Are you cool?

Thanks Casey for this amazing reality check.

Oscar Party!!!

Yesterday I watched the Oscars. It was okay. I really enjoy watching the Oscars, and I especially enjoyed watching them with the help of my DVR, but I guess I wasn’t totally into them. I think the reason is that I haven’t seen a lot of the Oscar films this year. I don’t know what it is—maybe it’s just the fact that all the main films dealt with serial killers, greed, and death.

However, I still get geeked out from all the Hollywood intrigue and so I partook of Hollywood’s own kudo-fest, even though most of America decided not to. This was the lowest-rated Oscar telecast in over thirty years or something, which isn’t necessarily surprising, since most of the major films haven’t been huge successes at the box-office. In fact, the Academy Awards are the most watched when there is a clear runaway winner, (Titanic, Lord of the Rings, etc.) and not when it’s the most suspenseful when winning is a crapshoot.

With that being said, I can’t help but congratulate myself for guessing the Best Picture winner, No Country for Old Men, in our small little Oscar party last night. In fact, I actually tied with Emma and got 11 categories right in our Oscar pool. That’s not bad really. We planned a big Oscar party, but a huge spring snowstorm put the kibosh on it, so we only had a few friends over—but it was still fun. We also had some Oscar-themed food. Check out the pictures.

A few observations:

• Jon Stewart was generally funny, but it was evident that some of his jokes were thrown together rather quickly due to the writers’ strike.
• Amy Adams performed one of her Enchanted songs w/o any backup singers, dancers, or an attempt at a costume. What was up with that? All the other songs had elaborate productions.
• After watching Falling Slowly performed my dad and Emma both changed their prediction to this tune for Best Original Song. I, of course, had already decided that it was my favorite song, because I had seen it performed live at Sundance last year.
  
  
  
  
• The Bourne Ultimatum won three academy awards. Not bad for an action flick, but we all know it should’ve won Best Picture right?
• Foreigners took home all the top acting prizes. We outsource everything here in the US, even our acting apparently…

Newsies!

Lacking the high hipness standards that I know Jedboy requires, I have been reluctant to post lately, as my own hipness lies dormant as the northern hemisphere tilts away from mother sun. But with all this Sundance business and Government Holiday Movie reviews, I thought we should discuss something more, shall we say, boring. The following breaks down my top choices for news:

Where I Go First

NPR: Great for so many factors: through while succinct, broad topic range, doesn’t insult anyone’s intelligence level, and you can easily multitask while listening, i.e. drive, do the dishes, etc.

USAToday.com: How does one go from the “wine and cheese” of public radio to this corporate blandness? It’s like my mom always said: stay close to the peeps (she meant people). USA Today has arguably the largest circulation of printed news, closely behind The National Enquirer by my count, so it helps me know what I know everyone else knows. It’s fast, it’s slightly more detailed than straight AP Updates, and it’s reliable.

NYTimes.com: In previous years this would have been higher, but I have been disappointed in the Times recently. I don’t know exactly what it is; I guess I could compare it how Jed feels after dating a girl for more than a month.

When I Have Time or Want More

The Economist: Great analysis of international news. Kinda long; kinda expensive.

Local Political BLOGS: Working in politics, I have to keep up on the gossip and rantings of all the different tribes.

Jim Lehrer Show/BBC: I put these together because they are both public television.

What I Left Out

I realize that there are many other sources of news. I don’t have cable, so that eliminates the Daily Show (as if Maria would ever let me watch that), CNN, Fox News. Sometimes I watch local television news, but I hate the feeling of wanting to vomit. Then there’s the web: Google News, MSNBC.com, etc – they’re okay I guess.

Did I leave anything out? Local newspapers maybe? I am entirely mistaken? Where do you get your news?

Government Holiday Movie Review

While government employee Jedboy was getting escorted through the hallowed grounds of NBC Burbank, non-governmental contracting employees such as me were hard at work building things for the government. Sometimes it's hard being a private businessman. I only get Christmas morning off, and I'm here plodding away at least until six o'clock most nights. On the other hand, the fistfuls of sweet, sweet American dollars rolling into my bank account (and swiftly back into the American economy via the McDonald's Drive Up Window) help to ease the pain ...

