Sunday, February 22, 2015

OSCAR PICKS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

I should add a review of The Imitation Game to my other on to Oscar posts, but it's almost magic time, dammit, so, quickly: We have a cryptographer-hero who's so ahead of his time he may as well be bringing penicillin to neanderthals, and who's also a gay martyr forced into chemical castration and suicide, plus he's possibly on the autistic spectrum, plus he sticks up for women's rights (well, one woman's) -- all this, as they say, and World War II! A Beautiful Mind meets Casablanca! It’s such perfect Oscar bait that I had to admire it, despite hearing each gear-tooth in the machine clicking — click, the platonic love of the smartgirl makes him try to be sociable and he’s humorously inept, click, but they’re going for it, and they stand up to The Man, click, etc.  Keira Knightley as always seems like a little girl playing at grown-ups and once again Charles Dance is made to be the Wicked Witch of the West. But Cumberbund or whatever his name is -- I thought he was supposed to be a pretty-boy and a joke, but in this he's not only believable and affecting in his swallowed anguish, he's absolutely magnetic, a real screen-filling star. Maybe the kids know something after all.

OK, on to this annual death march. I've been good and I've been awful, so make sure you can spare the money:

× Best Picture: The Imitation Game. People are talking Boyhood and talking Birdman. But those movies are probably too weird to win -- look at the past winners -- and will I believe knock each other off. As I just said, The Imitation Game is big-time Oscar bait, and has all the right nominations including Actor, Director, Screenplay, even Editing. (I half-expect -- maybe one-quarter-expect -- a late miracle surge for The Grand Budapest Hotel, so remember that if chaos ensues.)

× Best Actor: Michael Keaton, Birdman. I really was thinking Eddie Redmayne, but Glenn Kenny got me thinking about it -- Redmayne's performance has some nice shadings but nothing like the wells of anger and sorrow that, say, Daniel Day-Lewis gave Christy Brown in My Left Foot. And despite the gags about going full retard, disability is good for getting Oscar nominations, but not so much for winning the prize. In Birdman Keaton was acting his ass off, in both the good and bad ways, and the Academy gives points for effort (if you are or ever have been a star).

× Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Wild. I didn't see any of these movies except The Theory of Everything, so here's my half-assed but not necessarily wrong reasoning: The surge of enthusiasm for Julianne Moore in Still Alice reminds me of the alleged sure thing that was Julie Christie in her Alzheimer's drama Away From Her. Also, I hear great things about Witherspoon's performance, and people love her.

Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash. The odds are too steep for anyone else, plus I'm making too many wild picks and must cut my losses somehow.

Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood. Ditto.

×
Best Director: Richard Linklater, Boyhood. If it's not the picture of the year, it's the stunt of the year (or past 13 years) anyway. This is exactly the kind of thing that wins directors Oscars in year when their films don't win.

× Best Original Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness, The Grand Budapest Hotel. I think the Academy likes Wes Anderson but has been waiting for him to dispel their suspicion that all his movies were written to be performed by children, and that Anderson was having a laugh by using big Hollywood stars instead.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Graham Moore, The Imitation Game. Now, one or two craft awards and we've got a believable Best Picture card.

Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman.

Best Production Design: Adam Stockhausen, Anna Pinnock, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Best Costume Design: Milena Canonero, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Frances Hannon and Mark Coulie, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I think Birdman's camera trick carries so much of the movie's feeling that the voters will go for it. Also, now that Budapest has caught their attention, they can lavish rewards on his stunning visuals. (I am violating my own rule on costumes this year -- that the earliest period gets the award, particularly if there are ruffs and crinoline -- so Mr. Turner may make a fool of me. But I am prepared.)

Best Film Editing: Tom Cross, Whiplash, because it's got drumming, and I bet there's a lot of rhythmic stuff going on (almost as good as a car chase!).

× Best Score: Alexandre Desplat, The Imitation Game. And there's your Best Picture winner craft award! I still like Jóhann Jóhannsson's The Theory of Everything music very much, but Desplat has been a bridesmaid too often.

Sound Mixing: Whiplash. Drums!
Sound Editing: American Sniper. Guns!

Visual Effects: Interstellar. Ugh, what do I know. Speaking of which, I didn't have time to meditate and my Ouija board is broken,  so I'll refrain from predicting the other awards, though I will say I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't throw one to Glen Campbell just to fuck with us.

