Last night was The Oscars, and as has become a tradition for
me I watched it with Wassy and Jay this year
again. The new part was that instead of watching it long distance as per usual,
I went over to their place and watched it with them, along with a bloomin onion
from Outback and a couple glasses of wine. It was a very enjoyable evening.

There was a little bit of worry involved in this year's ceremony since it was
revealed they would be a little bit different than they had been in the past.
Which was good because there's a ton of fluff built into the ceremony which
caused them to play off the winners very quickly and still run over time. But
it's scary because they could have screwed it up.

Another scary thing was the selection of Hugh Jackman as the host. I saw that
and thought "What the hell???" but as it turned out, it was a VERY
good decision. His opening number was..incredible. I'm trying so very hard to
find a copy of that somewhere and not being successful at it. We were
practically rolling on the floor laughing.

The actual changes to the ceremony were very positive. They got rid of a lot of
the overly pretentious montages that the oscars have become known for, instead
keeping them limited to shorter pieces highlighting the films of the year. Another
winning idea was to not let the Academy president or the MPAA guy or whoever
talk. It's always boring and it always takes FOREVER. Also in the positive
changes department: each original song nominee was played in a medley and they
combined the song from Wall-E and one of the Slumdog Millionaire songs in a
very neat way

They also redid how they talked about the best actress/actor nominees by
bringing out former winners and spending time talking about each nominee and
what they did with their role. It was very classy and really celebrated the
performances that were nominated. Very inclusive.

The one thing I could have done without was the performance number about the
Musicals. It was very schmaltzy and a couple minutes too long…but if that was
the worst of it, I'm a happy camper. the ordering of the awards was very
strange too. They stuck best supporting actress up front and then a bunch of
other stuff and best supporting actor about an hour and a half in.

As far as the actual awards…I'm glad Slumdog didn't sweep entirely. It was
getting a little boring knowing they were going to win as soon as their name
was called for being nominated. I'm a little disappointed at Wall-E not winning
best original screenplay as I really think it was well written, especially
challenging for a movie with so little dialog and characters that, by
definition, have a difficult time expressing emotions via expression. So much
of the movie was in the writing. No surprise they won the animated feature
award though. I like Jack Black's statement as he was presenting on how he
makes more money on his voice work than his live action stuff because he stars
in a single Dreamworks movie and then takes the money he gets from that and
bets it all on Pixar to win an Oscar. Complete with a  "Yeah!!!"
cheer when Wall-E was announced as the winner.

I'm very glad Kate Winslet won an oscar for her performance in The Reader. I
sorta think Revolutionary Road was a hair better but she was so very good in
both of them so I'm glad she got an award for something. I liked her acceptance
speech too…she strikes me as a very genuine individual.

I'm also really glad that Heath Ledger won for his portrayal of The Joker. I
was afraid that the fact that he had died would dissuade people from voting for
him, but his performance was more deserving than anything else in the
supporting actor category by far. I think they should have showed a little clip
of his performance after he won, like on the Golden Globes, but it was a really
cool moment. Of course now we need to deal with people saying "He wouldn't
have won if he was alive" which is absolute bull.

So in conclusion, good ceremony this year, and a good Oscar-watching party to
watch it at.

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This weekend continues the second week of trying to catch all of these good movies that seem to be coming out in January. This week: The Reader. Originally we were going to go see Slumdog Millionaire, however The Reader opened at our local theater, so we decided to go out and watch it instead.

Overall I'd say The Reader was a very good film, but I think I liked Revolutionary Road just a hair better considering it was more personally relevant and I could identify with the characters more. But The Reader was very good. The pacing is a little slow, but necessarily slow. I was getting a little worried while I was going through the first part of it, however that part of the story is important to what happens in the second half and as such, it all came together. I can see why some of the reviewers did not enjoy it though.

I don't want to say much about the plot because that's the whole emphisis in a movie like this. I will say this is the second week in a row where we ended up watching a very dark and depressing sort of movie. Definitely not a feel good sort of film.

Kate Winslet's performance is definitely deserving of the awards she's nominated for. It was really the pin that held the movie together. It's one of those movies where you need to think about it and get into the characters heads in order to understand what's really going on but it was really well done all around.

The only downside is, like last week…we had old people problems. A couple sitting next to us wouldn't shut up and kept having conversations about what was going on in the movie, which during a quieter, dialog driven movie is INCREDIBLY annoying and distracted. It got bad enough to the point where I ended up actually staring at them and saying something so they would be quiet. I don't really mind if you're going to say a few words her and there or make a few comments, but don't freaking have long conversations in the middle of important dialog sequences!!!!

After the movie, I went back to my friends apartment and we hung out for a while, watching season 1 of House and getting some work done. I worked some on my C++ learning efforts and Wassy had to get one of her commission pieces finished. So it was a productive working fun day which was very nice after a long and draining sort of week.

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