I want to do some art. I don't know which medium, I'd have to dig through my college stuff to see what paper/supplies I have, and I don't know what I want to draw or paint. I just feel like doing something.
The vaguest entry ever! "I feel like doing something." Yep.
We went out for my mom's birthday last night to an Irish pub. It was really good food - we had curry and chips as an appetizer, then I had a corned beef and braised cabbage boxty with mustard tarragon sauce (after one bite I announced to the table I'd need another bite to be sure, but it was probably the most delicious thing I'd ever eaten), a scone with honey butter, a Guinness, and fried bread pudding. Sarah's a pretty big Anglophile, so she was just in heaven. Our host was in his 40s or early 50s, about six-four and maybe 150 pounds, wearing a tweed suit with slicked-down hair and a John Waters mustache. He had a very delicate, upper-crusty accent and was quiet and very nice. I caught Sarah gazing at him once or twice, her head in her hands; I asked if she was in love. Without a shred of irony, she answered, "Yes."
Marshall didn't go as he had already made plans to visit his girlfriend in Lawrence and couldn't postpone or cancel for his own mother's birthday. My mom shrugged her shoulders, but also vowed darkly that she would not forget.
Holly, where are you in BSG? I was going to put some stuff up for fun but it would be kind of silly it you'd already watched the episodes. I thought you might enjoy the first season soundtrack, though.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Did I, or did I not, call Christoph's acceptance speech for the SAG awards? For his Oscar acceptance speech, I'm assuming that he'll talk about what it means to be a part of an Academy dedicated to film, and how in some ways the cast and crew that made Inglourious Basterds is like the Academy, with Quentin as the president; everyone working to glorify film; etc, etc.
I may or may not have clapped my hands like a toddler when IB won Best Ensemble. That, coupled with Avatar losing the PGA to The Hurt Locker, makes me think IB has a real shot as a dark horse Best Picture winner, and that would be awesome. I haven't had one of "my" films win BP since ROTK.
Other than that, the SAG awards were nearly identical to the Golden Globes just six days earlier, which highlights one of my biggest problems with award shows (my biggest problem is genre bias): what I like to call the "Homecoming Queen" effect. When I was in high school, the so-called popular kids were outnumbered by the geek collective made up of band, drama, and FCA. We could have easily voted for our own when it came to dances, even making concessions to only choose the more popular of the non-populars, the cross-overs, the ones who stood on the boundary. But the super-popular girls always ended up nominated, which meant that the geek collective had to be voting for them, too. Which didn't make sense, because we didn't like them. But when you got your ballot, there didn't seem to be any point to vote for the trumpet player who was really nice or the stage manager who was really funny; they weren't going to win, so why waste the vote?
And I think this is what happens with the Oscars and related shows. Once the probable winners make themselves known on the critical circuit (which in its own way follows the same SOP and barring a few exceptions locks down itself within the first two weeks), everyone else pretty much follows suit. There might be a single acting category that could go either way, but even that is usually confined to an either-or between two candidates. And there's NEVER any feeling that all five are equally likely to win. So I've reached the point, as I do every year, where a lot of the fun is gone because we already know who's going to win 75% of the awards come Oscar night. :(
I may or may not have clapped my hands like a toddler when IB won Best Ensemble. That, coupled with Avatar losing the PGA to The Hurt Locker, makes me think IB has a real shot as a dark horse Best Picture winner, and that would be awesome. I haven't had one of "my" films win BP since ROTK.
Other than that, the SAG awards were nearly identical to the Golden Globes just six days earlier, which highlights one of my biggest problems with award shows (my biggest problem is genre bias): what I like to call the "Homecoming Queen" effect. When I was in high school, the so-called popular kids were outnumbered by the geek collective made up of band, drama, and FCA. We could have easily voted for our own when it came to dances, even making concessions to only choose the more popular of the non-populars, the cross-overs, the ones who stood on the boundary. But the super-popular girls always ended up nominated, which meant that the geek collective had to be voting for them, too. Which didn't make sense, because we didn't like them. But when you got your ballot, there didn't seem to be any point to vote for the trumpet player who was really nice or the stage manager who was really funny; they weren't going to win, so why waste the vote?
And I think this is what happens with the Oscars and related shows. Once the probable winners make themselves known on the critical circuit (which in its own way follows the same SOP and barring a few exceptions locks down itself within the first two weeks), everyone else pretty much follows suit. There might be a single acting category that could go either way, but even that is usually confined to an either-or between two candidates. And there's NEVER any feeling that all five are equally likely to win. So I've reached the point, as I do every year, where a lot of the fun is gone because we already know who's going to win 75% of the awards come Oscar night. :(
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Just for fun...
