Banjo Steve

Yes, I Know I Haven't Posted in a While, But...

2005-08-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

something weird and TV-related just happened to me. I was reading through a TWoP recap of The Amazing Race and Miss Alli mentioned someone being "on her list." A snippet of dialogue from a TV show came to me( "Nothing happens on the list") but I couldn't remember where I heard it. I knew it was a woman, and my first thought was that it was Natalie from Sports Night referring to Dana (or perhaps Dan or Casey). I eventually placed the real reference: it was Donna, referring to Josh in The West Wing episode "Isaac and Ishmael." Both The West Wing and Sports Night are written by Aaron Sorkin. That's the weird thing. I've had the same problem confusing two different actors who sound the same, or two different performances by the same actor, but I've never had that happen with a screenwriter. I suppose it says something about Sorkin as a writer that his voice shines through in such a small piece of dialogue.

My TV Is Talking To Me

2005-05-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

First there was the weird confluence of Gregs. Now all the shows I watch keep giving shout-outs to Iowa, my home state:

-In January, The West Wing did a show about Santos, Russell, and Vinick in the Iowa caucuses.

-In March, House had two different episodes where he mentioned Iowa. In the first one, House talked about a mobster going into Witness Protection and ending up working at a Wal-Mart in Des Moines. Then later, he talked to a black Senator about how the voters of Dubuque aren't ready for a black president.

-In the past couple weeks, 24 has had a minor plotline set in Iowa, where terrorist have hijacked a nuclear warhead and launched it from a missile. Incidentally, 24's most unintentionally funny line came in reference to Iowa, when Mike Novick mentioned that it would be hard to track the warhead because of all Iowa's mountainous terrain. Anyone who's been to Iowa would know that this state is so flat you can practically see the Nebraska border from Illinois.

-Last night on Lost, Kate's flashback was set in Iowa, and revealed that she had grown up there.

-Various reality shows have had contestants from Iowa, from Rory and Twila on Survivor: Vanuatu to Kris on The Amazing Race 6, to Tana on The Apprentice. This is noteworthy in two respects. First, until this season, Iowa had never been home to a contestant on a major reality show. Second, Twila and Kris both did very well on their respective shows, both coming in second (which, come to think of it, doesn't bode well for Tana).

-Speaking of Iowa and reality TV, the less said about Invasion Iowa, the better.

Now a lot of this can probably be chalked up to Iowa's role in the Hollywood as the archetypal American state. Certainly, House, a stereotypically jaded coastalite, made his comments in that light. But it is really strange to see all of this Iowa talk at once, especially coming at the same time as great deal of Greg talk. Add to that the fact that Capt. Jonathan Archer on Enterprise apparently went to Stanford and it certainly seems as though the television universe is aligning in one direction: straight towards me. I can see no other rational conclusion to be drawn.

Survivor Blogging: The Endgame

2005-05-05T12:23:00.000-07:00

It's now down to the final six--Tom, Ian, Gregg, Jenn, Katie, and Caryn--on Survivor. Faithful readers will notice that this group comprises Greater Koror, plus Caryn. The endgame is always the most interesting phase of the game, not just because it determines who will win, but also because now is the time in the game when strategies start to get more complex. Where before a contestant might base his vote on who is the weakest, or who is outside of her alliance, now people have to start thinking about who they could beat in an endurance challenge, who's going to be on the jury, or who they would have to face in the final two. And in a change from Survivor's past seasons, I could see almost any of the final six winning the whole game. Let's see how each player might accomplish this.

Tom:

The only way for Tom to stay in the game is to keep winning challenges. Everyone in the game knows full well how threatening he is, and so they'll likely take the first opportunity they get to vote him off. He's well-positioned to make it to the final two by brute force alone, and given the way he led his tribe to a perfect winning streak in team immunity, he's got a good shot at winning a jury vote, no matter who he's up against. It's rare on a Survivor for someone to take a leadership role for so long and not ruffle any feathers, and Tom has basically done just that so far. Sure, Coby and Caryn have bitched in the past, but neither of them seem to hate him--in fact, Caryn was well-positioned to vote him off last week, but she didn't. And I can't see anyone else they would be more inclined to vote for. So I think if Tom's in the final two, he wins. The only person who might be able to even put up a challenge would be Ian, so Tom would be well-advised to get rid of Ian as soon as he can. The best way for him to do that, I think, would be for him to win the final three immunity challenge and take whoever isn't Ian with him to the final two. I think Ian would be able to accept that without seeing it as a betrayal, given that his primary alliance is with Katie.

Ian

Being Tom's little buddy has served Ian well up to this point, but from here on out it will be more of a liability. Here's why: everyone recognizes the threat Tom poses, but as long as he keeps winning challenges, the only way to attack him is to attack his allies. And Ian is Tom's closest ally. In fact, if I were in Jenn, Katie, Gregg, or Caryn's position, I would try to get the rest of the four to agree to vote out Tom or Ian, depending on who loses the challenge. Ian's only hope, then, is to either win immunity or hope that someone hasn't thought through their best interests. Katie would be the most likely candidate to do this. She has a pre-existing alliance with Ian that may blind her to the reality that Ian can't help her win as much as vice versa. So if Ian and Tom can get Katie on their side, they only need to flip one more person. Their best bet would be Caryn. She no longer has any allies, and would probably cling tightly to anyone who would have her. This would be a bad move on her part, considering how easy it would be for Tom, Ian, and Katie to boot her afterward, but as I said, Ian has to depend on other people making bad moves to stay alive.

Gregg & Jenn

Gregg is in a good position to win the game. He's number three on the threat list, behind Tom and Ian, so he can fly under the radar to a great degree, simply because they'll draw all the fire. In any event, it's impossible to get rid of either of them without his help (unless they betray each other, which doesn't seem likely at this point) so he'll get a pass to the final five. Once in the final five, he'll need to beat whoever is left between Tom or Ian, because with the women in the majority, they'd be smart to go after the remaining men. If he succeeds in this, he'll be the last man standing, and will have an advantage in the next remaining challenges, provided they are largely physical. If he makes it to the final three with two women, he could probably win a jury vote no matter who he takes with him, but it would be smartest to take Jenn. First, everyone knows they're an item, and it will be seen as a betrayal if he doesn't choose her. Second, he doesn't want a woman scorned on the jury. While this strategy didn't quite work for Rob in All Stars, he was a much more polarizing figure than Gregg is, so the jury would probably rather award the person who did all the work to get there than the remora who coasted. Nevertheless, Jenn's best play would be to stick with Gregg and hope he steps on enough toes on his way to the top, that there will be a Rob & Amber Redux. Any other scenario would have to involve her not only winning immunity challenges, but having some assurance that she would be able to do so, both unlikely.

Caryn

Surprising as it may seem, Caryn actually has a decent shot to win here, if she's smart. (It doesn't look like she is though. Her best bet was a women's alliance, but she blew that last week when she had a choice between Steph and Tom.) Caryn's greatest strength is actually her weakness as a player. Any of the men would love to be opposite her for the final two; conversely she's probably the only one Katie or Jenn could beat. It seems, from the previews and the last episode, that she's trying to ingratiate herself in with the men, and poison them against Katie. This is probably her best play; if it succeeds, she'd take Katie's place in the Tom-Ian-Katie alliance, meaning that after they get rid of Katie, she'd be the swing vote between the Gregg-Jenn axis, and the Tom-Ian axis. Since she'd probably realize that she couldn't win the final three immunity and that if she went with G & J, they'd probably choose each other over her, it would be smarter to stick with Tom and Ian, and try her luck with the jury.

Katie

Katie's strategy for the win should be the same as Caryn's and she ought to be more secure in it, except she spent the last episodes trying to oust Tom and failing. At the same time, she was showing disloyalty to Tom, Caryn was showing loyalty. Add to that the fact that Caryn has no other options but to play ball with Tom and Ian, and it would make sense for Tom to try and swap her for Caryn. Her only hope is that Ian has some loyalty to her and tries to save her.

In the end, I think the scenario I outlined for Caryn is most likely. I'm thinking Katie, Gregg, and Jenn will be the next three to go, in that order, and the final two will be Caryn with either Tom or Ian.

Oscar Watch 2005: The Upside of Anger and Sin City

2005-04-22T13:13:00.000-07:00

I know it's extremely early to be worried about the 2005 Oscars, especially when you consider that the median release date for Oscar nominees is approximately Thanksgiving. Nevertheless, the Spring movie season is drawing to a close, and I thought now would be a good time to go over the deserving films that will be long forgotten by next January.

First up is The Upside of Anger. I'm not particularly in the mood for a detailed review, but I will say this: I loved this movie. It reminded me of Wonder Boys, not necessarily because of any similarity in the plots or anything, but because they're both what Quentin Tarantino has called "hangout movies". That is, they're movies with characters so well-drawn and likable that you watch the movie over and over again, just because you like hanging out with them. I look forward to the DVD release of Upside, for this very reason.

I don't know what the studio was thinking, releasing this movie in March. It could have easily been this year's Sideways, i.e. the independent critical darling that opens in New York and L.A. in October and coasts on the word-of-mouth buzz to an Oscar nomination, before opening wide in the winter. Honestly, it's like it was tailor-made for this release-plan. In addition, they could have capitalized on all the "Costner's Comeback" stories that would have inevitably followed this movie's release. If this movie had come out in October, it would have been a shoo-in for nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Costner), Best Actress (Joan Allen), and Best Original Screenplay (it's an original screenplay isn't it? If not change that to adapted.) As it is, I think the best it can hope for is the latter two. There are so few decent performances by women in a given year that a performance as good as Allen's won't be forgotten. The same is somewhat true of screenplays, the biggest reason it has a shot here, but not in Best Picture is that there are ten slots for writing nominations instead of five.

Another movie I hope doesn't get forgotten come Oscar time is Sin City. I don't think it will; it's a remarkable achievement on the technical level, and that's all it would ever get nominations for anyway. Regardless of the films merits or release date, there's no way the Academy would ever give serious consideration to a pulpy comic book movie. (Too bad Mickey Rourke). I think Sin City is a solid lock for nominations for Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, and Makeup. Voters in these categories tend to have longer memories than voters in the rest of the categories, for the simple fact that no studio would ever change a release date on a film in the hopes that it can get nominated for Best Makeup. As a result, there's no December logjam like there is for Best Picture nominees. Best Editing and Best Cinematography are another story. Here the logjam is a problem, because movies like Cold Mountain are made so they can rack up big numbers here and the ads can say "nominated for seven Academy awards", even if none of them are best picture. This is where the critic's prizes come in. If Sin City manages to make a lot of year-end top ten lists, or win a lot of critic's awards, voters beyond the ones in the tech categories will give it more consideration. Who knows, it might even have a shot at Adapted Screenplay. It wouldn't be the first comic book movie to get a nomination here; American Splendor and Ghost World both managed the feat, and with relatively early release dates to boot.

Long Time, No Post!

2005-04-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

I apologize, dear readers, for the recent drought in posting. I'm thinking of taking this blog in a new direction, and I haven't wanted to post until I figured out exactly what that was. The drought should end soon though, so take heart: the wit and wisdom of BanjoSteve will be coming soon. Thanks.

Still More Survivor Blogging

2005-03-22T12:31:00.001-08:00

If I'm going to continue to write about Survivor, I should probably program a macro, because typing "Koror's winning streak continues" over and over is going to get tiresome. Koror is in a good position to go into the merge having never lost an immunity challenge. One potential stumbling block, ironically, is a result of their complete dominance. Now that they have eight members to Ulong's four, they're going to have to put a lot more strategy into who they sit out in challenges. They could play the women in the reward and the men in the immunity, but that would be basically sacrificing the reward, because as bad as Ulong is, I doubt they could find a way to lose to Katie, Caryn, Janu, and Jenn. Of course, if one faction within Koror wanted to throw an immunity challenge in order to vote off someone at Tribal Council, the easiest way to do it without arousing suspicion would be by inopportune challenge assignments. Nevertheless, if they want to win both challenges, I think the best way to do so would be by playing Gregg, Coby, Janu, and Katie in the reward, and Tom, Ian, Jenn, and Caryn in the immunity. Of course, if they win one more immunity and there's no tribal shakeup and they wait to merge until ten, the numbers in the next challenge (8-3) will be such that it's impossible not to sit someone out twice.

The interesting part of last week's episode, though, was Gregg's strategic move. Apparently he saw that Katie, Ian and Tom were going to be difficult to separate when the time came, so he was on the weaker side of that alliance. Meaning that there are now three factions in Koror: Greater Greater Koror (Ian, Tom, and Katie), Lesser Greater Koror (Jenn and Gregg), and Lesser Koror (Coby, Janu, and Caryn). Gregg did the math and proposed to Coby a secret four person alliance between Janu and Coby and Gregg and Jenn, that would kick in after they had gotten rid of Caryn (and presumably Ulong). I had a post I was thinking of writing before Survivor: Palau premiered that would have basically laid out this strategy as a solid path to victory. As evidenced here, the biggest an alliance can get without breaking is probably four; any larger, and eventually someone will recognize that they're in a minority. This could happen with four too, which is why Coby and Gregg's arrangement is ideal. They have two solid pairs, as opposed to an alliance of three with an outlier. (Incidentally, Chris's best play last season was to convince Eliza that their alliance with Scout and Twila was the former, when actually it was the latter). The secrecy is important, because until you're in a tribe of seven or less, four is still not a majority, so an obvious bloc of four would represent a threat.