UPDATE. I cleaned up on the minor awards and wiped out on the major ones. Until they got to Best Score I was flawless, baby, solid gold, and even there I got the right composer. (Not predicting shorts, docs, and cartoons really helped my percentage, though, I had no idea what the fuck was going on there.)

But Desplat getting it for GBH rather than The Imitation Game was a tipoff that my big bet wouldn't clear. Guess the WWII-winning loner who's also gay, autistic, and bullied was a bit too on the nose; maybe it would have won if they'd just extended their rewrites of history and  given Turing the happy ending he deserved, perhaps ascending into heaven with Christopher like at the end of Gladiator. (And why not? I'm with Graham Moore, fact-checking the water lilies is stupid.)

I have to admit, if you'd tipped me that The Imitation Game wouldn't win and that Keaton wouldn't win, I still would not have guessed Birdman would win. It may be the most avant-garde (in relative terms) winner since All Quiet on the Western Front. Even other arty winners like American Beauty and No Country for Old Men give viewers some old-fashioned hey-that-star-is-a-guy-like-me thrills, or at least entertaining chase scenes, before it all goes existential; Birdman is the kind of headscratcher people used to associate with Europe and make fun of. Well, forty years of future studio execs going to film school have paid off. 

My Birdman review here.

86 comments:

  1. "I am a lineman for the counteeeeeeeeeee..."

    ReplyDelete
  2. The only one of these movies I saw last year was The Imitation Game, which I wrote a review of, calling it "catnip for the Academy" (it's kinda like "Rainman vs the Nazis"), I think it has a good shot of winning Best Picture, with Cumberbatch having a good shot as Best Actor.

    ReplyDelete
  3. calling all toasters8:29 PM

    Isn't "Stephen Hawking Conquers the Martians" catnip for them, too?

    ReplyDelete
  4. But Cumberbund or whatever his name is -- I thought he was supposed to
    be a pretty-boy and a joke, but in this he's not only believable and
    affecting in his swallowed anguish, he's absolutely magnetic, a real
    screen-filling star. Maybe the kids know something after all.


    I never saw him as the pretty-boy type. My aunt is a big PBS aficianada, and watched his "Sherlock Holmes" show religiously. I always saw him as portraying the "cerebral-yet-intense" type very well. I'm no authority on the aesthetics of the male form, but my take on his physical appearance is that he's more striking than classically handsome- he looks very angular, like he could cut you with his cheekbones. Is the term jolie laide applicable to a dude?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rossalind8:56 PM

    He's a thinking woman's unusual style of beautiful. He appeals to the kind of person that might find Tina Fey or Tilda Swinton more lovely than Kate Upton.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think the expression is "The thinking woman's bit o' crumpet."

    ReplyDelete
  7. That is a very tragic story. One really doesn't know what to think except that his family must just be destroyed with the loss.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Tina Fey or Tilda Swinton... Sorry, I, uh, lost my train of thought for a moment.

    ReplyDelete
  9. apocalipstick11:15 PM

    I had major problems with "The Imitation Game", primarily the way it rewrote history and Turing's own life in order to fit the Oscar-bait template. While it's entertaining in its own way, it's about as accurate as "Argo".

    ReplyDelete
  10. Commander Denniston's descendents are pissed at the way he was portrayed as an incompetent martinet.

    ReplyDelete
  11. AGoodQuestion12:04 AM

    It's about time Pia Zadora had a comeback vehicle.

    ReplyDelete
  12. montag212:56 AM

    Ah, well, "historical fiction," particularly when it comes to biography, is always an iffy subject. The edicts of classical drama which demand conflict, epiphany and resolution (and Hollywood's need for the good guys to always win, even if only in spirit) inevitably means that history will be bent to the will of the producers. Even adaptations of purely fictional books either get the Hollywood treatment or get ignored (thinking here particularly of two books that didn't fit the Hollywood mold--on the one hand, Waldo Salt's interpretation of Nathanael West's Day of the Locust, which Salt tried, not very successfully, to transform from a tale of obsession to a love story, to make it acceptable, and on the other hand, the reception of Michael Radford's 1984, which, precisely because it hewed to the bleak, unappealing message of the book, was completely ignored by the Academy, despite the film's obvious craftwork in production design, a faithful transcription of the book to screenplay, and some superb acting by the principals, particularly John Hurt and Richard Burton).

