I remember being floored by Kate Winslet’s cameo on “Extras,” one of the greatest comedy series ever. Check this out (via Sullivan):
…but I didn’t expect the joke to come true, down to every particular, with Winslet’s Oscar win for “The Reader” last night.
Ron Rosenbaum saw “The Reader” so that I don’t have to:
True, she’s unrepentant for the most part about allowing those women and children to burn to death. (Although we do see one scene in which it turns out she’s saved some pennies in prison that she wants to be given to the children of the women she murdered—thanks!) But most of what we see of her prison experience is her excitement at her growing literacy skills. Get a load of those pages turning! Reading is fun!
Anyhow, I’m quite sick of films — “The Reader” is one, “The Last King of Scotland” another — that get handed Oscars for trying to establish that such-and-such a mass murderer is actually, deep down, a human being. Sorry, that doesn’t count as an intellectual discovery.
[P.S. – Only in Hollywood could Sean Penn, an apologist for the longest-surviving dictatorship in Latin America, be hailed for “defending human rights.” But kudos to Penn for calling out the anti-gay protesters and speaking up against discrimination here in the States.]
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