Academy Awards 2008 (and how they continue to suck)

I get passionate about things… unfortunately they tend to be really unproductive things like yo-yoing, politics and movies.  And there is one thing that you can bet on and that is that you will hear me rant every single year when the Academy Award nominations are released.

Best Picture

This is the category that has me the most steamed.

• Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Straight up, right off the bat, this film does NOT deserve to be on this list.  The script was (as previously mentioned) almost a direct retelling of Forrest Gump.  Brad Pitt did not do any acting (more on this later).  And the film was not Oscar level great… it was good… but not a buyer and not great.  Cinematography and direction however were fantastic, but those have their own categories to compete in.
• Frost/Nixon: I have not seen this movie, but I don’t have a problem making bold and ignorant statements about how good it is.  It’s probably very good.  It might be Oscar quality, but let’s be honest about things, the only reason this got nominated was because Ron Howard directed it… I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just a true thing.
• Milk: Another film that I have not seen but have no problem judging.  It looks great.  I have heard from people who I trust that the film isn’t all that great.  I guess I don’t really have anything else to say about it.
• The Reader: This happens every year, some BS film that I have never heard of ends up as a best picture nomination and they never win and they always suck.  Where did this film even come from?  (does a little research) Oh… it’s an obligatory WWII film… figures.  This film should not have gotten nominated and The Dark Knight should have been nominated in its stead.
• Slumdog Millionaire:  I’ve seen this one and it’s fantastic.  This film really has all the makings of a real Oscar Best Picture.  The acting is great, the story is great, the Cinematography is great, the direction is great.  It’s just an absolutely great film.  This should win best picture because IMHO it is the best picture of the year (The Dark Knight is number 2).

Best Male Actor in a Lead Roll

• Richard Jenkins(The Visitor) : Don’t care.
• Frank Langella(Frost/Nixon): Don’t care.
• Sean Penn(Milk): Don’t care.
• Brad Pitt(The Curious Case of Benjamin Button): Does not deserve a nomination!  He did not do poorly in this film, it was not Seven Years in Tibet or anything (although I have heard people criticize his accent, I thought it was pretty solid… not as solid as Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump… but still solid).  But the performance was not great and to be honest he didn’t do much acting, he just did a lot of standing around looking bewildered.
• Mickey Rourke(The Wrestler): Amazing.  Should win.

Best Female Actor in a Lead Roll

Just like the left field nomination that is present in the Best Picture category every year, the Best Female Actor categories are always full of performances from movies that nobody has ever heard of.

• Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married): Who what why?
• Angelina Jolie (The Changling): I don’t have anything to say.
• Melissa Leo (Frozen River): Same for this one.
• Meryl Streep (Doubt): I need to see this film.
• Kate Winslet (The Reader): Hurm… The Reader again… wtf?

Best Director

• David Fincher (Curious Case of Benjamin Button): I get this.  David Fincher has made three groundbreaking films and has never been nominated.  As I said before this was a very well directed film and I would completely support Fincher for this award if he didn’t have such stiff competition.
• Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon): It’s Ron Howard.  Nuff said? Whenever Ron Howard makes a nonshitty film he seems to get a nomination and whenever he gets a nomination he gets a win (he is three for three), let’s see if we can break that streak.
• Gus Van Sant (Milk): I had forgotten this was directed by Gus Van Sant… he’s a (kinda) great director and he was nominated before with Goodwill Hunting.  He probably deserves this nomination but I doubt that he will win.
• The Reader (Stephen Daldry): Again?!?! This guy has a couple nominations under his belt (With The Hours and Billy Elliot) which makes his the most nominated and least winningest person on the list… does that make him the worst good director? or the best terrible director? It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t have the chops to win.
• Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire): I wish I could have lunch with Danny Boyle (I’m buying).  Danny Boyle has made eight features and you have probably heard of about half of them but they are all pretty awesome.  The direction in Slumdog Millionaire was top shelf and with such a solid filmography under his belt Danny Boyle deserves this Oscar.  But even without his filmography Danny Boyle still deserves the Oscar based on just this film alone.

Those are my thoughts for now.  I’m going to try and see The Reader (I really hope it sucks) but I doubt that I’ll see Milk or Frost/Nixon (they are getting plenty of coverage elsewhere).  I will also do a write up of the nominations for Supporting Male Actor and Supporting Female Actor this weekend.  Bye for now.

-Josh

Thoughts about subscription TV

I’m trying to formulate my thoughts on subscription TV in the wake of the cancelation of my favorite show ‘Pushing Daisies’. There are two online companies that’s are using voluntary subscriptions to subsidize their ad revenue and they seem to be very successful at it. And not only does it subsidize their income, but it also provides them with a listener engagement figure that they can show to advertisers.  Sure, ‘Pushing Daisies’ had 100k people sign an online petition, but imagine having 50k people subscribe to the show for $2 a week, now that’s a solid measure to sell to an advertiser.

The two companies that are using this model are Revision3 and TWiT.TV.  They are both online ‘broadcasters (or more specifically ‘netcasters’).  Both companies have created successful models that involve both paid advertising and voluntary subscriptions.  In the past I might have felt this model as repugnant but when you view something like H.B.O. you can clearly see that the best programming is created when money is not an object and money is not controlled by advertisers.

Those are just some preliminary and completely incomplete opinions.  What are you thoughts?

