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Keithasaurus Rex - LiveJournal.com
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So many people on the internet are idiots, it's mind-boggling. They really should make you pass an IQ test just to buy one.
It's just the type of the day where you wish your life meant more.
Baseball.
Sun for the first time in forever.
Beautiful women everywhere.
The smell of BBQ.
I love the fall months, but April is great.
Holy crap
RIP Kutner.
We were discussing obscure pro wrestlers just now.
Someone brought up the Honky Tonk Man and I laughed so hard, I cried.
Maybe the Stupidest Thing I've Ever Seen...
http://www.redenvelopeday.com/index.php
I expect for this to be about as effective as the "Day without Gays" or "Buy Nothing Day." News flash: the president has no time for a bunch of idiots with no ideas grinding an axe over something with a long legal diatribe, much less a pointless symbolic gesture.
I hope Obama gets one of his stooges to take all those envelopes and have them specifically recycled and reprinted as Planned Parenthood applications. We are, after all, in an energy crisis. Flex your power.
OSCARS LIVE BLOG!!!!!
So, I've decided to blog live as I'm watching the Oscars. It's always fun to watch this and I have a lot of thoughts so I might as well immortalize them.
I'll go ahead and make my fearless picks (Under the cut if you want to go ahead and read it)
4:17
Ryan Seacrest has been making a giant jackass of himself for around the past hour. He tried to interview a few kids from "Slumdog Millionaire" and 3 of them spoke no English. Terribly awkward. He then talked to some other "Slumdog" guys and tried to force John Legend into the conversation out of nowhere. It made no sense. Also, they showed Miley Cyrus earlier...there has to be a huge amount of partying that will go on when this chick turns 18...
Before I get started, I'll point out that I'm really miffed that "Gran Torino" got nominated for nothing. Eastwood's directing and acting should've gotten him in, and it actually should be in there over "The Reader" and "Button", given that the latter got some mixed reviews...I think if it gets the nominations, it wins 3 or 4 awards. f**king Hollywood and their politics.
PICKS:
Visual Effects: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". I'll admit I didn't see this one, so ultimately it comes down to "were the movies I saw that great?" "The Dark Knight" was awesome, but eh, I can't see it winning this one.
Sound Mixing: "The Dark Knight". The sound blew me away. It was loud and overpowering. Seems like a slam dunk.
Sound Editing: "The Dark Knight". Ditto.
Original Song: "Jai Ho". It's the one that everyone loves. Whatever. The fact that there's only 3 nominations is kinda bullshit.
Best Score: "Millionaire". Bunch of Indian music tied together with "Paper Planes" by MIA. Winner, winner.
Makeup: "Button" - saw enough pictures to convince me. Saw both "The Dark Knight" and "Hellboy" and wasn't overly impressed with anything in either as far as makeup. Some paste on Heath Ledger's face does not give you an award.
Live Action Short: "Auf der Strecke". Pure guess.
Foreign Language Film: "The Class". I only saw "Departure" out of these 5, but I guess it's the worst of the 5. This is more or less a guess as well, especially since it's tough for any French to get any recognition from any Americans.
Editing: "Slumdog Millionaire". This is going to be the big winner of the night, so for now if it's a toss-up (here it's between this one and "Frost/Nixon") and this one gets the tilt.
Documentary Short: "Conscience of Nhem En". It's the first on the list. Whatever.
Documentary: "Man on Wire". If you haven't seen this yet, see it. Probably in the top 3 this year. I doubt some people can watch something about the WTC without any reference to 9/11 and be entertained, but the story on this guy is outstanding. Very well put together, not too long, and very surprising in several parts.
Costume Design: "The Duchess". "Button"'s got a shot here, but if it's not going up against "Slumdog", lavish colorful costumes typically win.
Cinematography: "Dark Knight". This is kind of a guess, but the movie did kind of have this creepy element to it that you could only tell due to the dark shades going on. "Slumdog" will probably win, but I digress.
Art Direction: "Button". If I pick "Dark Knight" for both, I'm really going for an 0/2 and it's not going against "Slumdog", so they'll split the difference.
