8:30 p.m. Oscars starting!
8:31 p.m. Kind of stupid opening sequence.
8:33 p.m. Strike joke: “Welcome to the make-up sex.” Hey, Vanity Fair, how about inviting some writers to your party?
8:35 p.m. Stewart on the depressing topics of the Best Picture nominees: “Thank god for teen pregnancy.” Yeah, there’s some lighthearted fare.
8:38 [...]
Liveblogging Oscars ‘08
Oscars ‘08 Pre-Show
Maybe I’ll blog a little about the ceremony here. You can read my takes on the five Best Picture nominees.
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood
6:35 p.m. Boy, E!’s Red Carpet coverage really sucks these days.
6:55 p.m. Why does Ryan Seacrest keep asking, “Who made your dress?” What happened [...]
The young lady is no tramp.
Last year’s Best Picture nominee Little Miss Sunshine (2006) didn’t really seem to deserve that honor. Best Picture? Really? It was cute enough, but pretty flawed. You might agree. You might think Juno is in the same situation, but it’s not. It’s better than that.
It’s also reminiscent at first [...]
I was with ya almost all the way…
I have to confess to a certain ambivalence when it comes to the Coen Brothers. On the one hand, I’ve only seen seven out of their 12 movies. But my experience has been that when they’re good, they’re very good, and when they’re bad, they’re either boring or obnoxious. No Country [...]
A lawyer tells the truth.
Of all the films nominated in the Best Picture category for the Academy Awards this year, I would possibly rank Michael Clayton as the slightest. Not the least — that would go to Atonement (previously discussed here). Clayton doesn’t do anything wrong, but it’s little more than a very well-done legal thriller, [...]
Creep video
This is ridiculously bloody old, but I just ran across it. From four years ago, here is British Flash animator Laith Bahrani’s homemade video for Radiohead’s acoustic version of their song “Creep.” It is based on characters from his Low Morale series of shorts (suitable for anyone working at a soul-crushing place of [...]
Lost, back & forward
The new season of Lost has started and it is damn-diggity good. They started with the annotated version of last season’s finale (called “Lost, Enhanced”) and then a recap episode that summarized the story thus far. The first episode of the season follows off from last season’s promise of a possible rescue [...]
“I’m finished.”
I struggle to think what to say about There Will Be Blood.
I love writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, almost unreservedly. I’m aware he can be an acquired taste. His new film is amazing, his best work so far. Daniel Day-Lewis… Words fail. Incredible? Amazing? All trite. A standout [...]
Death of an ad salesman
I continue to watch for signs of how the current Writer’s Guild strike will affect the entertainment industry.
This article, written from the NATPE Conference this week, focuses on a couple of potential developments.
One possible change: “the death of the upfronts as we know it,” predicted Matt Seiler, president and CEO, PHD North America.
Seiler said the [...]