Sunday 11 September 2011

Best Supporting Actor 2001: Jon Voight in Ali

Jon Voight received his fourth nomination so far for portraying Howard Cossell in Ali.

This is a bizarre nomination that can only be explained by the academy wanting to see Jon Voight again I guess, or the academy was really taken with two far from perfect impersonations if you can call them that from this film. Voight is barely in the film really, and he does not even have a single scene to stand out he mainly is just there with a great deal of his performance being a voice over of a boxing match. Voight is bizarre looking with his Cossell makeup that frankly has an odd ghoulish quality to it, because Voight's eyes do not fit with the makeup.

The main question with this performance is how the impersonation is becuase frankly that is all the performance is. Well it is not very good. He sounds stiff as Cossell, and his impersonation never sounds really like the real Cossell, but just a comic imitation that really is not suppose to be funny. There simply is no reason this lackluster impersonation should have been nominated for any sort of acting award.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, it must be incredibly terrible.

Anonymous said...

It's amazing how little screentime he has.

dshultz said...

A friend of mine once wanted me to see Ali with him. I declined for reasons of my own, but after this review and the one of Will Smith, I'm really glad I did.

mrripley said...

He really is nothing special,his screen time is so limited,he hardly has a scene to call his own,reminded me of Catherine Keener's work in Capote.

Carolyn Renz said...

Wow, it must be incredibly terrible.

Anonymous said...

I remember that the clip they chose for his performance focused on Smith more than Voight and I find that hilarious.