For One Oscar Nominee the Magic May Be Over

I must admit I did watch the Oscars with my wife last night, but in a concession to my general hatred of the event we used the DVR to our advantage and didn't start watching until the program was already about an hour old. That way I could zip through the multitude of commercials, and zip through every acceptance speech...except Sandra Bullock's. We watched that one because she was the one nominee that I was glad to see win. She portrayed the mother in a Christian family, and an NRA member to boot, whose Christ-like behavior is a model that Hollywood rarely acknowledges, let alone honors. Hers was a surprise win.

One advantage of watching the show that way was that, thanks to Twitter, I knew who the winners were before they came on TV. I was able to make a number of amazingly accurate predictions...before my wife figured it out.

Given the way Hollywood loves to honor dreary stories and political correctness I thought for sure that newcomer Gabourey Sidibe would win for her role in Precious, a depressing piece of filmmaking that I'll never see because I can't think of anything that would interest me less. And it's her that I'm thinking about in the title of this post.

She may have been perfectly suited to the role she played in Precious, but I can't help but think she has now reached the high point of her movie career and the downhill slide will be fast. She had a Cinderella moment, but the ball's over and the clock has hit midnight. Most Oscar nominees could count on a stack of scripts to choose from for their next project, but sadly for Sidibe that's probably not happening. She may end up as the most typecast actress in history, and parts like that aren't going to come along very often. Unfortunately, her physical presence is going to be a very limiting factor for any acting career for which she might have hoped.

I hope she got the most out of her moment in the spotlight.

Oh, and next year, just go with Steve Martin. Alec Baldwin really didn't add much to the hosting duties.