I need to write a new blog post. I thought I'd start with some free association thoughts and reflections on the random things I think will happen.
Why should you care what I think? Well, you probably shouldn't. But I do pretty well at this futurism shit. I predicted the economic crash, the housing bubble, Obama's quick approval collapse followed by his slow climb up the ladder, the Nintendo Wii's early dominance, and at one point, six consecutive NCAA national champions.
Of course, I also predicted Rick Perry would dominate the Republican debates. So...
Onto my predictions!
1. If things continue on their current trajectory, Romney will eke it out over Santorum, and Obama will eke it out over Romney.
2. Alternatively, Paul or another media figurine could decide that both parties are weak going into this election and stake a third party bid. If this happens, the elections are going to get messy quickly. This is probably the only way the election result becomes unpredictable, so it will probably happen.
3. Israel and Iran will continue their staring contest, but the next major global brouhaha will come from Pakistan and India. And it'll be the messiest international crisis since the Cold War ended.
4. Peak oil will happen and temporarily destroy the economy...but we'll rebuild it faster than people think. While the US is overreliant on oil, we also waste so much that we could conceivably cut consumption by a fifty percent without even affecting our lifestyle. For example, everyone who owns an SUV could go buy a more fuel efficient car, we could cut the nonstop orgy of business travel, we could stop buying products from halfway around the world and start buying local out of sheer necessity, etc.
5. In fact, peak oil in the long run may *help* the US economy by forcing people to go spend money on more fuel efficient living and buy local products. While this will devastate standard of living in the short term, it'll get people working again in a hurry to facilitate the transition.
6. The next scientific revolution will be biological. We've learned more about biology than anything else over the last ten years, and some of what we've discovered is enormous: the ability to map the genetic code quickly, full activity maps of the human brain (less than ten years ago, high school science taught us we'd *never* know how the brain worked).
7. We'll learn how to 'code' in genetics. DNA comes in two sets of allele pairs that contain the code for every living thing that exists. In a way, this is like 1s and 0s, the backbone of everything we use for computing. Computer science, then, will become a very simple port to biological systems.
8. As we learn how to 'program' in genetic code and better design and build biological structures, bio solutions will rapidly begin to replace manufactured solutions. This will become even more true as oil prices make it more difficult to move physical material around.
9. The energy crisis will be solved when scientists crack the code for photosynthesis. While solar panels have major efficiency limitations, plants seem pretty damn good at converting solar energy to more useful types. And solar has to be the ultimate winner in the renewable war: there's literally an unlimited supply of it (though, as with all other unlimited resources we've had as a species, we'll find a way to use it all eventually).
10. We'll soon be able to grow things that we need more efficiently than manufacture them. By combining genetic code from the millions of sources of life we have, we'll be able to make virtually every product we use today, and improved versions of many of them.
11. While this will start in 'eco-factories', eventually the technology will become portable, and the entire idea of shipping products will fall by the wayside. Instead, our products will be transported as seeds that contain the code for the products we need. Without the shipping and manufacturing costs, these seeds will become virtually free. Industry will, of course, attempt to put a price on them and control their distribution, but hackers and bootleggers will distribute them regardless, like torrents.
12. We'll make the jump to being able to modify our own genetic code as well. While this will have huge medical benefits, it will also be coopted to support enormous genetic modification industries, like plastic surgery and tattoo artists today. Some will use the genetic modifications to achieve a model standard of beauty (like plastic surgery), while others will use it to reject this standard and differentiate themselves from the mainstream crowd (like tattoos and ear gauges).
13. As we get more and more proficient, the types of modifications will become more and more extreme. What starts as skin pigmentation or eye and hair color change will become more and more exotic: horns, scales, fur become available modifications for the counter culture.
14. We'll learn to map the brain and become very knowledgeable in how different parts of the brain create different parts of our reality. Once we know how it works naturally, we'll be able to manipulate it as well. We'll learn to 'adjust' our own experience of the world.
15. This can be as simple as putting a 'skin' over it (like the way you can adapt your computer desktop's visual settings) or as complex as generating a virtual reality that we can escape to and experience as if it were real.
16. We'll use this to create both awesome video games and a new, intensely addictive type of drugs. Some people will spend their entire lives in either type of world, the way a WoW addict lives his life in his bedroom's virtual world or the way a drug addict lives entirely in his drug induced world, slowly modifying his body more and more until outsiders can barely recognize his humanity.
17. We'll also learn how to interface between our virtual, computer worlds and our biological worlds. We'll learn how to download the entirety of wikipedia to our memory banks. We'll be able to 'visit' Minecraft and walk around it as if we were actually there. We'll be able to text and tweet our thoughts directly from brain to brain without the computer interface. In this way, a human hive mind will be created.
18. As these changes evolve, the physical world will gradually become less and less important to more and more people.
19. A few traditionalists will insist on living entirely in the physical world and rejecting the new lifestyle. Nobody under 30 will understand them. Everybody over 30 will envy them.
20. As we learn to communicate directly brain to brain, we'll learn to distribute our art through thought waves as well. Initially, this will be free. But as always, record and film studios will become upset that they're missing out on a profit, and insist that unauthorized mind to mind transfers of copywrited material is a crime. They'll attempt to draft legislation that allows them to sue and jail people for unauthorized thoughts.
21. As always, everybody will ignore these laws and share anyway.
22. Terrorist attacks will become less focused on the physical form and more on this biological hive mind. They'll attempt to create viruses that infect people through their thoughts. An enormous security and defense industry will grow to protect against these types of viruses. Doomsday literature and anxiety will grow about these type of attacks, as they would be literal mutual assured destruction.
23. Just as with nuclear attacks, the suicidal nature of this type of attack will prevent it from happening. The worrying and angst over the possibility will cause more harm to humanity than the threat itself.
24. As we begin to manipulate perception, we'll also begin to manipulate perception of time. We'll be able to grow our experience of nanoseconds out as if they were full minutes or hours or years. As we find ourselves able to do that, we'll also be able to program inhabitable mental environments that take place in 'nanotime'. In this way, humanity will obtain a type of immortality: we'll live whole lifetimes in the seconds between our physical blinks.
25. Many will choose to die regardless.
26. We'll still spend the vast majority of our time thinking about cats in adorable poses.
If you're still reading, damn. Thanks for jumping down this rabbit hole with me. Will it come true? Who knows?
