The year in movies

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It's movie awards nomination season, as different pools of movie critics across the country select their best films and actors of the year. The AFI has gotten into the act, announcing their first ever nominations for movie awards, and they will be accompanied by an awards show January 5, preceding the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
The nominating committee seems solid. According to Roger Ebert, it included "director Mimi Leder; writer-director Steven Zaillian; actress Marsha Mason; producers Michael Nesmith and Tom Pollock; academics Jeanine Basinger, Todd Boyd, Edward Branigan and Vivian Sobchack, and critics Molly Haskell, Andrew Sarris, Richard Schickel and [Ebert]."
Nominations included:

Best Picture



  • A Beautiful Mind

  • Black Hawk Down

  • In the Bedroom

  • The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings

  • The Man Who Wasn't There

  • Memento

  • Monster's Ball

  • Moulin Rouge

  • Mulholland Drive

  • Shrek


Best actor (female)



  • Halle Berry, Monster's Ball

  • Stockard Channing, The Business of Strangers

  • Sissy Spacek, In the Bedroom

  • Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive


Best actor (male)



  • Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind

  • Billy Bob Thornton, The Man Who Wasn't There

  • Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom

  • Denzel Washington, Training Day


Director of the Year



  • Robert Altman, Gosford Park

  • Todd Field, In the Bedroom

  • David Lynch, Mulholland Drive

  • Ridley Scott, Black Hawk Down


Looking at the list, what strikes me is that I've only seen five of the best picture nominees. The glass half empty: it was a long, bad year for movies. The glass half full: the home stretch will be a lot better.
I think what's most disappointing about the year is that we got films from some great directors, but none of them, at least from what I've seen, hit a home run.

The Panic Room

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An early cut of a trailer for David Fincher's next project, The Panic Room. Give it a bit--the MPEG file loads slowly.
I can't count the number of people who've scolded me for praising his film Seven. How could I condone the abhorrent things depicted in that movie? The difference between that film and The Silence of the Lambs, which so many people praise, is a matter of how thick one's stomach lining is. Seven is a better film, the cinematography and music and atmosphere as lush as that of any movie I can recall seeing in the 90's. Put Fincher in that category of directors whose work I'd always see, regardless of what the reviews say, because even his missteps are fascinating.
Also, The Panic Room marks the return of Jodie Foster.

The price of love

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A popular link among weblogs now. Call it matchmaking in the 21st century.
For $78,000, get set up with intel and a series of coincidental meetings with your dream date. I have no idea if this is for real, but I do know that there are cheaper ways to do this. Whatever happened to asking her friends, or your friends, to help you out. Are we so lazy in the modern world that we need to outsource our own stalking?
I doubt this is serious, but even if it is, it's humorous, especially the FAQ. It includes such standard business cliches as the first mover advantage:
"As industry initiators, we are in a strong position to capitalize on our domination of this market -- a robustly growing market, if our experience is anything to go by."
Or this question and answer, which seems quite sensible:
Q. Even if the subject and I do fall in love, won't it be a hollow love, having been artificially engineered?
A. No, no, no. We do not provide the love that arises between the two of you. We merely help you overcome the various societal obstacles that make the coming together of two human beings in modern society so difficult.
Getting to know someone and falling in love with someone thanks to an engineered coincidence is, if anything, more laudable than meeting someone via an authentic coincidence, as you had to work hard to make it happen. And there is no reason why some people should be the luck-prone beneficiaries of coincidences and others not.
A natural evolution of Serendipity, in which a hack screenwriter designs the coincidences which bring attractive actors John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale together.
Come to think of it, somewhere in this there's a movie waiting to be made. A more ruthless version of J. Lo's The Wedding Planner.

Spanking hanky panky

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Every year, Britain holds a unique literary event, the Bad Sex Awards, designed to honor the novel containing the worst description of the forbidden act. The goal of the prize is to "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it." This according to a short column in this Sunday's NY Times.
This year's nominees included Jonathan Franzen, whose otherwise well-written The Corrections includes the unfortunate scene in which Chip engages in "sexual congress with his red chaise-longue." Personally, I think any writer would do well to avoid the use of the phrase "sexual congress," except when attempting satire, or in legal proceedings.
The winning passage this year came from Christopher Hart's Rescue Me:
"Her hand is moving away from my knee and heading north. Heading unnervingly and with a steely will towards the pole. And, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Pamela will not easily be discouraged....Ever northward moves her hand, while she smiles languorously at my right ear. And when she reaches the north pole, I think in wonder and terror...she will surely want to pitch her tent."
Writing sex scenes is never easy, and in fiction writing classes in college, professors always warned students about the common pitfall of writing such scenes: don't be too clinical, but also don't engage in hyperbolic metaphor in an attempt to capture the raptures of lust. Any attempt inevitably toes the line of between eros and camp.
But, maybe because we were college students and our teachers did not wish to engage in sexually frank discussions, we were never given hard and fast rules, or examples of well-written sex scenes. In general, I think were discouraged from writing them, and the embarrassment of having to share such scenes with our peers was enough of a deterrent to prevent the situation from arising.

