And the award goes to ...

Well I'll be damned. Forest Whitaker has won an Oscar for his portrayal of the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada in The Last King of Scotland. I believe this is the first time anyone has won an Oscar for their portrayal of a dictator ... but hopefully, it won't be the last. I, for one, hope it opens the floodgates for dozens of dictator bio-pics. After all, if they can make a hundred Marvel Comics movies, why can't they start making quality films about Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong or Saparmurat Niazov? Hop to it, Hollywood!

For what it's worth, I enjoyed The Last King of Scotland, but I certainly found it less compelling than the German film Der Untergang. And while Whitaker's take Idi Amin Dada was enjoyable, Bruno Ganz's performance as Adolf Hitler blew Whitaker's Amin out of the water. Where The Last King of Scotland tries to play Amin for laughs, Ganz goes straight for the gut as the exasperated and desperate Hitler in the waning days of the third reich.

Still, it's hard to go wrong with either movie, and as I've said before, I hope this opens up the floodgates for more to come.