March 8th, 2010
#136
Avatar DIDN’T win the Oscar for Best Picture.
Because of a self-imposed boycott of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards, I didn’t watch tonight’s ceremony, but I was online when the news broke that The Hurt Locker swept Best Director and Best Picture, leaving the polarizing Avatar in the dust.
My faith in the film industry has now been restored… a little bit, anyway.
The people who have seen Avatar fall into one of two opposing teams. Team Avatar insists the film was the best thing to ever happen to cinema and will defend their masterpiece and Director James Cameron to the death, while Team Dances With Smurfs acknowledges that the visual effects are stunning but the story is nothing more than cliched, poorly written tripe, undeserving of a $500 million budget and a $2.5 billion worldwide gross.
I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker yet so I can’t say whether or not I think the film deserved to win. Of the 10 nominees, I’ve seen four: Avatar, District 9, Up, and Up in the Air, and of those films, Up in the Air would have been my pick for Best Picture. The first fifteen minutes of Up were brilliant, but the last hour fell short of Pixar’s earlier Oscar-winning films Wall-E and The Incredibles.
I am curious to see if the Avatar controversy and the Academy’s gimmicky nomination of ten films for Best Picture were enough to entice millions of new viewers to the 3+ hours of awkward, unfunny presenters and pompous ceremony. From the hundreds of angry rants on the Avatar and Hurt Locker IMDB message boards, one would think that an entire nation had tuned in for the battle between the blue smurfs and the bomb squad. Well, everyone but me.
Of course the night’s real winner is director Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman in 82 years of Academy history to walk away with the Oscar for Best Director. In the years to come, may the award always go to the most deserving auteur, regardless of gender.
Tags: 2010, 82nd Annual Academy Awards, Avatar, Awards, Celebrities, Happy Things, Kathryn Bigelow, Oscars, The Hurt Locker
Posted in Celebrities, Happy Things | No Comments »
March 7th, 2010
The 82nd Annual Academy Awards is on tonight… you know, that awards show where glamorous celebs get guzzied up in dazzling fashions, smile for the cameras, and then congratulate each other on a job well done in an industry where $75 million is spent on Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel which grosses almost a half-billion worldwide and ends up on the Academy’s short-list for Oscar nominee consideration.
The last time I cared (remotely/at all) about the Oscar stakes was in 2004 when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept all awards in the 11 categories in which it was nominated. Then I got a little older and a little wiser, and I realized that like most self-important ceremonies in which the overpaid are celebrated for doing their f*cking jobs, it’s all about the politics and the hype. There are dozens of great films overlooked every year because the filmmakers can’t afford to spend millions in advertising and awards campaigns, so already the decks are stacked to favor the mega-blockbusters and the indie darlings that were lucky enough to get noticed in the first place.
When Avatar wins the Golden Globe for Best Drama and is in position to sweep the Oscars too, you know the system is broken. The Academy can nominate as many films as it wants for best picture (deserving or no), and I still won’t watch their show.
Things I’d rather watch tonight (which may be terrible but are still less soul-sucking):
| Channel |
Time |
Program |
| NBC |
8:30 to 11:00 PM/EST |
Bad Boys II |
| FX |
5:30 to 9:00 PM/EST |
Spider-Man III |
| CW |
8:00 to 10:00 PM/EST |
Hoodlum |
| SyFy |
7:00 to 9:00 PM/EST |
The Midnight Meat Train |
| Bravo |
8:00 to 12:00 AM/EST |
Law & Order: Criminal Intent |
| E! |
9:00 to 11:00 PM/EST |
Keeping Up with the Kardashians |
Tags: 2010, 82nd Annual Academy Awards, Awards, Celebrities, Movies, Oscars, Things I'd Rather Watch
Posted in Celebrities | 2 Comments »
March 3rd, 2010
I’m ashamed to admit that prior to very recently (like, um, today) I wasn’t a fan of the indie rock band OK Go. I was familiar with some of their songs although I had never seen any of their music videos – not even their famous treadmill choreography to the song “Here it Goes Again” that became an Internet sensation a few years back and which is inching its way to 50 million views.
This all changed when one of my coworkers directed the first edition of OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” music video, featuring the Notre Dame marching band performing live in one take and on a shoestring budget (OK Go’s specialty). It was pretty awesome. Awesomer still is “This Too Shall Pass” Version 2.0, the band’s official music video which features a Rube Goldberg machine and astounding feats of physics and the domino effect.
Seriously, I could watch the video forever. It’s incredible.
From YouTube:
Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs (http://syynlabs.com/) over the course of several months.
The band also YouTube’d a series of “making of” 2 minute featurettes, entertaining introductions to the band and the Synn Labs team but they don’t reveal much of the months of creation and testing that must have gone into this three minute masterpiece.
I wish I could embed the videos themselves, but in an effort to make more royalties on YouTube, the band’s record label EMI has disabled all embedding on OK Go music videos. OK Go responded with an open-letter apology to their fans and an op-ed piece at The New York Times on how the embed restriction has actually dramatically decreased the band’s viral viewership.
In these tight times, it’s no surprise that EMI is trying to wring revenue out of everything we make, including our videos. But it needs to recognize the basic mechanics of the Internet. Curbing the viral spread of videos isn’t benefiting the company’s bottom line, or the music it’s there to support. The sooner record companies realize this, the better — though I fear it may already be too late.
In the meantime, OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” has already shot past the 1 million mark and is well on its way to becoming another Internet sensation. Despite the embed restrictions, the band can count at least one new fan among its numbers (me!). I sincerely admire their quirky, creative sensibilities and their catchy tunes and look forward to seeing and hearing their future work.
Stay classy, OK Go.
Tags: Embedding Video, EMI, Music, Music Video, New York Times, OK Go, This Too Shall Pass, Viral Video, YouTube
Posted in Music | No Comments »
March 2nd, 2010
Woo-hoo-hoo!
I am THRILLED to report that one of the things that made me happy in January (#189, to be exact), is now making me even happier six weeks later!
HBO has officially greenlit the first season (ten episodes) of A Game of Thrones, an epic fantasy series based on the first book in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire saga. ArtsBeat blog at the New York Times has the scoop.
The cast is impeccable, with talents ranging from Sean Bean (of Lord of the Rings fame) to Lena Headey, Jennifer Ehle, Peter Dinklage, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from the short-lived New Amsterdam series. The full cast of the pilot (with pics!) can be found here.
The only news that’s a little disconcerting is that “the pilot episode of the series was written by David Benioff (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and D.B. Weiss (the author of Lucky Wander Boy), who are also among its executive producers.” I didn’t personally see X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but the 37% rating on Rottentomato’s Tomatometer and lackluster reviews all around doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in Benioff’s ability to pull off an adaptation worthy of Martin’s prodigious series.
Fortunately, the source material provides a phenomenal starting ground and author Martin has been considerably involved in the adaptation from the very beginning… so much so that he hasn’t had time to finish A Song of Ice and Fire’s long-awaited fifth book (much less the sixth or seventh).
Snap snap, R.R., time’s a wasting! Take a page from HBO’s playbook and make magic happen this year. Your devoted fans will love you for it.
Tags: A Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, Adaptation, Books, George R. R. Martin, HBO, New York Times, Television
Posted in Television | 1 Comment »
March 1st, 2010
#31
The state of the American health care system in 2010… and what might have been. Click on the graphs below for larger images.
From the New York Times:
From National Geographic:
Tags: 2010, American Health Care Reform, Graphs, Health Care, National Geographic, New York Times
Posted in On the Web | No Comments »