    How faithful was "A Brilliant Mind" to the actual history of John Nash? Not much at all, and mostly in its superficial aspects. Nash even admitted in his later years that his early mathematics probably didn't predict human behavior nearly as well as it reflected his insanity, and the film assiduously avoided a bigger question--that Nash's insanity, through his mathematics, infected the nuclear war planning industry.

    I don't think we can expect history to get in the way of a "good" story. But, exactly because of that, we probably shouldn't expect Hollywood to produce faithful renditions of history, or of its principals.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Mr. Wonderful12:59 AM

    You laff, but that song is nervy and moving. "Glory," which won, is the usual (i.e., effective) uplift, but not nearly as cool.

    ReplyDelete
  14. JennOfArk1:33 AM

    I'm just glad American Sniper didn't win. The conservative outrage machine has already gone into overdrive.

    ReplyDelete
  15. According to my Parisian ex-pat girlfriend, it's applicable to men as well.
    We both learned something today that we will likely never use again! :p

    ReplyDelete
  16. apocalipstick8:30 AM

    There's also the way Turing is presented as having broken Enigma single-handedly and the shoehorning of his personality into a preconceived template. And let's not bring up how "Imitation Game" gets a Best Director nom and "Selma" does not.

    ReplyDelete
  17. M. Krebs9:16 AM

    Keaton wuz robbed, I tell ya.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Halloween_Jack9:49 AM

    You meant Tilda Stardust, I'm sure.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Kurzleg9:56 AM

    Cumberbatch is terrific in "Sherlock." In fact, I recommend the series. Casting Martin Freeman as Watson was a brilliant stroke, and they do a good job of bringing the SH stories into the current era.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Kurzleg9:59 AM

    That was my reaction upon skimming the winners in the paper this morning. I was disappointed that some of my favorites didn't win much but more than compensated by the fact that Sniper didn't win anything.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Halloween_Jack10:01 AM

    I expected NRO to be on that beat, but this morning they led with John Fund's attempt at a tu quoque WRT Rudy Giuliani's accusation that Obama doesn't love 'Murica. Not only was the stab at dragging up an old complaint about Debbie Wasserman Schultz from the whine cellar kind of sad, but it was bracketed by Kevin Williamson's similar attempt at lessening the sting of the McDonnells of Virginia going to jail by, nothin' like the oldies, trying to slap the defibrillator paddles on Whitewater. NRO can revamp its site all it wants, but it still comes down to white dudes sticking up for the white dudes by trying to throw women and others under the bus.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Kurzleg10:04 AM

    I'm miffed that Birdman took best picture. That film was a disappointment for me. While I liked the cinematography well enough, I thought "Mr. Turner" or "Ida" (or even "The Immigrant," which wasn't nominated) we as worthy of the award. Birdman cinematography was technically great but a bit gimmicky whereas that of a film like "Mr. Turner" served the story extremely well.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Halloween_Jack10:09 AM

    Birdman and Interstellar were the only two of the big films that I ended up seeing in the theater this year; I came closer than I'd like to admit to seeing American Sniper simply to see if the apologists who insist that it isn't the groovy 'Murica Fuck Yeah love-in that fans of shooting brown people in the head seem to assume that it is were right. Birdman was fine; Interstellar was a not-bad bit of skiffy poetry, although the science is about as plausible as any random Star Trek episode and in terms of visual effects, nothing in it particularly impressed me as much as the Captain America movie, most especially that special effect known as Chris Evans, but I don't think the Academy is yet ready to give even the most obscure award to a superhero movie.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Kurzleg10:16 AM

    The more I think about that film - which didn't impress me at the time - the more I agree. He's asked to do a lot, none of it is easy and he doesn't hit a false note.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Ted the slacker10:34 AM

    The conservative outrage machine, which I am always told does not care about nor want to know what Hollywood thinks, is now all terribly sad that Hollywood did not agree with conservatives.
    It's almost like they are begging for butt-hurt.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Halloween_Jack10:37 AM

    Oh, as a bonus:

    http://youtu.be/lnfAxUjRQAo

    ReplyDelete
  27. Professor Fate10:37 AM

    A friend of mine has a rule for picking Best Picture - If there is a film nominated that is about actors and/or acting that one will win - see Shakespeare in Love winning over Saving Private Ryan or The Artist in 2012. Seems to the case here with Bridman.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Jaime Oria10:48 AM

