Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 2003

The Contenders:

Jude Law: Cold Mountain
Ben Kingsley: The House of Sand and Fog
Bill Murray: Lost in Translation
Sean Penn: Mystic River (winner)
Johnny Depp: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Format: DVD from personal collection on rockin’ flatscreen.

When the first Pirates of the Caribbean film was announced, there weren’t a lot of people who had high hopes for it. Oh, I knew I’d go see it, but I didn’t expect much. The only exception to this I know is my friend Doug, but he’s not an objective voice on this one. Doug will watch anything with wooden ships and/or pirates in it; he actually liked Cutthroat Island. And then the reviews started coming in. Gore Verbinski had done the unthinkable and created something far more than anyone thought possible: a genuinely good and entertaining film based on a theme park ride. Usually it goes the other way—movie first, theme park ride second.

We get a nice tease at the start when young Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley eventually) not only rescues a young boy named Will Turner (Orlando Bloom after the opening scene) from a ship that has been raided by pirates. Will is wearing a medallion that looks suspiciously like it should belong to pirates, and since the penalty for piracy is death, she hides it.