80th Annual Oscar Nominees

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

Best Picture: "Atonement," "Juno," "Michael Clayton," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."

Actor: George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"; Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"; Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"; Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"; Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises."

Actress: Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"; Julie Christie, "Away From Her"; Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"; Laura Linney, "The Savages"; Ellen Page, "Juno."

Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"; Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"; Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson’s War"; Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton."

Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, "I’m Not There"; Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"; Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"; Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone"; Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton."

Director: Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Jason Reitman, "Juno"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood."

Foreign Film: "Beaufort," Israel; "The Counterfeiters," Austria; "Katyn," Poland; "Mongol," Kazakhstan; "12," Russia.

Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, "Atonement"; Sarah Polley, "Away from Her"; Ronald Harwood, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood."

Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, "Juno"; Nancy Oliver, "Lars and the Real Girl"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, "Ratatouille"; Tamara Jenkins, "The Savages."

Animated Feature Film: "Persepolis"; "Ratatouille"; "Surf’s Up."

Art Direction: "American Gangster," "Atonement," "The Golden Compass," "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street," "There Will Be Blood."

Cinematography: "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "Atonement," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."

Sound Mixing: "The Bourne Ultimatum," "No Country for Old Men," "Ratatouille," "3:10 to Yuma," "Transformers."

Sound Editing: "The Bourne Ultimatum," "No Country for Old Men," "Ratatouille," "There Will Be Blood," "Transformers."

Original Score: "Atonement," Dario Marianelli; "The Kite Runner," Alberto Iglesias; "Michael Clayton," James Newton Howard; "Ratatouille," Michael Giacchino; "3:10 to Yuma," Marco Beltrami.

Original Song: "Falling Slowly" from "Once," Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova; "Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz; "Raise It Up" from "August Rush," Nominees to be determined; "So Close" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz; "That’s How You Know" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz.

Costume: "Across the Universe," "Atonement," "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," "La Vie en Rose," "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street."

Documentary Feature: "No End in Sight," "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience," "Sicko," "Taxi to the Dark Side," "War/Dance."

Documentary (short subject): "Freeheld," "La Corona (The Crown)," "Salim Baba," "Sari’s Mother."

Film Editing: "The Bourne Ultimatum," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Into the Wild," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."

Makeup: "La Vie en Rose," "Norbit," "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End."

Animated Short Film: "I Met the Walrus," "Madame Tutli-Putli," "Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)," "My Love (Moya Lyubov)," "Peter & the Wolf."

Live Action Short Film: "At Night," "Il Supplente (The Substitute)," "Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)," "Tanghi Argentini," "The Tonto Woman."

Visual Effects: "The Golden Compass," "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End," "Transformers."

Because of the writer’s strike, there’s an open question as to whether or not there will be an actual ceremony.

Now, me, I haven’t seen most of these movies ("Sweeney Todd" being the exception), so it’s probably just as well if there’s no ceremony.  Maybe we as a nation, should sit this one out.  Not a bad idea really — no awards shows for one year?

That said, I’ll probably take a stab at picks like I usually do.  But I guess I need to read up on these movies, or perhaps see a few of them.

Attorney Firing Probe Deepens

Ken AshfordAttorney FiringsLeave a Comment

With Iraq, the economy and the elections, we seem to forget the Bush scandals.  And the attorney firing scandal, which has been festering in the background, is about ready to blow (some say), with allegations of perjury, witness tampering and the like:

The federal investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys could jolt the political landscape ahead of the November elections, according to several people close to the inquiry.

Washington’s attention has been diverted from the scandal since the August resignation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, and has focused instead on Democrats’ efforts to hold White House officials in contempt for ignoring congressional subpoenas to testify on Capitol Hill about the firings.

But recent behind-the-scenes activity in several investigations suggests that the issue that roiled Congress in 2007 could re-emerge in the heat of the election year. Two inquiries by the House and Senate ethics committees are examining whether several congressional Republicans, including one running for the Senate this year, improperly interfered with investigations.

As potent as the congressional probes might be, they appear to be far narrower than a sprawling inquiry launched by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).

Investigators from these offices have been questioning whether senior officials lied to Congress, violated the criminal provisions in the Hatch Act, tampered with witnesses preparing to testify to Congress, obstructed justice, took improper political considerations into account during the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys and created widespread problems in the department’s Civil Rights Division, according to several people familiar with the investigation.

I’m not quite sure how this will effect the November elections, since it doesn’t impute any of the standing Presidential candidates.  But still, it sounds like it is going to bhe nasty.

RIP Suzanne Pleshette

Ken AshfordIn PassingLeave a Comment

H150pxsuzanne_pleshetteow can you not feel at least a little sad about this?

Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced actress who redefined the television sitcom wife in the 1970s, playing the smart, sardonic Emily Hartley on “The Bob Newhart Show,” died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 70.

Ms. Pleshette died of respiratory failure, her lawyer, Robert Finkelstein, told The Associated Press. Ms. Pleshette had undergone chemotherapy in 2006 for lung cancer.

A native New Yorker, Ms. Pleshette already had a full career on stage and screen in 1971 when producers saw her on “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson” and noticed a chemistry between her and another guest, Mr. Newhart. She was soon cast as the wife of Mr. Newhart’s character, a mild-mannered Chicago psychologist, and the series ran six seasons, from 1972 to 1978, as part of CBS’s ratings-winning Saturday night lineup.

She was scheduled to get her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next week.

Paula At The Capital

Ken AshfordTheatreLeave a Comment

PoundstoneBeen kinda busy, and not focussing on the news.  In fact, you know you’re not paying attention when you get your political news from Paula Poundstone.

Saturday night, I caught Ms. Poundstone’s show in Greensboro, and she was every bit as good as I expected.  I’d seen her before; I almost hate to admit this, but it was in 1984, when she had a small Boston following.  She played a renovated church in Harvard.  Back then, she was more of a stand-up comedian in the purest sense, with a regular set of material.

She still had prepared material Saturday night, mostly about what is going on in her life.  Back in 1984, it was about her cats.  Now, it’s about her kids.

But Paula fans know that her big thing now — as opposed to 24 years ago — is when she simply riffs with the audience, and talks off the top of her head.  She can be — and was — topical, talking for example about the recent primary results that day in South Carolina and Nevada.  She talked about the weather, doing an extended riff on her introduction, in which the "emcee" thanked the audience for coming out in such horrible weather.  ("Yeah, you really had to hunker down", Paula later quipped.  "What did you get — an inch?  If you tried to do snow angels, you’d get an abrasion!").

She did her trademark teasing of audience members and their vocations — the woman who designs sweaters, the woman who sells doors and windows and whose boss is a Blackberry, the woman who teaches aquatic aerobics, etc.  She commented on CTG’s season ("They did Wizard of Oz in November?  Aren’t most people doing Christmas plays?") and did a lot of political humor.

Having read* her book over Christmas break, it was great to see her.  She’s one of my favorite comediennes/social commentators.  She didn’t talk about her legal/alcohol problems (so much a part of her book), but touched upon her financial difficulties.  She performed for a solid 2.5 hours.  It flew by.

If you ever get a chance to see her, she’s still at the top of her game.  A great evening.  And if she’s not coming to your area, there’s always "Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me".

* Okay, I read about half of it, and listened to the rest on tape.

Where’s Rudy?

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

From Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott, a precisely correct assessment of the disappearing-via-incompetence act more popularly known as the Giuliani campaign.  Think about it: Rudy Gulliani was the national frontrunner a year ago in many, many polls. He led virtually all of his Republican opponents, and several of the top Democratic candidates as well. Today, he has been drubbed in every race and is left in a do-or-die situation in Florida.

That’s the fascinating, baffling mystery of Giuliani’s campaign: How unsmart it’s been, how unattuned and utterly lacking in maneuverability and tactical finesse, as if Rudy’s been programmed only to move backwards or forwards on a single rail line. The realization still doesn’t seem to have infiltrated his campaign’s movable bunker that you can’t run solely on terrorism and security when underlying economic conditions are crumbling beneath millions of American families. Consider the contrast with Mitt Romney. Yes, he’s an acrylic fascimile of a pandering politician, every word out of his mouth a synthetic note that even Brian Eno couldn’t bead into a musical abstract, but after going 0 for 2 in Iowa and New Hampshire, he adapted his message for Michigan once he inputted the degree of economic anxiety and rot prevailing there, and projected specific remedies. He didn’t do as so many Beltway Republicans would have done–tell the underemployed and indebted to eat some supply-side theory and floss afterwards with the Laffer Curve or some such Larry Kudlow/Steve Forbes bullshit. He didn’t act as if making the Bush tax cuts permanent was some end-all be-all answer. Romney presented himself as ready to ride to the rescue with government programs if need be and, guess what, it worked–he won.

Rudy has never adapted or expanded his message. He seems weirdly clueless and insulated, as if he’d like to upstage his opponents by entering the debate forums wearing a surgical mask with a smoke machine going in the wings so that he could mime his 9/11 heroics all over again, with the Superman theme playing in the background. But perhaps that’s the only option left to somebody whom the more voters see of him, the less they like them. His candidacy could only thrive in a climate of fear, but the fear shifted to the economy and Rudy didn’t shift with it, which is why he now finds himself grinningly buried up to the neck in death ash like some character in Beckett. It’s hard to gain traction from inside an urn.