The trick with a strategy like this comes when it's down to the final four, and the alliance must start eating itself. If you have two solid pairs, it's impossible to put together a majority, and there's a good chance at forcing a tie. The easiest person to flip in this scenario is the person with immunity, because in the event of a tie, they'll lose their immunity and be forced to pick rocks out of a hat. No one with immunity would want to risk this, meaning they'll vote against their partner to avoid a tie. The counter-intuitive strategy then, would be for both members of a pair to throw the immunity challenge. This move, however, requires more trust than it's reasonable to expect in a Survivor endgame. Imagine proposing throwing the challenge to your partner: "If I get individual immunity it will force me to vote for you, and vice versa, so let's both give up on the challenge." A reasonable person hearing this would assume they were being played. It would be best, then, to leave final four immunity challenge alone.

Gregs

2005-03-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

This is neither here nor there, but I've noticed a lot of Gregs on TV lately. There's a Greg on one of the teams in The Amazing Race 7. There's Dr. Gregory House on House. There's Dr. Greg Pratt on ER, and then there's Gregg on Survivor. It reminds me of a conversation I had with someone a few years ago. Her name was Angel, and I asked if she ever watched the show Angel. She said no. I asked if she ever watched Dark Angel. She said no. I asked if she ever watched Touched by an Angel. She said no. I said that that was too bad; if there were a show with my name in the title, I would watch it for sure. Then I realized there were two: Dharma & Greg and Greg the Bunny.

The weird thing about my name is that even though it's a common enough name that everyone has heard of it, I almost never meet people who share it. Throughout my entire academic career, I've never had a class with another Greg in it. In the four dorms I lived in in college, I was the only Greg. While I've met other Gregs in passing, the only one I could say I know is my father, and I don't call him by his name. And in the hundreds of people I've interviewed for the census, I've never come across another Greg. The reason I bring this all this up, is that if not for the media, I would never see other Gregs.

Pitch: Star Trek meets 24

2005-03-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

The cancellation of Enterprise has given me a lot to think about regarding the future of Star Trek. Mostly this thinking takes the form of musing about what sort of show TPTB should create to bring it back. I have heard a lot of ideas around the internet, from a show set at Starfleet Academy, to a show about the Timeship Relativity, to a show about the crew of the Excelsior under Sulu. To be frank, most of these ideas seem like crap to me. The academy show would have to pile contrivance upon contrivance to get the cast into space exploring week after week. The time travel show would quickly collapse under the logical contortions required. And anyone who's sat through all 79 episodes of the original series and thought the Asian guy in the seat up front should get his own spin off is either insane or George Takei.

I got my idea for the next Trek spinoff from a column in the Chicago Tribune. The writer suggest Star Trek try out 24's real time format. I think that's a terrible idea; the vast distances and travel times involved in space travel would mean that the show would be confined to a rather small area of space for a whole season. It would be even more static than DS9 before the Defiant--at least they had runabouts. But while the real time concept of 24 wouldn't translate well, other aspects would. In particular, Star Trek could take the other defining feature of 24's narrative style, namely season long story arcs. Star Trek has done similar stories before, in the beginning of the sixth season of DS9 when the Dominion occupied the station and in the last ten episodes of the series' run. The writers of Enterprise tried something similar last year with the Xindi arc, to a lesser effect; with a few exceptions, each episode told a distinct story, and they were largely separable from each other.

But the theft of ideas from 24 need not stop at its narrative style. Why not show the CTU of Starfleet? When I first considered this, I didn't think much of it, because terrorism wouldn't be a main focus in the Star Trek universe, which generally focused on Great Power conflicts. But as of the late 24th Century, the Klingons are allies, the Romulans are too weak from the events of Star Trek: Nemesis and the Dominion war to be much of a threat, the Cardassians have been decimated, the Dominion has withdrawn to the Gamma Quadrant, and the Borg are in disarray. The Federation's position after the Dominion War would be similar to America's after the Cold War. It would be the only great power left, meaning the threats it faces would be asymmetrical in nature. Hence Starfleet CTU. I picture something like 24, except the big threat of the season isn't a nuclear bomb, it's a terrorist group trying to blow up some Omega particles in the Solar system.

If Star Trek: CTU is too similar for Fox's lawyers to allow, then perhaps a different angle. I picture Chinatown in space: a private investigator, in the course of another investigation, stumbles onto a massive web of conspiracies that cut to the very heart of the Federation. Or maybe Star Trek meets Lost: a ship crashes onto an uncharted planet with no hope of rescue and the crew has to learn to survive on its own. It could be the show Voyager promised but never delivered!

The interesting thing about all this speculation about new series, is that it's not so crazy to think that I might someday help create one of these shows. I have often considered television and/or screen writing. Theoretically, I could get a good enough start in Hollywood in the next few years, that when Paramount finally decides to resurrect the franchise, they hire me as a writer. Hmmm.

Decades in Film

2005-03-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

In the comments section of the post I linked to in my last post, there's an interesting debate raging about when exactly the 00s started. There are those that hold the common sense view that the 00s started January 1, 2000. Then there are the wiseasses that point out that because there was no Year Zero, the 00s didn't start until January 1, 2001. (No one likes a math geek, Scully). More interesting is the position that the 00s didn't start until September 11. The reasoning being that it was a defining moment that split history into a before and an after. I do subscribe to this view somewhat, but only in the political realm. There's no reason September 11 should have the same impact culturally, especially since movies and TV have barely felt the change. I can only think of one movie or TV show that has even touched the cultural impact of 9/11, and that's Rescue Me, the show about New York firefighters.

When I think about the defining sensibility of film in the 00s, it's probably the blurring of the lines between mainstream and indie. It's the decade where Miramax stopped being independent and became "independent". How can you be an independent studio and throw tens of millions of dollars into fancy, big production, famously cast, Oscar bait year after year. But mainstream studios, like Warner Bros. or Paramount are making small movies with the independent sensibility, like Wonder Boys or Million Dollar Baby. Another trend in filmmaking is the honing of visual-effects techniques to make them a seamless part of the storytelling. Someone once wrote to Roger Ebert that visual effects were to modern movies what song and dance numbers were to movies of the Golden Age. This has become less and less the case in the 00s, with movies like The Lord of the Rings, where digital effects are so pervasive that they cease to become surprising and new. Nowadays, the only limit on filmmaker's ability to give life to his or her imagination is not available technology, but a studio willing to put up the money. Both of these trends really started to take shape in 1999; the former with films like Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, American Beauty, and Three Kings, and the latter with The Matrix. So really the 00s began in 1999.

This is not so unusual. I'd say it's pretty rare for film decades to conform to their actual dates on the calendar. The first "decade" of film lasted from 1896, when the medium was invented, to 1915, when The Birth of a Nation, the first feature-length film to nail down the grammar of editing, cinematography and the rest of motion picture storytelling. The '20s of film lasted from Birth of a Nation to The Jazz Singer, the first sound film. The thirties lasted from The Jazz Singer to Citizen Kane. The fifties probably began with A Streetcar Named Desire, when Kazan and Brando brought The Method to film. The sixties are tricky to pin down; I'd guess that they began in 1960 itself, when Psycho and The Apartment signalled a more frank, mature handling of difficult subject matter. The 70s started with Easy Rider (and an assist from 2001). The funny thing about the eighties is that they started before the seventies ended, with Star Wars and the beginning of the end of the age of the Director. While Raging Bull is often cited as the last movie with a 70s sensibility, it's more like it's the last good movie, with the legendary flop Heaven's Gate as the Film that Killed the 70s. The 90s started in 1989 when sex, lies, and videotape and Do the Right Thing kicked off the indie revolution. Which bring us right back to the 00s.

The Top Ten Films of the 00's

2005-03-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

I've been resisting making lists since I started this blog, figuring that, once I got started I might never stop. But some of the political blogs I read are posting their lists of the top ten films of the 00's and since it's a subject near and dear to my heart, I thought I'd chip in my two cents:

1. Requiem for a Dream
2. Waking Life
3. Punch Drunk Love
4. Kill Bill (both volumes)
5. Memento
6. Wonder Boys
7. The Royal Tenenbaums
8. Minority Report
9. The Matrix Reloaded
10. High Fidelity

I should describe my methodology for making this list. In the past I've had minor updates, usually to insert, as I feel appropriate, a recent film I've seen. I also occasionally do a major revision, wherein I go over the list with as fresh eyes as I can muster and reorder accordingly. The way I do this is by first going through the films of each year (that I've seen) and picking out the best for each year. Strangely, despite not looking for a specific number, for each of the last four years, I've seen exactly eight films that pass muster. One those lists are complete, randomly pair them off and decide which of each pair is better. Conveniently, this time there were 32 films, which is a power of two. Anyway, this proceeds for the requisite number of rounds until I have one film that's better than all the rest. That goes number one on the list. Then I remove it from the brackets and repeat the tournment until I have ten films.

How do I decide which is better? Admittedly this is difficult, for a number of reasons. One of them is that some of the films I'm just more familiar with, because I own them and watch them more often. For The Royal Tenenbaums or Wonder Boys or Punch Drunk Love this has helped, because they're rich character studies that improve with familiarity. For other films that depend on surprise or a virgin viewing for effect, like Signs or The Matrix Reloaded, this can hurt. But ultimately if a film is going to last, it must deliver on repeat viewings. Terminator 2 is a movie much like The Matrix and its sequel, and it's well remembered and loved. The reason it has survived is that its action scenes still work even when they're familiar. The same seems to be true of the Matrix; we'll have to see for the sequel (Reloaded that is--Revolutions couldn't even deliver on the first viewing). One thing repeat viewing does do is help deflate my opinion of films that are somewhat shallow. For example, I don't think American Beauty or Traffic, as good as they are, will survive as classics, because after maybe three viewings they stop offering anything new.

Another difficulty, especially with films I haven't seen recently or that I've only seen once is that previous list standings tend to play a bigger role than they should. If I've previously judged one film better than another, it makes it difficult to reevaluate them. That's why I use the bracket system; the transitivity helps me make better judgements. For example, Bowling for Columbine was on my last list. This time it went up against The Fog of War in the first round and got eliminated. But Fog of War was eliminated by Amelie, even though Amelie didn't make the last top ten and B4C did.

In general, though, I make my decisions on film quality based on a number of criteria. Craftmanship is important. A film doesn't have to be perfect in every aspect, but glaring problems do hurt. For example, Minority Report has some writing problems, and Monster is seriously weighed down by Christina Ricci's performance. I don't give the same weight to every aspect in every film. Generally, since these are the creme de la creme of film, the better films will tend to be ones that have fewer flaws. My top three, example, are essentially perfect. Another important consideration is watchability. If I find I admire a film more than I like it--that while I hold it in great esteem, I don't really ever want to rewatch it--it will lose. That's how George Washington happened to fall off the list.

In the past the top three has been pretty stable: Waking Life, Requiem for a Dream, and Memento. In fact, this is the first list I've had since I saw Waking Life (the most recent film of the three) that hasn't had those three films in that order. It's looking like the top six will be relatively stable for a while. They may shift in position, but they're never going to fall off the list completely. They've achieved classic status in my mind. And the top two are staying put for good, I imagine. They're the only two films I've seen this century that have actually brought new techniques to bear on film-making. Basically they're the only films to advance the form in any meaningful way. In previous lists, I noticed that a lot of movies tended to jump into the number four position right after I saw them. That's because I wasn't willing to insert them into the top three and thus confer classic status upon them, but I did want to assert that they were superlative and stuck out in my mind. Thus, Gangs of New York, Signs, and The Matrix Reloaded all held that spot right after I saw them (Punch Drunk Love did too, but got bumped until I bought it and couldn't stop rewatching it). The bottom half of this list has fluctuated wildly the last few times I've updated it. I'm not sure exactly why. An interesting point to note, none of the films on my list are Best Picture nominees, let alone winners. Among them, they have eight Oscar nominations and only one win, that being Wonder Boys' Best Song Oscar.

More Survivor Blogging

2005-03-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

Hoo boy does Ulong suck! And fairly inexplicably too. I can't really get my head around it. It is true that Koror's by now massively superior numbers mean that it is better able to cull the best and brightest of its tribe at any moment in a way that Ulong can't. But aside from the short work Janu made of Kim in the last immunity challenge, I can't imagine why this particular difficulty would be setting them back. The one big difference is in team cohesion. Koror has never had to go to Tribal Council, while Ulong has been there four times. As I mentioned previously, this has a vicious-cycle effect to it; the more they have to point fingers and blame, the less cohesive they are, and the more they lose. But I have a funny feeling this cycle is ending. Ulong seems to have been pared down to its core players; the most recent bootees have been dead weight to varying degrees. Furthermore, I think they can have the unity and cohesion that comes from suffering so much together. If by some chance, all five Ulongers make it to the merge, they'll be a pretty unbreakable alliance.

