I need to get through this quickly. Three important pieces of entertainment news came at me at once and my head is spinning, so here goes. Fred Dalton Thompson dropped out of the presidential race. I feel that if Branch was going to leave the show, he better be leading my country. But the good news is they will be able to put his reruns back into circulation. I don't know how I feel about Sam Waterston in charge. The theory is we'll see him less, right? Booooooo! This new president we're getting instead better be awesome.
Second, the Oscars were announced and missing from the Best Actress Category was Keira Knightly. There was a lot of buzz in the beginning that she would take home the big prize for Atonement. I already live in a world where Reese Witherspoon, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta Jones, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Julia Roberts all have Oscars and Sigourney Weaver, Julianne Moore, Glenn Close, and Kate Winslet have multiple friutless nominations. Even more infuriating, Hilary Swank has as many Oscars as Meryl Streep and Jodie Foster. Thankfully we have in the recent category Cate Blanchett and Helen Mirren to restore come sanity to this tragic system. No nomination for Knightly, no possibility my head will explode due to an announcement at the Kodak Theater on February 24th.
Finally, there is the untimely death of Heath Ledger. This is a great loss to the artistic community. He was a great actor and there is no way to measure what he could have contributed. One unfortunate confession though. Is it bad that when I heard the news, I thought "somewhere Jake Gyllenhaal is crying into a shirt"? Yeah, I'm going to hell.
