Post-Oscars
Got my ass kicked last night, re: my picks. Only 10 out of 21 correct predictions, a horrific 48% accuracy. In my defense, I also had three "should wins" that in fact came away with the victory, so that improves things slightly.
Good Things: Four wins for No Country For Old Men, three for The Bourne Ultimatum. An almost-complete shutout for Atonement, which was nominated for eight awards and walked away with only Best Original Score. Good acceptance speeches: Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Diablo Cody, Marion Cotillard, Glen Hansard, the Coen Brothers. Best Acceptance goes to Tilda Swinton, after her fairly surprising win for Best Supporting Actress. Props to Jon Stewart for bringing Markéta Irglová back on to finish her speech. Props to Stewart in general for shepherding a very odd broadcast (post-strike, with a bunch of movies that many people haven't seen or even heard of...)
Bad Things: The writing and structure of the show, which suffered greatly from the limited time-frame and the inclusion of various poorly assembled clip montages left over from the backup-plan show. Every single one of the songs from "Enchanted", although I always like to see Kristen Chenoweth doing, well, anything at all. The fact that there were only so many awards to go around, so they couldn't give more to There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton. The repeated cutting-off of acceptance speeches by the orchestra; maybe they could have given these people accepting their once-in-a-lifetime honor a few more seconds and cut some of those dumb montages, hmm?
All in all, not a bad ceremony, I thought.
What else is new? I was in New York City on Saturday to take a written exam (basic reasoning, general knowledge and personality assessment) for the DGA Assistant Director Training Program. I won't find out if I advance to the interview phase until the end of March, so wish me luck. A trailer for the new X-Files film was shown at WonderCon this past weekend; I watched a bootleg filmed from the (wildly enthusiastic) audience and felt all warm inside. (The X-Files is in constant competition with Buffy as my favorite TV series of all time.) Kara returned from a week in the wilds of Vermont, and we dealt with spraying hot water pipes in her basement, watched Twin Peaks and Michael Clayton, laughed at each other a lot, and were generally insufferably cute. It is difficult to be as hateful and wretched as I like to make myself out to be when I'm so happy, damn it!
Apropos of nothing: an excellent quote from the blog of Peter Watts, whose newest novel Blindsight blew my mind at least three times:
"I find it astonishing that our society should treat religious faith as though it confered [sic] some kind of exhalted [sic] all-purpose free pass, instead of as a neurological disorder."
I should probably do some work.
Good Things: Four wins for No Country For Old Men, three for The Bourne Ultimatum. An almost-complete shutout for Atonement, which was nominated for eight awards and walked away with only Best Original Score. Good acceptance speeches: Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Diablo Cody, Marion Cotillard, Glen Hansard, the Coen Brothers. Best Acceptance goes to Tilda Swinton, after her fairly surprising win for Best Supporting Actress. Props to Jon Stewart for bringing Markéta Irglová back on to finish her speech. Props to Stewart in general for shepherding a very odd broadcast (post-strike, with a bunch of movies that many people haven't seen or even heard of...)
Bad Things: The writing and structure of the show, which suffered greatly from the limited time-frame and the inclusion of various poorly assembled clip montages left over from the backup-plan show. Every single one of the songs from "Enchanted", although I always like to see Kristen Chenoweth doing, well, anything at all. The fact that there were only so many awards to go around, so they couldn't give more to There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton. The repeated cutting-off of acceptance speeches by the orchestra; maybe they could have given these people accepting their once-in-a-lifetime honor a few more seconds and cut some of those dumb montages, hmm?
All in all, not a bad ceremony, I thought.
What else is new? I was in New York City on Saturday to take a written exam (basic reasoning, general knowledge and personality assessment) for the DGA Assistant Director Training Program. I won't find out if I advance to the interview phase until the end of March, so wish me luck. A trailer for the new X-Files film was shown at WonderCon this past weekend; I watched a bootleg filmed from the (wildly enthusiastic) audience and felt all warm inside. (The X-Files is in constant competition with Buffy as my favorite TV series of all time.) Kara returned from a week in the wilds of Vermont, and we dealt with spraying hot water pipes in her basement, watched Twin Peaks and Michael Clayton, laughed at each other a lot, and were generally insufferably cute. It is difficult to be as hateful and wretched as I like to make myself out to be when I'm so happy, damn it!
Apropos of nothing: an excellent quote from the blog of Peter Watts, whose newest novel Blindsight blew my mind at least three times:
"I find it astonishing that our society should treat religious faith as though it confered [sic] some kind of exhalted [sic] all-purpose free pass, instead of as a neurological disorder."
I should probably do some work.