The Oscars always get it wrong

Nothing shows Hollywood's disconnect from America, from art, or from the filmmakers more than watching the Oscars. They never get the big awards right. Famously, they voted Ordinary People over Raging Bull, Gigi over Vertigo, and How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane. Way to go, Hollywood.

This year was no different. I am, of course, talking about Slumdog Millionaire winning Best Picture over Death Race. Some pretentious dribble love story over a heart-pumping car racing movie?

Let's look at the Best Picture nominees to see where they got it wrong.

Slumdog Millionaire

How far do you want me to suspend my disbelief, Hollywood? Some guy going on a game show to win lots of money, I get that, but the cheesy love story that goes with it? Also, it is in some made-up country called India. Not to get all PC on you, Hollywood (that's your job) I believe these people prefer to be called Native Americans.

Milk

This guy won Best Actor?

And he did so portraying a dead gay guy? If you could've predicted that twenty years ago, I'd have thought you'd smoked more bud than, well, Sean Penn.

Did anyone out there ever see Casualties of War? It's this pretentious anti-war movie with Michael J. Fox playing the naive kid and Sean Penn as the bad guy, and amoral American soldier in Vietnam. As Penn is about to rape a Vietnamese woman, he says as dark clouds circle him and tense music plays, "This is my rifle, this is my gun. This is for fighting, this is for fun." The hilarity of that line gets me every time, especially given the over-dramatic execution of it. Come on, Penn. Rape isn't funny.

Frost/Nixon

More historical babble. If I'm to understand Hollywood, if you make a historical political movie, and do it with a big budget and a name director, you get nominated for Best Picture.

Seriously, how am I supposed to take this movie seriously? Did you see the guy's hair? I know it's trying to be historically accurate, but did you have to take the worst part of the 1970s with you? Hopefully this movie doesn't bring back that haircut, along with the soaring gas prices, a recession, and an endless war in Asia....

The Reader

I frequently state that movies would be made better with more gratuitous nudity. I'm on board for that. But did it have to be British nudity?

 The Wrestler

I can actually get behind this movie. I think they should make a sequel: The Wrestler 2: The Chris Benoit Story. In The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke completes a stunning comeback into respectability. In another triumphant return to acting, OJ Simpson could play the lead in the sequel. Like Rourke, he could get Oscar nominated for playing himself.

Cruel, funny day in sports

Two great articles for your amusement. First, from Deadspin:

The 100th season of the Montreal hockey club has had ups and downs, but it's not clear yet where "finding out two of your players are mobbed up" falls on the spectrum of season highlights.

Now that hockey's gone all Sonny Liston on us, maybe I'll watch a game. I mean, the fighting parts are ok, but fighting and mafia ties? Add some cheerleaders (and maybe actually televise a game) and I'm in.

 

Second, Ken Rosenthal over at Fox Sports has a story on athletes being caught up in financial scandals. Notably, Johnny Damon has had his assets seized as part of the investigation into financier Robert Allen Stanford.

For those of you not in the know,

this goofy looking guy allegedly hoodwinked $8 billion from investors. Apparently sports figures have been caught up in this, as clients of both the Scott Boras, Inc. and IMG agencies have been taken. This is another example of rich people not watching their money; Mets' owner Fred Wilpon was taken in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

The humor here is that Johnny Damon, making $13 million per year, can't pay his bills. And I find this funny because Johnny Damon went from wunderkind to impossible asshat in the span of about a decade. It's a story of how money corrupts, so it's only fitting that he now can't access that money.

The simplified story of Johnny Damon goes like this: boy wonder from Wichita gets taken by his boyhood favorite team, the Royals, in the first round of the draft. He marries his high school sweetheart. He tears up the minor leagues and says all the right things. He gets to Kansas City, becomes an all-star, declares he wants to be a Royal for his career. Then he sees the money around him and fires his agent in order to replace him with Scott Boras.

Boras then makes it known that Damon will not resign with the team before testing the free agent market, in spite of a reported four-year, $30 million contract offer (give or take) from Kansas City. So the Royals trade him to Oakland (for far too little, but that's another story) where Damon plays out his final year before free agency by playing the worst he's ever played. So now he's burned his bridge in Kansas City and takes a four-year, $30 million contract from the Red Sox.

Somewhere along this timeline, he has divorced his high school sweetheart and replaced her with a model.