Also easing my pain is the Government Holiday!!! Although I don't necessarily get a day off, I still get a vacation. As I stated in my first Government Holiday Movie Review, when the government takes a day off, the lady of my house takes a day off. This was an especially well-timed Government Holiday.

As stated earilier, Government Holidays allow the scales of masculinty vs. femininity to be balanced in the ASmith household. With Valentine's Day having fallen a few days earlier, my household man power was in short supply, fizzling out like my sweet Pontiac as it nears it's last dying breath of gasoline vapors.

Flowers soiled my kitchen table. Flowers that I purchased. Dishes from a finely prepared meal littered my sink. A meal that I prepared. A romantic movie starring a woman that works as a magazine editor who falls hard for a guy had stunk up my DVD player. A movie that I rented.

In short, I had brought a pox of femininity into my home. I had cursed my home. The Government Holiday was my chance for absolution. With the lady of my house gone, and with her taking Man Cub with her, I was free to perform the necessary ceremonies to restore the balance of power.

To restore that power -- a meal, consisting mostly of meat, consumed directly from a sack, not shaving, lifting weights in my living room, and an awesome action film. On to this week's review.

Actual campaign pamphlet from Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial re-election campaign in 2006.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day. With the recent restoration of the Terminator franchise coming at the hands of the Fox show "The Sarah Connor Chronicles," I had a restored interest in the best action film of my youth. It's hard to capture just how awesome this movie was when it came out in 1991.

Special effects are a funny thing. Generally, I'd agree that any movie made today has better effects than earlier films. However, computer generated images (CGI) can only go so far. Recall that the earlier Star Wars movies actually had things built out of plastic, wood, and metal. The ships looked real because they were real. The second round of Star Wars films looked cool, but they were also filmed in front of a green screen. They weren't made in the real world, they were made in George Lucas' computer world on his ranch.

That being said, James Cameron absolutley nailed the special effects for Terminator 2. CGI was just rolling around at the time, and Cameron used that CGI only for the evil terminator played by that one guy who made some other films. The evil terminator character, when playing the role of a human, was played by a human character. When it was doing it's computerized morphing bit, it was created by a computer. Thus, on film, it looks like a human when it's supposed to and it looks like a robotic liquid metal goo when it's supposed to.

Actor Robert Patrick is not in fact a mimetic polyalloy mass of robotic goo. ASmith regrets the error of firing shots at Mr. Patrick on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles.

In addition, I liked this movie because things blew up. Up until ten years ago, when you wanted something to blow up in a movie, you actually had to blow something up if you wanted it to look real. After a lenghty car chase through the canals of Los Angeles, the bad terminator wrecks a diesel truck. It blows up. And it was real. James Cameron actually set fire to a diesel cab and blew that thing up. And filmed it for posterity.

The film also had some good points. For example, although it's fun to blow things up, there are consequences. In addition, robots are capable of love on an one-to-one basis, but robots in general, and the artificial intelligence that drives them, are pure evil.

Then James Cameron had to go and make that Titanic movie. You tell me what's better -- that floating love story featuring super-duper awkward nudity (DiCaprio making coal-pencil sketches of Kate Winslet. What?) or the awesome powers of California's Governor blowing things up and saving our world from robotic future terrorists?

You know where I stand on the matter. T2 gets a 9.5 out of 10 on the man scale. Mitigating factors: Edward Furlong as the bratty teen John Connor. This guy is supposed to be the future leader of humanity. Um, no. He looks like kd lang. I'll stick with robots blowing things up, thank you.

I Was on the Tonight Show!

I had quite the Presidents’ Day weekend. No, it had nothing to do with presidents of the US of A, but more with F.U.N. That’s right. Emma and I went to SoCal along with part of my family. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of them I just realized. Steve, if you’ve got any extra footage of us in the Teacups I’d like to see it. I’m pretty sure we beat Emma and Naomi in the speed factor, but I need proof.