If nothing else, this is a pretty good fucking setup for a kick ass sci-fi novel.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Best Picture Predictions
Soundtrack provided by Wick-it the Instigator
Best Picture
The Artist
The Descendants
The Help
War Horse
Moneyball
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Midnight in Paris
Tree of Life
Hugo
So everything else has been snarky, but I feel like I've snarked each of these films as much as possible. Plus, the Oscars are actually coming up for realsies, so I want to do an actual break down of these films.
First, a caveat: I haven't seen The Descendants, The Help, War Horse, Moneyball, or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. From all accounts, they are: beautiful, cloying, surprising, and exploitative, respectively. Of those, I feel bad about not seeing the Descendants. The Help and War Horse I'm fairly apathetic towards. Moneyball I feel like I should be apathetic towards, but I've heard enough good things to spark my curiosity. Extremely Loud I want to see for the same reason I slow down to look at a car accident on the side of the road. I know I shouldn't, but it's just too damn fascinating.
So let's count down the films I've seen.
Midnight in Paris
This was probably the most delightful film of the year. I walked out of the theater beaming, and every 1920s sequence was pitch perfect. Hemmingway was probably my favorite supporting character of the year. I'm not a 1920s aficionado nor a Francophile, but MiP made me think I could become both.
Ultimately, it's a bit light to outpull the other films on this list, but I don't know if I had a more uplifting experience in theaters this year.
Hugo
The Oscars went all in on 1920s Paris this year. Actually, all four of the best picture nominees that I've seen are nostalgia fests. In fact, the only films that take place in the modern world this year seem to involve the apocalypse (Melancholia, Take Shelter, Another Earth). America needs to cheer up, I think.
Nothing explains the existence of Kung Fu Panda 2 better than Hugo's box office returns, and I don't want to listen to anyone talk about how Hollywood has no original ideas ever again. A visual masterpiece, with a rich tapestry of interwoven stories and characters, amazing adventures, deep inner and outer conflict, and even a wonderful bit of cinematic history, I don't know how much more a single film can pack into a train station.
For a while I even considered Hugo for my favorite film of the year, though it did end up sinking a bit down the list when all was said and done.
The Artist
The Artist was my favorite 'accessible' film of the year and likely the Best Picture winner in the real world this year. I put quote around accessible, b/c how accessible really is a black and white silent film?
Well, it turns out very; I didn't know exactly what to expect when I went into The Artist, but crowdpleaser was certainly not high on the list. But what a crowd pleaser it was! I'm going to find it hard talking about this film without gushing; it was absolutely masterful in its execution, and Dujardin and Bejo oozed more charisma and zest in their performances than any film I've seen in years.
We've had far too much nostalgia here: time to get bitter.
Tree of Life
Ok, so I have to preface this by acknowledging that Tree of Life has no chance.
I know that, you know that, the Academy knows that, Terence Malick and Brad Pitt knows that. That being said, it's the only film on this list that will have long term staying power in cinematic history. It was a tour de force, the most ambitious vision I've seen attempted since Synechdoce, New York, and the most emotionally raw, honest, hyper charged film I've seen in a long, long time.
The degree of difficulty here can't be understated. Yes, The Artist had to sell a black and white silent film to a modern audience, but at least it's couched in a traditional narrative structure. Tree of Life is a philosophical riddle wrapped in a pastiche of disconnected scenes with nothing but the audience's imagination and work ethic to hold them together. It's demanding, mercurial, and maddening, willing to drop the story for 20 minutes to show a visually stunning montage of planets forming and dinosaurs. The story, btw, is set in 1950s rural Texas. This is not an easy leap for audiences to make.
At the end of the day, are there some flaws? Sure. I don't care. Nothing this year was even playing on the same field as Tree of Life in cinematic ambition and panache, and it is and will likely remain my favorite film from 2011.
Now, that being said, there's no fucking way Oscar will agree, so I'll settle for a well deserved nomination and cheer The Artist on.
Now on Sunday, when Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wins, I'm going to print all of these posts out and set them on fire.
Best Picture
The Artist
The Descendants
The Help
War Horse
Moneyball
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Midnight in Paris
Tree of Life
Hugo
So everything else has been snarky, but I feel like I've snarked each of these films as much as possible. Plus, the Oscars are actually coming up for realsies, so I want to do an actual break down of these films.
First, a caveat: I haven't seen The Descendants, The Help, War Horse, Moneyball, or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. From all accounts, they are: beautiful, cloying, surprising, and exploitative, respectively. Of those, I feel bad about not seeing the Descendants. The Help and War Horse I'm fairly apathetic towards. Moneyball I feel like I should be apathetic towards, but I've heard enough good things to spark my curiosity. Extremely Loud I want to see for the same reason I slow down to look at a car accident on the side of the road. I know I shouldn't, but it's just too damn fascinating.
So let's count down the films I've seen.
Midnight in Paris
This was probably the most delightful film of the year. I walked out of the theater beaming, and every 1920s sequence was pitch perfect. Hemmingway was probably my favorite supporting character of the year. I'm not a 1920s aficionado nor a Francophile, but MiP made me think I could become both.
Ultimately, it's a bit light to outpull the other films on this list, but I don't know if I had a more uplifting experience in theaters this year.
Hugo
The Oscars went all in on 1920s Paris this year. Actually, all four of the best picture nominees that I've seen are nostalgia fests. In fact, the only films that take place in the modern world this year seem to involve the apocalypse (Melancholia, Take Shelter, Another Earth). America needs to cheer up, I think.
Nothing explains the existence of Kung Fu Panda 2 better than Hugo's box office returns, and I don't want to listen to anyone talk about how Hollywood has no original ideas ever again. A visual masterpiece, with a rich tapestry of interwoven stories and characters, amazing adventures, deep inner and outer conflict, and even a wonderful bit of cinematic history, I don't know how much more a single film can pack into a train station.
For a while I even considered Hugo for my favorite film of the year, though it did end up sinking a bit down the list when all was said and done.
The Artist
The Artist was my favorite 'accessible' film of the year and likely the Best Picture winner in the real world this year. I put quote around accessible, b/c how accessible really is a black and white silent film?
Well, it turns out very; I didn't know exactly what to expect when I went into The Artist, but crowdpleaser was certainly not high on the list. But what a crowd pleaser it was! I'm going to find it hard talking about this film without gushing; it was absolutely masterful in its execution, and Dujardin and Bejo oozed more charisma and zest in their performances than any film I've seen in years.
We've had far too much nostalgia here: time to get bitter.
Tree of Life
Ok, so I have to preface this by acknowledging that Tree of Life has no chance.
