Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1999

The Contenders:

Kevin Spacey: American Beauty (winner)
Denzel Washington: The Hurricane
Russell Crowe: The Insider
Richard Farnsworth: The Straight Story
Sean Penn: Sweet and Lowdown

Living in Django's Shadow

Film: Sweet and Lowdown
Format: DVD from Franklin Grove Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

Before I get into the nuts and bolts of Sweet and Lowdown, I feel like I should go through my own history with Django Reinhardt, who plays a significant part of the plot. Back in my college days, my roommates and I lived under a quintet of nursing students. They kept weird hours, which included them blasting metal at 2:00 in the morning. In retaliation, one of my roommates and I used to turn our speakers toward the ceiling and blast Django Reinhardt and similar music in the middle of the day. Petty, sure. But funny.

Anyway, Sweet and Lowdown is a fictionalized version of the life of guitarist Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), who considers himself the second-best guitarist in the world, second only, in fact, to the fabled Django Reinhardt. He also considers himself one of the greatest pool players in the country as well as one of the best poker players around. In fact, in Emmet’s mind, there is nothing that he can’t do. The truth is that he can’t keep to a budget, show up to a gig on time, or sober, or sometimes show up at all.