Sunday, February 25, 2007

Jake La Motta is a real person

I apologize ole blog for not posting for such a long time. The winter blues has set in and it is difficult for me to wrap my head around anything.

With the Oscars coming at us today, I wanted to spend sometime talking about a film that actually deserves some accolades. I learned today that Jake LaMotta the boxer from the 1980 film Raging Bull is actually a real person. He was a middleweight boxer with an 85 and 4 records. After he was done with his boxing career, we was an actor. He appears in several films most notably in The Hustler, the great Paul Newman flick, as the bartender.

Robert De Niro won an Oscar for his intense portrayal of La Motta in Raging Bull. The Academy seems to have a record of awarding Oscars to performers portraying real mostly-famous people. This year (tonight), we will see. A few of the best actor nominees portray real people, but none as famous as Idi Amin portrayed by one of my favorite actors, Forrest Whitaker. Same could be said about the Best Actress category with Helen Mirren portraying Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. Guess who is considered the front runners this year? You got it.