The problem for Ulong now is that the tribal shake up is coming soon, and because they have so many fewer people than Koror, most shakeup scenarios result in two teams that are majority Koror. This is not necessarily doom them however, because as Coby noted, there are divisions within Koror. Koror, like Ulong, has a core of strong players, in Tom, Ian, and Gregg and their groupies Katie and Jenn. Tom, Ian, and Gregg are pretty solid--I doubt any of them could be convinced to vote against the others--so if the outsiders of Koror wanted to peel someone off they'd have to go for Jenn or Katie. I don't think it would be Katie. She gives off the vibe of being one of the "cool kids". That is, one of those status-conscious high-schoolers that derives her self-esteem from the status of the group she's in. Katie already doesn't like Caryn (and the feeling is mutual) and as a group, Caryn, Willard, Coby, and Janu just don't carry the same cache as the Tom & Ian gang. (Part of this is because they aren't really a group per se, so much as several individuals on the periphery of the Inner Circle). Jenn would be a smarter target for flipping. If the promos are to be believed (and that's a big if) she and Gregg have a romantic connection, so they probably couldn't turn her against him. It would be dangerous to go after Tom without a pretty solid majority; he would be able to marshal more support from his allies, and he's obviously a lot stronger. If the outsiders of Koror wanted to flip Jenn, they'd have to go after Ian or Katie. Katie would be a better choice because she's less integral to the team and doesn't contribute very tangibly.

A more interesting way for Lesser Koror to rebel would be after a shakeup. Suppose Tom, Ian, Coby, and Willard ended up on a team with Steph, Angie, and Ibrehem and lost the immunity challenge. Everyone's default stance would be Koror vs. Ulong in the voting, but then Coby and Willard would have to realize that if they went into a merge with all of the original Koror, they would be at a disadvantage and would be picked off one by one. Their best play in this situation would be to side with Ulong against Tom or Ian. There is a drawback to this move, however. Of Greater Koror, Lesser Koror, and Ulong, Lesser Koror is the smallest factions, and will need allies going into the merge. Ulong will seek allegiance with Ulong, and the other members of Koror will see the booting of Koror over Ulong as a betrayal, and won't trust the remaining Kororians enough to ally with them.

In the end, even though they're momentarily on the stronger team, Coby, Janu, Willard and Caryn need to realize that they're in the weakest position in the game. Their one shot is that in most tribal shake up scenarios, neither Ulong nor Greater Koror would be able to form majorities against each other without them. They'll be, in effect, a secret swing vote. It would serve them well to coordinate strategy in advance of the tribal shakeup and agree with one another to stick with Koror against Ulong until doing so would cost them a majority with Ulong against Koror. And this might seem counter-intuitive, but while they're still the groups after the shakeup, they should target the members of Ulong and Greater Koror that are the least threat in individual immunity: people like Katie, Jenn or Angie. The reasoning being that if their plan works, the four of them would make it to the merge with three each from Ulong and Greater Koror. What they absolutely don't want is for people outside of their alliance ganging up against them, because they wouldn't have the numbers to stop them. But if they leave standing the greatest individual immunity threats, like Bobby Jon, Tom, or Steph, then they'll want to go after each other, and need Lesser Koror as a source of votes. Should this happen, Lesser Koror should swing between siding with Ulong and Greater Koror, depending on which alliance gets immunity.

Of course, this plan for Lesser Koror depends on a favorable shuffling, one they're most likely to get if it happens randomly, rather than dodgeball-style, like last season. And the trick, I think would be convincing members of Koror or Ulong to vote out weaker members pre-merge. They would have to couch it as something personal (like the Katie/Caryn feud) I think, or if they're switching to vote with Ulong, do so only on the condition they get to pick the bootee. But other than that, I think it's pretty solid, and represents the best path to victory for my favorite player this season (Janu).

I Knew Gene Siskel. Gene Siskel Was a Friend of Mine. You Sir, Are No Gene Siskel

2005-03-09T12:30:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things about Oscar season is when Ebert and Roeper go on the Tonight Show the next day. I usually hate Jay Leno, but he's at his best on these occasions because he and I have something in common: a seething contempt for Richard Roeper. Richard Roeper is one of the biggest sufferers of what I call the Lloyd Bentsen Effect. Lloyd Bentsen's only memorable moment was in the Vice Presidential debate in 1988, when after Dan Quayle compared himself to JFK, Bentsen came back with the famous retort, " I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. You sir, are no Jack Kennedy."

It goes without saying of course, but Richard Roeper is the Dan Quayle to Gene Siskel's Jack Kennedy. The phrase "Two Thumbs Up" used to mean something, but now that TPTB at Buena Vista Television have replaced Siskel with such a hack of a movie reviewer, one of those thumbs is basically irrelevant. The reason I love the Tonight Show appearances is that Jay Leno always goes after Roeper really savagely. His conversation is basically with Ebert, who gets the chair (Roeper is always on the couch, even though Siskel and Ebert took turns in the chair), and whenever Roeper says anything, Jay just mocks him for it. Ebert doesn't even defend him and sometimes joins in. Leno's attitude is similar to that of a fifteen year old hanging out with his friend and the kid brother his friend's mom made him bring along: when they're not ignoring him outright, they're dismissively taunting him. It's comedy gold.

The 24 Paradox

2005-03-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I love the Oscars so much is that I like lists. For whatever reason, I like quantitative summaries of essentially subjective things. The ludicrous extreme of this tendency is my exhaustive rankings of 24 episodes. Such a ranking might make sense if I were talking about Star Trek or Law & Order, but 24 is the most serialized show ever and as such it's a little silly to think of it on an episode by episode basis. Nevertheless, I still do it. The thing is, it's harder for me to do it for the second and fourth seasons. At first I thought it might have been because of the seasons themselves, but I doubt it. The major differences between the second and fourth seasons versus the first and third is that I saw the first and third on DVD and the second and fourth as they aired. This is the paradox. You would expect that I would have an easier time differentiating episodes that I saw one at a time spread out over a year, instead of the ones I saw all at once over the course of week or so. I find this very strange, and I have no idea why this is the case.

To Race Amazingly or Not To Race Amazingly, That is the Question

2005-03-04T10:14:00.000-08:00

The new season of The Amazing Race started this week, and while I might have something to say about that later, I'm really more concerned about The Amazing Race 8. You see, they're changing the rules so that instead of teams of two, there will be teams of four, meaning families can sign up. My parents and my brother are huge TAR fans--in fact, it's the only show we all watch together as a family--and this piqued our interest. My dad looked up the rules and it turns out that the minimum age is only eight, meaning my brother could come too.

However, I have several concerns about this. The thing is, I don't really get along very well with my family. I don't particularly enjoy their company, and running TAR would mean that I would be spending twenty-four hours a day with them for the better part of a month or two. In addition, in my non-family life, I generally stay away from people I don't like, and so I'm generally surrounded by agreeable people. As such, I am more agreeable myself. In fact, I'm a rather different person when my family is not around, and I've come to think of that person as the genuine me. (Actually, that's a major reason no one in my family knows about this website). I like the "Genuine BanjoSteve" a lot better than "Family BanjoSteve", and I think America would too. Family BanjoSteve is sullen, aloof, short-tempered, and prickly. Genuine BanjoSteve is kind, charming, gregarious, and witty. I would much rather show America Genuine BanjoSteve than Family BanjoSteve; I don't want to be the next Jonathan Baker. In addition, my father and brother both have a tendency to say nasty things to me at the expense of others solely to amuse themselves. They also know where my buttons are, and knows how to push them, and I wouldn't put it past them to push them repeatedly, especially in a high-stress environment and on national TV. So even though now is probably the best time in my life to go on the Amazing Race, I don't think it's something I should do. So I guess there are things I wouldn't do for a million dollars.

Survivor Blogging: Initial Impressions

2005-02-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

The new season of Survivor started a couple weeks ago, so I'm a little behind on this, especially if I'm going to be talking about "initial impressions", but whatever. Besides, strategy (really the only reason I watch this show) doesn't play a very big role this early in the game.

Ulong:

Ulong has had two Tribal Councils, so we have an idea of how the alliances are shaping up. On one hand there seems to be a romance budding between Jeff and Kim, with Bobby Jon as a third wheel. On the other hand there is James and Angie, with Stephenie and Ibrehim looking like free agents. Last week the vote came down to Ashlee or Kim, and for a while it seemed as if James, Angie, Stephenie, and Ashlee were going to break up Jeff and Kim. I don't know how much was editing, but it looked like Ashlee's side broke down when it looked like there was going to be a tie, meaning they just assumed Ibrehim's vote, which was dumb. In any event, even though the people outside the Romance Alliance have numerical superiority, it doesn't look like they're very well-organized; they're not so much an alliance as a group of people who vote together. Stephenie in particular, doesn't seem allied with them so much as willing to use them to advance her own agenda. If anyone was going to switch and vote with the Romance Alliance it would be her. Even though she seems the most aware of the threat Jeff & Kim pose, her finger is in the wind enough that if she saw an advantage in switching, she'd take it. My prediction for members of this team to make it to the merge: Stephenie seems the most strategic-minded and James looks slippery enough to stay off of people's radars long enough so I'd say they're in. As for the rest, it would depend on whether the Noromos can get their shit together and boot Kim. They have the numbers and it seems like they have the will; Angie would vote against them out of lingering high school resentment against the jocks and cheerleaders, Ibrehim has already cast a vote against Kim, Stephenie was concerned about the romance, and James can probably figure he's safer at the core of the Noromo alliance than the periphery of the Romance alliance. So my prediction for now is that the Noromos will get rid of Kim at their next opportunity, and then possibly Jeff.

Coror:

I like this team a lot. Somehow they managed to get all of my favorite people on the same team. It's hard to see what the alliances are here because this team hasn't had to go to Tribal Council yet. While they probably will have to eventually, the kind of success they've had with immunity challenges tend to promote a vicious circle: because they haven't had to vote anyone out yet but Ulong has, they're more cohesive and united, and also larger, obviously, which makes it easier for them to win challenges in the future. Which is not to say there hasn't been friction at the camp, but really the only thing that's happened so far is that Caryn blamed Tom for the decision to go to the new camp, and made a big stink about it. Tom has kind of taken the role as team leader, which gives him a certain amount of sway, but also put a target on his back. I think Caryn was trying to make him pay for sticking his neck out, but it backfired, because now it seems as though everyone hates Caryn. If they do have to go to Tribal, she'll probably be the first gone, because she's been the only source of friction so far in an otherwise happy, cohesive, unified tribe. In addition, it'll probably be largely unanimous, meaning that the vote won't cause the divisiveness and fragmentation. If there's any dissent from the Caryn vote, I doubt it will be because Caryn is part of an alliance to protect her. Because the alliances haven't really shaken out yet, it's too soon to say who'll make it to the merge. I think the next couple votes will be more about getting rid of weak links. Janu looks potentially shaky, fatigue might weaken her and make her look like a target. And then there's Willard the Old Guy, who's already sat out of one challenge and Katie, who in addition to sitting out a challenge, also played a role in losing the challenge she was in for her team. Nevertheless, any of these people might buffer themselves within an alliance, so it's anyone's game as far as Coror is concerned.

Oscar Watch 2004: The Ceremony

2005-02-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

Random Thoughts:

-Chris Rock wasn't as good as I'd hoped he'd be. First of all, while I appreciate Bush-bashing, especially to such a wide audience, it's a little inappropriate for such a forum. Maybe a joke here or there thrown in, but that extended Gap metaphor was pretty far off the subject of the movies. When he did talk about the movies though, it was good. Nice and self-deprecating to take some of the meanness off (speaking of which, give it a rest Sean Penn).

-I really hate the whole giving out awards in the audience thing. One thing I appreciated about Oscar ceremonies past was that they gave just as much attention and credit to the guy who does the sound as Julia Roberts. It's the only time people ever even think about "the little people" in Hollywood, and it's rather classless to say to them, "You're not worth the time it takes to show you walking up to the stage." I did like bit where the nominees are already onstage. They should do that for all the categories. I would have loved to see Kate Winslet, Imelda Staunton, Catalina Sandina Moreno, Hilary Swank, and Annette Bening all onstage at once when the winner is announced. It would be like the Miss America pageant.

-I really really wish that people would stop clapping over the Necrology. As above, the Necrology is a place where Hollywood recognizes that it's more than a bunch of pretty faces, that there are real people toiling away unglamorously in editing bays and risking their lives as stunt people just to entertain us. Yet the audience persists in turning it into a popularity contest. There should be a little flyer passed out with the tickets asking the audience to keep their silence. Failing that, they should cut the feed from the audience clapping so the viewers at home are spared.

-I really like the Chuck Workman bits where they edit together tons of clips for different movies. That's one of my favorite parts of any Oscar ceremony. Though I wonder how he'll be acknowledged when he dies. They can't very well cut together highlights from his work now, can they?

-As for the awards themselves, there weren't a lot of surprises. I got a few of my predictions wrong, but the only ones that were really out of left field were Best Song and Best Sound Editing. Overall, I got 15.26 points out of a possible 24, and fifteen correct categories. My biggest prediction mistakes were probably writing off Lemony Snicket's chances in Best Makeup. and hedging too much in Best Picture and Director. I suppose the problem was that I finalized my predictions a few weeks early. If I'd done so on Saturday, for example, I don't think I would have given as much credence to The Aviator's chances. Strange how only a month ago there was no front-runner at all and any of four different movies could have credibly won, but yet it was obvious by the time of the ceremony that Million Dollar Baby was going to win. Also, the rule that the Best Picture winner also wins the most awards didn't hold. I think that rule played a little too much into my thinking in Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. Hindsight's 20-20 I suppose. On my new prediction system, I did well. I got more points than I would have if I'd only scored one point per category, meaning my hedging for partial credit didn't cost me too much. Though it was kind of pussy for me to spread 20% all around in Best Animated Short.