Favorite Lolanimals of 2009
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
No lie, I would say that "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't" is in my top five of all-time things on the internet I've laughed the hardest at. It was two or three days later and I would randomly remember it as I was in the shower or eating or driving and I'd laugh so hard I'd see spots.
Favorite Lolanimals of 2009
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
No lie, I would say that "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't" is in my top five of all-time things on the internet I've laughed the hardest at. It was two or three days later and I would randomly remember it as I was in the shower or eating or driving and I'd laugh so hard I'd see spots.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
This took a lot of time. Not so much with the Photoshop or even with the write-ups, but with finding episode-specific pictures and videos on YouTube, for which I was almost entirely successful (one I couldn't embed, which kind of threw off my overall plan, but it's no big). Here goes!
Favorite Episodes of Television 2009
10. Modern Family - “Run For Your Wife”
I started watching this show because Eric Stonestreet, who plays Cameron, went to my high school, although he graduated six years before I showed up. But it’s a great sitcom all around - I’ve enjoyed it more than Glee (blasphemy!). Funny, entertaining and with characters that - and this is sometimes rare in TV - I actually like. The show was funny before this sixth episode, but this to me felt like when everything really clicked into gear.
9. Star Trek - “Balance of Terror”
In which we first meet the Romulans. The original seriesis often can be campy, but this episode is deadly serious and tense; I read a review that likened it to a Cold War submarine movie, which is dead-on. Everyone - the actors, the writer, the director - brought their A-game.
8. Deadwood - “Sold Under Sin”
I feel like the appropriate level of praise I could bestow upon Deadwood would be taken as hyperbole, but it’s a fact that the level of quality in every aspect of the show is unlike most else in TV.
7. Big Love - “Come, Ye Saints”
The very large Henrickson family takes a cross-country trip, visiting the most important locations in the history of the Mormon religion as they do so. As one often sees in film, traveling lends an opportunity to strip characters down and allows them self-reflection in a way that can be difficult when trammeled in by their day-to-day lives. A beautiful, heart-breaking episode.
6. Fringe - “Bound”
I didn’t catch Fringe when it started. Then Alyssa wrote an incredibly scathing review of the second episode (scroll down to September 17) and I figured I’d not waste my time. Then, about three months ago, I saw this gif somewhere:
And I was like, I absolutely have to watch this show. So I checked it out from the library, and…this is one of those things where Alyssa and I will just have to disagree, because I love this show. No, the science isn’t real and it doesn’t make any sense, but I love the floating location tags, I love the characters and the actors who play them, I love the mood and the music and the funny. I picked this episode not just because it’s around when the show really started finding its feet - as well as defining its internal mythology - in season one, but also because of what came before it. The episode before ended in a cliffhanger as FBI agent Olivia Dunham was abducted. A lot of shows would have had that female character in peril all hour, finally to be rescued by a man. This show? Olivia rescued her own damn self before the opening credits. Awesome.
5. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - “Self Made Man”
Cameron is a Terminator assigned to protect John Connor. Terminators don’t sleep. So what does Cameron do every night? That’s the premise of this episode. What I loved about this show was how well it was able to expand from its basic premise, which we all know from the films, to create its own intricate and unique universe. While there were a lot of pure killing machines on the show, Cameron wasn’t the only Terminator to be a character in her own right, and watching her investigate with the dogged determination only a computer mind can bring to bear while being forced to interact with illogical humans made her one of my all-time favorite characters.
4. Dollhouse - “Belonging”
There are a lot of Whedon fans who seem to grudgingly watch this show, out of loyalty it seems, who don’t seem to actually enjoy it. It’s pretty common, when reading message boards or blogs about it, to see more complaints than anything else. Which I don’t get. It started off a little wobbly but don’t most shows? I’m very sad it’s been canceled, especially since the second season has brought us stellar episodes like this one, exploring the ramifications of the Dollhouse and how the dolls ended up there in the first place. Visually, this is one of the most stunning thus far. NB: This episode was directed by Jonathan Frakes.
3. Father Ted - “The Passion of Saint Tibulus”
Bishop Brennan asks Father Ted and Father Dougal, priests who have essentially been exiled because of their incompetence to tiny and remote Craggy Island off the coast of Ireland, to boycott a film that the Church has condemned. A film that no one on the island was planning on watching until the Fathers handcuffed themselves in front of the theater with ridiculous signs. I had to pause this episode three times because I was laughing too hard to live.