I flew out on a Thursday and decided to rent a car, which I had never done. I was a little nervous, but I ended up with a pretty sweet little ride for not much money. Is it normal to pay about $16 per day?? I have no idea. I used my mom’s Costco card or something in order to get a discount. I was thinking I was gonna get some old compact beater, but I ended up with a Chevrolet Cobalt Sport that had under 10,000 miles on it. It was actually pretty fun.

Of course, this opened up the door to the wonderful world of Southern California’s freeway system. I had to find where my sister and her family was staying at, but couldn’t even if my life depended on it. (Which I thought it did during one sketchy encounter with a gas station attendant.) Apparently, in this part of the world, it’s okay for roads to disappear and suddenly reappear. I still have no idea how Firestone Blvd. exists as a thoroughfare—I’m almost positive that it’s really a black hole or some sort of TV prop from the hit show Punk’d.

Well, I eventually did make it to the hotel with no help from the car rental agent, or the two English-as-a-second-language gas stations attendants who attempted to help me on my futile journey at 11:30 at night. However, I was rewarded with a snug place on the floor to rest my head. I’m not complaining, it was just a little hard.

The next day was Universal Studios/Hollywood Day. I have this friend, Kristian, who has an enormously entertaining blog, if you’re interested. He works for NBC/Universal in the Burbank area. I asked him if we could get some tickets to the Tonight Show knowing that he had worked there before, but my anticipation level was quite low since I had only asked him the day before. But Kristian, the miracle worker, pulled some strings and got us some free tickets to see Jay Leno!

I have to be honest. I’ve been a huge fan of the Tonight Show since Johnny Caron. Being able to watch one of these late-night comedy shows is a kind of a life long dream of mine. I do have other dreams, don’t get me wrong. But I grew up watching these shows mainly with my dad and they’ve kind of become part of my collective childhood memories. So, I’m deeply indebted to Kristian. I did get him some CPK, so hopefully that makes up for it somewhat.

Before I explain what happened on the show, I just wanted to say that Kristian also volunteered to give us a free tour around Universal Studios. I’ve been on this tour before, but getting taken around in a golf cart while giddy stargazers snapped photos of us because they thought we were celebrities was pretty cool. I’ve posted a couple of pictures on here for your enjoyment.

One more thing; Kristian pointed out at the end of the tour that Conan O’Brien is taking over for Jay sometime next year. Conan is getting a brand spanking new studio to go along with the prestigious promotion and we were able to glimpse the outside of it. Keep this in mind.

Emma and I, along with her friend Tara, then headed off to the show. I wish I had pictures of our little outing, but unfortunately you’re not allowed to take pictures in the studio. Nevertheless, we were all still very excited for what lay ahead. Now, I’ve been told this before, but the studio really does look a lot smaller once you’re inside. I don’t know what it is, but Kristian says that the cameras they use are somehow specially equipped to make it look like it’s bigger somehow, but I don’t remember what he said.

I wasn’t expecting to get good seats, because we were so far behind in the line when we entered the studio. But it’s not a first come, first serve basis; the pages that work there actually sit you depending their whim. Fore some reason, we just happened to get three seats in the second row right in front of Jay. I seriously almost wet my pants. Jk ;)

This was about three in the afternoon. The show actually films extremely early even though they call it the Tonight Show. I believe that part of the reason they do this is because of the Eastern time difference. Of course, the Late Show with David Letterman still shoots pretty early, even though they don’t have to deal with a time difference. Anyway, I kind of already knew this, but what I didn’t know was that during the commercials of the show, they actually stop the show for the exact same amount of time that it takes to air the TV commercials. Meaning that when he pauses for a break, he actually pauses for a break and gets make up applied or something. Also, they don’t edit the show really at all, which means that if there are any mistakes those get put into the show.