Over at TPM, they’re saying Rudy ’08 is "in serious competition for worst presidential campaign ever…" and provide this illustrative graph:

Rudysfall

Idelological Placement Of Voters/Candidates

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

Interesting chart from the Pew Center:

6937

A couple of things that strike me:

(1)  Voters (on average, of course) are slightly to the conservative side of moderate.  However, when you look at party breakdown, Republicans generally see themselves as being much further from moderate than Democrats.  In other words, the average Democratic voter is closer to "moderate" than to "liberal", whereas the average Republican voter is closer to "conservative" than to "moderate".

(2)  Democrats and Republicans view the GOP lineup almost the same.  But Republicans push all the Democrats comically far to the left.

(3)  In fact, Clinton Derangement Syndrome is clearly visible, as Republicans push her waaaaaay to the left — left of Obama — and somewhere in Josef Stalin regions.  Democrats (correctly, in my view), recognize that Hillary is much closer to being a moderate than Obama, and indeed not extremely liberal at all.

(4)  It’s interesting that Giuliani is viewed as being "to the left" of his GOP counterparts.  Of all of them, Giuliani is the most fiscally conservative, and the farthest right on international policy (i.e., starting wars).  Clearly, these assessments were made on metric of social policy, where Giuliani (being pro-choice, etc.) truly is far more liberal than his opponents.

Squirrels Are Devious

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Longtime readers of this blog know that I occasionally post about how we underestimate the vile wickedness and violence inherent in the contemporary squirrel.  (See here and here and here and here and here and here).

Well, science have discovered another aspect to the clever deceptiveness of these furry rats:

Now it turns out that grey squirrels are even more devious than anyone realised.

To protect their winter food stocks from potential thieves, they put on an elaborate show of burying non-existent nuts and seeds, a study has shown.

Scientists say the fake burials are designed to confuse any rival squirrels, birds or humans who might be watching.

The level of deception has astonished animal experts who say it shows a rare form of animal cunning and intelligence.

Didn’t I tell you?  They are eeeeeevil!

GOP candidate Mike Huckabee, for all his faults, may have a solution:

Actions Have Consequences

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & DeficitLeave a Comment

It’s easy for people to get behind the idea of tax cuts, especially when they aren’t aware of the consequences:

TAMPA – The University of South Florida plans to cut more than $52 million from its budget during the next two years, a grim prospect that likely will force layoffs and could further reduce the number of students accepted.

Half of that comes this year and includes $12.2 million USF has cut as a result of a $1 billion state budget shortfall. Every public service from education to law enforcement has felt the pinch.

That’s just the start, however. State economists predict a $2 billion shortfall next fiscal year, a symptom of Florida’s housing woes that are depleting tax collections. Anticipating those bad times, USF leaders will spend the next two weeks considering how to cut $26 million more out of next fiscal year’s budget.

It’s not just education; it’s roads and infrastructure, health care, social security, etc.

Taxes, when you think about it, don’t go to "the government".  Sseeing as how we (the people) are the government, they go to us.  A lot can be said about who should and shouldn’t pay more (or less) taxes, and even more can be said about the proprities of government spending (the classic bombs-vs-butter argument).  But the simplistic notion that taxes are per se bad is mindnumbingly facile.

Once you start to see the interconnectedness of it all — the housing crisis, tax rates, fiscal spending — you’ll understand how we’re all in this together, and everything — everything — affects you.

The Edwards Campaign

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

John Edwards is trying to raise $7 million dollars today.

I hope he succeeds (and I’ve helped a tad).  I haven’t commited to Edwards; in fact, I’m still undecided.  But I think it important that he stay in the race, keep the media-annointed "frontrunners" (Obama and Clinton) to the left, and raise the issues that he so passionately raises, especially the corporate stranglehold over our lawmakers. 

Click here to make a donation.

Gold

The Web’s Largest Webpage

Ken AshfordWeb RecommendationsLeave a Comment

The largest webpage is 9 quadrillion pixels wide by 9 quadrillion pixels tall.  If you could see it laid out without scroll buttons, it would be 17 billion times the surface are of the Earth.

And if you were to repeatedly click (or hold down) the right arrow on the scroll bar, thus moving the image from the left hand side to the right hand side, it would take you half a million years to reach the end.

That’s one big page, and it’s right here.  (No, it doesn’t take long too load at all….)