Oscars Live Blog — Part 1

• My dad’s fist reaction to hearing Hugh Jackman’s name: “How do they pick the people to host this?” Almost like, “If they’ve sunk this low, I should get my name in the hat.”
• Is Hugh Jackman allowed to make jokes about not being nominated? Doesn’t that require some sort of conceivable possibility of it ever occurring?
• Wow, this musical number is depressing me.
• Solid reference to Benjamin Button’s pubic hair. Did you know that nine people have found my blog by searching “pubic hair”? I’m not sure why that makes me proud, but it does.
• Hmm… standing ovation for the musical number? I don’t know if I support this. Although, these are some decent jokes from Van Helsing, I must say.
• I’m not digging the scaled-down style here. I want the red curtain, the sweeping vista of the crowd. This seems like 50 people in my high school auditorium.
• Penelope! One for one. I’m not one to notice these things, but that dress is really pretty. Not a bad speech–waxed a little purple about the “uniting” effect of the ceremony. It’s not like it’s a war-time olympiad or Joyeux Noel.
• MILK! Hmm… 1 for 2. This kind of scares me, because Milk is one of those movies that could really just end up winning every award it’s nominated for and jacking up my predictions… WAIT! AWESOME! A GAY MORMON!!!!!!!!…Holy cow. What a night. Later on, Hugh Jackman’s going to announce that he’s a Unitarian who has sex with plants.
• Simon Beaufoy wins. 2 for 3. Suck it, haters.
• Wall-E wins its default category. No surprise. 3 for 4.
• Ahh… Pixar misses out on the shortie. 3 for 5. Wait, why is Michael Scott accepting, and why is he doing a bad impression of a chinese person?

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

So this movie is about a guy, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffers a massive stroke and becomes completely paralyzed except for his right eye. Before the accident, he was kind of a turd. He left his woman, neglected his kids, and even hassled his son about not having any pubic hair (really). After the stroke, he learns all kinds of life lessons, develops a communication system via blinking, and remarkably blinks out his memoirs, but is still kind of a turd. The mother of his children visits him constantly, takes him on outings, helps take the dictation for his book, forgives him in general, and treats him with amazing kindness and grace, but he still just wants to see his mistress. So I guess it’s a very French movie.

The camera work is gorgeous. I had a teacher once tell me that a really great filmmaker makes movies where any freeze frame looks like a composed photograph, and TDB&TB is like that. The first half hour or so is shot almost exclusively from the perspective of Jean-Dominique’s non-paralyzed eye. There’s one shot where he watches his own eye get sewn shut, so an ulcer can heal, or something. Pretty cool. The music is great too, featuring “La Mer” (the beautiful French song, which is the source material for Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea), and a couple of Tom Waits songs, including the incredible “Green Grass.”

As far as the movie goes, I guess I had high expectations. The film’s official site quoted all these intense reactions from reviewers, saying things about how this movie will change your life and completely revolutionize your perspective, etc. And don’t get me wrong–the movie was excellent, about as good as they get. In the end, though, it mostly just reminded me that, as good as movies can be, they don’t heal your relationships for you, and they haven’t cured any diseases. And that, my friends, is the paradox inherent to the moviegoer lifestyle: as much as the best movies make you want to get off your ass and do something incredible with your life, they also make you want to watch more movies, which really isn’t that incredible of an endeavor (although the essential basis of this very superb weblog). And after all, who has time to do anything with their life when there are so many movies left to see?