Best Picture Nominee: Milk (2008)

Upon moving to San Francisco from New York City in 1972, forty year old Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) gains focus in his life as a gay activist in the city's Castro district. Hilarity ensues as gay rights activism turns to political activism as Milk decides he can be a more effective voice for the gay community as a politician, elected or not. Through several elections and losses both for a city seat and a state assembly seat, Milk becomes the first openly gay man in the United States to be elected to political office when he wins a San Francisco supervisor seat in 1977. His many political battlefronts include one with the national anti-gay Save the Children crusade, led and fronted by singer Anita Bryant. Closer to home, Milk has a continuing struggle with his fellow supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin), a staunch social conservative.

Trivia: Thousands of people agreed to take part in the film as extras for free. The filming location for Harvey Milk's business, Castro Camera, was the real storefront where the actual business had once been. At the time of filming (mid-2008), it was a gift shop called "Given"; the film crew worked with the owner of the gift shop to recreate the look of Milk's camera store inside the space and restored it to its 2008 appearance after filming. It was widely reported that while filming a scene at the old Castro Camera, some of the actors claimed that they saw a man come in and sit on a couch. After the scene was filmed, nobody else claimed to have seen the man, and the actors themselves went on to claim that it was perhaps the ghost of Harvey Milk. The apartment that was used in the film is the real apartment Harvey Milk lived in on the Lower Haight in San Francisco.

Tonight we have another multi-nominated film. Besides Best Picture, both Sean Penn and Josh Brolin were nominated as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively. Josh Brolin doesn't have a chance, he will be up against Heath Ledger, the almost certain supporting actor winner. But Sean Penn has a decent chance. I don't hide the fact that I dislike Sean Penn, mostly because of his politics, but he has had some good roles. I also think he gets more then his share of accolades for his work, basically he gets nominations like this because he is Sean Penn (See Meryl Streep). But his take of Milk is very engaging and is in my top three male performances this year. As with Frost/Nixon, I was alive when this true story actually happened, but I was under 10 and pretty oblivious to the news so it was interesting to see what was happening on that side of America coupled with my trip last summer to San Fransisco it was a pretty cool film to watch.