Energy Plus

Caught bits and pieces of "Walk the Line" again on TV last night.

Reese Witherspoon won the Oscar for Best Actress in 2006 for her role as June Carter Cash and, given, the peculiar choices that year, it was well deserved.

Joaquin Phoenix lost out to Philip Seymour Hoffman, who pretty much had the award to himself the moment "Capote" was released.

And Phoenix is pretty darn good in all of the dialogue scenes. From moment to moment, shy, determined, crushed, enraged, addicted, desperate and so on.

But...

When he straps that guitar on and leans into a microphone some alchemy beyond explanation takes place.

He is utterly transformed and imbued with a wild, deranged beautiful energy.

The performance and concert scenes are astonishing.

What is so strange is that this is exactly what happened with Jamie Foxx in his Oscar-winning performance in "Ray."

Both movies are rather pedestrian. Predictable and formulaic music star biopics.

But in both cases, the two actors get hit by a bug when they take on the music.

And in both cases the result is electric every time you watch.

I mean electric.

Last night, I kept switching over to some other movie or the news or whatever during the expository dramatic scenes.

As soon as the singing came back on, I was there, whooping it up and with tears in my eyes.

Go back to these two flicks for a helluva good Saturday Night time.