I know that, you know that, the Academy knows that, Terence Malick and Brad Pitt knows that. That being said, it's the only film on this list that will have long term staying power in cinematic history. It was a tour de force, the most ambitious vision I've seen attempted since Synechdoce, New York, and the most emotionally raw, honest, hyper charged film I've seen in a long, long time.
The degree of difficulty here can't be understated. Yes, The Artist had to sell a black and white silent film to a modern audience, but at least it's couched in a traditional narrative structure. Tree of Life is a philosophical riddle wrapped in a pastiche of disconnected scenes with nothing but the audience's imagination and work ethic to hold them together. It's demanding, mercurial, and maddening, willing to drop the story for 20 minutes to show a visually stunning montage of planets forming and dinosaurs. The story, btw, is set in 1950s rural Texas. This is not an easy leap for audiences to make.
At the end of the day, are there some flaws? Sure. I don't care. Nothing this year was even playing on the same field as Tree of Life in cinematic ambition and panache, and it is and will likely remain my favorite film from 2011.
Now, that being said, there's no fucking way Oscar will agree, so I'll settle for a well deserved nomination and cheer The Artist on.
Now on Sunday, when Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wins, I'm going to print all of these posts out and set them on fire.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Oscars: The Stunning Conclusion
So I've let this dangle almost long enough for the Oscars to actually happen. Let's close it out with more arbitrary goodness, shall we?
Beats Antique is providing the soundtrack.
Directing
The Descendants
The Artist
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Tree of Life
Directing Oscars almost always are tied directly to the Best Picture nominees: it normally goes without saying that Best Picture will win Best Director as well. Well, I think that's bullshit. To say that the direction of a film and the overall quality of the film are exactly mirrored is to discount the contributions of literally thousands of other craftsmen. It's to suggest the writer, actors, editors, craftsmen, and producers contributed literally nothing to making the film happen.
I think that's bullshit. Yes, the director is ultimately responsible to pull all those disparate elements together into a coherent vision, but some films have legitimately more ingredients to work with than others.
I haven't seen The Descendants, but I imagine making George Clooney in Hawaii look good doesn't demand the absolute best from the film head, and anyway, I don't think anyone's suggesting this is Payne's best film.
Midnight in Paris is delightful, but Woody Allen is renowned for his minimalist directing style, and his films are made in the screenplay and acting performances, not in the somewhat workmanlike interpretation he brings to the screen (there, I said it).
Hugo is a masterpiece, and I'm tempted to give it to Scorsese for the excellent use of 3D alone. But this is a story that does not demand the absolute peak out of a director: Disney could have slapped this together, and it would have still been enjoyable, if not nearly as magical, as Scorsese's interpretation.
Tree of Life is a tour de force in some ways, but fundamentally flawed in others. No one but Malick could have brought this story to screen, and the force of his personality shines through. But this is for both better and worse; just ask Sean Penn (plus, who wins an Oscar without Sean Penn's blessing? Nobody; that's who!)
No, this category has to go to Michel Hazah!-navicius for The Artist: simply the most ambitious, risky, and flawlessly executed film of the year. Not only does it take balls to sell a silent film in the 21st century, it takes serious execution: a bad moment on screen, one poorly formulated concept or idea, and the whole spectacle falls apart into silly camp or, worse, pretentious bullshit. I went into this film expecting a cute gimmick and a nostalgia-fest; instead, I got one of the most masterfully executed visions I've seen this decade. This was an extraordinarily difficult film to sell, to create, to execute, and to perfect, and at no point does it even become a question.
There really was no contest here; Hazanavicius takes this category, and it wasn't close.
Actress in a Supporting Role
Berenice Bejo in The Artist
Jessica Chastain in The Help
Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer in the Help
Whew. That last category got serious. Fortunately, I’ve only seen one of these films, so I can be much more snarky here. In fact, I’m disqualifying the one I did see; Berenice Bejo did was more than support that film, and her placement here is unfair to the rest. Most reasonable heads seem to agree Jessica Chastain’s performance in The Help was her fourth best of THE YEAR, so that’s just nonsense to see her here. Janet McTeer is clearly in the wrong category; she’s obviously playing a man in this film. So we’re down to Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer, and hell. This is the Academy. You know they’re playing the race card.
Octavia Spencer it is.
Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill in Moneyball
Nick Nolte in Warrior
Christopher Plummer in Beginners
Max von Sydow in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
I’m just going to go ahead and say the last three split the old man vote (granted, a substantial Academy demographic) three ways and knocks them all out. So this comes down to Kenneth Branagh and Jonah Hill. I didn’t see either of these movies, so I’m going to quote my firend Tristan’s reaction to this.
“Maybe the dog. He’s certainly better than Jonah Hill. Jonah Hill. Oscar Nominees. Sign of the Apocalypse.”
Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me! Plus, he put on all that weight for the role. Academy loves physical commitment to the performance.
Best Actress
Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis in The Help
Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn
Did anyone but the Academy see Albert Nobbs? Jesus, I’m running out of snarky cross dressing jokes. Let’s see…what else do we have here? Meryl Streep…yawn. Viola Davis, no we’ve made our affirmative action hire already. Michelle Williams. *swoon* Still, none of this holds up to Rooney Mara, if for no other reason than I never imagined we’d have an Oscar nominated performance that revolved heavily around a dildo rape scene. Sorry Michelle. If you had just convinced the biographer to put in a section about Marilyn Monroe tying down JFK in the Lincoln bedroom and tattooing “I’M A RAPIST” across his chest, I’d have been all over it. Plus, history class would have been more interesting. Double points.
Actor in a Leading Role
Demian Bichir in A Better Life
George Clooney in The Descendants
Jean Dujardin in The Artist
Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt in Moneyball
Funny to see Dujardin here. I didn’t remember him having any memorable lines. Clooney and Pitt have to split the heart throb vote here. Oldman or Bichir? As usual, I haven’t seen either of these films. IMDB tells me Bichir played Castro in Che. Communist. This is America!
Gary Oldman wins with the patriotism vote…for his role as an Englishman. And I guess he’s English too. So…I don’t know, don’t ask questions. AMERICA!
I know I said this was the last one, but I’m tired of snark. Tune in next week for the final Best Picture reveal, in which I find witty things to say about all 4,381 nominations.
Beats Antique is providing the soundtrack.
Directing
The Descendants
The Artist
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Tree of Life
Directing Oscars almost always are tied directly to the Best Picture nominees: it normally goes without saying that Best Picture will win Best Director as well. Well, I think that's bullshit. To say that the direction of a film and the overall quality of the film are exactly mirrored is to discount the contributions of literally thousands of other craftsmen. It's to suggest the writer, actors, editors, craftsmen, and producers contributed literally nothing to making the film happen.