Luck of the Irish

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Is there anything better than seeing Notre Dame's football program take one in the arse? This coach, this man of integrity, brought with him a 33% graduation rate from Georgia Tech and and the dark cloud of having allowed (ordered?) one of his players to be physically assaulted by at least two other players after he missed some blocks in practice. Why would a football coach want to lie about having a master's degree anyway?
Notre Dame is in the Midwest, but its football practices are a few miles South of shady, leaning more towards those of the Florida programs in the Southeast than those of its more solid academic reputation. I love it when Stanford beats up on Notre Dame in football every year.

Skillz

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I just got my copy of the 2002 Jack Welch Management Game for the Playstation 2 and I noticed that I had crappy ratings for finance and marketing skills. That really irked me. It's like only the famous business people like Bill Gates and Michael Dell get great ratings across the board. But at least I'm in the game, and it's cool when my relatives get to play the game and be me as a middle manager. I had to wear this body suit with little lights on it, and they followed me around for a day in the office with a camera, so they've got a really realistic depiction of my arm gestures in meetings, so if you have the game, try to play me in a meeting and press the A-button a few times. It's really great.

My next cellphone

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More good reviews for the Treo 180. I have held off on upgrading my cellphone for a year and a half now, and my Nokia 8260 is starting to show signs of wear. The sound is starting to go. I haven't had any significant reason to upgrade my phone during that time as the primary advances in cell phone tech have been in form factor, primarily, and it's painful to pay $100 just so your phone is small, looks good, is made of chrome, etc. Functional advances have been absent.
Once AT&T flips to GSM, or even if they don't, I may have to get a Treo 180. Syncing my Outlook address book to my cellphone easily is key, and I prefer the keyboard approach to the graffiti approach (the 180g offers graffiti for those who are of the opposite opinion). The ability to rattle off a quick e-mail from my phone is not a huge need, but I could see occasional uses for it. And for remote web browsing, I have to have at least a minimal screen. I refuse to browse the web using a four line black and white text interface.

Usenet Archives

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Google has finally integrated some 20 years of Usenet archives into Google Groups. (Usenet, for those who don't know, is essentially newsgroups; it's funny, because so many people don't know what they are now, but back in the early days of the Internet, newsgroups on various topics were these amazing communities of like-minded people, sharing information on every topic imaginable). Because this archive goes back so far, you can find such posts as...
First mention of Microsoft (May 1981)
First mention of Star Wars Episode 6, then called Revenge of the Jedi. This post reads like a precursor to Ain't It Cool News, albeit minus the foul-mouthed fanboys and large (both physically and personality-wise) moderator Harry Knowles.
First mention of Microsoft Windows, an operating system for personal computers made by Microsoft Inc. of Bellevue, Wash."
First announcement of the Challenger tragedy. Tasteful post to net.space.
First mention of AOL, which I didn't realize had early early links to Apple.
Tim Berners-Lee announcing his WorldWideWeb project.
Marc Andreessen announces Mosaic, the first web browser.
Linus Torvalds announces Linux.
What's really fun is trolling for my own early posts. Finding them out there and reading them is a complete nostalgia trip. The earliest post that I wrote is from 1993. Here I am, in 1994, begging some hometown fans for news on my beloved Cubs. I write: "Steve Traschel--his stats look impressive. I can't wait to see him pitch. What kind of stuff does he have, and is he for real?"
I didn't really post to Usenet that much in school. I remember reading a lot more than writing. I do remember printing out some of the early FAQ's off Stanford's networked printers, carrying off 400 page printouts of the complete annotations to Milton's Paradise Lost or Neil Gaiman's Sandman, crazy things like that. All plain ASCII text.

Military Alphabet

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I've never learned the military alphabet, but tonight I decided I would. Do you know it?
A = Alpha
B = Bravo
C = Charlie
D = Delta
E = Echo
F = Foxtrot
G = Golf
H = Hotel
I = India
J = Juliet
K = Kilo
L = Lima
M = Mike
N = November
O = Oscar
P = Papa
Q = Quebec
R = Romeo
S = Sierra
T = Tango
U = Uniform
V = Victor
W = Whiskey
X = X-ray
Y = Yankee
Z = Zulu
My favorites? Zulu, Whiskey, Tango, Victor, Bravo, Foxtrot, Charlie, Delta, and Juliet.