Video here - I couldn’t find one with embedding enabled. :(
2. Star Trek: The Next Generation - “Cause and Effect”
It’s a fairly straightforward SF premise, really: the Enterprise gets stuck in a time loop that keeps repeating itself, and must figure out how to get out and save the ship. The structure of the episode could have made it even more boring: each act repeats itself, with slight changes as the crew figures out what’s going on, but the basic action is the same. It’s also a bottle episode, so no big battles or special effects. It ends up being so fantastically fabulous that I have to give a lot of the credit to the director: that’s right, Jonathan Frakes! When you’ve got two episodes in my top ten, you’re doing something right.
I also should point out that I made nine icons from this episode. Nine. That means there was some prime Beverly Crusher action going on in here, and you know how I feel about that.
1. Battlestar Galactica - “The Oath” / “Blood on the Scales”
Okay, two episodes, but how could I really pick one? I’m not sure what I need to say about this two-parter. Action, tension, romance, lots of killing and running and even crawling the length of the ship. Roslin and Balter stuck somewhere together, bitching at each other. Starbuck holding her guns in a stupid, improbable way yet still being badass. The music when everyone joins Adama in the corridor. “I am coming for all of you!” Perfection.
Favorite Episodes of Television 2009
10. Modern Family - “Run For Your Wife”
I started watching this show because Eric Stonestreet, who plays Cameron, went to my high school, although he graduated six years before I showed up. But it’s a great sitcom all around - I’ve enjoyed it more than Glee (blasphemy!). Funny, entertaining and with characters that - and this is sometimes rare in TV - I actually like. The show was funny before this sixth episode, but this to me felt like when everything really clicked into gear.
9. Star Trek - “Balance of Terror”
In which we first meet the Romulans. The original series
8. Deadwood - “Sold Under Sin”
I feel like the appropriate level of praise I could bestow upon Deadwood would be taken as hyperbole, but it’s a fact that the level of quality in every aspect of the show is unlike most else in TV.
7. Big Love - “Come, Ye Saints”
The very large Henrickson family takes a cross-country trip, visiting the most important locations in the history of the Mormon religion as they do so. As one often sees in film, traveling lends an opportunity to strip characters down and allows them self-reflection in a way that can be difficult when trammeled in by their day-to-day lives. A beautiful, heart-breaking episode.
6. Fringe - “Bound”
I didn’t catch Fringe when it started. Then Alyssa wrote an incredibly scathing review of the second episode (scroll down to September 17) and I figured I’d not waste my time. Then, about three months ago, I saw this gif somewhere:
And I was like, I absolutely have to watch this show. So I checked it out from the library, and…this is one of those things where Alyssa and I will just have to disagree, because I love this show. No, the science isn’t real and it doesn’t make any sense, but I love the floating location tags, I love the characters and the actors who play them, I love the mood and the music and the funny. I picked this episode not just because it’s around when the show really started finding its feet - as well as defining its internal mythology - in season one, but also because of what came before it. The episode before ended in a cliffhanger as FBI agent Olivia Dunham was abducted. A lot of shows would have had that female character in peril all hour, finally to be rescued by a man. This show? Olivia rescued her own damn self before the opening credits. Awesome.
5. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - “Self Made Man”
Cameron is a Terminator assigned to protect John Connor. Terminators don’t sleep. So what does Cameron do every night? That’s the premise of this episode. What I loved about this show was how well it was able to expand from its basic premise, which we all know from the films, to create its own intricate and unique universe. While there were a lot of pure killing machines on the show, Cameron wasn’t the only Terminator to be a character in her own right, and watching her investigate with the dogged determination only a computer mind can bring to bear while being forced to interact with illogical humans made her one of my all-time favorite characters.
4. Dollhouse - “Belonging”
There are a lot of Whedon fans who seem to grudgingly watch this show, out of loyalty it seems, who don’t seem to actually enjoy it. It’s pretty common, when reading message boards or blogs about it, to see more complaints than anything else. Which I don’t get. It started off a little wobbly but don’t most shows? I’m very sad it’s been canceled, especially since the second season has brought us stellar episodes like this one, exploring the ramifications of the Dollhouse and how the dolls ended up there in the first place. Visually, this is one of the most stunning thus far. NB: This episode was directed by Jonathan Frakes.