I think that's bullshit. Yes, the director is ultimately responsible to pull all those disparate elements together into a coherent vision, but some films have legitimately more ingredients to work with than others.
I haven't seen The Descendants, but I imagine making George Clooney in Hawaii look good doesn't demand the absolute best from the film head, and anyway, I don't think anyone's suggesting this is Payne's best film.
Midnight in Paris is delightful, but Woody Allen is renowned for his minimalist directing style, and his films are made in the screenplay and acting performances, not in the somewhat workmanlike interpretation he brings to the screen (there, I said it).
Hugo is a masterpiece, and I'm tempted to give it to Scorsese for the excellent use of 3D alone. But this is a story that does not demand the absolute peak out of a director: Disney could have slapped this together, and it would have still been enjoyable, if not nearly as magical, as Scorsese's interpretation.
Tree of Life is a tour de force in some ways, but fundamentally flawed in others. No one but Malick could have brought this story to screen, and the force of his personality shines through. But this is for both better and worse; just ask Sean Penn (plus, who wins an Oscar without Sean Penn's blessing? Nobody; that's who!)
No, this category has to go to Michel Hazah!-navicius for The Artist: simply the most ambitious, risky, and flawlessly executed film of the year. Not only does it take balls to sell a silent film in the 21st century, it takes serious execution: a bad moment on screen, one poorly formulated concept or idea, and the whole spectacle falls apart into silly camp or, worse, pretentious bullshit. I went into this film expecting a cute gimmick and a nostalgia-fest; instead, I got one of the most masterfully executed visions I've seen this decade. This was an extraordinarily difficult film to sell, to create, to execute, and to perfect, and at no point does it even become a question.
There really was no contest here; Hazanavicius takes this category, and it wasn't close.
Actress in a Supporting Role
Berenice Bejo in The Artist
Jessica Chastain in The Help
Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer in the Help
Whew. That last category got serious. Fortunately, I’ve only seen one of these films, so I can be much more snarky here. In fact, I’m disqualifying the one I did see; Berenice Bejo did was more than support that film, and her placement here is unfair to the rest. Most reasonable heads seem to agree Jessica Chastain’s performance in The Help was her fourth best of THE YEAR, so that’s just nonsense to see her here. Janet McTeer is clearly in the wrong category; she’s obviously playing a man in this film. So we’re down to Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer, and hell. This is the Academy. You know they’re playing the race card.
Octavia Spencer it is.
Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill in Moneyball
Nick Nolte in Warrior
Christopher Plummer in Beginners
Max von Sydow in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
I’m just going to go ahead and say the last three split the old man vote (granted, a substantial Academy demographic) three ways and knocks them all out. So this comes down to Kenneth Branagh and Jonah Hill. I didn’t see either of these movies, so I’m going to quote my firend Tristan’s reaction to this.
“Maybe the dog. He’s certainly better than Jonah Hill. Jonah Hill. Oscar Nominees. Sign of the Apocalypse.”
Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me! Plus, he put on all that weight for the role. Academy loves physical commitment to the performance.
Best Actress
Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis in The Help
Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn
Did anyone but the Academy see Albert Nobbs? Jesus, I’m running out of snarky cross dressing jokes. Let’s see…what else do we have here? Meryl Streep…yawn. Viola Davis, no we’ve made our affirmative action hire already. Michelle Williams. *swoon* Still, none of this holds up to Rooney Mara, if for no other reason than I never imagined we’d have an Oscar nominated performance that revolved heavily around a dildo rape scene. Sorry Michelle. If you had just convinced the biographer to put in a section about Marilyn Monroe tying down JFK in the Lincoln bedroom and tattooing “I’M A RAPIST” across his chest, I’d have been all over it. Plus, history class would have been more interesting. Double points.
Actor in a Leading Role
Demian Bichir in A Better Life
George Clooney in The Descendants
Jean Dujardin in The Artist
Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt in Moneyball
Funny to see Dujardin here. I didn’t remember him having any memorable lines. Clooney and Pitt have to split the heart throb vote here. Oldman or Bichir? As usual, I haven’t seen either of these films. IMDB tells me Bichir played Castro in Che. Communist. This is America!
Gary Oldman wins with the patriotism vote…for his role as an Englishman. And I guess he’s English too. So…I don’t know, don’t ask questions. AMERICA!
I know I said this was the last one, but I’m tired of snark. Tune in next week for the final Best Picture reveal, in which I find witty things to say about all 4,381 nominations.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Waking Life
As I imagine anyone pretentious enough to start a blog (which is to say, everyone) feels, I spend much of my time contemplating the nature of what is real.
After all, why write if you don't have a thought on reality? Some writers wouldn't put it in quite those terms, but whether you're writing about cooking or cars or Socretes or finance, you are facing something expressible, something that you perceive not only as real, but in some way primary to your existence. Something that in the confused primordial sea of what we see and feel and hear and smell and taste on a daily basis that strikes us as somewhat MORE REAL than the rest; if not, what about that particular topic arrests us out of the literally millions of sensations demanding our attention?
I read a fascinating fact the other day: every minute, 8 hours of video is uploaded to youtube alone. Every day, eight years are added. It is literally impossible to watch everything: you would need 480 screens streaming simultaneously and updating to the newest content instantly to keep up. If nothing else tells us how much our reality is entirely designed of our own choosing, by what we SELECT to perceive, and more importantly, what we elect to ignore, this fact, the literal kaleidoscoping of time, drives the unfathomiblity of the universe into us like a spike into our frontal lobe.
Eleven years ago, Waking Life, in its own wandering, dreamlike way, gave us the most beautiful elucidation of our weird reality we could ask for. And, driving home the futility in trying to keep up, it has taken me eleven years to catch up and give it the viewing it deserved. This is unacceptable; I've watched The Secret and What the Fuck Do We Know, two films that attempt to sell this philosophy and reality paradigm shamelessly and blatantly, in this time. Where Waking Life ruminates and sheds light and asks questions, those films preach, paradoxically attempting to sell their concrete vision of reality that is based off the impossibility of certainty. And yet, somehow, those made it on my viewing queue before Waking Life. One of the characters in this film tells us "the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are." And in the spirit of this, I accept responsibility for making the choice to define my reality as one that includes The Secret and doesn't include Waking Life.
Until now. And in honor of this beautiful film, I present my favorite quotes from perhaps my favorite existential pondering.
****
****
They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?