-Josh

WLW and why i have not been blogging

I’m sure you’ll find this to be a very bad excuse, however it’s true.  I have not been blogging because Windows Live Writer has not been working.  I finally got a chance to dig into the problem and this is what I found out.  PHP 5.22 has an error when generating the xmlrpc.php file in wordpress.  My hosting company, HostMonster, happens to use PHP 5.22 and therefore when Windows Live Writer looked at the xmlrpc.php to determine the details about my blog it gave me an error.  Here is a link to the site that gave me the errors. 

The site gave me the instructions to put this line of code at the top of the xmlrpc.php file

$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA = file_get_contents(”php://input”);

and since I am a noob I took that to heart… but what I should have inferred from that was to place it on the second line of the file right after the

<?php

Once I figured that out it was smooth sailing.

I would just like you to know that I am typing this on WLW in Windows 7 beta (build 7000).  Windows 7 is proving to be just as fantastic as everyone says that it is.  The installation went great.  Networking has been a snap.  Everything on my Toshiba a215-s5837 laptop was fully supported out of the box.  The new tool bar is just stellar.  And of course the entire OS is very very pretty.  Are you bored yet?

-Josh

I never intendid to use that theme that long

Seriously, I installed that last theme temporarily while I searched for a new theme then a year and a half passed. This theme was recently posted on smashing magazine and I just fell in love with it so I installed it and did a few slight modifications and here we are. There is a little bit too much space in the header and those links up top there are not in the right locations, but it’ll do until I learn how to fix it.

Also one of the sites I built is now live at www.bwhawksoccer.com. The header was done by my friend Ryan Power and the xhtml was all done by myself and Kari Root. The xhtml validates as strict, because I’m awesome.

Next quarter I am taking “Introduction to Web Development Software” which I guess is just about Adobe Dreamweaver (lame), but I’m not sure what the other class I am going to take is. Rasmussen keeps insisting that I take classes online despite the fact that they advertised a 100% in classroom and at every chance I get I reaffirm that I don’t want to take classes online. Hopefully they will get their act together and get me in a solid programming class like Perl. Bye for now.

-Josh

This title is a pretest for a loop

You can decide if that meets the qualification for you to continue or to skip it and move to the next one.

I am deep into development on two sites right now, www.bwhawksoccer.com and www.tlcelectronics.com , (what you see there right now is not my work). The first one should be going live in about a week and the second one might take a couple weeks because the company is still trying to figure out exactly what they want.  Important things that I have learned,

1. XHTML Strict means nothing to IE6

2. Alpha transparencies with PNG mean nothing to IE6

3. Everything you want to do with javascript has already been done, so just use their code.

4. I want to be better at graphic design, but that’s just not going to happen, best to leave that to the pros.

I am also deep into a class on programming logic.  For loops, and while loops and structured programming and IPO charts and uml.  Delicious.

And then there is interpersonal communications… it’s so boring.

I got a very small link on laughing squid today thanks to doctor popular.  Check it out.

 

-Josh

Movie Trailer Review, Episode 25

Just saw Quantum of Solace and it kicked ass.  Saw five trailers to report on (and I saw one of them twice which was kinda lame).

Seven Pounds

This is another Will Smith movie.  Directed by Gabriele Muccino who also directed Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness.  This movie looks very good in much the same way that The Pursuit of Happyness looks very good and I’m not going to see it in much the same way I didn’t see The Pursuit of Happyness.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

Who’s bright idea was it to remake this movie?  They should not be allowed within five miles of authority to green light a film.  This is a modern remake of the 1951 classic “B’” movie of the same name.  For the record the trailer is just the worst…. the absolute worst.  How does anyone expect to take a schlocky sci-fi film and turn it into something that might have box office draw?  Or at least street cred?  Theory – it can’t be done.  2nd Theory – it shouldn’t be attempted again least Hollywood dies with a remake of Manos: Hands of Fate.

Fast & Furious

What what what?!?!?!  I don’t know what it is about this franchise, but they put out the best movie trailers.  In this one (number 4 for those who are counting) Paul Walker teams back up with Vin Diesel for… um… crime? Maybe not crime?  Who cares?  The trailer rocks.  Fast & Furious is directed by Justin Lin who also directed The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift which I did not see, but many people said they liked.  Game on.

Bedtime Stories

Adam Sandler stars in this Disney film where the bedtime stories that his niece and nephew help him make up end up coming true.  The trailer is very cute and if I had a niece in the area I would very willingly bring her to see this film.  It’s directed by Adam Shankman who has built a pretty solid career turning out crappy Hollywood films (read as: The Pacifier, Bringing Down The House, Cheaper By The Dozen 2, and my favorite A Walk To Remember).

Valkyrie

Maybe it’s the scientology thing but I don’t really care to see Tom Cruise in movies anymore unless he is unrecognizable.  Valkyrie is the ‘true’ story of an attempted assassination of Adolph Hilter by some members of the SS.  See?  Tom Cruise tries to kill Hilter so Tom Cruise can’t be all bad!  Incidentally the film is directed by Bryan Singer so it has a lot of buzz and it’s written by Christopher McQuarrie who also wrote Singers breakout flick The Usual Suspects.  I think I have digressed too much.  The trailer gives away almost the entire plot of the movie, while it did make me interested to see the film I believe that these sort of trailers ought to be banned.

-Josh