it was a poorly acted fake.