The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because if you can do that, you can do anything.
Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.
The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.
It's bad enough that you sell your waking life for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.
As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough.
This is where I think language came from. It came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another.
A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another.
The function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them.
There are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life.
I'm closer to the end of my life than I've ever been, I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world.
The funny thing is our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remains quintessentially ourselves.
We are the authors of ourselves, coauthoring a giant Dostoyevsky novel starring clowns.
Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Now, Philip K Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 AD. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now. And it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question. And that question is, basically, do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven? And we're all saying, No, thank you. Not just yet."
If you can wake up, you should...because someday you won't be able to. So just, um-- But it's easy. Just--just...
Wake up.
After all, why write if you don't have a thought on reality? Some writers wouldn't put it in quite those terms, but whether you're writing about cooking or cars or Socretes or finance, you are facing something expressible, something that you perceive not only as real, but in some way primary to your existence. Something that in the confused primordial sea of what we see and feel and hear and smell and taste on a daily basis that strikes us as somewhat MORE REAL than the rest; if not, what about that particular topic arrests us out of the literally millions of sensations demanding our attention?
I read a fascinating fact the other day: every minute, 8 hours of video is uploaded to youtube alone. Every day, eight years are added. It is literally impossible to watch everything: you would need 480 screens streaming simultaneously and updating to the newest content instantly to keep up. If nothing else tells us how much our reality is entirely designed of our own choosing, by what we SELECT to perceive, and more importantly, what we elect to ignore, this fact, the literal kaleidoscoping of time, drives the unfathomiblity of the universe into us like a spike into our frontal lobe.
Eleven years ago, Waking Life, in its own wandering, dreamlike way, gave us the most beautiful elucidation of our weird reality we could ask for. And, driving home the futility in trying to keep up, it has taken me eleven years to catch up and give it the viewing it deserved. This is unacceptable; I've watched The Secret and What the Fuck Do We Know, two films that attempt to sell this philosophy and reality paradigm shamelessly and blatantly, in this time. Where Waking Life ruminates and sheds light and asks questions, those films preach, paradoxically attempting to sell their concrete vision of reality that is based off the impossibility of certainty. And yet, somehow, those made it on my viewing queue before Waking Life. One of the characters in this film tells us "the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are." And in the spirit of this, I accept responsibility for making the choice to define my reality as one that includes The Secret and doesn't include Waking Life.
Until now. And in honor of this beautiful film, I present my favorite quotes from perhaps my favorite existential pondering.
****
****
They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?
The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because if you can do that, you can do anything.
Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.
The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.
It's bad enough that you sell your waking life for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.
As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough.
This is where I think language came from. It came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another.
A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another.
The function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them.
There are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life.
I'm closer to the end of my life than I've ever been, I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world.
The funny thing is our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remains quintessentially ourselves.
We are the authors of ourselves, coauthoring a giant Dostoyevsky novel starring clowns.
Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Now, Philip K Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 AD. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now. And it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question. And that question is, basically, do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven? And we're all saying, No, thank you. Not just yet."
If you can wake up, you should...because someday you won't be able to. So just, um-- But it's easy. Just--just...
Wake up.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Oscars, Part Deux
There are a lot of categories that not only are relatively irrelevant, but that I personally have seen zero films from. Let’s go through them as fast as possible!
Lightning round!
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
I had the chance to see Bullhead and didn’t, so it couldn’t have been good. The only alternative is that I’m a bad decision maker, and that’s just absurd. A Separation already won; don’t get greedy, Iranians. A Canadian film? Adieu, Monsieur Lazhar. It’s trendy to hate on Israel this year, so you’re out, Footnote.
In Darkness from Edgar Allen Poland it is. Appropriate.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The best documentaries are typically about irrelevant things that sound boring as hell (I’m looking at you, Helvetica). Let’s use that logic here. Hell and Back Again and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory both sound like low level horror films. Undefeated is going to suffer its first lost. The Earth Liberation Front bombed my old workplace once, so screw If A Tree Falls. Pina, which is about the tragic death of a dance choreographer. Well, none of those things are irrelevant or boring sounding, but Hell and Back Again sounds a lot like Helvetica. Done.
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Christ, more shorts. The Barber of Birmingham sounds so boring and irrelevant, I’m not even going to read the rest of the titles.
FILM EDITING
The best film edit is the edit you didn’t even see, so in that spirit, this category comes down to The Descendants and Moneyball, two films I haven’t watched. It’s also important to leave the boring parts on the cutting room floor, but Moneyball, a film entirely about statistics and baseball, apparently did the exact opposite. Some might call it avant-garde, but this is the Oscars, dammit.
The Descendants it is.
ART DIRECTION
Obviously, The Artist is going to win this category. IT’S IN THE TITLE.
COSTUME DESIGN
This category always goes to the costume designer who recreated a foppish era of England’s past, so in the interest of balance, I’m going to disqualify every film that involves the Brits. Sorry W.E., Jane Eyre, and Anonymous. That leaves The Artist and Hugo, which recreate foppish eras of America and France’s pasts, respectively. I’m going to give the nod to The Artist, mostly for John Goodman’s cigar.
ANIMATED FEATURE
The Pixar Memorial category.
I don’t vote for sequels or ridiculous spinoffs, so Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots are flat out. There are way too many films set in Paris, so sorry Cat in Paris. We’re left with a cowboy lizard and a film I haven’t heard of but appears to prominently involve lead character Rita’s breasts. Unacceptable! This is a kid’s category! I won’t have you corrupting America’s youth with beautiful imagery of the human body!
Rango rides away, and we all can’t wait for Pixar to get back in the game.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Anyone who knows me knows The Tree of Life won this six months ago, and the rest of the list is there to be polite. What, you wanted a joke? I have to take one of these seriously, and it’s going to be the category led by 1950s Texan tale of childhood angst that prominently involves dinosaurs.
Whoops, those last few were real categories. Oh well. Onto the big 6 next time.
Lightning round!
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
I had the chance to see Bullhead and didn’t, so it couldn’t have been good. The only alternative is that I’m a bad decision maker, and that’s just absurd. A Separation already won; don’t get greedy, Iranians. A Canadian film? Adieu, Monsieur Lazhar. It’s trendy to hate on Israel this year, so you’re out, Footnote.
In Darkness from Edgar Allen Poland it is. Appropriate.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The best documentaries are typically about irrelevant things that sound boring as hell (I’m looking at you, Helvetica). Let’s use that logic here. Hell and Back Again and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory both sound like low level horror films. Undefeated is going to suffer its first lost. The Earth Liberation Front bombed my old workplace once, so screw If A Tree Falls. Pina, which is about the tragic death of a dance choreographer. Well, none of those things are irrelevant or boring sounding, but Hell and Back Again sounds a lot like Helvetica. Done.