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4:37
Peter Gabriel just came through and answered Seacrest's prying question about his refusal to perform very well. He doesn't agree with the stupid medley, and he was very professional in more or less saying "It's bullshit, I don't wanna do it". Probably the coolest interview thus far. Hope he wins...
----
Animated Short: "Presto". Guess.
Animated Feature: "WALL-E". I actually liked "Kung Fu Panda" more, but "WALL-E" is ahead by a mile, I guess, in terms of just pure artsiness.
Adapted Screenplay: "Millionaire". I think this is pretty safe. It's going against "Button" and a couple of sure losers (I dont see "Frost/Nixon" winning anything tonight), but people really fell hook line and sinker for this story.
Original Screenplay: "Milk". If they were all lumped into one category, this would be your winner. Supposedly "Frozen River" was pretty cool, but it seems like there's a mile in between that and "Milk". Would be pretty surprising if this didn't win.
Supporting Actress: Taraji P. Henson "Button", kind of taking a shot in the dark here, having seen none of the movies nominated, but I think it's going to either her or Cruz, and Penelope Cruz just has this kind of sleazy reputation...can't see her taking it.
Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, "Dark Knight". Nobody else has a chance.
Actress: Kate Winslet "The Reader". She walks around naked in 1/3 of the movie. Why the hell not?
Actor: Sean Penn, "Milk". Penn's reputation puts him over Mickey Rourke. Plus, I just saw Rourke and he looks like total shit tonight, and there was about an 80% chance of that happening anyway. I'd love to see Richard Jenkins win for "The Visitor" which is my winner for "Best picture nobody saw". No chance, though. Bummer. There's a scene where he yells at this customs officer that's definitely going to be his Oscar clip.
Director: Danny Boyle, "Millionaire". Tough call between him and the guy that directed "Button", but they usually give this to the same movie that wins Best Picture unless there's a clear winner, which leads me to...
Best Picture: "Millionaire". Most buzz. Really good movie. Not clearly better or worse than the other contenders ("Milk", "Button"), but again, most buzz.
This makes 6 for "Millionaire", 5 for "Button", and 4 for "Dark Knight". I might have f**ked this up...that's a little more spread out than I'd typically like...
4:54
On an unrelated note, I saw "The International" today, and a couple automatic thoughts:
-Clive Owen is f**king awesome. Every movie I see him in, I really like his character. "Sin City", "Inside Man", "Children of Man"...the guy's just a badass.
-This movie has maybe the best shootout scene since "Tombstone" or "Heat". I won't divulge too much information, since the location of the shootout is key, but damn. Had just about everything right.
Overall, great movie. Was a little slow in parts, but that shootout scene and Owen's character just leave you feeling pretty happy.
4:58
Robert Downey Jr. is being interviewed. Surprising that a guy playing a character in blackface even gets nominated, but good for him. Now he's talking about "Iron Man 2"...makes me excited for "The Watchmen".
Need a break now to switch the channel over to ABC....
5:04
Matthew Broderick is still alive...good for him. How on Earth can a guy with a name like "Tim Gunn" be so gay?!?!
5:08
Starting to think about the montages that will be shown tonight. They usually forego the best picture vignettes lately, so that's out. One that I hope gets extra attention is the "in memoriam". Lot of big deaths this year...Brad Renfro, Heath Ledger, Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Sydney Pollack, Roy Scheider, Bernie Mac...hopefully Isaac Hayes and George Carlin
get some love too.
5:20
Terrible "accountant" montage just got shown. An ugly sign of things to come...Penelope Cruz got interviewed and she sounds like Borat..."I very excite to be here tonight!"
5:24
Camera just showed a close up of Marisa Tomei. Just as I'm thinking how Marisa Tomei's in strong contention for hottest chick over 40 (up there with Jennifer Aniston), Tim Gunn f**ks it up and says something like "Mickey Rourke likes to see you with your clothes off, I like to see you with them on!". There are no words to sum up how many chances this man has wasted.
5:28
Opening monologue from Hugh Jackman coming up in a few minutes. There's a very low chance that it's remotely funny. Is he supposed to be funny? Is he going to just go deadpan? Very weird choice. I can see him going up there and trying to tell cheesy one-liners and falling flat on his face.