The Mother of All Crossovers

2005-02-24T11:04:00.000-08:00

For all the CBS executives out there who read this site, here's an idea for a great sweeps stunt:

Det. Lilly Rush hears about a serial killing in Miami, one with details strikingly similar to a case she investigated eight years ago. She reopens the case, investigates it, only to find out she put the wrong man away back in '97. The real murderer was THE PHILLY STRANGLER. Later, we see case that brought this guy to Lilly's attention in the first place. Apparently, THE PHILLY STRANGLER has been targeting women in clubs. He gives them roofies, and then he takes them home, keeps them locked up in his basement, and then after a week he kills them. Horatio Caine almost catches him in time to save his latest victim, a Marine on leave from Iraq, but he's too late; by the time he finds THE PHILLY STRANGLER's hideout, she's already dead. Because she's a marine, Gibbs and his NCIS crew investigate the Miami killing, and discover that the Philly Strangler is actually a naval midshipman gone mad. He's stationed on the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter which left port in Miami and recently docked in New York. Mac and his CSI team investigate a missing persons report of an NYU student who was last seen partying with some sailors who had just got back into town. The investigation hits a dead end until Mac decides to call a friend of his in the Bureau. The FBI takes over the investigation and almost catches THE PHILLY STRANGLER, but he escapes their clutches and heads west, leaving a seemingly random trail of victims in his wake. The FBI tries to figure out the pattern, it isn't until they talk to CalSci professor Charlie Epps that they are able to determine that the killer plans to strike somewhere in Los Angeles. Will they catch THE PHILLY STRANGLER in time? Find out this May on CBS.

Enough Already

2005-02-19T10:56:00.000-08:00

There has been a trend among television writers lately that has really started to annoy me. Every now and then a show will have some character make some crack about the Patriot Act. Last week on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, someone mentioned the Patriot Act, and another character retorted that he liked it better the first time he read it, when it was called 1984. I've heard similar statements on Alias, Without a Trace, The Practice, Boston Legal, and others I'm sure. A few of them were hyperbolical wisecracks like Det. Logan's above. But most were basically sincere. Now I'm about as liberal as they come. I hate George W. Bush and voted for Kucinich in the primaries. But come on. The Patriot Act is not that bad. It doesn't erase the Constitution. It doesn't turn America into a police state. Most of it is actually good, useful law. There are bad parts, but in my mind what makes them bad aren't the powers they give to the executive, which by and large seem reasonable, it's the fact that it gives the executive broad new powers without any checks. It's bad, but nowhere near as bad as TV writers seem to believe. The problem, I think, is that all the egregious constitutional overreach of the past four years--the rounding up of Muslim immigrants, the holding of "enemy combatants", the torture memos, etc.--have been all wrapped up in the liberal mind as being one and the same with the Patriot Act. They use the Patriot Act as a convenient short hand. But if it were repealed in its entirety tomorrow, most of the worst stains on our constitutional democracy would remain. So move on, TV writers, and find a new and more accurate bugaboo for you concerns about creeping fascism.

Dear J.J.

2005-02-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to stay off the Lost bitterness train for a long time. When you dropped the plot thread about who whacked Sayid that one time, I didn't complain. When it looked like you had actually killed Charlie, but then Jack brought him back, I bit my lip, but I didn't complain. When you also killed Shannon, but then it turned out the whole thing was a hallucination, I also didn't complain. When you gave Jack and Kate a second flashback before Hurley even got one, I didn't complain. I didn't complain about the glaring plot holes week after week either. And as hard as it is to believe, I didn't complain when you had a whole episode about how Kate killed several people just to get her toy plane back I didn't complain then.

But I'm complaining now. First of all, one word. Amnesia. Amnesia! You're killing me, J.J. Amnesia is the oldest, most tired plot device there is, and if 24 couldn't pull it off without almost derailing a whole season you sure as hell can't. Second, the thing about a serialized mystery is that you can't just keep dragging things out. As it stands, every episode just adds a new question. Why were there polar bears on the island? Who knows, but here's another one for you, and by the way, Walt has powers. Why can Locke walk now? Who knows, but now he's a fledging cult-leader. Where was Claire that whole time, and what did Ethan want with her? Fuck if I know, Claire has amnesia and Ethan's dead.

You can't just keep stringing us along like this. The way to keep a mystery plot going is to answer questions, but do so in a way that raises more. The closest you've come to this was when you showed us who the French woman was. That was almost a pretty good plot twist, but it's been negated by two things. First, Frenchie was crazy. That means nothing she says can be taken as true, and everything she says can be dismissed. (Way to write yourself a little trapdoor there, J.J.). Second, you've done almost nothing with that plot since it was introduced. What happened to Alex? What was the sickness she referred to that changed everyone in her group? Who are the "others" she mentioned? And that's just the beginning of the dropped plot lines.

I don't know how much more of this I can take. I've already given up on Alias. You have seven more episodes to turn this season around, J.J. If this show hasn't lived up to the promise of the pilot and "Walkabout" (the Locke flashback episode) by the end of this season, you can forget about me coming back next year.

Signed,

Banjo Steve

Comments

2005-02-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

I've long wondered why I get so many visitors to my site, but so few leave comments (Only one so far). I've investigated the problem and it seems that the default setting for comments was for registered Blogger users only. I changed that so now anyone who wants to leave comments. Expect them to start flowing in like a mighty river of opinion.

On another note, I've figured out who has been trying to use The-Cloak.com to come here. Apparently, it was a pedophile/terrorist from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

On a third note, my traffic counter is also showing me that a good way to get people to come here is by putting the words nude or naked anywhere on the site. Given that I mention so many actresses in the course of normal operations, a search of the words "Kate Winslet nude or naked" (for example) will deliver this site. Another search that brought someone here: "david carradine snubbed oscar", which made me proud. That one actually delivered on its promise. I hope you enjoyed your visit here, Mr. David Carradine Fan (or maybe it was David Carradine himself, in a fit of ego).

Oscar Watch 2004: Picking the Winners

2005-02-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

In college, a friend of mine was taking a class on Decision Analysis, which was about how to balance the risk inherent in making decisions under uncertain conditions. Their final was unusual. It was a multiple choice test, but it gave partial credit. The way it worked was you estimated the probability that each answer was right, and then your points for the question were multiplied by the percentage of likelihood you gave the correct answer. I can't imagine another class this sort of test would work for, but it would be a great way to run an Oscar Pool. So here are my predictions for each category.

Best Picture

For a long time, there didn't appear to be any front runner in this race and it looked like Finding Neverland, Sideways, Million Dollar Baby, and The Aviator all had good shots at winning. But as time went on Finding Neverland and Sideways prospects dimmed slightly, and the race is now between The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby. The exciting thing about this race is that it's the first time since I've been following the Oscars that there isn't a front-runner for Best Picture. There was an upset In 1998, when Saving Private Ryan lost, and in 2000 and 2002, the way the awards were handed out in the ceremony made it look like Traffic and The Pianist might beat Gladiator and Chicago respectively, but this year neither Million Dollar Baby nor The Aviator's chances are solid enough for a loss to be considered an upset. Two rules of thumb when picking the Best Picture winner. First, the film with the most nominations usually wins. There have been exceptions in the past (A Beautiful Mind and The Silence of the Lambs, for example) but this rule is usually quite solid. A firmer rule, one with no exceptions that I can recall, is that the Best Picture winner also is the film that wins the most Oscars. There was a tie in 2001, when A Beautiful Mind and the Lord of the Rings each won four, but even in that case, A Beautiful Mind's wins were in more prestigious categories. Both of the rules would favor The Aviator. It has eleven nominations to Million Dollar Baby's seven, and it's hard to see Million Dollar Baby beating it in total wins, though I can picture a few scenarios where they tie (MDB wins Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay, Aviator wins Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction, Costume Design, and Sound).

I think I'll give a slight edge to Million Dollar Baby. I'm probably biased by the amount of Roger Ebert I read (he's crazy about that movie), but my sense of the buzz is that Million Dollar Baby's support comes from a love of the film itself, while The Aviator's comes from a respect for Martin Scorsese. My final guess:

60% Million Dollar Baby
40% The Aviator

Best Director

Like in Best Picture, this is a race between MDB and The Aviator. And just like in 2002, there is a sizable amount of support for Martin Scorsese that is less about the film he's nominated for and more about correcting past snubs. Still, while I think he's got a better shot than in 2002, I think ultimately he'll lose again, for the same reason: there's a movie out there that people like more. This year that movie is Million Dollar Baby. Yes, Clint Eastwood has already won an Oscar, but he made the better film, and in giving Oscars to people to correct past injustices, you only create new ones. I do think, however, that The Aviator has a better chance for Best Director than for Best Picture. Also, a weird pattern has formed in the last few years. While normally Best Director and Best Picture go to the same film, lately it seems like they split in even years (1998, 2000, and 2002) and match in the odd years. This is an even year, and never have the two awards seemed as splittable. If they do split, it will a situation similar to 1998, where the Academy just plain can't decide which film they like more, rather than in 2000 or 2002, where the splits seemed to be between a popcorn film and an art film.

55% Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
45% Martin Scorsese, The Aviator

Best Actor

Jamie Foxx is a big front-runner here, but not so much that I'd say it's guaranteed. Clint Eastwood could easily sneak in here in a Million Dollar Baby sweep. It's tricky to assign percentages here because I'd say that Jamie Foxx has an 85% chance of winning and Clint Eastwood 15%. But if I'm that confident in Jamie Foxx, it would make more sense to give him 100%, rather than give away 15 points when I don't have to. So I'm going with:

100% Jamie Foxx, Ray

Best Actress

Not really a contest here. It looked for a while like Annette Bening could put up a fight with Hilary Swank, but wherever they've gone up against each other, Hilary Swank has won.

100% Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby

Best Supporting Actor

Here I have the same problem as in Best Actor. There's an very real chance that Thomas Haden Church could sneak for his performance in Sideways, but at the same time I'm very confident in Morgan Freeman's chances. Like Martin Scorsese, here's another case of a well-regarded figure who has yet to win an Oscar. The difference here is that this performance is one of his best, while I'd be surprised if The Aviator made anyone's Top Five Martin Scorsese movies.

100% Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby

Best Supporting Actress

In many respects, this race is even harder to call than Best Picture or Director. It's a two-woman race, and as I said in my nominations post, Cate Blanchett is getting a lot of acclaim simply on degree-of-difficulty. But Virginia Madsen has the whole Travolta Career Resuscitation thing going for her. Add to that the fact that Sideways is still beloved, yet likely to get shut out of all the other categories in which it's nominated, and this is the best place for a win. I'm giving it very narrowly to Madsen, if only so I don't have to go fifty-fifty, which is lame.

52% Virginia Madsen, Sideways
48% Cate Blanchett, The Aviator

Best Original Screenplay

I'm really worried for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's chances in this category. It's clearly the most deserving, and the favorite, but then again, so was Adaptation, and the Academy still went for the safer movie (though that might have been because of category confusion. Adaptation was nominated in the adapted category, even though most of it was original. That might have turned voters off). The safe choice here would be The Aviator. This is going to be one of those ones where I hedge my bet on a pick that would ordinarily be a lock.

75% Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
25% The Aviator

Best Adapted Screenplay

Yet another category with two strong contenders and no way to choose between them. The question here is how deep the Million Dollar Baby tidal wave will be. If it's strong, it'll pick up Adapted Screenplay and Actor (maybe even Editing). If, on the other hand, the Academy is in a Spread the Wealth sort of mood this year, Sideways should win in this category. I think I'll give a very slight edge to MDB.

51% Million Dollar Baby
49% Sideways

Best Cinematography

I can't see this going to any film besides The Aviator. Maybe The Passion of the Christ, but I'm not doubtful enough of The Aviator's chance for me to need to hedge my bet. There will be some sentiment that the Passion shouldn't walk away empty-handed, but Makeup should take care of that.

100% The Aviator

Best Editing

Most prognosticators will tell you that this award usually goes to the Best Picture winner. This is not true. Look at the the past few winners: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Chicago, Black Hawk Down, Traffic, The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, The English Patient, Apollo 13. If you'll notice, the only Best Picture winners on this list are the ones that won tons of other awards as part of a sweep. Apply that lesson here. If any Best Picture nominee will be carried to victory in a massive sweep, it'll be The Aviator; MDB doesn't have enough nominations for a sweep of Chicago magnitude, much less LOTR/Titanic. If there's a split between Best Editing and Best Picture, it's either because the Best Picture winner doesn't have the technical depth for it (like A Beautiful Mind, or American Beauty) or there are a few films with technical depth that split up the awards pretty evenly (See Gladiator, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Traffic in 2000, or SPR & SiL in 1998). This year seems more like the former, so I'm going to say The Aviator.