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Christ, more shorts. The Barber of Birmingham sounds so boring and irrelevant, I’m not even going to read the rest of the titles.
FILM EDITING
The best film edit is the edit you didn’t even see, so in that spirit, this category comes down to The Descendants and Moneyball, two films I haven’t watched. It’s also important to leave the boring parts on the cutting room floor, but Moneyball, a film entirely about statistics and baseball, apparently did the exact opposite. Some might call it avant-garde, but this is the Oscars, dammit.
The Descendants it is.
ART DIRECTION
Obviously, The Artist is going to win this category. IT’S IN THE TITLE.
COSTUME DESIGN
This category always goes to the costume designer who recreated a foppish era of England’s past, so in the interest of balance, I’m going to disqualify every film that involves the Brits. Sorry W.E., Jane Eyre, and Anonymous. That leaves The Artist and Hugo, which recreate foppish eras of America and France’s pasts, respectively. I’m going to give the nod to The Artist, mostly for John Goodman’s cigar.
ANIMATED FEATURE
The Pixar Memorial category.
I don’t vote for sequels or ridiculous spinoffs, so Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots are flat out. There are way too many films set in Paris, so sorry Cat in Paris. We’re left with a cowboy lizard and a film I haven’t heard of but appears to prominently involve lead character Rita’s breasts. Unacceptable! This is a kid’s category! I won’t have you corrupting America’s youth with beautiful imagery of the human body!
Rango rides away, and we all can’t wait for Pixar to get back in the game.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Anyone who knows me knows The Tree of Life won this six months ago, and the rest of the list is there to be polite. What, you wanted a joke? I have to take one of these seriously, and it’s going to be the category led by 1950s Texan tale of childhood angst that prominently involves dinosaurs.
Whoops, those last few were real categories. Oh well. Onto the big 6 next time.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Aaron Picks The Oscars, Part One
It’s that time of year again. No, not Oscars nominations. That happened like an hour ago; nobody cares anymore. No, it’s time for everybody to wildly speculate on who’ll win the somewhat-coveted trophies while maintaining intellectual superiority by declaring “it’s all politics anyway. (do you think George Clooney is due?)”
I’m not going to fall into that trap. Oh, no. I’m not going to be ironically and hilariously smug while descending (eh? eh?) into the same idiotic fervor everybody else does. I’m going to maintain artistic integrity here. I’m not going to predict who wins. I’m going to write a blog post about who I THINK should win, based on the nominations, and my own spotty track record of having watched the nominated films and a healthy dose of my own personal biases. It’ll be exactly like the real Oscars, only I’m the out of touch, elitist Academy who’s shamelessly pandering to mainstream sensibilities.
Without further ado…
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
I’ve seen three of these, which is pretty damn good for what’s about to transpire. Also, I’m not sure why Midnight in Paris, The Artist, and Bridesmaids qualify for this category, since those are all clearly biographies and not original stories at all.
Margin Call is also pretty clearly an account of actual events, but they did stop short of calling the fictional investment firm the “Lame Men Brothers”, so they sneak in.
Still, A Separation, which I believe has something to do with divorce in Islamofascist Communist Iran (I haven’t seen it), clearly sets itself apart. There’s no way it isn’t a made up story because as I understand it, it portrays Iranian citizens as real people with complicated emotions and political beliefs, and at no point do any of the main characters attempt to build a bomb or declare ‘Death to America’ (again, I haven’t seen it…if the end of the movie twist is a suicide bombing, I take this back and give the win to Margin Call). This level of silly imagination shows great creativity, so A Separation is my winner (unless it sucks, b/c again, haven’t seen it).
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
Ah, the real Hollywood writing category. As we all know, Hollywood is generally incompetent except when they can rip somebody else off and not give them credit for it, so this is the real battle.
More typical of this awards season, I’ve only seen one of these movies, so it’s a particularly hard category to judge. Both The Ides of March and The Descendents prominently involve George Clooney, so they split my Clooney vote and knock themselves out of competition. Moneyball is about baseball, and I’ve heard it’s quite good, which means I know a lot of liars because nothing about baseball is good. It’s out for dishonesty.
That leaves Hugo and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I loved Hugo, but I didn’t remember the writing being particularly good, plus a lot of it was in French, which meant I had to read it. While some might argue that gives it extra points for a writing category, this is America. And in America, we love the Brits (pip pip!). And TTSS combines four words that have no business going together into a cool sentence, which is all I know about the writing of the film. Good enough for me.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wins the day.
SOUND EDITING AND MIXING
Now begins my annual Wikipedia research session to relearn the difference between editing and mixing.
Still confused.
Let’s use the scientific method.
HYPOTHESIS: If there’s a difference, it will show up in the nominees. We can then use the what we know about the nominees to extrapolate what that difference is.
OBSERVATION: Since these are two entirely different skills, the lists of movies should differ greatly as well. Let’s see, for sound editing we have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers, War Horse, and Drive. For sound mixing, we have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers, War Horse, and Moneyball.
….
….
ANALYSIS: Clearly, the difference between sound mixing and editing is very precise. It also appears to have something to do with the difference between Drive and Moneyball. Having seen Drive, sound editing, therefore, seems to have something to do with cars and 80s throwback synth tracks. Moneyball has something to do with baseball, so I can only extrapolate from what I know about the film (not much) that Sound Mixing is predominately concerned with sports.
CONCLUSION: Well, Moneyball is clearly the most sports related movie on this list, so we’ll go ahead and award the Sound Mixing Oscar to them.
You might be tempted to say Drive is the most cars related film on the list, but Transformers has even cooler cars, and theirs transform into robots. Plus, there’s a rumor going around that if you put on Pink Floyd at the same time as Transformers and get really stoned, IT TOTALLY SYNCHS UP, so we’re going to give Transformers: Dark of the Moon the Sound Editing Oscar.
VISUAL EFFECTS
Another category where I’ve only seen 2 of 5. Unlike writing, this is a particular handicap, as I can’t get any clues from the titles. So instead, I’m going to go by a google images search.
Harry Potter 2: Ok, so I’ve seen this one. I don’t actually remember anything about the effects, so I’m going to yawn and move on. The poster is very blue, for what it’s worth.
