Legendary actor Paul Newman has died at the age of 83 after a battle with cancer. And no, to those readers who haven’t appreciated my fake articles, this is no joke.

He had most lately been attached to a project to direct Of Mice and Men in the fall, but dropped that earlier this year for “unspecified health reasons.”

I just watched Cool Hand Luke the other day (review coming soon), but Newman is known for a lot more than just that film. I have to admit that, having grown up in the 1980’s, I really haven’t seen that many Paul Newman movies for some reason, but he’s always been considered one of the classiest and most respectable actors in the world… and that guy on the salad dressing bottles.

Anyway, I won’t drag on any long emotional thoughts as that’s not my thing – but it’s a sad thing to wake up to on this Saturday morning.

On January 25, 2008, shortly after Heath Ledger’s death, I conjectured on whether the actor would win an Oscar posthumously for his portrayal of the Joker in the upcoming movie The Dark Knight. The Heath Ledger Oscar post is here, and examines the chances of actors winning awards after their deaths. It’s a rare feat indeed.

Now, six months later, on the eve of the release of The Dark Knight, critics are echoing what fans have only guessed based on 20 seconds worth of footage, that Heath Ledger should and will receive an Oscar nomination for his role as the Joker. In this article, AP writer David Germain drills into the what-if’s, James Dean and the cautious marketing approach Warner Brothers is taking to tout Ledger’s performance and get him a nomination.

The Dark Knight movie reviews I’ve seen so far for have been just short of heavenly, and Ledger is getting immense praise. At this point, it’s almost certain that Ledger will receive an Oscar nomination. The bigger question is whether he can defy the odds and actually win an Oscar more than a year after his death?

The Associated Press is reporting that an actor who played a minor role in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has died after being stabbed to death. Eighteen-year-old Rob Knox was killed when he got involved in a fight outside a bar. Allegedly, a 21-year old suspect, who has been taken into custody, pulled a knife and stabbed Knox to death.

Knox played Ravenclaw student Marcus Belby in the new Harry Potter movie. The article does not indicate whether Belby already filmed his scene, though, with the movie set to release in less than six months, one would assume that he had.

Fourteen teenagers have been violently killed in London since the beginning of the year.

The coroner announced today that Heath Ledger died as a result of an accidental overdose of about a dozen different prescribed medicines, the belief being that he had been prescribed the drugs by different doctors and thus took something that reacted badly with something else. This is all fine and good, and to save a bit of Ledger’s reputation, the death is ruled “accidental”, but how accidental was his death?

After all, the guy literally had a ridiculous amount of different drugs in his system. How can one determine that he took them all intending to simply get high or go to sleep, rather than commit suicide? I’m not saying he did, but how do we know he didn’t? How much of it is a PR move to protect his image? In Ledger’s father’s quote to the press, he specifies “accidental” as if telling us to believe it.

Of course, we do want to believe it. No one likes to hear that someone committed suicide, especially a celebrity who is appreciated and respected by so many people. You look up to people like this and say, “Man, if I had that life…” It’s just a waste. Of course, according to the death report and everyone else, Ledger’s death isn’t a suicide, and that’s fine. But it is clear that Ledger had a problem with drugs… no sane person, no matter how tired or desperate, would take or even acquire the variety of drugs he had in his system. That’s sad to think about, too, because if he had a problem, someone had to know about it, and that someone could have done something to prevent this.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the Ledger situation. I’ll stop writing about him now, until The Dark Knight comes out, of course.

I haven’t seen many blogs discussing this, so I thought I’d raise the question: Could Heath Ledger win an Oscar for his portrayal of The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie The Dark Knight? At the very least, could he receive an Oscar nomination?

The thought is unlikely – after all, action movies – especially action movies based on comic books featuring a man dressed up in a rubber bat suit – are hardly critical fodder for nominations of any sort outside of a few technical awards such as editing and visual effects. Jack Nicholson didn’t receive any major awards, or nominations, for his portrayal of Batman’s arch nemesis – and yet he was praised for his performance and is, at least for a few more months, still considered to have the best comic book villain performance ever.

But… is Academy Award recognition, whether it be through a win or a nomination, that unreasonably for the late Heath Ledger, who died earlier this week from an apparent drug overdose? Let’s look at the possibilities:

• Heath Ledger already has an Oscar nomination for his excellent performance in Brokeback Mountain. Repeat nominees often have a better chance.
• Heath Ledger was a good looking guy, and in his upcoming role, he plays a disfigured psychopath. Oscar voters love good-looking people who make themselves ugly (though this tend to applies more to women than men).
• The Dark Knight is a comic book movie, yes, but of all of the comic book movies that could have had a chance at award nominations, Oscar or otherwise, Batman Begins is the most serious, dramatically significant, character-driven film of them all. Expectations are that The Dark Knight is going to have the same brooding, dark approach to it that the previous film had.
• The Dark Knight is directed for Christopher Nolan, who so far has yet to direct a bad movie. Popular, critically favored directors can help elevate a film and its actors.
• The buzz around Heath Ledger’s performance, even before his death, was and is huge. Snippets of his performance that have been seen in trailers and clips have been downright terrifying.
• It looks like Heath Ledger has transformed himself into the villain of villains, and will do what no other actor has done: to overshadow Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of The Joker.
• Some people are blaming Heath Ledger’s death on his devotion and submersion into his role as The Joker; the actor was apparently only sleeping a couple hours a night because The Joker was so disturbing and evil. It is possible that Ledger overdosed on sleeping pills. Essentially, it is possible that Heath Ledger “died” as a result of playing The Joker.
• Heath Ledger is dead. Let’s face it – the emotional vote is in his favor.

To push on my last point a little more, madbeast.com says there are six actors to be nominated for acting Oscars posthumously:

• Jeanne Eagels received a Best Actress nomination months after dying of a Heroin overdose.
• James Dean received two nominations after his fatal car crash.
• Spencer Tracy received his ninth Best Actor nomination after dying.
• Peter Finch died of a heart attack some say was a result of an exhaustive effort to win the Oscar for Network. After WINNING THE AWARD, his costar and fellow nominee William Holden said, “If the son of a bitch
  hadn’t died, I could have won my second Oscar.” Hmm…
• Ralph Richardson died five months before his Tarzan movie was released; he was subsequently nominated.
• Massimo Troisi died a day after completing Il Postino; he received nominations for Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.

So, again, we realize that a Batman film is an unlikely place to find an Oscar-winning performance in any way or form, but actors have been nominated posthumously before. The Dark Knight comes out in the summer, not a very good time to showcase an actor’s capabilities for Oscar voters, but the film will be hitting DVD sometime before Christmas, and it will hit big. Every voter will see the movie, and every voter will be reminded of Heath Ledger’s death.

Until that day, who knows, but it’s certainly an interesting prospect. What do you think?