I haven't been posting that much this week, other than my "
Lilo & Stitch for Best Animated Feature!" comments, but I really liked, and fully endorse the views therein (coughcoughexceptthati'mprolifecoughcough),
Sari "Segacs" Schultz's in-depth deconstruction of the anti-war movement. (I'm still a little uncomfortable with her 'blog linking to mine, since I post about entertainment-related stuff, and entertainment-related stuff I like, which usually isn't what the entertainment magazines talk about, like how I'm rooting for
Lilo & Stitch over
Spirited Away in the Best Animated Feature race, but I'm fairly disinterested in who's going to win "Best Picture", and my political thoughts usually aren't as well developed as hers... Also, I think her surname is Schultz, but I'm not 100% sure.)
Hmm, incidentally, how many times do I have to write "
Lilo & Stitch" and "Best Animated Feature", for this 'blog to show up in the top 10 if I search Google for "
Lilo & Stitch" and "Best Animated Feature", on the odd chance that I might snag a few undecided Academy voters who might be looking for arguments in favour of
Lilo & Stitch winning Best Animated Feature would find this 'blog, which supports
Lilo & Stitch winning Best Animated Feature and not
Lilo & Stitch losing Best Animated Feature to
Spirited Away (as I predict it will do)?
IT'S ALL ABOUT OIL! What? The upcoming war in Iraq? Partially, and nothing wrong with stopping a tyrant who might potentially get nukes from controlling 1/5th of the world's oil supply, but, this time, I'm referring to French
opposition. It's the dirty little secret the "No Blood for Oil" Idiotarians don't want the public to know.... France's TotalFinaElf is the foreign oil company with the most assets in Iraq, and has a vested interest in keeping Saddam in power.
EDIT:
From The Knowledge Problem, more links about France's oil interests in Iraq, as well as Russia and China.
Oh no! There's an article about that
minor anti-free trade protest in front of the Ritz-Cartlton hotel (requires free registration to read) in the
Concordian and it's also completely one-sided from the point of view of the protestors. Now I expect that sort of agitprop from
the Link, that's just par for the course, but I expected better from the
Concordian. And, at least on the
Link site, you can respond directly to the articles and call them on their bias...
I'm not a huge
Harry Potter fan (the films are enjoyable enough fluff when they don't take themselves too seriously), but I gotta admit
these pics of the triple-decker "Knight Bus" are damned cool. I'm guessing there's a one-storey version of the bus for tight shots and for streets where the clearance is limited. But how much of a tipping hazard is that thing.
Double-decker buses are bloody cool... the best bit of the much-despised (somewhat unfairly)
Mummy Returns was the double-decker bus chase.
OMF'ingG! POETS FOR THE WAR!
What a cool site!
I submitted a little couplet to
Poets Against the War using the alias "Jonah Goldberg Fan", but I can't seem to find it anywhere using the index.... I guess they haven't updated it since I submitted it. I was channelling the spirit of Eric Cartman...
A war in Iraq sure would rock!
Stupid tree-hugging hippies suck cock!
Well, it's still better poetry than anything
Amiri Baraka, New Jersey's poet laureat, could write.
John Griffin, of the Montreal
Gazette has his own prediction for Best Animated Feature (sorry, it's only in the "On Dead Trees" version of the
Gazette so no link):
The final category announced live yesterday was for animated feature. The Japanese masterpiece Spirited Away joins more pedestrian U.S. kiddy fare Ice Age, Lilo & Stitch, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and commercial shipwreck Treasure Planet. A Japanese winner here would confirm the Academy's intent to acknowledge a creative reality beyond America's shores. But will it take the comfort out of future Oscar nominations? Relax. Ice Age's win is as real as our weather.
I have to come clean... the word "masterpiece" has always been a word critics toss around like salad that always make me roll my eyes. I think Miyazaki's and Studio Ghibli's best film is
Kiki's Delivery Service, but I wouldn't call that a "masterpiece", nor would I call
Lilo & Stitch a "masterpiece", nor would I call any film I really like a "masterpiece". There's just something about the word "masterpiece" that just reeks of excessive hyperbole.
ANOTHER REASON WHY LILO & STITCH SHOULD WIN:
Of course, here in Steve Brandon-land, I think
Lilo & Stitch should win over
Spirited Away in the race for Best Animated Feature simply because I liked
Lilo & Stitch more than I liked
Spirited Away, even if
Spirited Away has most of the critical buzz. But, yesteday,
Andrew Sullivan (ooh, I'm linking to something by Andrew Sullivan... now I'm in the Blogger big leagues... I feel almost as though I'm writing in
"The Corner" on National Review Online!) posted
an e-mail from an unnamed friend listing all of the openly gay nominees for the Oscars, and, among them is Dean DeBlois, co-director of
Lilo & Stitch. I must say, it is news to me that DeBlois is gay, but should that matter one way or the other? Of course not... the only people that will be bothered are the ones that have been
boycotting Disney for years. However, remember that the Academy voters are mostly film critics and film industry types, and, to these people (well, maybe excluding
Michael Medved), homophobia is an anathema, and "homophobe" is the most detestable of epithets.
