Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Award Season is Full of Grit and Made for Kings

Every year at this time I am excited to see what films the Academy has chosen to nominate.  I have this weird Love/Hate relationship with the Oscars and the Academy, but it is like a weird cultural train wreck that I can never look away from.

The Academy has this thing they do almost every year which is to pick the best movies and performances to nominate, but then (usually) give the award based on popularity or politics, at least in my humble opinion.  This year I do not think it will be any different, but we are always hoping.

This year I will run down the list in the two main categories that I am concerned with and give my predictions as to who will win, why, and who should win and why they will not.

Let us start with my favorite topic:  Best Director.

David Fincher for The Social Network
The Coen Brothers for True Grit 
Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
Tom Hooper for The King's Speech
David O. Russell for The Figher

These are some very high-class directors and a very competitive match up, both in my pick to actually win and my pick on who should win.  David Fincher is an amazing director that with a normal group and with one of his normal films I would choose hands down, but in this group with this film...he is not my first choice in any way.  The Social Network is a good, well directed, well acted film, but is it the best direction of the year?  No.  What it is though is the most popular film of this group and the most likely that the Academy will grant with this honor.

The Coen Brothers are one of my favorite production teams that make some of the highest caliber of American films in the past 20 years.  I love them and I love their version of the Charles Portis novel True Grit.  It is, as the name states, gritty and fun at the same time.  The acting was wonderful with two of the best performances of the year, but as with David Fincher, in this group with these films...I have to pick against them.

Tom Hooper is a wonderfully gifted director with such credits as John Adams and Elizabeth I and has shown good poise with her newest offering, but in then end what make this film great is the performance or Colin Firth, not the direction.

This leads us to David O. Russell who is one of the most underrated directors of the past 15 years who brought us the great films of I Heart Huckabees and Spanking the Monkey.  While a great film mind, with this group he does not and should not stand a chance.

Now we get to my horse in this race.  Mr. Darren Aronofsky.  I love this man and I love his neo, semi-Kubrickian, art-snob style of wonderful film making.  I have not and will not miss his work and with Black Swan, this was no exception.  Anyone that could make such a haunting film and produce the performance out of Natalie Portman should win every award in the book.  He won't win though.  The Academy does not like Artsy directors anymore and for some reason seems to find all art films as pretentious.  He will continue to make great movies and sooner or later the Academy will feel that he has paid his dues and grant him recognition as they will this year with David Fincher.

Now, as I have rambled for quite awhile, the Best Picture award is about int he same boat the as Best Director.  I am sure that The Social Network will win surpassing the great films mentioned above along with the other great movies of the year in Toy Story 3, Winter's Bone, Incenption, and 127 Hours, the last being directed by the great Danny Boyle whom the Academy finally granted the Best Director Award to a couple of year ago after 15 years of making brilliant films that never got their attention.

So to wrap it all up, here are my emotional pick, the horses that I am rooting for in this race:
Best Director: Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
Best Picture: True Grit
In the end though, in my heart deep down and am completely sold that both of those awards are going to go to:
The Social Network (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) [Blu-ray]
Oh well, it is what it is and we cannot force the Academy to do anything.  While I am not trying to take anything away from David Fincher or this fun and almost Vonnegutesque film, I doubt you will ever convince me that this was the best film of the year or the best directed.  David has paid his dues in the film industry with such greats as Se7en, Panic Room, Fight Club, and the beautiful sad The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which if you did not cry during that movie, you are probably not human...



...Same goes for Toy Story 3.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The End is Nigh...Again!

So I guess it is finally time for me to say something.  Since vowing not to write political posts anymore, it is hard to write something and not point out the battle against simple logic and mathematics that the Republican party is trying to use to claim that the Health Care law is bad for the economy, or about the new Alabama governor that yesterday came out in a huge public speech stating how non-Christians are not his brothers or sisters, but alas, that is all politics.