100% The Aviator

Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design

More often than not, these two awards go hand in hand, so we can assume that Ray and Troy won't win Best Costume Design and A Very Long Engagement and The Phantom of the Opera won't win Best Art Direction. Lemony Snicket's is too lightweight and gaudy, leaving The Aviator and Finding Neverland. If Finding Neverland is going to rally, this won't be the place, so The Aviator will probably win both easily.

100% The Aviator, both categories

Best Visual Effects

Don't have much to say about an award that's so obvious.

100% Spider-Man 2

Best Makeup

See my remarks for Best Cinematography above, as well as my remarks in my Oscar Watch post.

100% The Passion of the Christ

Best Sound Mixing

I'm genuinely torn here, and in three directions. I'm leaning toward Spider-Man 2, because action movies often do well here, but then there's Ray with its boatloads of original recordings of Ray Charles, and The Aviator with its minor sweep. Let's split it more or less evenly:

37% The Aviator
36% Ray
27% Spider-Man 2

Best Sound Editing

Like an animated film would ever win this. Pshaw!

100% Spider-Man 2

Best Score

I'm bad with this one. Hmm let's see. Not The Village. Not Lemony Snicket. People say John Williams always wins, but really it's been more than a decade, and Harry Potter 3 is not what comeback vehicle are made of (Harry Potter 1 on the other hand...but don't get me started on that particular instance of highway robbery). Which leaves Finding Neverland and The Passion of the Christ. My gut tells me to go with the latter, but I think I'll hedge a little.

60% The Passion of the Christ
20% Finding Neverland
20% Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Best Song

Random guess, really, but I think I'll go with the Shrek 2 song, but hedged. This is also a weak category for me. It's so hard without all those Disney ringers.

60% Shrek 2
20% The Polar Express
20% The Phantom of the Opera

Best Animated Feature

In the words of Roger Ebert, "Shrek 2 is no Shrek". Shark Tale's nomination is a joke. Thus:

100% The Incredibles

Best Foreign Film

As I said when picking the nominees, it's probably the film you've heard of. I've heard of The Sea Inside, ergo...

100% The Sea Inside

Best Documentary Feature

This one's tricky. There's no Holocaust film to clear the decks, and no Michael Moore or Errol Morris. Super Size Me is out; too fluffy.
The Story of Weeping Camels was a little controversial in its use of staged footage. I doubt the Academy is ready to honor a Tupac documentary (a Tupacumentary, if you will). I think I'll go with Born into Brothels.

100% Born Into Brothels

Best Documentary Short

This one's tricky too (as it always is, because you haven't seen the nominees and never will). Mighty Times looks pretty good, though I think Sister Rose's Passion, which is about a nun who tries to get the Church to apologize for blaming the Jews for Jesus's death, might win, just as a little "fuck you" to Mel Gibson.

51% Mighty Times: A Children's March
49% Sister Rose's Passion

Best Live Action Short

Little Terrorist looks cute. I'll go with that one, hedged.

52% Little Terrorist
12% each for the rest

Best Animated Short

No idea at all.

20% all around.

Review: Finding Neverland

2005-02-09T12:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, so remember my Oscar Watch article a while back when I suggested that Finding Neverland was a bad movie that didn't deserve a nomination for Best Picture? I'm going to have to call a "my bad" on that one. You see, I hadn't seen the movie at the time I wrote that post and every indication in the trailer and i everything I'd read about the film pointed to the film being tear-jerky pap--a Cider House Rules/Chocolat sort of movie. But then I went and saw it.

The interesting thing is, I was half right. Finding Neverland is a delicate high-wire act above all the smarm and schmaltz that would tend to characterize a film about a man who uses the wonders of imagination to help ease the pain of a bunch of kids watching their mother die. The credit for avoiding that pitfall goes to the actors, and of course the director, Marc Forster. The first key decision was for Johnny Depp to remove any hint of sexual chemistry between Kate Winslet and himself. This is crucial because the whole film would have fallen apart if we viewers had, at any point, thought that Winslet and Depp's characters should be together, because we, like the characters in the film played by Radha Mitchell and Julie Christie, would have begun to suspect his motives. Another touch that avoids the easy, safe cliché was to make Mitchell's character less of a superficial bitch than she might have seemed on the page. Too often, in stories like these, a movie will make the agrieved spouse as unpleasant as possible, so that it won't bother the audience when the hero or heroine leaves them for their "true love". If the couple in question is rich, they'll often throw in the hint that the marriage only happened because the agrieved spouse was only after the hero's money. Forster, Mitchell, and Depp avoid that here, by showing how rooted in love the Barrie's marriage was, so instead of being glad when the marriage dissolved, because it freed Johnny Depp up to go after Kate Winslet, I was a little sad, because it meant that Radha Mitchell would never experience the "neverland" she expected when she married him.

Another crucial performer that I've left out of this discussion is Freddy Highmore, who played Peter. Too often when films have a child character who is wise beyond his or her years, the writers use that as an excuse to write him as a short adult, but here Highmore, particularly in the scene where he's tearing apart the stage after he finds out his mother is sick, shows that while he has learned things most children don't know, he's still a young child, ill-equipped to handle the pain that adult life so often brings. It's an adept performance, and one so subtle that I have to give the actor credit; usually child performances are coaxed out by the director (and it shows), but I can't imagine this performance working without some pushback from the performer. It's mature work, and I'm even tempted to say that he deserved an Oscar nomination for it (more than Jamie Foxx for Collateral)

Public Service Announcement

2005-02-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make. I've spent more time in the last week looking at the traffic stats than I have working on the content for this site. But one thing I've noticed is that there is someone who was directed here from a website called the-cloak.com. I clicked on it, think it was some sort of blog, but I saw that it's supposed to hide the user from websites. I hope, whoever you are that came here under the cloak, that you're not paying money for this service, because it does not work. I totally saw your IP address, your location, your browser, your operating system, and how long you were here, and these are the sorts of things I would have expected the-cloak.com to have kept from me.

The End of an Era

2005-02-03T11:53:00.000-08:00

I just found out today that Enterprise was cancelled. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand it was a pretty crappy show. It did start to get better this year, but in terms of Star Trek and in terms of television it was bad. I could go into a litany of it sins (It's slow-paced, Archer is profoundly unlikable, It wastes its cast members, that theme song, etc.) but that's not really the point. The only reason I even watch a show this bad is the two words that the powers that be added to the title at the beginning of the third season to boost ratings: Star Trek. For the last eighteen television seasons there has been at least one Star Trek show on the air, and I've been watching it faithfully, even when the quality wasn't rewarding. I recall the 1996-1997 season when for a spell Voyager was more entertaining than Deep Space Nine. I remember wondering why I still bothered with DS9, and the answer I came up with was, "Well, I need to see what's going on in the Alpha Quadrant." It was as if the Trek Universe had a reality independent of me. I continued to think like this: whenever I think of Voyager, DS9, and TNG, I wonder what everyone's been up too since I saw them last.

But now that Enterprise has been cancelled, the 2005-2006 TV season will be the first in almost two decades without a Star Trek show. There isn't one in the works, nor are there any plans for a movie. The TNG cast is done with movies and no other series had anywhere near the popularity and cultural cache of the first two. It's still hard to believe, but this might be the end. Forever. It's entirely possible that the book has been closed on the Star Trek universe. I'll never know whether Cardassia rebuilt its empire, or if it's now peaceful and humble. I'll never know if Bajor joined the Federation. I'll never know if the Borg were totally decimated by the virus Janeway gave them. I'll never know if the holographic laborers at the end of "Author, Author" rose up in rebellion. I'll never know how Captain Picard dies.

It feels like the end of Nemesis, when Data died. He'd been one of my favorite TV characters, and he was gone. Except this time, it's every character, from Seven of Nine to Porthos, from Worf to Morn, and I'll never see them again.

The Coolest Man in the World

2005-01-29T09:18:00.000-08:00

I just saw Samuel L. Jackson on Letterman last night, and it occurred to me that he just might be the coolest person in the world. Let's look at some of the evidence.

-To say that he dresses well would be an understatement. His personal style is utterly unique, and yet doesn't really call attention to itself. He seems to take fashion risks, but then pulls them off. He will never embarass himself at the Oscars.

-He's always laid back in interviews and never seems to be trying to make himself likable with the interviewer, and his interview bits never sound like egregious setups from preinterviews. He always has interesting stories to tell too, leading me to my next point.

-He seems to live thoroughly in Hollywood, but not of Hollywood. For example, on Letterman he told a story about how he was invited to Star Jones's wedding and how he was hanging out with Chris Rock, but then he left to go to a fight with Donald Trump. Normally that would sound horribly name-droppy, but he told the story so matter-of-factly, that it's as if he's just being honest. That is, given that he is a celebrity and that he does things with other celebrities, a telling of events from his life would naturally involve some name-dropping. And the way he tells the stories, it seems as though he's not terribly impressed with either his celebrity, nor that of other celebrities. At the same time though, he does get star struck by some people. For instance, Quentin Tarantino mentioned that at one point Sonny Chiba, a relatively obscure personality, visited the set of Jackie Brown, and Samuel L. Jackson was star-struck. In the same movie, he was intimidated by doing a scene with Robert De Niro.

-He's still married to the woman he was with before he became famous. That speaks volumes to his character. Yes, it's true that I'm giving him extra credit for something that should be mandatory, but understand that it's easy to be faithful when that's your best or only option. Samuel L. Jackson stepped into a world where a great deal of anonymous sex with beautiful women was his for the asking, and that kind of temptation is hard to turn down, but he did.

-And of course there's his onscreen work. Like Christopher Walken, he's not always in good movies, but he's always good in them, and often the only good thing about them. He so effortlessly plays badasses, that you have to assume he's like that in real life at least just a little, kind of like how you assume Jack Nicholson is a smirking jackass in real life. And no one can read Quentin Tarantino dialogue like him. He's so good at it, that I'd even hazard a guess that QT owes as much of his success and acclaim to Samuel L. Jackson's gift with his dialogue as vice versa. Pulp Fiction might have been a flash in the pan if not for Samuel L. Jackson.

I suppose the definition of a cool person is someone you'd like to be. While I wouldn't want to be Sam Jackson himself, I would like to that kind of person, and face the world the way he does. He's literally the most successful movie star on the planet, and yet he seems down-to-earth. I would like to think that if have his kind of success that I would react in a similar fashion.

Oscar Watch 2004: The Nominees

2005-01-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry for being so tardy with this post, but after cranking out so many posts to finish before the announcements, I was a little burned-out on the Oscarblogging. Anyway, some thoughts, in bullet points:

-There weren't a lot of surprises this year. Almost none actually. Paul Giamatti got snubbed for Best Actor, but it was in favor of Clint Eastwood, so it wasn't that big a shock (One question that occurred to me was how the consensus arose that Clint Eastwood, as opposed to say, Johnny Depp or Don Cheadle, that stole Giamatti's nomination. For all we know Giamatti was eighth in the balloting and Eastwood was third.)

-Once again, my losing streak with Best Animated Feature continued, as The Polar Express was snubbed in favor of Shark Tale. I'm beginning to think the answer is that the Animation branch doesn't like it when animators "cheat". If you'll recall, another recent snubee was Waking Life, which has in common with The Polar Express that rather than being drawn, characters were created by digitally manipulating footage of actors.

-Ray did a lot better than I had predicted, scoring nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Costume Desing and Best Sound. Now, I haven't seen Ray, so I'm not sure if my cinematicity theory was wrong, or whether it was right and Ray is more cinematic that it appears in the previews. I'm going to try and watch the best picture nominees this coming week (that's right, I haven't seen any of them, the first time this has happened since 1992).

-Speaking of not seeing any of the movies, I think I did pretty well with my predictions in the face of that fact. Of films to score nominations, I've seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Hotel Rwanda, Spider-Man 2, The Incredibles, Collateral, The Passion of the Christ, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and I, Robot. In fact, at the time of the nominations announcement last year I'd seen all the Best Picture nominees and most of the nominees in lesser categories, and I did better with my predictions this year. I think it might actually help, because last year, I definitely let wishful thinking get the better of me, predicting that the Academy would see Seabiscuit the same way I did, nameless as a decent movie, but a little to saccharine to deserve serious Oscar consideration.

-The funniest nomination for me was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for Best Score. It amused me so because it proved I was right about the OJWN in general, if not in the particulars.

-Another minor surprise was the number of actors of color recognized. Actually was made it noteworthy was just how non-noteworthy it was. It was only three years ago that a big hullabaloo was raised by the number of non-white nominees, and the fact that two won. But this year, there were two black men nominated for best actor, a Latina nominated for best actress, two black men nominated for best supporting actor, and a black woman for best supporting actress, and in all the reading I've done about the nominations, I haven't seen anyone make note of that fact. It seems like the rule now, rather than the exception, that deserving actors of color get recognized.

I'm kind of sick of writing about the Oscars, and I don't expect to do so again until I release by predictions for the winners. I'm going to back to TV for awhile.