5:34
Jackman sticks to what he knows and tells some ethnic jokes. Didn't totally suck. But now....he's falling flat on his face. First off, using the recession to joke around leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That and Jackman's acting like kind of a smug prick. He's going to have to rely on his accent to carry him tonight.
5:40
Jackman rips on Brangelina. Brad gives a courtesy laugh. Is there anyone else more obviously annoyed by other celebrities?
5:41
First montage..."best supporting actress" winners saying "Thank You". Stage crew fails to get the curtain open in time. 11 minutes in and there's already a goof. Best Supporting Actress is coming up...
5:45
They're foregoing the typical "show a clip" for each nominee, they're having 5 former winners talk about how great the nominees are. Cute idea, and it exemplifies how "it's an honor just to be nominated", but I don't like it. The clips highlight the roles, and give people who haven't seen the movie an idea of what the context was...
Penelope Cruz wins, and I'm 0 for 1. Not really surprised, but she'll probably butcher the speech...
On another note, Whoopi Goldberg is apparently pregnant and I didn't know. She's wearing this weird leopard print thing that's covering up a hideous tattoo. At least she managed to make an amusing reference to "Sister Act".
5:51
Sure enough, Cruz gives an awful speech. Incoherent and all over the place.
5:54
Steve Martin shows up, and if pretty much funny just by being Steve Martin. Underhanded shots at Scientology follow. Best Original Screenplay Award to follow...
5:57
"Milk" wins, which was obvious, and the writer is a little overwhelmed. He gets choked up when talking about gay rights, and very bravely makes a pitch towards legalizing gay marriage. Easy crowd to give that speech to, but I'll give the guy his props. Adapted Screenplay is next...
6:01
"Slumdog" wins for adapted and I'm 2/3 so far. I'm not sure, but it looks like his acceptance speech was written on a candy bar wrapper...that and he referred to one of his stars as their real name and the other as their character name...really?
6:06
"WALL-E" wins for best animated feature, and I'm 3/4. Jack Black presented this award, and that has to be a first - having the star of one of the nominated films give out an award. Jennifer Aniston also is there, and looks incredibly on edge with Brad Pitt thrown in front of her.
6:09
The French film wins and my wild guess of "Presto" is incorrect, and I'm suddenly at 60%. WOW! The guy that won is a Chinese guy and can't speak a f**kING WORD of English. He mumbled "Schank you" a few times, then said "Domi arogato Mr. Roboto" before taking off. TOTAL train wreck. If you were nominated for an award like that, wouldn't you be a LITTLE more prepared than that?
6:17
"Button" wins for Art Direction, and I'm back on track, 4/6. Daniel Craig and Sarah Jessica Parker present and have to talk over some cheesy song by the jazz group playing in the background. Terribly obnoxious. I hope they try and blow it off as a production error, despite the fact that it was clearly intended to be that way.
6:20
I'm catching some heat now as "The Duchess" is a winner. Sarah Jessica Parker's boobs appear to be choking her since she has some uber-push up thing going on. I hope this costume design guy finishes up before the entire audience dozes off....wrap it up, buddy...
6:24
I'm really picking up steam now. "Button" wins their 2nd of the night.
6:28
Montage appears for romantic films of the year, and it's pretty much just the right length. Multiple clips from "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" and one from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". Also several clips from "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", all of which focus on Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem, and almost none on Cruz, who just won an Oscar...
6:34
"Slumdog" wins for cinematography and my risky pick does not pay off. 6/9 at this point. Overshadowing this is Ben Stiller coming out looking like Joaquin Phoenix, and during the video montage aimlessly wanders around the stage. Pretty funny, wasn't overdone...I like it. They're going with this ridiculous "the making of a movie" theme with the awards, with the set made up like the set of a movie. I'm not impressed. They're not keeping it simple.
6:40
Jessica Biel shows up for 45 seconds. Life is good.