Hugo: That’s a pretty cool clock. It also gets some extra props for landing a visual effects nomination for a film about a 9 year old clock maker in 1920s Paris. Oh yeah, and the 3D stuff is revolutionary. Interesting dark horse.
Real Steel: I liked this movie better when it was a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots commercial. None of these guys are taking Optimus Prime. Sorry.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes: The effects on those monkeys are so good they almost look like monkeys.
Transformers Dark of the Moon: If only Michael Bay movies didn’t have sound. Wait, this won sound. If only Michael Bay movies didn’t have…screw it, those robots are f’ing awesome, and nothing about this category says “writing”, “dialogue”, “acting”, “direction”, or “plausibility”. Transformers Dark of the Moon wins a stunning second Oscar (in the fake Benmark Academy). I was stunned.
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
Wait, there’s only 2 contenders? Fuck it, I’m taking The Muppets.
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
Again, I’ve seen two of these, and I can’t really remember the music from either of them. So The Artist and Hugo: out by default. I can only assume Tintin and War Horse, two John Williams scores for Spielberg movies, are bad ass. But again, the Williams vote is split, leaving us with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Alberto Iglesias takes the trophy. I’m pretty sure he’s some sort of hybrid between a Colombia rebel and a pop icon.
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED AND LIVE ACTION)
I can’t believe they split the category literally nobody’s seen a contender from into two. Someone must have let them know that the Oscars don’t drag on long enough. I’m taking Wild Life as the least hipster sounding contender, and Time Freak as what I can only assume is a film about a time travelling cross dresser who likes to freak on unsuspecting club goers in different centuries, which SOUNDS AWESOME.
MAKE UP
Only three contenders, which means the Academy watched more than three times as many short films as films where they noticed the make up. Here we have the always wonderful wizards and magical creatures of Harry Potter, Meryl Streep transformed before our very eyes into a dignified old lady at the top of her profession, and…
….
….
Oh God.
OH GOD.
IS THAT GLENN CLOSE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER? YOU…YOU MONSTERS! I CAN’T UNSEE IT. HERE, TAKE YOUR FUCKING OSCAR, YOU HEATHENS.
The Oscar goes to Albert Nobbs.
(editor’s note (yes, I’m my own editor, what of it?): After googling Albert Nobbs, I googled Glenn Close to see what she looks like these days, and maybe it’s not quite as drastic a transformation as I first expected. Or they did such a good job making up her face, they froze it into a hideous, emotionless spectre for all eternity. I like the second theory better, and I’m going to stick with it).
I’m not going to fall into that trap. Oh, no. I’m not going to be ironically and hilariously smug while descending (eh? eh?) into the same idiotic fervor everybody else does. I’m going to maintain artistic integrity here. I’m not going to predict who wins. I’m going to write a blog post about who I THINK should win, based on the nominations, and my own spotty track record of having watched the nominated films and a healthy dose of my own personal biases. It’ll be exactly like the real Oscars, only I’m the out of touch, elitist Academy who’s shamelessly pandering to mainstream sensibilities.
Without further ado…
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
I’ve seen three of these, which is pretty damn good for what’s about to transpire. Also, I’m not sure why Midnight in Paris, The Artist, and Bridesmaids qualify for this category, since those are all clearly biographies and not original stories at all.
Margin Call is also pretty clearly an account of actual events, but they did stop short of calling the fictional investment firm the “Lame Men Brothers”, so they sneak in.
Still, A Separation, which I believe has something to do with divorce in Islamofascist Communist Iran (I haven’t seen it), clearly sets itself apart. There’s no way it isn’t a made up story because as I understand it, it portrays Iranian citizens as real people with complicated emotions and political beliefs, and at no point do any of the main characters attempt to build a bomb or declare ‘Death to America’ (again, I haven’t seen it…if the end of the movie twist is a suicide bombing, I take this back and give the win to Margin Call). This level of silly imagination shows great creativity, so A Separation is my winner (unless it sucks, b/c again, haven’t seen it).
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
Ah, the real Hollywood writing category. As we all know, Hollywood is generally incompetent except when they can rip somebody else off and not give them credit for it, so this is the real battle.
More typical of this awards season, I’ve only seen one of these movies, so it’s a particularly hard category to judge. Both The Ides of March and The Descendents prominently involve George Clooney, so they split my Clooney vote and knock themselves out of competition. Moneyball is about baseball, and I’ve heard it’s quite good, which means I know a lot of liars because nothing about baseball is good. It’s out for dishonesty.
That leaves Hugo and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I loved Hugo, but I didn’t remember the writing being particularly good, plus a lot of it was in French, which meant I had to read it. While some might argue that gives it extra points for a writing category, this is America. And in America, we love the Brits (pip pip!). And TTSS combines four words that have no business going together into a cool sentence, which is all I know about the writing of the film. Good enough for me.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wins the day.
SOUND EDITING AND MIXING
Now begins my annual Wikipedia research session to relearn the difference between editing and mixing.
Still confused.
Let’s use the scientific method.
HYPOTHESIS: If there’s a difference, it will show up in the nominees. We can then use the what we know about the nominees to extrapolate what that difference is.
OBSERVATION: Since these are two entirely different skills, the lists of movies should differ greatly as well. Let’s see, for sound editing we have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers, War Horse, and Drive. For sound mixing, we have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers, War Horse, and Moneyball.
….
….
ANALYSIS: Clearly, the difference between sound mixing and editing is very precise. It also appears to have something to do with the difference between Drive and Moneyball. Having seen Drive, sound editing, therefore, seems to have something to do with cars and 80s throwback synth tracks. Moneyball has something to do with baseball, so I can only extrapolate from what I know about the film (not much) that Sound Mixing is predominately concerned with sports.
CONCLUSION: Well, Moneyball is clearly the most sports related movie on this list, so we’ll go ahead and award the Sound Mixing Oscar to them.
You might be tempted to say Drive is the most cars related film on the list, but Transformers has even cooler cars, and theirs transform into robots. Plus, there’s a rumor going around that if you put on Pink Floyd at the same time as Transformers and get really stoned, IT TOTALLY SYNCHS UP, so we’re going to give Transformers: Dark of the Moon the Sound Editing Oscar.
VISUAL EFFECTS
Another category where I’ve only seen 2 of 5. Unlike writing, this is a particular handicap, as I can’t get any clues from the titles. So instead, I’m going to go by a google images search.
Harry Potter 2: Ok, so I’ve seen this one. I don’t actually remember anything about the effects, so I’m going to yawn and move on. The poster is very blue, for what it’s worth.