Today I am hear to speak about the more than obvious apocalypse that is coming very soon.  Oh, were you not aware about the End of Time and that it has started?  Well, neither was I until I read some articles by some very smart people who are also Christian bloggers.  The reported death of 200 cattle yesterday was the final sign that they needed to believe that a biblical prophecy is in order.

That is right!  The Anti-Christ is coming and then Jesus will be reborn!  Duh!  Because both of those things exist, we know it for a fact, and there is no argument at all to the idea that this is the sign we have been waiting for!  Come come Jesus Zombie, rise up and eat out brains!  Oh...I mean, rise up and save us...well...only 144,000 of us, if you believe what the bible says.  The rest you, fuck off, you are dead even if you were a brilliant and wonderful person, even if you were a Christian that led a good life.  If you did not receive the final stamp of approval from Jesus himself, then you are dead too.  Woot!

According to the Bible, which we all know to be true and correct in every way, there is a "prophecy" in the book of Hosea which states the following: By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood...Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.

Whoa!  They are speaking the truth!  It has happened!  OMG!

Okay, it is time to get serious here because someone are so out of touch with reality and have no ability to take sarcasm.  I better explain myself before people think that this is real.  Let me start by letting all of you prophecy and conspiracy people in on a little secret that I know for a fact you are not aware of.  Here it is, are you ready:

Animals die...everyday.

Now, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, as if stating reality and denying the rapture is a bad thing, but animals die in mass numbers all of the time.  All the time.  You think some fish and birds dying is the sign of the End of Days?!  What about the mass extinction of millions of people in EVERY WAR?  Those were far more frightening than 200 cows dying or thousands of fish washing ashore in a river.  Some people will want to associate this with the idea of the "End of the Mayan Calendar".  This is one of the most hilarious ideas ever.  First of all, anyone who thinks it is the "end" of the calendar, is misreading the calendar in the first place.  Second of all, if the Mayans really knew so much about the future, why are they an extinct culture?

Anyone who believes in the rapture is just silly, I am sorry, but it is just a silly superstition that does not even fall in line with the basic tenets of Christianity as a whole.  It does not make sense people, even if you are someone that follows the word of Christ!

How many times have Doomsday prophecies gone unfulfilled?  Too many to count, that is for sure.  One day, yes, the world will end and all of these people are going to sit around going "I told you so!"  If you make enough guesses you will be right eventually.  The fun part is that if the world is going to end, fuck it, we have no real control over it.  We may not even know it.  One day we are sitting around, drinking out lattes, the next we are gone.  Oops!

It seems like a study in human arrogance and ego to want to claim to know the end of the world and claim that there is an answer.  It is another case of man claiming control of the forces of nature.  I cannot blame mankind for wanting to, but in then either we will achieve this feat through the acts of logic and science or we won't and nature will kick our ass again.  This feat will not be achieved through random beliefs and silly superstitions.  I am sorry, it won't.  Your arguments fail again and again and again.

So I will wrap this up by listing some of the Doomsdays that were supposed to have happened in my life time alone...
1. 1982 some preacher claimed was when it was going to happen.
2. September 1988, another Christian claimed it was going to happen.
3. Y2K...that is all I need to say about that one.
4. May 5th, 2000 was, according to some Christian scholars, the day the Devil will be set loose on the earth.
5. The LHC and black holes.  Sure...

These are just a  few.  Now, let us just sit around and hope that Zombie Jesus, the only savior that can use his hand as a friggin' whistle, will come back to save us.  Thank you Zombie Jesus!


PS:  If this sounds bitter, it is because it is.  I am tired of religious assaults on reality and reason.  I am tired of people thinking that it is okay to fail at life and at humanity because your soul, a thing that you cannot see or test or feel but it is there and we cannot prove it, needs access to an afterlife.  Fuck that.  Live a good life.  Help people be and do what you feel is morally correct, and you will win in the game called life.  Why does there have to be a reward afterward?