Oscar Watch 2004: Best Picture & Best Director

2005-01-24T22:32:00.000-08:00

And now for the for the big prize. Best Picture was actually one of the easier categories to predict. In fact, each of the most likely nominees fills a different traditional Oscar Sure Thing role. The Aviator is the Big Historical Epic á la Master & Commander or Gangs of New York. Sideways is the Independent Critical Darling, á la Lost in Translation or In the Bedroom. Million Dollar Baby is the Actor's Showcase, á la Mystic River, The Pianist, or A Beautiful Mind. And Finding Neverland gets the slot for the Tear-Jerking Melodrama That Probably Doesn't Deserve The Nomination, And Will Be Forgotten in Five or Six Years, á la Seabiscuit, The Hours, Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, and pretty much every damn year before then (not that I'm bitter). The fifth slot I'm not sure about. There isn't a clever name for it like the rest. It's just the fifth slot, and I can't decide whether it's going to be Ray or Hotel Rwanda. Ray was much beloved and widely seen, but it also came out a long time ago, at least compared to Hotel Rwanda, which is in theatres now. Hotel Rwanda, while not technically a Holocaust movie, fills basically the same role. It's a story of the power of the human spirit in a world surrounded by despair and hopelessness. It's also an Issue movie, in that it grapples with social issues of the day, in the same way Traffic dealt with the drug war and The Insider went after corporate greed. Yeah, that settles it. An Issue movie crossed with a Holocaust movie? Sound like Oscar to me. Hotel Rwanda it is.

The category of Best Director is intimately tied to Best Picture, so much that there's usually substantial agreement between the two. The weird thing, though, is that they almost never match exactly. Usually the directors agree on four and then add in a fifth. I'm thinking the four films of agreement will be the four I mentioned above, meaning Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, Clint Eastwood, and Marc Forster will probably get nominations. As for the fifth, it's tempting to say that it'll be Taylor Hackford, for Ray, but the Director's Branch usually uses the fifth slot to show up the rest of the Academy and prove they're willing to go with a more daring choice. Witness City of God, Talk to Her, Mulholland Drive, and Being John Malkovich. Another point about the fifth nomination is that directors care more about "cinematicity" than the Academy at large, so they'll probably reject the least cinematic movie of the Best Picture nominees for something more conspicuously directed. I've been penalized in the past in this category for not going far enough out on a limb in my guess, so this year, I think I'll go with Michael Mann for Collateral.

Oscar Watch 2004: Writing

2005-01-24T21:10:00.000-08:00

A couple things to remember about the writing categories: in general, every Best Picture nominee gets a nomination in one or the other category, depending, obviously, on whether the screenplay was adapted or original. Another point is that the WGA awards tend to be unhelpful, because they're stricter than other Guild awards about not recognizing films that weren't made by non-Guild members. So a lot of apparent snubs in their nominees are just because they aren't eligible for the award. Basically that means less cheating for me.

In the Best Original Screenplay, the first nomination to get out of the way is the Obligatory Charlie Kaufman Nomination, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Normally, when I comment on the whole Obligatory Nomination thing, it's kind of complaint that these people get nominations whether they deserve them or not, but Charlie Kaufman always deserves his, so it doesn't bother me. In fact, I'm a little pissed he's never won. This looks like his year though. This category has also been pretty friendly to animation, more so than Best Picture, so I'm putting The Incredibles down too. The Aviator, Hotel Rwanda, Ray and Kinsey are the biggest Best Picture contenders with original screenplays, so I'm betting that some combination of them fills out the rest of the list. The Aviator definitely. Hotel Rwanda will probably get one too, leaving Ray and Kinsey. I'm not optimistic about Kinsey's chances, for reasons stated previously, so I'm giving the fifth slot to Ray.

Best Adapted Screenplay is a little easier because most of the big Best Picture contenders have adapted screenplays. Which means you can count on nominations for Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, and Sideways. And even though it's probably not going to get Best Picture or Director, as its prerelease buzz suggested, Closer is probably a safe bet here. The fifth slot is tricky though. Spider-Man 2 is probably too lightweight. The Passion of the Christ has as many detractors as fans in Hollywood, and besides, it's more of a director's movie. My gut says that A Very Long Engagment will probably get the last nomination.

Oscar Watch 2004: Supporting Actor & Actress

2005-01-24T15:31:00.000-08:00

Surprisingly, I've found that the Best Supporting Actor has been hard to pick, not because there have been too many possibilities, but because there have been too few. Thomas Haden Church has the category locked up for his performance in Sideways (he's probably the favorite for a win), and Morgan Freeman is probably a safe bet too, but other than that, every other name I've heard bandied about has some strikes against him. Clive Owen looked in trouble after he was shut out of the SAG awards, and the Closer buzz started to die out, and I was almost ready to write him off, but then her came from behind to win the Golden Globe, so he's probably safe here. Jamie Foxx's Ray acclaim has been bleeding into his Collateral performance, but it's really a lead, and it's a lot less impressive a role. If he gets a nomination here, it's best to understand it as the Academy liking him in Ray so much they wanted to nominate him twice. That leaves the fifth slot. EW says it'll be Peter Sarsgaard from Kinsey, but I haven't seem him get any other award from any other group, so I don't know where they're getting that. It might be someone from The Aviator, but the problem there is that there too many potential someones, from Alan Alda, to Alec Baldwin, to John C. Reilly, and the buzz hasn't crystallized around any of them the way it has around Cate Blanchett, so they'll probably cancel each other out. Freddy Highmore got a SAG nomination for Finding Neverland, as did James Garner for The Notebook, and David Carradine got a GG nom for Kill Bill:Vol. 2, so I'm betting it will be one of these three. The Academy, for whatever reason, is less kind to child performers than SAG, and Freddy Highmore doesn't have the buzz of Haley Joel Osment or Anna Paquin, for instance, so he's probably out. James Garner's film was a little to small, and too long ago to really have a shot, so I'd give the last slot to David Carradine. I freely admit that this last one is perhaps a bit of wishful thinking clouding my judgement, but for every time that's failed me (Memento for Best Picture) it's paid off (Johnny Depp for Best Actor for Pirates of the Caribbean), so I'm comfortable here.

Because of the dearth of strong leading roles for women I mentioned in my post on Best Actress, there are a glut of potential nominees for Best Supporting Actress. Starting with Virginia Madsen for Sideways. Like her costar, Thomas Haden Church, she's so solid a lock she's the favorite for the win. And just like her costar in Closer Natalie Portman had a similar rise and fall and rise again fate culminating in a Golden Globe, and probably an Oscar nomination. Cate Blanchett is in a funny position. Her performance in The Aviator was a highwire act. Katharine Hepburn is such a famous and particular personality that if she screwed it up it would have been legendary. Yet she nailed it so much that she invites unflattering comparisons with the real thing. Consequently, while I think she's a lock for a nomination, she has no chance whatsoever at a win. For the last two slots, I'd say that Kate Winslet will probably ride a Finding Neverland tidal wave to a nomination bolstered by good will for her Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind performance. And Laura Linney, by virtue of the fact that her character was not as famous as a real person and thus less a lightning rod for criticism, will dodge the bullet that caught Liam Neeson and Kinsey.

A Suggestion For a New Oscar Category

2005-01-24T14:45:00.000-08:00

I've long had ideas about ways to improve the Oscars. One way would be to add a few more categories. They did this a few years ago when they added Best Animated Feature, and though this hasn't been a complete success (see my previous post on the travesty of the Boy Genius beating out actual genius), it's a long overdue acknowledgement of the validity of animation as a film medium. My first idea came from, of all places, the MTV Movie Awards. In addition to their best actor and actress prizes, the MTV Awards also give a prize for Best Comedic Performance, one in which men and women compete as equals. This would be a great idea for an Oscar category. Comedies, particularly comedic performances, have been overlooked far too often at Oscar time. They occasionally get nominations, but deserving performances are snubbed more often than not, and they rarely win. The way I envision this category is that all comedic performances, whether leading or supporting, male or female, or even those in otherwise dramatic films, would be grouped into one category, and unlike the Golden Globes, the performance would be eligible for the other acting awards as well. If this category had been around in previous years, Gene Hackman might have gotten recognized for The Royal Tenenbaums, Adam Sandler for Punch Drunk Love, Ben Stiller for Meet the Parents, and Nicolas Cage and Renee Zellweger might have won for Adaptation and Bridget Jones's Diary, respectively.

One drawback would be ghettoization, the tendency for voters to be reluctant to nominate films in other categories when they know they will be acknowledged in their "ghetto" category. Look at Shrek and Finding Nemo, for example. There are those that argue that without the Best Animated Feature category, they would have been Best Picture nominees. And also notice that no foreign film has ever won Best Picture and no documentary has ever even been nominated. This might happen with my hypothetical Best Comedic Performance category, but considering the extent to which comedy is already ghettoized, I doubt it would make things worse.

Oscar Watch 2004: Animated Feature & Foreign Film

2005-01-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

You'd think the nominees for Best Animated Feature would be easier to predict. There are only a handful of eligible films in a given year, and the vast majority of them are Pokemon movies or crappy Disney sequels. Yet I somehow have managed to screw it up every year the award has been presented. In 2001, I overestimated the taste of the Animation branch and assumed that Waking Life, one of the best animated films of all time, would at least get a nomination. No such luck. The Academy, in its infinite wisdom, chose friggin' Jimmy Neutron, the friggin' Boy Genius. Oy. In 2002, I did alright with my predictions, but because there were an unusually high number of eligible films, there were five nominees and I only picked three. (All three were among the five, though). Last year was my biggest boneheaded mistake yet. I picked Sinbad over Brother Bear, thinking that a) it was eligible, which it wasn't, and that b) Disney's thirst for Oscar gold would be slaked by Finding Nemo's lock in the category, forgetting that that thirst is essentially unquenchable (there's a reason Walt Disney is the all-time record holder for both nominations and wins.) Let's hope my picks this year can break that trend. The Incredibles is the solid favorite for the win, so it's naturally a solid lock on a nomination. Shrek won this category a few years back, so I expect Shrek 2 which outperformed it at the box-office, if not critically, to get a nomination here. The last slot will probably be The Polar Express, though given my luck, I wouldn't be surprised if Shark Tale or Home on the Range snuck in.

This will be the first year I've made predictions in Best Foreign Film . Usually I've avoided it, because most of the films haven't come out yet, so there's no buzz, and there are some arcane rules that I don't quite understand governing how the nominees are selected. But the Academy lists the films eligible for consideration, so I think I can do pretty well. The first thing to do is scan the list of eligible films for movies you've heard of, however dimly: they're usually locks. This year that means House of Flying Daggers from China and The Sea Inside from Spain are definitely locks, and I'm pretty confident that Lars von Trier has the name recognition to get his The Five Obstructions noticed. Next look at France and Italy. They're kind of the Foreign Film equivalents of Meryl Streep or John Williams. In this case, France has The Chorus which I've heard of so it's in. After that, it's kind of a crap shoot. I haven't seen or heard of the rest of the eligible films, so I'm just going to pick the film with the funniest name Hawaii, Oslo from Norway.

Oscar Watch 2004: Sound & Music

2005-01-24T12:33:00.000-08:00

This is the Oscar Watch entry where I get blatantly lazy and cheat. But I suppose I warned you in my first OW post that I was going to do this with Best Sound anyway, because it's too hard to pick the sound nominees any other way (and besides, it's pretty accurate). I refer, of course, to copying the Cinema Audio Society nominees: The Aviator, The Bourne Supremacy, Finding Neverland, Ray, and Spider-Man 2. Done and done!

The other hard cateogory to pick is Best Song. It's even harder than sound because there is no guild (I think, or if there is, it's not predictive or well-established like SAG, DGA, WGA, ACE, and ASC. I forget why I don't use the guild). Best Song and Best Song both have in common the fact that there is no relationship between quality of the movie as a whole and the quality of the songs in it or the sound mix, so the door to both categories is thrown wide(r) than it is in, say, Best Editing or Best Original Screenplay. Of course, there is a similar problem in Best Costume Design or Best Visual Effects, but in those categories, you really only need to see the trailers to get an idea of the quality of the costuming or the visual effects, while watching the whole movie is often no help deciding which has the Best Sound. Anyway, the cheat I use here is to rip off the Golden Globe nominees, which were Alfie, Hotel Rwanda, The Phantom of the Opera, The Polar Express, and Shrek 2. Don't ask me what songs I'm referring to. I have no idea.

Honestly, I think the Academy should drop this category. It makes the ceremony too long, with all the performances of the songs, and it's kind of obsolete anyway, because the category was developed when Hollywood cranked out several dozen musicals a year. Nowadays, there's at most one musical a year, and it's something like Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, Moulin Rouge, or O Brother, Where Art Thou, where none of the songs are original, so they have to nominate songs from non-musicals, which usually means that its the song that plays over the credits, which most people miss anyway because they have already left the theater. And who cares what the best song that played over end credits was in a particular year? Seriously, they contribute nothing to the quality of the film as a whole.

With that rant over, it's time to move on to Best Score. The first slot to get out the way is the Obligatory John Williams Nomination. He has two movies this year, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and The Terminal. The former is basically just a reprise of his score from the first Harry Potter movie (one of his best, actually) so I expect that the OJWN this year will go to his work in The Terminal. Next up is the Obligatory Pixar Nomination. Every Pixar movie has gotten a Best Score nominaton (except Toy Story 2, but it got a Best Song nomination that year), so I expect the streak to continue unabated with The Incredibles. The Golden Globe nominees for Best Score should help me fill out the rest of the category. The Aviator is the year's only big epic (well, the only one that wasn't a horrible movie and huge flop. Oliver Stone, I'm looking in your direction), so I expect it to get a nomination here. And with all the Clint-loving going around, I'm thinking he'll be nominated for his score for Million Dollar Baby, whether he deserves it or not. And for the last one, I can't really think of a clever reason for it but my gut says Finding Neverland. Hey, give me a break. I have to write five more of these in the three hours.