3. Father Ted - “The Passion of Saint Tibulus”
Bishop Brennan asks Father Ted and Father Dougal, priests who have essentially been exiled because of their incompetence to tiny and remote Craggy Island off the coast of Ireland, to boycott a film that the Church has condemned. A film that no one on the island was planning on watching until the Fathers handcuffed themselves in front of the theater with ridiculous signs. I had to pause this episode three times because I was laughing too hard to live.
Video here - I couldn’t find one with embedding enabled. :(
2. Star Trek: The Next Generation - “Cause and Effect”
It’s a fairly straightforward SF premise, really: the Enterprise gets stuck in a time loop that keeps repeating itself, and must figure out how to get out and save the ship. The structure of the episode could have made it even more boring: each act repeats itself, with slight changes as the crew figures out what’s going on, but the basic action is the same. It’s also a bottle episode, so no big battles or special effects. It ends up being so fantastically fabulous that I have to give a lot of the credit to the director: that’s right, Jonathan Frakes! When you’ve got two episodes in my top ten, you’re doing something right.
I also should point out that I made nine icons from this episode. Nine. That means there was some prime Beverly Crusher action going on in here, and you know how I feel about that.
1. Battlestar Galactica - “The Oath” / “Blood on the Scales”
Okay, two episodes, but how could I really pick one? I’m not sure what I need to say about this two-parter. Action, tension, romance, lots of killing and running and even crawling the length of the ship. Roslin and Balter stuck somewhere together, bitching at each other. Starbuck holding her guns in a stupid, improbable way yet still being badass. The music when everyone joins Adama in the corridor. “I am coming for all of you!” Perfection.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
CHRIIIIIISTOOOOOOPH. (Although Laura and I were trying to figure out what his metaphor-driven speech for his inevitable SAG win would be; something about all the wonderful ACTORS he worked with and he was just a simple ACTOR but then he became part of a great ensemble of ACTORS...you get the idea.) I was also happy with: John Lithgow, Michael C. Hall ( :( ), Meryl and Sandra, Jeff Bridges, RDJ, Glee, Chloe Sevigny. The acting categories for film seem to have fallen into place, although comedy and drama being split up does nothing to help clarify the Sandra vs. Meryl race.
The one thing that drove me crazy about the Globes tonight? The whole Haiti thing. I mean, it is an absolutely horrific tragedy and everyone who is able to help and feels so inclined should do so. That said, I am so beyond sick and tired of overpaid actors standing on a stage, pretending to be so noble and humble and yet only being pretentious and self-serving, going on and on about how they know "what's really important" and how we should all donate money because they've donated money and obviously we, the common folk, should follow their lead. You know who actually donated a shit-ton of money? Sandra Bullock. Did you hear her say anything about it? No. Because she's one of the few who actually understands that charity isn't just another publicity device. If I had heard one more of them go on and on about dear generous Clooney and his tireless efforts blah blah, my head would have exploded. There was the same exact song and dance after 9/11 and the tsunami and probably something else I'm missing, and it's like, Hollywood? I do not need you to be my conscience. I do not need you to remind me that bad things happen in the world, and you're just an actor and your life is so great but now you've been reminded of how precious it all is and why don't I pick up the phone while I watch you in your $10,000 dress and jewels thanking your "team" as you hold a gold statuette. Seriously, STFU.
The one thing that drove me crazy about the Globes tonight? The whole Haiti thing. I mean, it is an absolutely horrific tragedy and everyone who is able to help and feels so inclined should do so. That said, I am so beyond sick and tired of overpaid actors standing on a stage, pretending to be so noble and humble and yet only being pretentious and self-serving, going on and on about how they know "what's really important" and how we should all donate money because they've donated money and obviously we, the common folk, should follow their lead. You know who actually donated a shit-ton of money? Sandra Bullock. Did you hear her say anything about it? No. Because she's one of the few who actually understands that charity isn't just another publicity device. If I had heard one more of them go on and on about dear generous Clooney and his tireless efforts blah blah, my head would have exploded. There was the same exact song and dance after 9/11 and the tsunami and probably something else I'm missing, and it's like, Hollywood? I do not need you to be my conscience. I do not need you to remind me that bad things happen in the world, and you're just an actor and your life is so great but now you've been reminded of how precious it all is and why don't I pick up the phone while I watch you in your $10,000 dress and jewels thanking your "team" as you hold a gold statuette. Seriously, STFU.