I was looking at the best picture nominees, and I don’t get it. Yes, I was in the boat for putting The Dark Knight into the best picture category, and yes, I knew that the chances of it happening were slim. It is a blockbuster, a mammoth of a film, and it has “funny costumes.” However, it was engrossing, entertaining, very well acted, and gorgeous to look at. So what else do we really need?

Like I said, I knew it wasn’t going to get nominated, but I disagree with a lot of the Academy’s choices this year.  This is twofold – first, for both Best Picture and Best Director, they completely ignored what I considered the two best movies I saw this year, the aforementioned Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan) and The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky).  I’m not going to write a review for it, but I will say that The Wrestler was excellent on all fronts.

Second, the nominees they DID choose for best picture were extremely obvious.  Right out of the Oscar-nod playbook.  Think about it, you have…

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – the long-winded, super saccharine, epic romance of the year.  Was it an okay movie?  Yes.  Was it worthy of being called “best of 2008″?  Not by a long shot.  I’m in full support of the best Cinematography nod, because the movie was awesome to look at – very rich, deep colors and lively setpieces – but the story was “meh” at best, and the actors just sort of plugged into it.  Great looks, but not a lot of heart.

Milk - I liked this movie, but really only because of Sean Penn (who I thought did a great job) and the background story itself, which is inspiring and interesting.  However, Gus Van Sant has ALWAYS struck me as awfully pretentious, and this film was no different.  As a story, A, as a movie, B- at best.  However, it played right into (A) the counter-culture fighting against insurmountable odds category (will “playing gay” become the new “playing handicapped”?) and (B)  the “look, isn’t this pertinent to somethings that is happening RIGHT NOW?  lol” category.

Frost/Nixon – To be fair, I have not seen this movie.  However, it seems like if Ron Howard makes a biopic, it will get nominated for an Oscar.  Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind jump out at me.  Quick review: Apollo 13 was good, I think, I haven’t seen it since I was 12 years old.   A Beautiful Mind was heavy-handed and forgettable.  But let’s face facts – Ron Howard made How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey.  He also made the universally hated adaptation of The Da Vinci Code.  He’s even following that by remaking Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.  For these reasons, he should probably be banned from the Academy Awards, at least until the 10th anniversary of The Da Vinci Code passes.  That movie actually had the line, “This cannot be this!” in it.  Come on!

Now, I have not seen Slumdog Millionaire or The Reader, but I can say this.  From what I’ve heard, Slumdog Millionaire deserves the nod, and I do wish to see it at some point.  Danny Boyle has a history of making movies that work beautifully until the last 20 minutes, so I’m curious to see what happens.  Now, I haven’t really heard anythign at all about The Reader, which leads me to believe it was chosen to fill the last Guaranteed-nomination spot, which is “under-the-radar film” slot.  Again, I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know if it is worthy of the nod – but I’m not sure it can do much better than The Wrestler.

It’s not like I plan on watching the Oscars anyway.

I don’t understand why Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would do this… but I’m happy about it.  What’s next, Nancy posts a Bush Macro (“Legacy Fail”?) on facebook?

Whenever George W. Bush says something about keeping America safe from Terrorist attacks since 9/11, two quotes pop into my mind.

First is Keith Olbermann, who said “Yes, but doesn’t THEN count?”

Second is this exchange from The Simpsons (yes, the show applies to everything).

Homer: Not a bear in sight.  The Bear Patrol must be working like a
       charm.
 Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
 Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
 Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
 Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
 Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
        [Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

Today was Bush’s farewell address, and this was a big theme.  That and the statement “Some people didn’t agree with the tough decisions I had to make… but we can all agree that I made the tough decisions.”  I should hope so, considering that was his job.  Maybe he outsourced that as well.

I wonder if anyone was allowed to actually wear shoes during the speech…

Winner of the never gets old award:

Awesome craigslist ad.

Apparently PETA lauded a NYC restaurant for freeing a 140 year old lobster named George from its tanks.  I don’t know exactly how they came up with the number 140.  I also don’t know what makes them think taking a 140 year old lobster living in relative safety (no one would eat it at the restaurant, he’d become something of a mascot) and releasing it in Maine seems like a good idea.  It’s not as though Maine catches 80% of American  Lobsters.

We’ll just chalk this up to another brilliant move by PETA.

In other news, George the Lobster is definitely already dead.

Read the CNN story here

This is amazing, there is really no other word for it.  While I haven’t had the chance to read it, it apparently involves Spiderman solving a plot to assassinate President-Elect Obama on inauguration day that includes an Obama-twin, a revelatory basketball match, and a happy ending with Spiderman and Obama sharing a “terrorist fist-jab.”  Good God, I don’t even know what to say… the world is a wonderful place.

This is one of the better stories I’ve heard in a long while.  The long and short of it is, this fellow was carjacked and his phone was in the car.  His friend texted the phone suggesting “he” (but actually, the criminals) come to a party with “hot chicks and drugs.”  Needless to say, the car thieves thought this was a terrific idea, showed up, and were arrested.

