a damn shame
I usually don't get all weepy and whatnot when a celebrity dies; I understand that death is an inevitable part of life, etc. Lately I've been thinking though, about the late Heath Ledger. When he died in January, I didn't think much of it. I don't think I had even seen any of the movies he'd been in up to that point. But a few months after he died, I rented "I'm Not There," a bio-pic of sorts about Bob Dylan, in which he plays an actor playing a folk singer based on Dylan. The film is quite good, and his performance in particular was good (Cate Blanchett steals this show, truth be told, but Ledger stood out). And then of course in the summer, there was The Dark Knight, which to me lived up to all the internet hype and bullshit. Ledger's Joker was mesmerizing, his performance was a spark of brilliance in an otherwise average film. And that's when I really started thinking that it was a shame, a damn shame, that this person died as young as he did (though he was seven years older than I when he died, and he will be older in my mind until I'm 28 and remember this post or watch the movie on DVD or Blu-ray or brainscan or whatever).