Oscar Watch 2004: Cinematography, Art Direction, and Costume Design

2005-01-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

Yikes! I'm way behind on my Oscar Watching. The nominations come out on Tuesday, and I have six more posts to go to get through the rest of the categories. So without any further adieu, I give you Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design.

As with Best Editing, voters for Best Cinematography tend to reward films that seem more cinematic (see that post for a explanation of that concept). The also tend to favor Best Picture nominees, but not to as large an extent. As with all the previous categories I've discussed, the guild award is very predictive. In fact, the ASC is probably the most predictive guild award, consistently predicting four, sometimes five nominees. The nominees for the guild award this year are Collateral, The Passion of the Christ, The Aviator, A Very Long Engagement, and Ray. Since they usually only get four out of five, the trick is picking the snubee. In this case, it's not too hard (you can tell by who I bolded). Like I said in my Editing post, I don't think Ray has the cinematicity of the other films on this list, and so I predict it will be replaced by a more grand, more epic film. Or at least something memorably pretty. My pick: House of Flying Daggers.

The nominees for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design almost always match at least four nominees, and as with Best Cinematography, the voters favor epics, though in this case, it's historical epics. In fact, in the last ten years, only seven contemporary films have been nominated. So I'd say The Aviator juggernaut will keep chugging along. The other historical epics with the requisite opulence to snag a nomination are House of Flying Daggers, A Very Long Engagement, and The Phantom of the Opera. Those will probably be the four matching nominees. What about the fifth slots in each category? I'd say Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events has noteworthy art direction, but not costume design, and The Passion of the Christ vice versa. So there you have it.

Where Else Can You See a World Leader Called a Wanker to His Face?

2005-01-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

I caught another entertaining installment of the best show on CSPAN last night. It was, of course, "Prime Minister's Questions" for the British House of Commons. Even though the issues are all literally foreign to me, I love this show, for the reason mentioned in the title of this post. I love that every conceivable English accent is in that room, from Cockney, to Scots, to fancy-pants London. I love that the PM (I've only seen Tony Blair do this) gives as good as he gets. I love that even members of the PM's own party take the opportunity to stick it to him. We should totally have something like that here. It could even replace the State of the Union. The constitution say that the president shall from time to time provide Congress information on the state of the union, but it doesn't say it has to be a speech. Or maybe it could be a short speech with a Q&A. All that needs to be done to start this is for some president (Not with this one; he would never go into a room with a TV camera and almost three hundred angry Democrats) to do it. If it's popular and if he or she serves two terms, then the public will want his or her successor to continue. Indeed, if the successor does it too, it will become expected that this is what presidents do. Not only would it be great TV, but it would good for democracy, to force the president to account for himself before representatives of the people. The House is the chamber of congress that any old nutball can get into (look at Bernie Sanders (I-VT)). Every voice on the political spectrum is somewhere in the House and it would be great if once a year the president set aside time to respond to them.

Oscar Watch 2004: Editing

2005-01-16T11:57:00.000-08:00

And now we come to my favorite category, Best Editing. I'm not exactly sure why it's my favorite. Perhaps it's because editing was always my favorite part of the filmmaking process when I did it myself. Anyway, I always like to imagine that Best Editing is really Best Picture, because it seems like the movies I like that get snubbed for Best Picture often get nominated for Best Editing. Look at Seven, The Matrix, Memento, Out of Sight, Almost Famous, and Wonder Boys. It's as if the Editing branch is the only one with taste.

Anyway, the rule of thumb to look out for when picking the nominees for Best Editing is that the nominees always match at least three with Best Picture. Sometimes it's four and in 2002, it was five. This tidbit is helpful, because the ACE awards split their prize into comedy and drama, so they have ten nominees for best editing in a motion picture. This year they have eleven, because of a tie in the drama category. The nominees in drama are The Aviator, Collateral, Finding Neverland, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Kinsey, and Million Dollar Baby. The nominees for comedy are De-Lovely, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Incredibles, Ray, Sideways. And even though it's not in either of these categories, Fahrenheit 9/11 was nominated in the documentary category. I bring it up because it's a high-profile, well-regarded film and editing is one of the few categories it even has a shot at a nomination, since Michael Moore didn't submit it for Documentary Feature. I'm confident the five nominees will be one of these twelve.

The films here with the best shot at Best Picture are The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, Ray, and Sideways. (In fact, these may be the five Best Picture nominees, though I think Hotel Rwanda might bump Ray.) The Aviator is the most "cinematic" of this group, and the closest thing to an epic this year, so I'd give it the first slot. Million Dollar Baby and Finding Neverland are also "cinematic", in the sense that they owe their quality as much to the visual aspects as to their writing and acting, so I'd say they have a decent shot. Conversely, I get the feeling Ray is viewed as a crowd-pleaser, and Sideways as a writer's movie so I'd count them out here. That leaves two slots to be filled out by the rest of the nominees. Kill Bill and Collateral are the most cinematic of the rest, so I'm giving them the last two slots.

Oscar Watch 2004: Makeup, Visual Effects, and Sound Editing

2005-01-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

While these three categories may seem at first to be among the more arcane (especially Sound Editing), they are actually the easiest to predict. The reason for this is the weird nomination process they have. While most categories only have one round of nominations, this one has two. In the first round, the professionals in each group rate all submitted films on a scale of one to ten. The films with the highest ratings advance to the next round. If there are more than seven, they pick the top seven. if there is only one, that film gets a special honorary, non-competitive prize (I think that's what happened in 1990 for Total Recall). If there aren't any that score high enough, that branch doesn't award the prize. In the second round, the whole branch narrows the nominees to two or three.

What makes this easy is that the Academy announces the films that make the first cut of each category. It's pretty easy from there (though my success rate is not perfect: I usually get one or two wrong in all three categories every year). A guide for picking Visual FX is that voters prefer new techniques; if a film pioneered a technique (like The Matrix, or The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) it's usually a lock. So I'd say count on Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow getting a nomination. The other films that made the first round for Visual FX this year are The Aviator, The Day After Tomorrow, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I, Robot, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Spider-Man 2. Of these, I'm confident that Spider-Man 2 is a lock. Otherwise, it's a little tricky. The quality of the overall film matters more than it should, and voters will likely notice that The Aviator is the only likely Best Picture candidate of the group. Because of that, I'm giving The Aviator a slight edge for the third slot, but I wouldn't be surprised if The Day After Tomorrow or I, Robot snuck in.

For Makeup, the rule of thumb is the flashier the better. If it's obvious from the trailer why the film is getting consideration for best makeup, the film is usually a lock. For that reason, I'm pretty sure of nominations for Hellboy and Lemony Snicket's. Conversely, I don't like The Aviator, De-Lovely, and The Sea Inside's chances. This leaves Harry Potter and The Passion of the Christ. The Harry Potter series has had a Susan Lucci problem in this category, and this installment did very little that the previous films didn't, so I'm guess they'll keep the snub streak alive. Which leaves The Passion of the Christ, the bloodiest, goriest, most violent film ever, for the third slot.

The thing about the Best Sound Editing category is that it's not as arcane as it sounds. A better name for it would be "Best Sound Effects". The finalists here are The Aviator, Collateral, The Day After Tomorrow, The Incredibles, The Polar Express, Ray, and Spider-Man 2. Pixar has gotten nominations in this category for its last couple films, and given that this category tends to favor action films anyway, I'd say The Incredibles is a solid lock. Speaking of action films, Spider-Man 2 is the only pure action movie to get any kind of serious Best Picture buzz since The Fugitive, so I'd call it a lock in this category. The last slot is trickier. I think it'll be either The Aviator or The Day After Tomorrow, but this leaves me with the same problem as with Visual FX above. Will the voters go for film with the bigger, splashier effects, or the one that's just better? I'm guessing the latter. They will have blown their puff slot on Spider-Man 2, and give the quality slot to The Aviator

That's it for now. Check back later for my picks for Cinematography, Editing, and Writing.

Oscar Watch 2004: Acting

2005-01-11T08:15:00.000-08:00

The Oscar nominations are due to be announced in a couple of weeks and, per my annual tradition, I have set about trying to predict the nominees. The first early bellwethers--National Board of Review, critic's awards, Golden Globe nominations--have passed and thinned out the herd somewhat. It's looking, for instance, like Kill Bill: Volume Two is going to be largely overlooked, as well as Spider-Man 2, The Passion of the Christ, and Fahrenheit 9/11. Early awards are extra important for those last three, because the academy would need lots of prodding to get them to think that they're really "awardy". The thing about the Oscars is that they're not about quality movies, so much as "quality" movies. That is, a movie has to seem like the type of movie that gets Oscars to get Oscars. Silly, isn't it? Anyway, that's what these critics groups do: they pull out a handful of movies and say, "See here, these are the quality movies."

But once you're past this early stage, there are still way too many contenders--about ten or so for each major category. The way to winnow even further is to look at the guild awards. The thing to understand about Academy voting is that the nominees for each category are selected by the people in the Academy who work in that field. And by and large, the people in the Academy for that field are also in the guild. So if you want the secret for picking the nominees for Best Sound, for example, just copy exactly who the Cinema Audio Society nominates. You'll probably get at least four out of the five, guaranteed. A lot of the Hollywood craft guilds announce their nominees in the coming weeks, and as they do, I'll reveal my picks in that category.

The guild of the day for today is the Screen Actors Guild. SAG is one of the more important guild awards because actors form the largest branch of the Academy, meaning their nominees can be highly revealing about the buzz that's in the air about various movies. The most noteworthy revelation this year from the SAG nominees is how Closer was completely shut out. Closer was getting shakier and shakier, after pre-release buzz turned quickly into post-release backlash, when people went and saw the movie and came away turned off by how unpleasant everyone in the movie was. It managed to stay afloat for a while, buoyed only by buzz for its performances. But if SAG didn't see fit to nominate it for anything, that means its Oscar hopes are basically dashed. I'm not writing it off completely--I do expect supporting nominations for Clive Owen and Natalie Portman, and I'd be surprised if its screenplay got snubbed--but forget a Best Picture nomination and forget winning anything.

Moving on to specific categories though, there weren't any surprises in Best Actor. Jamie Foxx for Ray, of course. Leonardo DiCaprio for The Aviator, of course. The other three (Don Cheadle, Johnny Depp, and Paul Giamatti) weren't necessarily givens, but none of them were the locks I considered Foxx or DiCaprio to be. This category is more noteworthy for its exclusions. The tea leaves here show that Liam Neeson is probably out of the running for Kinsey (after a savaging in the mainstream press about accuracy reminiscent of the Beautiful Mind kerfluffle a few years back). Entertainment Weekly has been telling me to watch out for Javier Bardem for The Sea Inside. I keep watching for the buzz to materialize, but at this point in the game if it hasn't, it's not going to. And while I still think Clint Eastwood could sneak in for Million Dollar Baby, he's more likely to be recognized for directing than acting. So my picks here are a direct lift of SAG's.

More of the same in Best Actress. One interesting thing about the Best Actress category in the Oscars, SAG, and Golden Globes, is that more often than not the nominations are outside of the mainstream of American cinema, and often go into independent and foreign films. The reason for this is that perennial chestnut, "There Are No Good Parts For Women In Hollywood." It's kind of true actually. In most films with a male and female lead, the male part overshadows the female, so that if a woman's performance is award-worthy at all, it's usually in the supporting category. So to fill out the category without embarassing itself, the Academy casts a wider net than it would ordinarily, and the Best Actress Oscar category looks a lot like the Independent Spirit Best Picture. Same thing this year. Because the bench is so shallow in this category, the nominees are usually obvious for a long time. I have considered Imelda Staunton, Kate Winslet, Hilary Swank, and Annette Bening locks for about a month now. The only hesitation was that fifth slot. As much as think Uma Thurman deserves it for Kill Bill, I don't really see it happening. Like The Sea Inside, I don't see the buzz gathering for A Very Long Engagment, and if Audrey Tautou got snubbed for Amelie, I don't see her sneaking in for a movie with a fraction of the acclaim, unless it's as one of those "Sorry For Overlooking You Last Time" nominations, which are rarer than EW thinks. And as for Julia Roberts, well I've said my piece on Closer. I have been resisting Catalina Sandina Moreno and Maria Full of Grace for a while, thinking it was too small a film to garner much attention, but with her SAG nomination I grudgingly put her into the fifth slot.

Okay, this post is getting a little long, so I must wrap it uo. I'll update soon with the supporting categories, as well as the cinematography and writing categories.