Hugo: That’s a pretty cool clock. It also gets some extra props for landing a visual effects nomination for a film about a 9 year old clock maker in 1920s Paris. Oh yeah, and the 3D stuff is revolutionary. Interesting dark horse.
Real Steel: I liked this movie better when it was a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots commercial. None of these guys are taking Optimus Prime. Sorry.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes: The effects on those monkeys are so good they almost look like monkeys.
Transformers Dark of the Moon: If only Michael Bay movies didn’t have sound. Wait, this won sound. If only Michael Bay movies didn’t have…screw it, those robots are f’ing awesome, and nothing about this category says “writing”, “dialogue”, “acting”, “direction”, or “plausibility”. Transformers Dark of the Moon wins a stunning second Oscar (in the fake Benmark Academy). I was stunned.
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
Wait, there’s only 2 contenders? Fuck it, I’m taking The Muppets.
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
Again, I’ve seen two of these, and I can’t really remember the music from either of them. So The Artist and Hugo: out by default. I can only assume Tintin and War Horse, two John Williams scores for Spielberg movies, are bad ass. But again, the Williams vote is split, leaving us with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Alberto Iglesias takes the trophy. I’m pretty sure he’s some sort of hybrid between a Colombia rebel and a pop icon.
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED AND LIVE ACTION)
I can’t believe they split the category literally nobody’s seen a contender from into two. Someone must have let them know that the Oscars don’t drag on long enough. I’m taking Wild Life as the least hipster sounding contender, and Time Freak as what I can only assume is a film about a time travelling cross dresser who likes to freak on unsuspecting club goers in different centuries, which SOUNDS AWESOME.
MAKE UP
Only three contenders, which means the Academy watched more than three times as many short films as films where they noticed the make up. Here we have the always wonderful wizards and magical creatures of Harry Potter, Meryl Streep transformed before our very eyes into a dignified old lady at the top of her profession, and…
….
….
Oh God.
OH GOD.
IS THAT GLENN CLOSE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER? YOU…YOU MONSTERS! I CAN’T UNSEE IT. HERE, TAKE YOUR FUCKING OSCAR, YOU HEATHENS.
The Oscar goes to Albert Nobbs.
(editor’s note (yes, I’m my own editor, what of it?): After googling Albert Nobbs, I googled Glenn Close to see what she looks like these days, and maybe it’s not quite as drastic a transformation as I first expected. Or they did such a good job making up her face, they froze it into a hideous, emotionless spectre for all eternity. I like the second theory better, and I’m going to stick with it).
Thursday, January 19, 2012
MEOW
I was digging for topics, and so I put up to facebook a request, with the promise that whatever I was given I would proceed to write a blog post about.
Naturally, I got LOLcats. An interesting quandary, because how, exactly, do you talk about something that is, by its very nature, so trivial and meaningless?
LOLcats, have in some strange ways, changed our national narrative on the feline species. When I was young, I remember distinctly (or perhaps it was just me), people divided very solidly into “cats” and “dogs” people. If you liked one, you hated the other. It was like being on two sides of a very dug in football rivalry; it was almost unthinkable to cross the picket line and join the other side. Certainly, I was very much a dog person: I despised cats, considered them evil, and secretly wondered when they might rise up and overthrow the world.
Sometime around the point the Internet started putting cats on everything, that dialogue began to change. These days, it’s not only perfectly acceptable but probably the norm to love cats AND dogs. I was resistant to this change at first, holding out for the unassailable superiority of dogs (DOGS RULE, CATS DROOL), but one hilarious and poorly captioned image after another began to wear down my defenses to the point that I now find cats adorable, fluffy, and hilarious like everybody else.
Of course, there’s an alternate possibility: that the two events were not related at all (correlation does not equal causation and all that jazz). At about the same time, many of the women I dug were very much cat people, and in college setting, where dogs were actively discouraged, cats were the only pet available. As a result, I was around them a lot more. They say you broaden your horizons when you live in a new place and travel; you’re exposed to your deepest stereotypes, and find them breaking down over and over again. Maybe this effect happened in an odd arena: with the classic cats and dogs war.
On the other hand, society in general has grown in many ways much less divisive (our politics aside) and more open to new ideas and alternative lifestyles. Maybe as a result of the general trend to accepting the merits of virtually everything, cats have come along for the ride.
I’m not saying I understand why, but whatever the case, it has certainly become more true. The long standing cats and dogs war has broken down, and cats and dogs (and their owners) have begun to live with each other in harmony and peace.
And with that, you’ll excuse me. I need to look at every single post in r/awww.
AW HE THINKS HE’S PEOPLE!!!!!
Naturally, I got LOLcats. An interesting quandary, because how, exactly, do you talk about something that is, by its very nature, so trivial and meaningless?
LOLcats, have in some strange ways, changed our national narrative on the feline species. When I was young, I remember distinctly (or perhaps it was just me), people divided very solidly into “cats” and “dogs” people. If you liked one, you hated the other. It was like being on two sides of a very dug in football rivalry; it was almost unthinkable to cross the picket line and join the other side. Certainly, I was very much a dog person: I despised cats, considered them evil, and secretly wondered when they might rise up and overthrow the world.
Sometime around the point the Internet started putting cats on everything, that dialogue began to change. These days, it’s not only perfectly acceptable but probably the norm to love cats AND dogs. I was resistant to this change at first, holding out for the unassailable superiority of dogs (DOGS RULE, CATS DROOL), but one hilarious and poorly captioned image after another began to wear down my defenses to the point that I now find cats adorable, fluffy, and hilarious like everybody else.
Of course, there’s an alternate possibility: that the two events were not related at all (correlation does not equal causation and all that jazz). At about the same time, many of the women I dug were very much cat people, and in college setting, where dogs were actively discouraged, cats were the only pet available. As a result, I was around them a lot more. They say you broaden your horizons when you live in a new place and travel; you’re exposed to your deepest stereotypes, and find them breaking down over and over again. Maybe this effect happened in an odd arena: with the classic cats and dogs war.
On the other hand, society in general has grown in many ways much less divisive (our politics aside) and more open to new ideas and alternative lifestyles. Maybe as a result of the general trend to accepting the merits of virtually everything, cats have come along for the ride.
I’m not saying I understand why, but whatever the case, it has certainly become more true. The long standing cats and dogs war has broken down, and cats and dogs (and their owners) have begun to live with each other in harmony and peace.
And with that, you’ll excuse me. I need to look at every single post in r/awww.
AW HE THINKS HE’S PEOPLE!!!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)