    For me, what sums up The Imitation Game's fundamental Oscar-bait laziness was that they couldn't be bothered to correctly lay out the "imitation game" itself. Not being a full-on Turing obsessive, I assume that was his name for what AI and sci-fi geeks came to know as the Turing Test, or maybe it's a fictional conceit of the screenplay's. Anyway, in the Turing Test you interrogate your subject via teletype; as a thought experiment it utterly breaks down if you're sitting across a table from them.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Jaime Oria10:52 AM

    And I'll also add that I found Argo a far better and enjoyable film - Academy Award winner aside - the The Imitation Game. The latter is just high minded drek.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Jaime Oria10:55 AM

    A story that may have been better handled by David Cronenberg, I think. Then again, he's not really one for Oscar-worthy Triumph of the Human Spirit homilies.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Jaime Oria10:59 AM

    I'll just leave this here -

    ReplyDelete
  32. Well-no because you could argue that a closeted gay man has to learn how to imitate a heterosexual and that this necessity could be said (fictionally) to have informed turings desire both for anonymity within the machine and for the idea of synthetic intelligence.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Jaime Oria11:05 AM

    Holy hell - why couldn't the movie have been about that? Would have been far, far more interesting than - pace BBB - "Rain Man versus the Nazis".


    PS - "Fantastic pitch, Aimai. Vera, call business affairs. Great meeting, everybody...!"

    ReplyDelete
  34. RogerAiles11:06 AM

    They cut Patty completely out of "Selma."

    ReplyDelete
  35. Yes, actually, even though I was just spitballing I realized as i was typing that it would make a damned interesting movie.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Wrong. His Holmes is an unwatchable prick. When I'm dying on a desert island, I'll take Jeremy Brett. (And Satan says, "Yeah, but your TV doesn't work!" Sonofabitch!)

    ReplyDelete
  37. RogerAiles12:07 PM

    I was 5 for 12. Four of the five I got right were the favorites. I could've batted .500 if I hadn't bet against Glenn Greenwald.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Howlin Wolfe12:30 PM

    I can't wait for Wes Anderson to use Keira Knightly in a movie!

    ReplyDelete
  39. ...we probably shouldn't expect Hollywood to produce faithful renditions of history, or of its principals, and we damned sure shouldn't view Hollywood's take on history as factual.


    Damn fucking straight. This has pissed me off no end for donkey's years. I was nowhere near the slob Walter Matthau portrayed me as in the movie. Sure, ashtrays overflowed, dishes were left undone and my bed never got made, but that's how I'm most comfortable, dammit.


    I will say they got Felix just right. And just between you and me the Pigeon sisters were real goers. Too bad that didn't make it into the movie.

    ReplyDelete
  40. apocalipstick1:56 PM

    Oh my, yes. I can still enjoy Argo as a well-constructed, finely paced adventure story. Imitation Game flattens out its truly fascinating period and protagonist into cliches. Frankly, PBS does a better job.

    ReplyDelete
  41. apocalipstick2:04 PM

    The strange part about Birdman is that I enjoyed many individual parts of the film, but I'm not sure they actually added up to an excellent whole.

    ReplyDelete
  42. PersonaAuGratin2:23 PM

    For them, the Oscars were a cherished celebration of American Exceptionalism until Sacheen Litlefeather had to go and ruin it forevermore.

    ReplyDelete
  43. There goes Aimai, reducing men to tea time edibles again.


    Clots my cream, it does.

    ReplyDelete
  44. John Wesley Hardin2:29 PM

    How about a Fey, Swinton and Upton sandwich with a side of Cumberbatch?

    ReplyDelete
  45. John Wesley Hardin2:30 PM

    "begging for butt-hurt" Worst Game Show Evar.

    ReplyDelete
  46. John Wesley Hardin2:32 PM

    They call it 'American Exceptionalism' because it means freedom for everybody, except native Americans, women, the blahs, what-have-you.

    ReplyDelete
  47. John Wesley Hardin2:35 PM

    With enough ingenuity, you can cobble one together from coconut shells, gull droppings and seasalt. Getting the crystals to form a translucent sheet is the hard part.