Before the show started Jay came out and kind of told us all of this. He was wearing his denim shirt that he always wears when he’s not wearing his suit. He was personable and pretty quick-witted, which isn’t surprising, but still amazing to watch live. He’s a little shorter and stouter in person that what appears on the TV, but this wasn’t that surprising either.

The show starts filming at 4:00 and pretty much goes for an hour. When Jay first comes out some of the audience goes up to the front and shakes his hand. Since I knew this I grappled my way up to the front and pretty much nabbed his hand as he was trying to shake someone else’s. It was awesome. You can actually see me on TV if you want to check it out here. It's the February 15 Friday episode.

I was pretty much psyched out of my mind at this point, so I wasn’t expected anything else of that caliber to happen. But during the program, on this particular episode they decided to do this thing when audience members can ask Jay a question. I sat there and listened to various members of the audience ask Jay something stupid, so that they could set him up for a joke. A few minutes went by and I knew I needed to say something. So, I raised my hand. As soon as I did Jay called on me. I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I didn’t wait for the mic or for the spotlight to shine on me or anything—I just blurted out the first question that came to my head: ‘So, I noticed today that they’re building a new studio for Conan O’Brien, it looks pretty big….’ I wasn’t able to finish my question—before I could blurt out, ‘what do you think about that?’ he started into his joke. Something about how NBC was building a cathedral for Conan made out of solid gold, with a throne and candles to boot. It was pretty funny. I’d like to think that I made America laugh somehow. See here. It's the second chapter: Jay's Open Mic.

After that, we headed out into LA rush hour traffic. That wasn’t as fun. But still a pretty good start to the Presidents’ Day weekend.

'Lost' and the Fantastic Freighter Four

I'm kind of surprised that I haven't written anything about Lost yet this season. It's so good!! I just finished reading this post from probably one of the best Lost blogs that I've come across. Thanks Casey. You need to check it out. Plus, I've recently read that Lost will probably produce five more episodes to add to this season's eight since it looks like the writers' strike it about to end. Phew!

Lost: Confirmed Dead

February 8th, 2008: Posted by J. Wood

Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency.
—Michael Faraday, 1849

"Confirmed Dead" has more than enough red-meat new material to keep the confirmed audience digging, and probably just enough to make the unconfirmed even less satisfied with the storyline (and we may hear from them in the comments — let 'em fly!). We have another group of newly-introduced characters (I'm hearing "Freighties"), a return to flashbacks, some slight shifts in the power balance, the question of the plane at the bottom of the Sunda Trench, and a favorite of mine, the oopart (more on that in a minute).

There's a few in the press who get advanced copies of episodes and get the chance to work on some of the intricacies so they can post a story with some decent analysis quickly after airing. This is good and bad; it means that the audience will have plenty to hang a discussion on come the next day, but it also means many of the references are already smartly teased out by mid-morning (I'm looking at you, Doc Jensen). The Freighter Four, for instance, bear some not-too-subtle similarities to the Fantastic Four of Marvel Comics. Lost has been doing some tie-in work with Marvel, and this episode was written by none other than Brian Vaughan, whose own work in comics is well worth looking into (see his Y: The Last Man series). It's probably worth mentioning the connections, and although this may be old news to many by now, let's see what we can pull from them:

More.

The Continuing Saga of Sundance

I’m sorry that this post has taken so long. Everyone’s probably already lost the majority of their interest in Sundance, but I wanted to chronicle my entire experience and so I’ll just add this final one.

On Tuesday of the second week of Sundance I saw this movie called the Adventures of Power. Honestly, I really enjoyed this movie—it was probably my favorite Sundance movie that I saw—but when I saw it I was kind of in a bad mood, so I don’t think I appreciated it as much as I could have. It’s a pretty light-hearted comedy that owes more than a little to another Sundance breakout hit, Napoleon Dynamite. The editing is a lot more fast-paced for sure, but the quirkiness and eclectic feel have Napoleon Dynamite written all over it. Not to mention that the star and director look suspiciously like Jon Heder in his first starring role. Therefore, if you enjoy unconventional offbeat humor wrapped around the premise of ‘air drumming’ then you should definitely give this little movie a try. That’s if it gets picked up by a major studio. Thanks again, Christian for the tickets.