Damon was, of course, instrumental in the Red Sox run to finally win a World Series. He then spurned another fan base when he left for the Yankees' money, but not before he could publish a book that he "wrote" where he could profit still more. He hasn't been healthy since. He is, however, in a contract year, so expect big things in 2009 from the 35-year-old. And pray your favorite team doesn't sign him next year.

Also, pray he doesn't "write" another book to get him out of this cash bind he's in.

One more note on updated literature

Let it be known that I called it.

Coming to a theater near you (courtesy slashfilm.com).

Hollywood Studios Bidding For Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 8:54 pm by: Brendon Connelly

According to the Sunday Times, Hollywood studios (I quote) are already fighting for the rights to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a Jane Austen rewrite that injects a little undead action and is due to hit bookstores in April.

I wonder if they can get Bruce Campbell to play Mr. Rochester.

Wait, wrong book. All that trash runs together.

More Updated Literary Classics

The subject of my last post has inspired me to come up with other ways to update classic literature. After all, what was great yesterday is often boring today. These are some of my ideas for new versions of old books. If they get made, I expect royalties.

 

Oliver Twist versus the Nazis

By Charles Dickens and Philip Roth

The touching story of a Victorian-age orphan sabotaging Hitler's secret plan of using time-travel to win World War II before it began.

 

The Call of the Cujo

By Jack London and Stephen King

The vicious man-eating dog is kidnapped and taken into the Yukon, where he kills his entire team and two Eskimo villages before becoming the leader of a pack of wolves.

 

Frankenstein meets Abbott and Costello

Wait, that's been done.

 

The Tragedy of Macbeth and the 101 Dalmatians

Out damn'd spot!

How to get your kids to read the classics

There's a problem with classic novels: they're inherently old. The language is archaic, the humor doesn't translate to modern times, and the ideas have been reused so often they're no longer novel (pardon the pun).

Take, for instance, this passage from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, lifted from a random page I opened to in my Mark Twain: Four complete novels hardcover.

That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him.

That passage is about one tenth of the paragraph. English teachers don't like to admit this, but Twain is hard for modern kids to read. Furthermore, he teaches kids grammar that is no longer considered proper. Let's reproduce that paragraph as if a child wrote it and I am the teacher grading it.

That night we went down the lightning-rod (remove the hyhen, -1 pt) a little after ten, and (comma splice, -2 pts) took one of the candles along, and (comma splice, -2 pts) listened under the window-hole (remove the hyphen, -1 pt), and (comma splice, -2 pts) heard Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and (comma splice, -2 pts) it didn't wake him. (Run-on sentence, -2 pts)

Hey, at least the kid knows the proper use of a semicolon.

No wonder kids never want to read. It's hard enough to get through the plots of these books with Cliff's Notes, but to decipher these sentences while doing it takes more time and energy than you realize.

Fortunately, someone has come up with a solution to keep our youths interested in the classics. It's all about knowing your audience. If you can take a classic and update it just a little bit, then you might be able to motivate your child to spend those hours reading and understanding the text.

From chroniclebooks.com

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action.
About the Author
JANE AUSTEN is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature. SETH GRAHAME-SMITH is the author of How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn. He lives in Los Angeles.

 

There's no better way to get your kid reading the classics. Until they make this into a movie starring Anne Hatheway and Robert England. Then they'll just rent the movie and pretend they read the book.

Super Bowl Predictions

Today's Super Bowl Sunday. You know what that means: another excuse to drink until you think Brenda Warner is hot.

We're gonna need a bigger keg.

Here are some of my predictions for today's game.

• Al Michaels will sleep through the first quarter
• Anquan Boldin (v. 2.1) will have his face broken again, this time by Steelers' safety Ryan Clark.
• The only reason Bruce Springsteen agreed to finally do the Super Bowl halftime show is because it is being broadcast on NBC this year -- his drummer, Max Weinberg, is Conan O'Brien's bandleader. That, and the gigantic sack of money, have convinced Bruce to join the darkside.

+ =

• Speaking of The Boss, I predict that the pyrotechnics, or possibly a baton-twirling cheerleader, will light his awful goatee on fire. The Just For Men Beard and Mustache coloring will cause the fire to spread quickly, killing Bruce before we realize he isn't just trying to sing the last note of "Born to Run."

• Upon throwing an interception, Kurt Warner will descend into a spiritual crisis, shouting, "Why God, why?"
• The Steelers will win, 27-17
• I will get the previous prediction wrong but disavow having ever made it.