Wrestling Over Oscar

Midnight at a coffee shop. (No, it's not Moby Dicks.)

Over coffee me and my college friends discuss who should have won this year's Academy Award for best actor. It's been two weeks already, and the aftershock still reverberates.

While Sean Penn received the precious paperweight, darkspark feels it should have gone to Mickey Rourke- the star of such movies as Diner, Rumble Fish, 9 1/2 Weeks, Barfly, and Angel Heart.

Withavengeance agrees: He wonders how Penn could have won when he had taken it home already five years ago.

Lamplighter thinks it's because of Proposition No. 8. Penn is the respected actor they can look to who can give a voice to the Hollywood community.

I think Penn had a lot of advantages over Rourke. He was in the bigger movie- a studio movie- with more earnings and nominations, and better machinery.

Penn was already on his fifth nod, while Rourke was just having his first. Recently, we saw Alan Arkin (three-time nominee) go away with the Oscar, beating front-runner Eddie Murphy (who was on his first nod).

And more than anything, the win is rooted in their respective personas as celebrities.

Because The Wrestler is like art imitating life (Rourke's back story), a lot of voters might have thought, "Is this acting?"

On the other hand, Penn is seen as the brash macho who plays it gay. Now, that's acting. Hence, the Oscar.