A Little Thing That Has Bugged Me For A While

2005-01-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

What do the following characters have in common:

-A black-ops CIA agent
-A Manhattan Assistant District Attorney
-A flamboyant homosexual
-An FBI Agent who tracks missing persons
-A teenage boy whose brother will grow up to be president of the United States
-A doctor stranded on an island in the South Pacific
-A counter-terrorism agent

Answer: They're all named Jack. That bugs the hell out of me. I have never met a single person named Jack in real life. Why the hell are so many TV characters named Jack? Are the writers that uncreative? You wouldn't think so; the writing on most of the above shows are otherwise excellent, with great characterization and storytelling. The actors who play these character have a great variety of names: Victor, Sam, Sean, Anthony, Logan, Matthew, and Kiefer. Seriously, writers of Hollywood, get one of those little baby name books. Stay away from overt symbolism in the definitions (eg. Christian Shepherd, Lost writers? How many lobotomies do you think we've had?), but otherwise go crazy. It's not like it will cost you viewers or anything: several of the most popular shows of recent years have had lead characters with unusual names; think of Fox, Chandler, Frasier, Homer, Bart, Horatio, Gil.

Let's look at that last one for a second. Gil. That's short for Gilbert. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "I'm writing a show about a hard-boiled cop on the edge. No hard-boiled cop on the edge is named Gilbert." But what if there were a show about a crime-fighter named Gilbert. What would that be about? Let's free associate. What the first thing that comes to mind when you think of man named Gilbert. Science, right? So how about we make a show about a cop who solves crimes with science? See, right there, you have the pitch for a hit show in less than ten minutes, and it all started with coming up with an unconventional name for your character.

Jumping the Shark

2005-01-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

Any avid follower of the televisual medium will have noticed that long-running television series have a pretty fixed life cycle. Usually in their first season, shows begin to reveal their potential, but because of inconsistent characters and an unclear direction in the story, they don't live up to the potential. It's only in the second season that the series begins to take shape and become the Platonic ideal of itself, and this burst of creativity usually lasts through the third or fourth season. In the fifth season shows start to show their age, and begin to get gimmicky, adding new characters or changing the scenario somewhat.

It is around this time that a phenomenon known as "jumping the shark" takes place. So named after the episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie tries to waterski over a shark, it's the moment in a show's life when it becomes clear that the writers have run out of ideas, and the series, from then on, will be merely a pale shadow of its former self. The weird thing about jumping the shark is that it's almost always irreversible, despite the fact that there's no reason why that should be the case. Theoretically a show could, after running on empty for a season or two, come up with an idea that's worth pursuing and leads to a wealth of new material. This would be considered jumping back over the shark.

A popular, long-running show has accomplished this very feat this season. The show I speak of is The West Wing. While its creative decline long preceded Aaron Sorkin's departure from the show, the real shark-jumping moment was in Sorkin's last episode "Twenty-Five", where he removed Bartlet from power temporarily. Two episodes earlier, he had removed the Democratic Vice President in a sex scandal, meaning that when Bartlet stepped down, he left a the Republican Speaker of the House in charge. While "Twenty-Five" was pretty good, the subsequent, post-Sorkin episodes weren't, and they signalled a decline that many fans thought would be permanent.

That all changed this season with the episode "Liftoff". While the promotion of CJ to Chief of Staff--a job for which she had almost no relevant experience or qualification--strained credulity every bit as much as the aforementioned bloodless Republican coup, it shook up the series in a lot of interesting ways. First of all, the change, by its very nature, thrust CJ into an entirely new role and gave her character a lot of new interactions, particularly with Margaret, Leo's secretary, who apparently comes with the job. (Margaret has long been the funniest and most interesting tertiary character on the show, I still smile when I think of the time she offered to forge Jed's signature on a letter removing him from office). The vacuum in the position of Press Secretary provided an opening for another interesting new character, Annabeth Schott, the new Press Secretary.

But even aside from the shakeup in the A-story, "Liftoff" also had a B-plot which set into motion a lot of creative changes for the show. The plot involved Josh meeting and becoming intrigued by a Congressman from Texas, played by Jimmy Smits. In later episodes, Josh leaves the White House to manage his campaign for the Democratic nomination. One of West Wing's best and most interesting episodes was "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" which basically served as the origin story of the West Wing. It showed through flashbacks how everyone met and became a part of the Bartlet staff during his campaign for the nomination. The flashbacks to the primary campaign got me thinking that The West Wing missed an opportunity. I've always thought the story of a presidential primary campaign would make for an interesting series unto itself, and it would have been great if instead of starting a year into the President's term, the show had begun with the primary campaign. It now appears that I've gotten my wish, and that The West Wing: the Next Generation is starting this year, with Josh guiding Matt Santos though the primary to the general and then through the presidency.

Both the A and B plots of "Liftoff" point the way to a West Wing very different than the one to which we've become accustomed, the one whose ratings and quality have been declining for years. It's enough to make me think that this is not a case of a broken watch occasionally getting it right, but that TPTB saw what had happened to their show and took conscious steps, not to reverse it, like so many shark-jumping shows in the past have done, but by giving their characters new challenges befitting the experiences they've been through over the course of the show. It makes me think they named the episode what they did on purpose, like a little nod to the audience that they're back. In any event, I'm sold.

Post the Fourth: Wherein I Discuss This New Blockbuster Commercial

2005-01-06T18:22:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you've seen this new commercial for Blockbuster. If you've been watching TV this week, you probably have, given how many times they've showed it. If you haven't, it's basically an announcement that Blockbuster has stopped charging late fees. A bunch of people are organized into a protest rally chanting "No More Late Fees!". When they get to Blockbuster, a couple of employees happen to be setting up a banner say that they're no longer charging late fees. After a moment to process, this the crowd breaks into spontaneous celebration, and then there's a song on the soundtrack singing "It's oooover!", and a voiceover announcer says you'll never forget where you were when you first found out.

When I saw this initially, my reaction was "Oh, Blockbuster? Let me fetch you a stepladder, so that you may GET OVER YOURSELF. No one cares that much about Blockbuster!" But then I saw it again and again several times over the next few days, and the true genius of the ad emerged. Most people are going to hear about the change in policy from the commercial, so when they hear the bit about "you'll remember this moment forever" they'll take note of the moment and their surroundings, consciously or not. Then, because of the saturation bombing campaign, they'll probably see the ad again, and when they do, they'll remember back to when they first saw it, because the line in the ad linked memories of seeing the ad to memories of the ad itself. Every time they see it, the memory link will be reinforced. Plus the catchiness of the song, and the fact that it imparts useful information guarantees that whenever one tries to apply the knowledge gleaned from the ad--say, when returning video--one will remember the ad itself, and the experience of first seeing it. This is a deceptively clever ad campaign. I'm impressed.

CSPAN Rocks!

2005-01-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

Now, I wanted this to be a TV blog and not political one, but really this is a TV story. Today is probably the greatest day in the history of CSPAN. Okay, not really, but it has been a pretty big day. First, there were the Alberto Gonzalez confirmation hearings, then the challenge to the election by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Sen. Barbara Boxer. Normally congressional business is horribly boring, but these two events have made for some good TV.

First, in the confirmation hearing, even some of the Republicans were grilling Gonzalez pretty hard. Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, in particular was attacking Gonzalez's torture memo on the grounds that it puts American troops in jeopardy. He actually struck me as one of those reasonable, non-spittle-fuming Republicans (though still quite conservative). I wouldn't mind that much if he were president (though I would never vote for him), and I hear he might be thinking of running in '08, and if so, I hope he at least gets the nomination. He seems like the sort of person that would not let the debate get dragged into the gutter like Bush did.

Other highlights: I enjoyed Pat Leahy (whom you may remember from such Senate floor moments as when Dick Cheney told him to "go fuck [himself]") trying to elicit a straight answer to a yes or no question from Gonzalez. I also enjoyed Ted Kennedy getting really angry at Gonzalez, and basically yelling his questions at him, and my favorite senator of all time, Russ Feingold, hectoring him for not mentioning to Bush when discussing clemency for someone due to be executed that the guy's lawyer slept through half the trial.

The election stuff was less interesting, but it had some high points. Bernie Sanders yelling his floor speech, for one. The really annoying thing is that the Democrats who get up to speak keep saying over and over that they're not trying to overturn the election results and all the Republicans who speak criticize the Democrats for not getting over it. It's like they're being willfully ignorant. They don't even address the issues the Democrats are really raising, namely the long lines, broken machines, questionable provisional ballot decisions, or electronic machines that mistabulated the votes. Election reform is not a partisan issue, especially since the Republicans just lost a few close elections, in Washington, Montana, and Texas.

Anyway, if you're reading this now, I suggest you turn on the TV and watch democracy in action. It's surprisingly entertaining stuff.

Examining the Lost Theories

2005-01-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

I'll spare you the exposition about what Lost is and assume that everyone coming here has heard about ABC's new hit show about the plane crash on the deserted island with the monsters and the weird things going on and the occasional polar bear (See what I did there? I said I'd spare the details, but then--oh, fuck it, the joke bombed. Move along, nothing to see here). Anyway, I thought I'd use the first real post of this thing to discuss some of the theories put together to explain the various strands of evidence the show has given us thus far. It's the least I can do for all the blue-balled Googlers who think they've scored some naked pictures of Evangeline Lilly, when in fact they've just stumbled onto some silly blog.

I hope we can summarily dismiss with the "They're All Dead, and The Island is Purgatory" theories, as well as the "The Whole Show Takes Place Entirely Within (Jack/Locke/Vincent/some autistic kid's) Mind" theories. First, these theories are really lazy and narratively unsatisfying. Both of them have the feature of being essentially unfalsifiable, meaning any gap in continuity, plausibilty, or logic, no matter how severe, is explicable with either of these theories. This provides a backdoor TPTB could use if all the tidbits of evidence they've thrown out don't all fit together into one whole. Second, the latter theory (or class of theories; it has a lot of variations) is really just the tired chestnut "And It Was All a Dream". Seriously, when was the last time that worked? 1939? The Wizard of Oz is the only piece of fiction I can recall that didn't feel like cheating when that device was employed, and even then they telegraphed it with the dual casting of all the roles and the switch from B&W to color. If Lost ends up being a variation of either of these theories, JJ Abrams is waking up with a horse's head in his bed.

The Evil Government Conspiracy theory is almost as clichéd as the AIWAAD, but it is marginally redeemed by the fact that it doesn't permit as many easy narrative outs. Mind you, there are still plenty of ways to cheat--a sufficiently vast EGC is basically omnipotent, story wise. While it can't control the weather (or can it...), it could manipulate a lot of people's itineraries so that they all end up on the same flight, and then plant an operative on the plane to make it crash on a predetermined desert island in the South Pacific, where the selfsame EGC is experimenting with diseases and polar bears. Anyone who pointed out holes in this plot, like for instance, the fact that no Evil Government Conspiracy could train a pilot well enough to control a plane that has broken into three pieces, could be countered with a more elaborate conspiracy. Suppose instead that these people were simply kidnapped, brainwashed, implanted with false memories of a plane crash and placed on a island. Evil Goverment Conspiracies do these sorts of things every day of the week! Twice on Sundays! Nevertheless all EGC theories still need to explain the why. That is, why anyone would go to all this trouble. As elaborate as the EGC on the X-Files was, it was grounded in the conspirators desire to survive the coming alien invasion. That's where all the Lost EGC theories are the weakest: none of them explain why anyone would do such a thing.

My personal favorite Lost theory is the "Venus Flytrap/Bermuda Triangle" Theory. According to this theory, the island has special powers that either attract planes and boats and what not, or else cause them to crash if they get too close. Whatever power allows it to do this also gives it the power to heal paraplegics, bring long dead parents and newly dead hobbits back to life, and give small children the power to bend reality to their will. This one has similar holes as the EGC and the Purgatory/Dream; that is, its powers are not very well defined, and it's easy for the writers to conveniently pull something new out of their asses. Nevertheless, if this is the theory and the writers commit to it, they should lay down the rules and stick to them scrupulously.

We'll see tonight though, when the show comes back on after the hiatus. Well, we probably won't get any conclusive answers, but I think the show is going to start drawing all the narrative threads together. At least I hope. This show has to stop raising new questions without addressing the old ones. I'm all for new questions, but I prefer that they come out of the answers to the old ones. When that happens, it feels like each episode builds on the previous one, like in 24 for example, and the show has some momentum. Lost's biggest problem has been that each episode introduces a brand new mystery, and if they don't start tying them all together, there are going to be too many to do it with any kind of coherence.

Welcome to Banjo Steve

2005-01-02T16:33:00.000-08:00

Hey there everyone and welcome to my new blog. I don't know what to say in this little introductory piece, except that I think I should explain what this blog is all about. I've been "between engagements" for quite some time now, and living at home with my parents. Because of the abundance of free time here as well as the presence of a TiVo, I've been taking in prodigious amounts of TV (and not a few movies) and I've begun to re-discover my love for the medium, so much so that I've decided to pursue a career as a television writer and producer. But in the mean time, I've decided to start a web page devoted to my various thoughts about the things I've been watching, from movies to TV episodes, from whole seasons to individual characters or actors, or sometimes even a single scene.

It's hard to for me to start projects without developing grandiose fantasies about them. This particular project has me imagining that this site will become as fantastically popular and successful as another of my favorite TV sites TWoP. But the rational, intellectual side of my brain knows that I won't have any readers for a long, long time, and even then they'll probably top out at around fifteen. But the delusions of grandeur persist. Still, I'll try to keep my expectations nice and low so that they're easily surpassable. But for all of you readers out there, especially the ones erroneously directed here by the words "Evangeline Lilly nude", I hope you enjoy my site.