6:45
Pretty funny montage of this year's comedies from the set of "Pineapple Express". Stoners laughing their asses off at scenes from "Doubt" and "The Reader". Not bad. I also learn that my pick for best Live Action Short is incorrect, although I'm not too broken up because James Franco butchered the title "Spielzeugland" followed by Seth Rogen chuckling. I'm at a mediocre 6/10 now.
6:55
Jackman does a duet with Beyonce and a couple from "High School Musical" that's a long medley of music from musicals. It's god-awful and I'm very close to changing the channel...I'm not sure they can justify cutting off speeches when this piece of trash just took up 5 minutes we'll never get back.
7:06
They continue with the prior winners introducing nominees. Alan Arkin refers to Philip Seymour Hoffman as "Seymour Philip Hoffman", again showing that Arkin has lost a step or two. Cuba Gooding Jr., who probably should have his rights to show up to shows like this revoked since appearing in "Daddy Day Camp" jokes around with Robert Downey Jr. Ledger wins, to no one's surprise. Brad Pitt gets a bit misty-eyed during his father's speech, and everyone is in a stoic mood as the speeches get read. You have to wonder if he'd won it had he not died.
7:17
Bill Maher comes out for the documentary awards and pimps his own film. Nice. Phillipe Petit from "Man On Wire" comes up with the producers of the film and does a nice balancing act with the statue. "Simple Pinki" wins for documentary short and I'm officially 0/3 on my random guesses.
7:25
The "action movie" montage gets shown, and it looks like they had trouble getting the rights to a lot of movies. Majority of the clips are from "Valkyrie", "The Dark Knight", "Quantam of Solace", "Iron Man" and "Hancock". "Button" wins for visual effects and I'm 9/14 as of now. It's beginning to look like I'll finish right around the 2/3 mark.
7:33
Will Smith f**ks up saying "outstanding" and saves himself by saying "Boom Goes the Dynamite". f**king hilarious. Well played, Mr. Smith. In a big surprise, the same movie doesn't win both sound awards, and I'm 10/16 now. "Slumdog" and "Button" now have 3 each, and "Dark Knight" has 2. "Slumdog" wins its 4th for the night for Editing. There's only 7 awards left to hand out and we're only 2 hours in, so they're making good time. They still have the musical montage to go, though...
7:41
Jerry Lewis about to come on, and there's about a 10% chance he goes insane here and yells at everyone. Eddie Murphy is presenting this award, and it's unbelievable to say this, but his brother is now probably more respected than he is. On come the tearjerker montage...
7:47
Lewis barely makes it through a 30-second speech. You know his family approached him and said "Jerry, if you start to itch, just say 'thank you and goodnight' and walk off stage, then you can yell all you want." Towards the 20 second mark he started to twitch and you could tell he was beginning to lose it. This is probably tonight's biggest unheralded success.
7:54
A nice montage of music from each nominated movie for best score, capped with "Slumdog" winning it, their 5th of the night. Danny Elfman, despite his fantastic achievements, is now 0/4 for Oscar nominations.
7:55
Now comes the really tough one to pick. It seems divided 3 ways as far as what could win. We'll get the performances now...
8:00
The medley finishes and gets a really tepid reaction from the crowd, as it should have. It wasn't very good, and the only really cool thing about it was John Legend singing the "WALL-E" song and then singing along with the Indian singers/dancers. "Jai Ho" wins and I'm 13/19. "Slumdog" now has 6.
8:07
Went against my gut and was wrong. The man accepting the award speaks almost no English, and we have another total train wreck of a speech.
8:15
The "In Memoriam" thing showed, and really, I hope this production gets savaged for that last montage. Nothing short of an absolute debacle and a disgrace to those they intended to honor. I have a relatively large TV, and because of the panning in and out, I couldn't see the names of a lot of them, and especially not what they were famous for. Also, having Queen Latifah singing some mediocre version of some mediocre version over what used to be total silence or a quiet string score. They tried to reinvent the wheel, and failed on a massive f**king level. They took what's consistently one of the better produced portions of the show and truly wrecked it. Everyone involved in this program should be ashamed of themselves.
8:21
Danny Boyle wins best director for "Slumdog". After Boyle's speech, it's clear the show was intended for the audience and not for the TV audience.