Telethon

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You'll notice a new button on some of the pages of my site, including the left-hand column of my weblog. You're thinking, oh great, Eugene's going to start charging for this crap on his personal site? Who does he think he is? Is this like Salon Premium? Did he promise venture capitalists more advertising revenue and now he has to flip the switch?
No, no, I'm not going to start e-mailing you and begging for money. Simply a thought, which is this. I have to spend a bit each month to keep the site up and running. Website hosting fees, licensing the URL, software to do HTML editing and photo editing, stuff like that. If somehow I can cover my costs through the occasional donor or through Amazon Associates fees (yep, if you click through on something I recommend and buy it from Amazon, I get a small commission), awesome. If not, no worries. I'm having lots of fun with this. It was one of those things on my 30 things to do before 30 list.
My website's a little over a year old now, and it's come a long way from where it was at the start, which was simply a weblog. Thanks to all my occasional and regular visitors and readers. I'm continually amazed at how many random people stumble across my site for one reason or another (usually content of some sort) and drop me a note.
Okay, can I end this with a plug? If you own a DVD player, you absolutely must own Almost Famous Untitled --The Bootleg Cut. Cameron Crowe makes movies that can have high repeat play value. I just watched this movie again. Good good stuff. Happy holidays!

TV Guide

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EW recently put out an issue that touted the five new TV shows to watch this season. Coincidentally, or maybe not, I've been watching three of them: Alias, 24, and Smallville. The other two shows, I believe, were Scrubs and Undeclared, neither of which I've seen.
I like 24 a lot, but I read that they still have half the season to write, or something like that, which strikes me as a dangerous proposition. Frankly, I'm not religious about getting exactly 24 episodes, so if they have to condense the show a bit and fast forward some parts (Kiefer Sutherland's character has yet to use the bathroom, which you would think he'd have to do sometime in the span of 24 hours) I'd be fine with that. They do some interesting things with split screens, similar to what Mike Figgis did with Timecode, and I'm curious to see where more filmmakers take that technique. Overlaying narratives like that is something not easily accomplished with literature.
Alias is somewhat fun, but I really think I just watch because Jennifer Garner is cute and dresses up in all sorts of crazy outfits and wigs in each episode. It's not really that great a show, but most of TV is trash anyway and this is shiny trash. Her character seems way too emotionally fragile to be an international spy, but she looks good running from her pursuers.
Smallville has been up and down, and I've missed a few episodes. I love re-examinations of popular mythologies, and this is a sometimes clever revisiting of the Superman mythology. There's certainly enough material to work with, but hopefully the show doesn't descend completely into teenage melodrama.
I've given up on the X-files. Not just because Mulder and Scully are gone, but because the material feels stale. Without the conspiracy engine, the show is just a weekly monster mash. I personally believe the show could have survived the loss of Mulder and Scully, but the lack of interesting new story material is what's killing that series. Doggett and Reyes are fine, but at some point they have to run into some creature and think, "Wait, didn't Mulder and Scully figure this one out in Season Five?"
I wish the Simpsons would focus even more on current events and on spoofing pop culture. That's when the show is at its best. Some of the territory the show covers now no longer amuses me. What's amazing about the show is how broad its canvas can be, and I'm logging my vote for more pop culture bashing. Take advantage of the flexibility of the Simpsons universe and the inherent freedom that comes from animation and stick closer to current events. For example, that episode last year with the teen boy singing group (of which Bart is a member) was great. N'Sync guest starred, made fun of themselves, a good time was had by all. Basically, I'd like to see the Simpsons steal a bit of The Onion's soul.

Happy birthdays

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Adam, Dan, Christina, Rachael.
Adam: a funny, funny guy.
Dan: living the life I could have lived, if I'd only sold. The ghost of Christmas that could have been.
Christina: young. Very Chinese. Not as disillusioned as she thinks she is. I hope.
Rachael: new age energy and powers. Interesting mix of wise and fragile. Approachable member of the Seattle power late 20's, early 30's, power women's reading group.

Minority Report trailer

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Steven Spielberg's long delayed film finally hits theaters next summer. He seems to have a hankering for sci-fi these days. Let's hope it explores the ramifications of the idea (murders can be predicted by reading people's minds so people can be arrested for crimes they will commit in the future) like all the best sci-fi novels do, instead of being a smash it up type of film.

Over stimulus

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People describe my room as being too full of stuff. I must agree with them. I am overwhelmed with stimuli in my room. DVDs. Satellite TV. Music CDs. Video games. Books piling up in all corners. Dozens of unread magazines, but damned if I'm not saving each and every one because some article looked interesting. The internet. Art on the walls. E-mail. Snail mail. Catalogs. People describe it as a bachelor pad, but that is a mis-statement, because it's really set up just to indulge my need for constant idea flow. I find myself working hard to just stay on top of it, and I'm failing. I feel good when I can throw out a newspaper, or mail, or a magazine. Or finish a book. It feels like progress.
I walk in, and I can't get anything done because there's too much to do. Maybe it is a bachelor pad. It keeps me so occupied I'll have trouble getting out and meeting girls.