Monthly Archives: February 2011
2011 Oscars
As usual, we watched the Oscars at my house last night and did the traditional contest where we fill out our ballots and try to predict the results. I won with a score of 17 correct out of 24 awards. Did anyone out there beat me?
I thought it was a pretty good show, with Franco and Hathaway (mostly Hathaway, who looked amazing all night in each one of her many dresses) doing a creditable job of hosting. One of my favorite parts was the auto-tuned musical version of some of the movies:
The biggest surprise was that David Fincher didn’t win the award for best director. The Social Network deserved at least as much recognition for directing as it did for its script (Aaron Sorkin won the award for best adapted screenplay). I was glad to see Inception get some recognition, sweeping both sound editing and mixing as well as visual effects. I also thought the award to The Social network for best score was well-deserved.
Discuss these issues and any other Oscar-related stuff here.
Stuck On a Deserted Island: Music Edition
You’ve been banished to a desert island, never to return. In addition to food and water to survive indefinitely, you’re allowed to take a device to play music with and the collected works of any single recording artist, but no other music.
What music library do you select?
Additional Rules:
- You can choose a solo artist or a group.
- If you choose a solo artist, you can also choose the songs written/performed by that artist as part of a group, but not vice versa. For example, if you choose Sammy Hagar, then you get any Van Halen albums he contributed to, but if you choose Van Halen, then you do not get Sammy Hagar’s solo albums.
My choice: It’s a clear win for the Beatles. The sheer volume of songs, combined with the variety in styles as the band progressed from dance hits to psychedelic awesomeness, along with Paul’s granny music ballads, would make sure that I have tunes for all seasons. I’m tempted to choose John Lennon instead, since I’d still get all of the Beatles, but also some of his solo works which I like, but then I find myself wanting some of Paul’s solo work, and I think it’s safer to stick with the duo.
The only other band I’d consider would be Depeche Mode, since they were my first non-family-influenced love. In fact, if DM hadn’t royally sucked since Songs of Faith & Devotion, I might be persuaded.
Next time: Stuck On a Deserted Island: Actor Edition
Justified: The I of the Storm
I really liked this episode. The actor playing Boyd did a fantastic job really unifying the different experiences that character had gone through last season. I really liked that he still is trying to stay on the straight and narrow. We also got the return of Dewey Crowe, a regular from last season.
We start with Dewey on a church bus that gets hijacked in order to steal a bunch of oxycotin leaving a guy with a big hole in the back of his head. That sets up our “one off” element for tonight’s episode. However much like last week the plot of the day plays a backseat to elements of the season arc. I don’t know why but while last week’s arc bothered me a bit more tonight’s seems to flow a bit better.
As with last week there was a lot being setup for the season.
No More Serialized Dramas?
One of my favorite aspects of the last decade in TV has been sophisticated serial dramas. It’s really made TV great again. Some of my favorite shows of all time have fallen into that category: Battlestar Galactic (the first two seasons at least), Lost, Dexter, Rubicon and so forth. I’m sure you have your own you love. So imagine my surprise and disappointment when I read this on Deadline.
Landgraf spoke candidly about the difficulty of making serialized dramas work on basic cable. He noted that viewers seem to watch only reality series and sports live and prefer to view serialized shows in blocks of several episodes at a time on their DVRs. That hurts ratings tremendously and puts a lot of pressure on scripted programming, which doesn’t come cheap – Landgraf quoted a $200 million figure for keeping a basic cable drama series on the air for 7 years. Looking back at a show like Damages, while proud of it, Landgraf acknowledged that it didn’t work for FX and he wouldn’t do such serialized series in the future.
Towers of Midnight – Book 13 of The Wheel of Time
The latest book in the Robert Jordan series The Wheel of Time has been out for a few months and I finally finished it, which at 800+ pages is somewhat of an accomplishment . We talked about book 12 here.
This book is the next to last book in the series and the word from Brandon Sanderson, the LDS author and BYU creative writing instructor hired to finish the series after Jordan’s death, is that the 14th and last book in the series, A Memory of Light, will be out around March of 2012.
Which means that this current book is essentially the middle book in a trilogy that Sanderson has been writing as the conclusion to this overgrown series. Cue alarm bells.
The good news is that, as he did in the last book, Sanderson performs a yeoman effort at searching out and tying down the plethora of flailing strands of character and narrative that Jordan left him with.
The bad news is that Sanderson can’t completely escape from the trap that writing the middle book of a trilogy places him in, partly, I assume, because this trilogy is one that is both highly anticipated and fraught with enormous deadline pressure and fan expectations.
This means that the book is concerned primarily with moving all of the chess pieces to the required locations so that the scene is set for the last battle and other scenes that are to take place in the final volume. Read the rest of this entry
The Banksy craze
Is there anyone who doesn’t know who Banksy is?
Of course I don’t mean that literally. There are very few people who know Banksy’s real identity. But is there anyone who hasn’t heard of him?
In case there is, I’ll give some quick background. He’s a British street artist who does clever stencils. He somehow manages to be funny and whimsical while making strong social/political statements.
Something in his work has really struck a cord with people. The Banksy craze is sort of mind-boggling. He’s done pieces on buildings that the owners sold by removing the wall it was painted on. Some building owners have put plexiglass over Banksy pieces to protect them from being tagged over or otherwise damaged.
Last year Banksy released a documentary movie called Exit Through the Gift Shop. But in a typical Banksy move, it ended up being about the guy filming the movie, and not Banksy himself. It was one of my favorite movies from 2010. The big question it raises, of course, besides how much hype is involved in the art world, is was the movie itself a hoax? Did Banksy set it all up to watch it fall down, or is Mr. Brainwash for real?
Here’s the trailer:
Justified: The Life Inside
OK sure this episode wasn’t remotely as good as last week’s premier. But there were still some really great moments. The best of which was the, “have you ever heard of the apricot?” That said while there was the one off element of the search for the pregnant escaped prisoner most of this episode was clearly setting things up which will become important in future episodes. As such there was something a little dissatisfying about it all. I found the villain this week pretty distasteful as well. Yes, arguably last week’s was too. Maybe even worse. But somehow the quirky villains doing nasty things just didn’t catch me this week. They just made me uncomfortable. Of course we were supposed to be disturbed, as was Raylan by his comments to his ex-wife at the end of the episode. And honestly the show tries to play the villains straight. They aren’t comedic characters the way some Leonard novels are adapted.
So onto the revelations. (Spoilers ahoy, so don’t read if you haven’t seen)
The big season arc revelations were the disposing of the body by the Bennett boys. Lots to that short scene. The most obvious was the stealing of the watch which is almost certainly foreshadowing for future discovery. (Either by the daughter, as I suspect, or Rayland as is possible) I didn’t really get the way they poured lye on the body and then dumped it almost certainly scattering all the lye off the body. But then as mommy Mags notes, they aren’t necessarily the brightest.
Next up is a conflict between Rayland and Winona’s husband. It appears he was booted out of the house (somewhat understandably considering his mixup with the mob last season). He is going to try and get Winona back. Meanwhile we get the impression from all the episode’s pregnant talk that Raylan would like a child with Winona. Interestingly I believe the name Winona had was the name of the child they had in the original books. (The series diverged quite a bit from the books where he had two kids with his ex-wife)
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Shaun the Sheep
Due to the wonders of Netflix my family has recently discovered Shaun the Sheep.
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The King of Limbs
It seems that Radiohead has a new album, available for pre-order. I know nothing about it, but I have several of their albums and have never given them a cent. So I figured I’d pay for this one, in penance for my crimes.
Anybody else ever bought something out of guilt after a life of piracy?
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