My next Sundance experience was a concert. Emma and I went to go see the Aggrolites at the Kimball’s Art Center. Again, in order to get into these concerts you have to have credentials. I didn’t this time, but Emma actually knew the band from when they performed on the hit kids TV show Yo Gabba Gabba, which Emma was on. The concert was extremely small and was really conceived for the Sundance ‘uppities’ with their important credentials. This meant that the band was performing for a bunch of people that were only there to flash their credentials and say they went to the concert, in other words, they weren’t really fans. This created kind of a lounge bar feeling: an act performs with great panache, but the elitists are too busy sipping their drinks and schmoozing to really take notice. However, the Aggrolites released some exclusive tickets on their MySpace page to their most loyal fans, which meant that there were probably twenty-five to thirty people there who actually cared. And the band delivered. They’re kind of a reggae-rock band akin to 311, but with more allegiance to the ska realm of the musical universe. Anyway, it rocked and we didn’t get a ticket for illegal parking. Yay!

Our final Sundance venture happened at 9:15 on a Saturday morning. (Getting Emma to go anywhere at this time in the morning is a minor miracle. jk.) We went to go see this movie CSNY: Déjà Vu. It’s about the aging rockers, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, on their "Freedom of Speech Tour" in 2006 that was the equivalent of a political rally for anti-war sentiment. Let’s see, I don’t mind people speaking their minds and letting their frustrations out through song, but to create a documentary about pulling out of Iraq, built upon weak 60s sensibilities and simplistic melodrama isn’t the way to really influence policy or difficult decision-making. Here’s what one commenter said on the movie’s IMDB webpage:

Sundance Moment: Someone in the Q&A said that he had lost a brother in Iraq, and told Neil Young that "you have no idea what you're talking about." It was a tense moment in the very liberal Sundance crowd. I'm guessing that Young has dealt with this kind of thing dozens of times on the tour, and he chose to handle it by, essentially, backing down. "I think you're right," he said. "We're just trying to get people to talk about it." Well, that might be an easy answer, but I'm not sure it's honest. A song like "Let's Impeach the President" is something more than an invitation for dialogue; it's a political statement of the strongest kind. I respect the band's sincerity, but was disappointed they were something less than forthright when challenged.

Here, here.

Anyway, thanks again Christian for the tickets. Apparently all of CSNY were there that morning at the screening, but we failed to even look for them. That was stupid. We then went out to eat at Loco Lizard and decided to take a picture.

So, Sundance is over for now. When worked correctly you can have a pretty good time when Hollywood turns its spotlight onto little ol’ Park City. I really enjoyed myself this year, but it’s also kind of a headache. It’s kind of like when your relatives come over to visit you: it’s great to see them and listen to all they have to say, but soon enough you can’t wait for them to leave.

Connecting at Sundance

The next big day was on Monday or MLK Jr. day. I started off the day by skiing with my honey. Parking again was a mess, but thanks to my bro-in-law, Steve, we were able to get some pretty sweet underground parking. (Thanks Steve.) We then took public transit again to Main Street where we were able to see a couple of bands. We wanted to see Ingrid Michaelson, but because we missed our transit connection, we got their too late.

However, we did see Sea Wolf at the Music Café. It’s a pretty cool little venue and the only way to get in is by having ‘credentials.’ I, of course, don’t have credentials, but I borrowed some from work and I was consequently known as ‘Alison Butz’ the rest of the day. No really. The little concert was actually extremely awesome, mainly due to the band itself, but the intimate atmosphere and ability to be really close to the band was priceless.

I kept trying to film them, but I got in trouble. Then I took some pictures of them, but got in trouble because of the flash I was using. This lady must have felt bad for berating me so much because she gave me and Emma a couple of free CDs at the close of the show. Since we were so close to the band we went up and talked to them. Emma told them that they looked really peaceful. Not wanting them to feel like we had just finished singing hymns or something, I hurriedly told them that they rocked. They then signed our CDs. Now, that really did rock.

