posted by Henry Basenji at
3/24/2004 03:09:00 PM
Friday, March 05, 2004
Belated Oscar Thoughts
(Haven't checked the ranch in a while, since I was tired of looking at the fake Sibley ad.) This year in our house we celebrated the Oscars with prodigous drinking, as I had taken a day off Monday to take the dog to the vet and run other errands and Will seems to forget from time to time that work is no fun with a hangover. We also increased our Oscar enjoyment by wagering. We wagered on the awards of course, with tie breakers for predicting who would present the best picture and successful prediction of up to five names dropped by Blake Edwards in his speech. (I'm proud to say I have won a free dinner at the new Tapas place in Arlington by the slim margin of one bonus point. God bless you Henry Mancini!) That said I found it to be one of the most entertaining telecasts in years, while at the exact same time, the most boring. (God bless you, beer!)
I agree with most of the comments here (esp. Jim's #3 - although Will liked this bit so much we had to watch it about 15 times on the Tivo and I got sick of it around the eighth repetition. We also had to see the bit about Clint Eastwood "starring with monkeys and Sondra Locke" several times, but jokes about monkeys and Sondra Locke just don't get old.)
I don't know about this Oscar question. Not that the question itself is inherently bad but the example used is flawed. The LOTR movies are an exceptional case. They were all made simultaneously and meant to come out in consecutive years. Individually the first movie was probably better than the next two (and was obviously better than that crappy Opie movie that won instead), but in reality they are all one movie. If you look at it that way, with all three movies together being one contiguous piece, would you still say that Master & Commander was better? I can't really comment myself because I haven't seen M&C yet.
That said I don't know about this idea of "encouraging boldness." Sounds a little to new age to me, like hugging children without nuclear arms. I'd vote for whatever movie I thought was best.