    ReplyDelete
  48. Just don't forget to fix the hole in the boat too, Professor.

    ReplyDelete
  49. John Wesley Hardin2:42 PM

    I thought the science of Interstellar was a little dodgy, too, until I learned that Noted Physicist Kip Thorne had served as a science advisor and to the film and worked with Christopher Nolan to keep things more-or-less possible, if not always plausible.

    ReplyDelete
  50. John Wesley Hardin2:44 PM

    Sorry, had to cannibalize the boat to make the wet-bar. This may be a desert isle, but it's not uncivilized.

    ReplyDelete
  51. Halloween_Jack3:42 PM

    Way-ull, let me just walk that back a bit, then. :P

    ReplyDelete
  52. In keeping with my distaste for "best" ratings for any art form, (or anything, really, save competition not scored by judges) here are a few of my favourite things from the Oscars:


    Favourite Speech JK Simmons urging everyone to actually talk to their parents. Gee, what a novel approach.


    Favourite Song Glory was simply grand. Kudos, too, to the opening number. It had wonderful wordplay and was a fun way to kick it all off.


    Favourite Funny Bit The whole Ocatvia Spencer watching-the-box-bit. Not funny haha. Funny just plain weird. And not funny-weird.


    Favourite Tribute Lady Gaga absolutely killing TSoM medley. I can hardly wait to ask my mom what she thinks of Lady Gaga now.


    Favourite Thing I Learned I gotta see Whiplash.


    Favourite Part of the Whole Damn Telecast Right at the very end, when the Best Picture folks are onstage and Michael Keaton is urged to speak and he starts to go into "thank you" mode, stops himself and declares, "aw who the hell am I kidding? I'm just lucky to be here." What a guy.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Actually I'm pretty sure that "Begging for Butt-Hurt" is next up on the rotation after 50 Shades of Jeopardy.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Actually, I'm kind of surprised that anyone would call the guy a "pretty-boy."


    Now, I don't want to be insulting or anything; I think Cumberbatch is an enormously talented actor and all, but isn't he kind of funny-looking? His eyes are farther apart than normal, and people DO compare his face to that of an otter for a reason...

    ReplyDelete
  55. As TBogg pointed out, the lack of self-awareness is manifested by all the whinging that Hollywood liberals undid Sniper while forgetting that it was Hollywood liberals who MADE Sniper.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Always remember that he is somebody's otter half.

    ReplyDelete
  57. I want to make a standing rib roast for this comment, and then have to turn it into beef stew.

    ReplyDelete
  58. whetstone5:13 PM

    With the provision that I haven't seen any of the films, here is a theory*: Birdman seems like it's an art film about someone struggling to make art and who wants to make superhero movies instead. I seem to recall a perceptive critic writing this:

    Riggan isn’t happy. But it’s not because he’s about to lose his shirt.
    No, it’s because he’s doing what actors do — but unsuccessfully,
    aimlessly, because he doesn’t really believe in it. (The play looks
    awful, and his why-Carver explanation is just ridiculous.) When the
    phenom starts throwing around actorly shit about “truth,” it drives
    Riggan crazy.... And the costumed superhero
    is coming around because Riggan is realizing he prefers something else —
    and, despite what we might have assumed if the movie didn’t show us
    different, it isn’t his old tattered stardom. It’s magic. Even when no
    one else sees it, even when it’s insane, he has it. And with that he can
    fly.



    If that's the case, you might as well call it Birdman (Or the Unexpected Virtues of Anxieties Particular to Academy Voters. And so they gave it the Oscar and went on to make Iron Man: Whatever Number Comes Next. Everyone wins.


    *Oh, what, it's good enough for Doughy Loadpants.

    ReplyDelete
  59. chuckling5:15 PM

    Amores Perros is one of my favorite movies, so I slog through
    everything by Iñárritu when it comes out. I like Michael Keaton a lot
    as well, so I really wanted to like Birman, but try as I did, I just
    couldn't.

    Not that it was bad, and it certainly had a lot of very
    good about it (the acting, the score, the camerawork) It just wasn't
    great and I want great from Iñárritu.