After finding a place to eat (thank you Davanza’s) we met up with my buddy Christian and his date (friend?) Whitney. We then took the lovely public transit over to the Racquet Club. I was worried that they’d give our seats away since we were getting there only fifteen minutes beforehand, which is customary. Luckily, we didn’t have any problems finding some seats, but we couldn’t exactly sit right next to each other. It was during this time that we were able to spot Quentin Tarantino directly across the aisle from us. I took a very quick and blurry picture because I didn’t want to feel like a gawky fan, which is why I didn’t take a second. Stupid.

So here’s the rub: with Sundance you really never know what kind of movie you’re gonna see. You can read the small little snippets before you go, but this isn’t as useful as you might think. I didn’t choose this movie on purpose; we were going because I got free tickets at work. The move was called Sleep Dealer, and honestly, after watching the movie, I’m not entirely sure why it was called that. I knew it was a sci-fi before going in, but I had no idea it was going to be ninety percent in Spanish. Think about it—a Mexican science fiction movie—that’s kind of weird isn’t it? Well, it was kind of weird, but at the same time wonderful. It was a simple story about a dystopian not-too-distant future on the Mexican/American border. The special effects were amazing for a low budget film, but for blockbuster cinema it would’ve been almost laughable. The cinematography was great and the acting top-notch, but the story was almost too quaint to be honest.

Science fiction is about turning all your traditionally held beliefs on their ear; but the major themes in the film seemed almost like retread for me. For instance: becoming less connected to humanity in a world that’s becoming more digitally connected seems like it could’ve been a cautionary public ad or something. Science fiction is supposed to scare you to the core; it makes you say, “I pray that our future could never be like that.” But this movie made me think, “hmm, the future doesn’t really sound that bad.” Am I a (gulp) becoming too much of a realist, too much of pragmatist? Maybe, but I think the filmmaking was just a little soft, if not delicate—which would’ve played out well for a rom-com, but not so much for sci-fi.

However, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the director and principle cast members giving their two bits about the movie after the credits had rolled. I think I liked the movie a little more after this, but that’s like saying you enjoyed a joke after someone explained the punch line to you. You appreciate the joke for its creativity, but you’re still not sure why you just didn’t ‘connect’ with it to start.

Sundancing with the Stars, er, kind of...

I’ve lived in Park City off and on for the last twenty-odd years. I love and hate it sometimes. I love the snow, skiing, and the small-town mentality, but once a year my little home town turns into Hollywood on ice. While I find Sundance intriguing in a way, I also find it incredibly annoying with all the extra traffic, wannabe stars, and uber fan gawkers. While I can’t help but get caught up in the frenzy a little, I’m also apt to complain – call it human nature. But this post won’t dwell on the headache induced aspects of Sundance, but rather the parts that I enjoyed and participated in. I was originally going to give day-by-day updates of Sundance happenings, but I’ve found myself extremely busy at work and tired at home, thus postponing my desire to write something for my faithful readers, yes all two of you.

Sundance officially begins on Friday, but the traffic begins a couple of days before. Now, when I say traffic, I mean traffic. Usually it takes me only 15 – 20 min. to get home from work; this is usually doubled during Sundance or even longer. Plus, I’m not allowed to park in my own parking lot for work. I’m not sure why this is, but it’s so frustrating. I have to take public transit everywhere.

Anyway, on Friday of the first week a couple of my friends went to go hang out on Main Street during our lunch break. Now, let’s be honest, you could spend the whole day looking for celebs and never see any—I know I’ve looked. So, our Main Street venture was supposed to be pretty lame because that’s what I was expecting—and for the most part it was. But I did run into the one and the only Ian Ziering from 90210 and Dancing with the Stars fame. I know, you’re all pretty shocked and awed by this, but that’s how I roll. Usually I wouldn’t brag about this, but that’s what blogs are for, right??