So, to anyone with an Oscar ballot that might be reading this, I want to be the first to say it, "Vote for
Lilo & Stitch, otherwise you're a
HOMOPHOBE!"
OSCAR NOMINATIONS The good news is that my predictions as to which animated films would be nominated for Best Animated Feature were 100% correct. The bad news is my favourite "Oscar Bait" film,
About Schmidt was snubbed in the Best Picture category. Although I liked
Punch-Drunk Love and
Adaptation about as much as I liked
About Schmidt, I had no delusions that they'd be nominated for Best Picture being too quirky for the tastes of the plurality of Academy voters.
About Schmidt was the rare "Oscar Bait" film I enjoyed, so, because it's not nominated, I really don't have much of a compelling reason to watch beyond the Best Animated Feature award, since I liked, but did not love,
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and don't feel any particular desire to sit through two hours of boring tributes after the BAF award to see it lose to
Chicago or
The Hours. Immediately after
Lilo & Stitch wins or loses to
Spirited Away, I'll crank up the old Toshiba DVD player and watch
Lilo & Stitch which I'll always like more than
Spirited Away no matter what, film critics be darned. (I concede that
Spirited Away is more "artsy" than
Lilo & Stitch, but I don't particularly value "artsiness" over entertainment and, while still quite good, I didn't think
Spirited Away was as successful on an artistic level as certain other anime I like more, like
Yokohama Shopping Log or
Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer.)
Oh well, I started
this thread on RottenTomatoes.com's Forum for Lilo & Stitch to explain just a little bit more about why I prefer
Lilo & Stitch, though part of the reason is just due to the vaguaries of my own personal tastes where I'm not 100% sure and cannot codify or quantify why I like some things more than others, I just do.
I don't usually leave long comments below articles on
The Concordia Link site, but I'm especially proud of
my response to this
agit-prop piece about a recent protest against a meeting of the Free Trade Association of the Americas outside the Ritz-Carlton (notice how they don't actually say how many protestors were there... I think the
Gazette said it was 20... maybe). Though I didn't actually bother addressing any of their arguments, I was just amused that Patrick Lavery, the writer of this opinion piece (posing as an article, though they only give the views of protestors, particularly the tiresome Rob Green who was the Concordia Student Union president who effectively turned the CSU into the Communist Party of Concordia before being forced out of office by a financial scandal... plus, the "article" gives contact info for this protest group; great objectivity there), seemed to be implying that
(Red) Tory leadership candidate runner-up David Orchard was somehow "right wing"... um... no, Orchard's wacky anti-Free Trade antics are the cold shower I need to keep me firmly in the Canadian Alliance camp whenever I consider holding my nose and voting Progressive Conservative in order to get the "Natural Governing Party" (re: the Liberals) kicked out.
I could debate these guys on Free Trade, but why waste my time? They're on the far, far left margins effectively barking at the storm clouds to stop raining. Protest to stop Free Trade all you like, but, after that, try something more constructive like draining the Saint-Lawrence one thimble at a time.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE NOMINEES
My prediction:
Ice Age
Lilo & Stitch
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
Spirited Away
Treasure Planet
The only prediction here where I'm going out on a limb is
Treasure Planet, which lost gobs of money at the box office due to strong competition from
Harry Potter and Disney's own
Santa Clause 2, though it was still quite good. I adore
Lilo & Stitch, my favourite Disney film (excluding Pixar) since
The Lion King at least, and think
Spirited Away's a tiny, tiny bit overrated (but still good), though I'm afraid, since
Lilo & Stitch failed to win any
Annie Award besides "Best Vocal Performance", my money's on
Spirited Away taking the statue home.
DUDE! YOU'RE GETTING A COURT DATE!
Benjamin Curtis, the guy from the Dell commercials, was
arrested after he tried to buy marijuana in New York. Eh, while I've honestly never touched the stuff
*, I think marijuana laws are just silly and
should be abolished, which they may be quite soon
here in Canada. It's quite easy to wring hands about pot smokers supporting terrorism, but, even if those allegations hold any water (and I'm not saying they do), the situation wherein people have to buy on the balck market was created by prohibition in the first place. I wouldn't start smoking up even if it were legal, though I might be curious enough to try the occassional brownie.
Also, am I the only person that is reminded of the old
Encyclopaedia Britannica commercials when I see the Dell commercials? Never the less, I do own two Dell computers myself, so I can't say the commericals aren't effective, though we were more won over by the circulars in the
National Post.
*Actually, when I was in Grade 10 or 11 (11 being the final grade of high school in Quebec), I did once find on the ground at school two or three hand-rolled items in a baggie that were either cigarettes or joints, but I got wussy and flushed them down the toilet.
