Monday, February 26, 2007

Monday Morning Coffee

Egads! Two days of Morning Coffee in a row?!?

* The King of the World vs. The King of Kings...Who Ya Got!!! James Cameron - who I thought was finally making fictional films - claims to have located the tomb of Jesus Christ and his son, which, if true, would tear the foundations out from under Christianity. This isn't Al Capone's vault, JC - hey, look whose initials are ironic! - if you're wrong, you'll be buried.

* Oscar Reax: Tom Shales said:

Virtually everything about the Oscarcast, except for a few mercifully brief features, was entirely, punishingly too long. The award for Best Foreign Language Film was preceded by a montage of famous foreign movies going back to "La Strada," presumably for people who had no idea what a foreign film is.
The usually retarded Nikki Finke said:
Well, I say enough is enough. Who isn't sick of getting stuck sitting through an ass-killing show that runs on and on beyond reason with no entertainment within it to speak of? As a comedian friend told me: "If this goes on any longer, they're going to be reporting next weekend's Friday night box office, the obituary package is going to be out of date, and the ballots will be going out for next years' awards." Frustration echoed by this emailer: "If they show another montage, I think it should be of people killing themselves while watching the Oscars."

Erroll Morris' interviews of the nominees kicked off the show. And it laid a huge egg. The package was way too "inside the Industry". The TV viewing audience had no idea who most of these people were on screen. And the opening wasn't even original: I'm told Morris did the same thing for the Oscar telecast a few years ago. What was this: The Sequel? Thus began what is supposed to be an international broadcast reaching out to 1 billion peopole, and instead comes off like Hollywood's really boring home movie.
In retrospect, there was little memorable or exciting about the show. Now, I'm sure some would've appreciated it if every speech contained some gratuitous shot at Dubya and the non-war, but instead we had canned speeches and dullness except for Jennifer Hudson who didn't have anything written down and actually seemed overwhelmed.

* Reporters Ask The Stupidest Questions: While watching what little of the backstage interviews that E! aired, I saw Hudson asked these stupid questions: "How does it feel to be only the third African-American actress other than Whoopi Goldberg and Hattie McDaniel?" and (paraphrasing) "REAL actors spend years perfecting their craft and you win an Oscar on your first film. Don't you feel like a fraud?"

The first question ignores Halle Berry's win - unless they were just talking Supporting Actress winners - but reveals the race grievance obsession of the media. Are they going to ask the 10th and 20th black Oscar winners this same dumb question or will we finally get to the point where it's not a novelty for the elites to patronize minorities about? Liberals just love to pat minorities on the head and tell them that they'd be nowhere without them.

The second question is garbage as well. Sure, there may be some beginner's luck, but so what? There have been other first-time charmers, but did they have to endure these idiotic queries?

Screw the handicapped! We're keeping it real!!! It used to be that the surest way to win an Oscar was to play a handicapped person or have an accent, but in the past few years, we've had a rash of acting awards going to performances that portrayed very familiar, real-life people. Off the top of my head, we've had Queen Elizabeth II, Idi Amin, Truman Capote, June Carter Cash, Ray Charles, Aileen Wornous and one other that's slipping my mind win and had Chris Gardener nominated. While these performances may've rose above mere imitation, that's part of what they've won for; the ability to convince us we're seeing the real deals.

I feel sorry for actors who create compelling characters from whole cloth, with nothing but a script to guide them, who may be passed over for one of these real-life role-players. Reese Witherspoon has done very good work, but there is no way in hell her JCC was better than Claire Danes in "Shopgirl" or Felicity Huffman in "Transamerica". If she had any shame, she should've turned down the trophy. She'll be good again in future roles, so it's not as if this was her only chance.

Single-Issue Dogma Voters = Losers: Listening to Bill Bennett on the drive in, I was depressed to hear the myopic views of the callers with regard to various candidates and people they'd wish would run. I'll say more on this on a dedicated post, but the people slagging Romney for being a Mormon or having been equivocal about abortion in the past are dopes. The first point is straight-up religious bigotry, but the second shows how purity tests are lame. Romney has moved to the right and they're bashing him for not always being with them. Ironically, some of these same folks are big on Guiliani, who is as liberal, if not more, than most Dems, but because they feel (note that I didn't say think) he'll be strong on the war, they'll toss their concerns overboard. Realpolitik = realstoopid.

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