The Oscar nominations have been announced. This is the first year I can remember since I was a kid that I haven't seen any of the movies nominated for Best Picture. Not only that, but all the nominees are movies I have no particular desire to see, with the possible exception of Milk. The absence of The Dark Knight would be more astonishing if I didn't already know how witless the Oscars were. I mean, actually, I did expect The Dark Knight to be nominated, so I am technically surprised. But not enormously surprised.
Comparing The Dark Knight with the nominees highlights the ridiculousness of the situation. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button not only did not perform terrifically well in the box office, it currently only has a 74 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Whatever you might think of The Dark Knight, it meets the all of the most objective criteria available for being nominated far better than Benjamin Button does.
Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon on the list is surely a bigger joke, but one hallowed by time, since the Academy has already swallowed Howard's average skills, and everyone already knows that the actual Frost/Nixon interviews are interesting. Howard has tenure and he's chosen safe material.
Heaven forbid the Academy make a decision without political consideration. Sure, Brokeback Mountain's a better and more culturally significant film than Crash, a film I sincerely doubt anyone's been in the mood to watch again in the past couple years. But Crash fed more of the baby bird ego mouths stretched open and waiting for the worms of acknowledgement. I almost think the Academy recoils when they sense a group of filmmakers is more interested in crafting a good movie than they are in being acknowledged. And, you know, maybe that's even how it ought to be. I suppose I wish it could be more honest somehow, but I suppose shattering the illusion would render the thing pointless for everyone.
But why should I watch it this year with fucking Hugh Jackman hosting? Fucking Huge Jack, man. I liked him well enough as Wolverine and in The Prestige, but he's no host. He doesn't even give interesting interviews.
He's probably going to sing, too. Fucker.
So far I'm liking the second season of Battlestar Galactica a lot better than the first season. I feel like we still haven't had much opportunity to see Starbuck actually being a fighter pilot as we ought to have had. It seems like they keep giving her odd jobs. I liked seeing her apartment and all, and now there's a new reason for me to feel sorry that the Caprica segments are always so short. Before it was more of a feeling of urgency; "Get on with it! You two only have, what, four minutes?! Develop something, damnit!"
But I love how we're apparently skipping over the part where Starbuck explains to Helo just what the frak she's doing on Caprica. What would that conversation have been like?
HELO: "The Cylon fooled me! What do you want me to say? I'm an idiot, are you happy now?"
STARBUCK: "You are a frakking idiot, Helo, I'm glad you understand that."
HELO: "So, uh, what brings you back to Caprica? And what's with the arrow?"
STARBUCK: "Um. Well. You see, the, uh, President--the new President, Roslin, former minister of education or something--had, like a dream. And, uh, she's like a messiah or something and she saw this arrow and so I, er, thought I'd just, you know, steal a captured Cylon fighter and come here and get it instead of using the fighter to rescue some of our crewmates on the recently discovered, inhabitable planet Kobol. You know, from the scriptures . . ."
HELO: "Frakking hell. You're another Cylon, aren't you? How frakking dumb do you toasters think I am?!"
It's amazing--Roslin just gets more and more annoying. When she was standing over the comatose Commander Adama and said to Apollo something like, "You know you're father's going to be okay, right?" I so wanted Apollo to say something like, "You'd know wouldn't you, you frakking genius? The one who forced him into all but staging a coup when you started ordering people to do frakking crazy shit. How the frak did you think he'd react? You frakking caused this you frakking twit."
But I'm enjoying the show. Really, I swear!
Remember, new Venia's Travels to-day. Feel free to gripe to me about logical inconsistencies.
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