8:31
Best actress comes up and Sophia Loren looks like she's a few seconds away from breaking into about 12 pieces and then just exploding into flame. The acknowledging of the nominees is kinda growing on me, but I still want my clips. Winslet wins for "The Reader" to no one's surprise.
8:43
Penn wins for Best Actor and this speech should be pretty good...16/23 now..and just as everyone expects, Sean Penn grinds his axe. Mickey Rourke may have won this award, but they changed the winner once Rourke showed up looking like a heroin-dosed cross between Jack Nicholson and Gary Busey.
8:52
...and as bad as that "in memoriam" montage was, the "Best Picture" montage spliced in with quick shots of past winners was fantastic. Made all those movies look great and tying in the other films was a flash of brilliance. "Slumdog Millionaire" wins Best Picture, and I guess in honor of India, they cram about 50 people in a space made for 10. Doesn't that guy that plays the game show host look sleazy as hell still?
I finish 17-7, not too bad. Overall, Jackman was very forgettable as a host, the montages were good with exception of the plane crash in the middle, and "Millionaire", as expected, is the big, big winner. "Button" and "The Dark Knight" get a few nods for their nice sets and direction, and "Milk" gets credit for the screenplay and Penn's performance. Til next time, I suppose...
Racism from both sides of the gun
I loathe the term "racism". I think it gets used to bail people out constantly and gives people an excuse to try and blame somebody else for their shortcomings. It's also troubling that it's seemingly something that's only used for black people to use. The fact remains, this is a nation of immigrants. Was the slave trade bad? It was downright awful. Were black people treated poorly in this country for a very long time? They were treated worse than poorly. Know your history, though. Native Americans? Slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands. Asians? Thrown into ghettos and denied rights for hundreds of years. Hispanics? To this day, you can consider the way they're treated in the labor market as borderline slavery. And yes, WHITE PEOPLE. Think the Irish had the red carpet rolled out for them when they came here? How about the French? How about the Jews? We won't even get into the post-9/11 stuff with Middle Easterners....
I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, because it does. There's a fine line out there that divides racism with something that's being embellished. We'll look at 2 examples...
http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/2008/12/08/billey-joe-johnson-top-high-school-football-recruit-dies-in-po/
We'll start with this story that really got my attention a couple weeks ago. To make the story short, high school hotshot football player on his way to college ball goes to an ex-girlfriend (some serious issues here) and allegedly tries to break into her house before taking off. He speeds through a red light at 5 AM, gets pulled over by police, and while the cop is running his registration, there's a gun blast and Billey Joe is no more.
Why is this big news? Apparently it can't just be a suicide. Clearly, since the officer was white and the kid was black, it was a murder. The NAACP did their own investigation and "ruled out suicide". The family and friends all believe it wasn't a suicide, despite the fact that they are basing this off TWO pieces of evidence:
1. Billey Joe had "so much to live for".
2. The officer was white and Billey Joe was black.
They ignore that ballistics confirmed the shot fired was from the gun, and that BJJ had gunpowder residue on his hands. The path of the bullet through his head shows that it had to have come from the right side, and shows the death was due to either suicide or an accident. A grand jury found no evidence of potential murder.
I think to myself: What was the NAACP's brilliant "investigation" that led them to believe BJJ's death wasn't a suicide? If they had some scientific evidence, it surely would have been presented by now. Their investigation probably consisted of several phone calls to people he knew, went to their "Blame Whitey" flowchart and figured it was the policeman's fault.
This whole "he had so much to live for" argument doesn't fly, either. Teenage suicide rates are at an all-time high, and they're not all burnout junkies or basket cases with severe hallucinations. Many to most of them are high-achieving and notable people who couldn't take the pressures or had issues they felt like they couldn't talk to anyone about. Whenever you see stuff like this, it comes out of nowhere. The quality of his life had nothing to do with it. You're telling me it's impossible for a 17 year old to be depressed, not want to talk to somebody about it, has obvious issues with a girl he probably loves, has incredibly high expectations made for him, is basically saddled with bringing his entire family out of the gutter and just got denied by his gal and pulled over by the cops (maybe for attempt to break and enter) to think about just ending it?
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