Read the whole story

It’s snowing too much. It is only January. On the plus side, I’ve been listening to The Tallest Man on Earth. It’s pretty, jumpy folk music from a guy who sounds like Dylan + Ray Raposa (The Castanets) + Devendra Banhart (- the creepiness). It’s very old sounding, and anybody looking for mostly upbeat americana, check it out.

According to CNN,  Larry Flynt (Hustler) and Joe Francis (Girls Gone Wild) are planning on asking the US Government for a 5 billion dollar chunk of the Bailout package.  It seems more reasonable than giving the auto industry all that money for essentially having fucked themselves over.  After all, the porn industry has been providing the American public with a lot of (variable) quality material for decades, never once failing to keep it’s promise of sexual acts, ranging from the tastefully softcore, to the “holy fuck, he’s killing her,” caught on film.

I have a feeling, which may seem obvious to some, that it’s a publicity stunt, since Larry Flynt is behind it.  After all, if the internet and its vast seas of free erotica didn’t kill the porn industry, nothing will.  And, by the way, nothing will.

Digg it! Stumble It! FacebookMyspace

Like many folks on the internet, I’m an avid stumbler.  I’ve lost uncountable hours pressing that button over and over again, just to see what comes up next.  I’m tempted to stop what I’m doing right now and just press the button, in hopes that it brings me to some…. fuck, I actually did it, and lost a few minutes.  Highlights included a recipe for fish-pie, and a picture of a woman with a phone taped to her head.  Now, I have stumbleupon set to bring me to a lot of photography sites, and because of this, I’ve come to the (titular) conclusion that Photoshop has sucked the goddamn fun out of the internet.  Let me explain…Whenever I find an interesting picture / photograph / painting on the internet, whether by means of stumbleupon or not, the comment section of the page inevitably goes like this.

1. “FIRST” often followed by “lol”

-Let me sidebar here for a moment.  This is probably the stupidest thing on the internet.  Worse than Twilight fan-fiction.  For starters, who gives two shits if you are first?  Is there an underground contest for fame, glory and riches to the person with the most “first” comments that I am unaware of?  The person that started this trend, though notable for being the “first first”, should be trampled to death by ponies.

2. “Shopped.”  As in photoshopped.  As in, fake picture.

3. “Definitely shopped, you can tell by the pixels and from seeing a few shops in my time.”

4. “Who cares if it is shopped, it’s awesome.”

What kills me is how often this exact conversation seems to happen, almost verbatim.  How many times can we have this conversation before it gets reduced to internet shorthand, so that the rest of us don’t have to watch people turn in slow circles, muttering “shopped” to themselves until they drown in their own spit.

What makes it worse, to me, is that I agree with hypothetical post #4, but often the person who says that doesn’t really think it, they just say it because it’s how the conversation is supposed to end.  It’s a big jerk-off of a joke, where punchlines are delivered simply because there is a void if they aren’t, one that might be filled by, I don’t know, something useful.

And it doesn’t matter what the picture is.  In fact, sometimes I think its reasonable to question whether or not something has been edited in photoshop, because its not always clear.  Take, for example, the following picture.

photo by Kevin O’Mara

This is not a photoshopped picture (and is, in fact, a picture of an art installation called Inversion House).  However, I can see how one might make the argument that it is a photoshopped picture.  It’s certainly very strange looking.  Mind you, this doesn’t excuse the notion of the “automatic conversation” as outlined above, but it is at least reasonable to suggest this could be a fake.  However, the “conversation” usually happens with pictures like this as well…

taken from Bored to Death

Let’s just get the obvious out of the way – smoke doesn’t do that.  It can’t and it never will.  So, when somebody on the site replies in the comments “Obviously shopped” it means one of two things.

1) They actually think people might not realize that it is photoshopped.  This means that they think everyone else is a total fucking idiot.  This, in turn, makes them a total fucking idiot.  It’s such an obvious statement, they may as well have posted “Hey you guys, we’re on the internet right now!” or “I am a complete tit!”

2) They are making an increasingly unfunny joke.  This is the problem with internet memes.  They get replicated so fast and so often that within a month, they are common-place – nowadays, I’m shocked when I see a picture of a cat that doesn’t have a grammatically-fucked caption.  So, rather than thinking we’re all morons, the person is saying “Hey, you guys remember irony?  How about sarcasm?  Well, here comes some more, bitches!”  As jokes go, it’s the path of least resistance.

Either way, to paraphrase Keith Olbermann (though, he was speaking in reference to Sarah Palin’s nomination to VP candidacy), “people who like that sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”  So, morons like jokes that morons make.  I’m just looking forward to whatever the next meme is, so at least this one will go the way of the fat kid with the lightsaber and “All your Base” jokes.

Final Note: I’m sure someone will post a “first” comment now, in an attempt at a joke.  If you do, at least leave your address, so I know where to send the ponies.

Digg it! Stumble It! FacebookMyspace