    Though in his favor, at least it didn't have the mutliple storylines in different time frames going on. It worked great with Amores Perros, but got tired from repetition in the next two or three films. And I wish Michael Keaton would have won, though. He was great in Night Shift, then he kind of disappeared.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Hell, if they'd just made a movie about how the Enigma codes were broken--THAT would make a great movie. It's got everything from Turing and his brilliance to secret missions to capture German subs and weather stations, to British-American cooperation in which the Brits REALLY didn't want to hand over anything they had on Engima and the Americans didn't really believe the Brits HAD anything on Enigma. All followed by Turing and a nascent IBM making computing breakthroughs that lead directly to the computer you're reading this comment with.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Jaime Oria5:44 PM

    Yeah, Benedict strikes me as a bit of a watcher.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Jaime Oria5:48 PM

    B-b-but Clint! And the chair!

    ReplyDelete
  63. I roll my eyes at you.

    ReplyDelete
  64. One thing that really stood out, even though it was just something you notice rather than a big part of the thing, was how enthusiastic both Keira Knightley and Emma Stone are about stuff. Whatever was going on, they just seemed to get into it bigtime. They both seemed to just be enthusiastic about life.

    ReplyDelete
  65. chuckling7:11 PM

    What does IBM have to do with the Mac?

    ReplyDelete
  66. Kurzleg7:12 PM

    Well, he is a prick. (And not a prick for its own sake; it's part of bringing the story into current times.) But unwatchable? I don't think so. YMMV.

    ReplyDelete
  67. coozledad7:57 PM

    With your host, Bill O'Reilly, and his vibrator "Caramel."

    ReplyDelete
  68. coozledad8:40 PM

    Clint is the kind of whiteboy Buddhist who, when he gets things right, gets things only marginally right because he's a striver. He does for Buddhism what Charles Manson did for psychedelia.

    ReplyDelete
  69. coozledad8:55 PM

    There's some village in Britain where everybody looks like that. Someone told me that nearly everyone in Hull looks like Tracy Thorn. Over a relatively short period of time, it happened in the American south.
    We had a guest from Britain who was brought up near Ely Cathedral. He looked exactly like a friend of mine with the surname Ely.

    ReplyDelete
  70. coozledad9:09 PM

    If they'd put the maths in The imitation Game, American Sniper would have gotten a Nobel.

    ReplyDelete
  71. M. Krebs9:42 PM

    They say everyone in New Zealand looks like this guy.

    ReplyDelete
  72. coozledad9:46 PM

    Now that you mention it, he does look a little like Chris Knox.

    ReplyDelete
  73. Jay B.9:50 PM

    Well, except for those minor Burton costume pieces he was in.

    ReplyDelete
  74. Not dead.

    Good drugs, but still hurts like a mo'. Before (x-ray -- non-gross) photo; after comes tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  75. coozledad10:22 PM

    I'm content with "drinking woman's canned croissant".
    I don't have to work as hard.

    ReplyDelete
  76. M. Krebs10:27 PM

    Knox is new to me. I must check out Songs for Cleaning Guppies.

    ReplyDelete
  77. coozledad10:31 PM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdFPTgx9i4

    ReplyDelete
  78. Tehanu10:36 PM

    He was also a terrific Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.

    ReplyDelete
  79. StringOnAStick11:13 PM

    Dang, nasty breaks. Something tells me you just acquired some permanent metal fixin's.

    ReplyDelete
  80. Yep. Titanium!*

    * Said by Pauly Shore.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Halloween_Jack10:24 AM

    There's a bit in Charles Stross' Laundry books about a training village for their magic spy agency that riffs off of Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." You know, where everyone has a certain... look.

    ReplyDelete
  82. M. Krebs11:09 AM

    Kinda Syd Barrettish. Cool.

    ReplyDelete
  83. J Neo Marvin11:31 AM

    I like that theory. But I guess poor Chris's stroke would disprove that.

    ReplyDelete
  84. Danno1311:57 AM

    I don't think most people realize that the award for Best Picture is done via preferential voting (the voters rank the nominees 1-whatever and votes are distributed accordingly). This means there's virtually no chance of two nominees that are alike cancelling each other out.

    ReplyDelete
  85. StringOnAStick12:16 PM

    Word to the wise: take you're pain meds as prescribed and do not, I repeat DO NOT get behind on them or think you can just tough it out or you're feeling too good to need them. Once break-through pain occurs, it takes a lot more drugs to knock it back to tolerable, and in the meantime you've had a really, really bad time of it. Narcotics are your buddy right now!

    ReplyDelete