"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives."
~William Dement
It’s now or never
Veteran head coach Don Galster knows his Rockets need a win Friday night against NorthPointe Christian keep alive realistic hopes of his team getting to the playoffs for the third year in a row. But a disappointing loss to Godwin Heights last week isn’t going to stop these Rockets from taking off.
Kelloggsville is now 3-3 overall and 2-1 in the OK Silver conference. Last season, the Rockets defeated NorthPointe, 36-21, as part of a 9-0 regular season.
Thanks to the tremendous response from fans, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band’s show at SMG-managed Van Andel Arena on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018, has SOLD OUT. As a result, a second show has been added for Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019, at 8pm.
Tickets for the Jan. 5 date will go on sale Friday, Oct. 5 at 10am. Go here for details.
Start planning
Before you know it, the bright fall foliage will be here.
Weight gain around this time of year may not be from all the food.
Researchers have found that lack of vitamin D reduces fat breakdown and triggers fat storage. So, the lack of sunlight has more to do with the extra gain than all the pumpkin spice lattes. Well, at least some of it.
On the latest episode of WKTV Journal: In Focus is the now retired Wyoming Director of Police and Fire Services Chief, as well as a candidate for a local state house seat.
After coming back from a week of glamping at Camp Buttercup in Dexter (story coming soon), I have done a lot of thinking about disconnecting…about shutting down, turning off, recharging. In today’s fast paced world, we definitely need to find times to do this. And, just like each of us has our own wiring formula that dictates HOW we work (and how MUCH we work), the reboot time varies from person to person. For me, just a couple nights under a canopy of trees was enough to redirect my energies away from my laptop and my cell phone to books, magazines and notepads for journaling my thoughts. It wasn’t much…collectively maybe a couple hours, but it was enough for me.
Someone asked me recently to “shut it off…” to STOP talking about Michigan, just for one night. They might have had better luck saying “stop breathing…” “stop loving…” “stop living…” I know I can be too much for some people, my intensity and love for Michigan is overwhelming, even for me, at times.
I guess some could find it annoying the way I sneak something positive about Michigan into nearly every conversation:
Ordering a gin and cocktail? Is that a MICHIGAN gin? Looking for a book to read, have you read this title from this MICHIGAN author? A song comes on the radio…did you know Stevie Wonder, The Knack, DeBarge, Del Shannon (born Charles Westover) were from MICHIGAN? The recent passing of Muhammad Ali…he lived in southwest MICHIGAN.
I could play this game all day (and many of you who know me, know this to be true).
And while some may think I’m spewing all this information to be a show off (in constant used-car-salesman mode), the truth is…I can’t NOT do it. I can’t stop talking about all the great people, places and products that make MICHIGAN such a great place to live, work and play. I didn’t just create Promote Michigan because I thought it was a way to make an easy buck off the state. I created it because I recognized that I could make a living doing what I love to do…telling people true stories about what goes on within the boundaries of the Great Lakes State.
If you asked me to tell you my favorite place, my favorite wine, my favorite museum, golf course, restaurant, concert venue, brewery, etc., in Michigan…I couldn’t do it. Like asking someone to tell you which kid they like best. Each place, each person, each story impacts me in a different way—admittedly, some more than others, but each is unique and important.
I may go off on tangents or have certain themes that are of interest: lighthouses, covered bridges, historic sites, ghost towns…but inside those categories, picking just ONE favorite is tough.
Throughout the course of my travels, I also encounter wonderful people who have wonderful stories they share with me—and often, I find myself so intrigued I begin digging into those stories for more information. The more I find, the more I want to share not only with the original storyteller, but with others.
Currently on my mind…
The Purple Gang operated a secret speak-easy in Harbor Springs called The Club Manitou, which later became a concert venue called The Club Ponytail. This week, I’m having coffee with someone who has been researching this extensively (after learning about it from another local historian who helped me recently on an article about Ernest Hemingway that appears in the current issue of Michigan BLUE Magazine).
Henry Ford was a frequent visitor to the Upper Peninsula and found himself on the “wait list” to become an owner / member of the Huron Mountain Club in Marquette. Next week, I’m traveling through the UP to some of the places that Ford and his entourage would have visited. The challenge in telling this story, is that I’ll only have 600 words in which to convey the magnitude of Ford’s adventures as an early tourist. The bonus side of it is, after the story is written, I can verbally tell it in greater detail.
Vernor’s was invented 150 years ago in Detroit, by a pharmacist. Even though I’m not a fan of ginger ale, the history is fascinating and when I give my “Made in the Mitten” presentation, it is always among the samples offered. It is also often included in Michigan-themed gift baskets that I use for various purposes.
A friend just told me about his experiences kayaking through the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Munising. Every time I drive through that area, I think “I should have really made time to kayak here…” and then the thought passes. Will this be the year I actually cross this off my bucket list? I WILL be in the area in mid-September for the UP Fall Beer Festival so it is possible.
The Barn Theatre in Augusta – celebrating its 70th season as Michigan’s oldest resident summer stock theatre company. Every week, they’re presenting a new show (opening tomorrow: Guys and Dolls). Some big names are among the “Barnie” history – including Tom Wopat (Dukes of Hazard), Kim Zimmer (Guiding Light), Jennifer Garner (Alias), Robert Newman (Guiding Light) and Dana Delaney (China Beach), among others.Footnote: I’ve seen two shows here in my life, including Escanaba in da Moonlight (written by Michigan’s own Jeff Daniels, who was raised and still lives in Chelsea—where, ironically, I’m doing some work with the library on promotions and marketing for an upcoming community history project).
Stafford’s Pier Restaurant in Harbor Springs has recently completed a full renovation of its dining room and outdoor spaces, overlooking Little Traverse Bay. I haven’t seen it yet in person, however I do have guests coming for the evening and they want to go out to dinner. A great meal, with friends, overlooking the water and checking out the new décor. That’s a win-win-win-win!
This list could go on and on, as my ADD brain flips to dozens of topics in a matter of minutes – but almost all of them are related in some fashion to MICHIGAN. Sometimes my digging is work related—tied to a client, a story assignment or an upcoming program, but often, I’m just captured by something someone told me during the course of a casual conversation.
You may call that obsessive, but I call it passion. And, thankfully…I get to call this wonderful place my home! And, honored that I get to share these stories with others who live here, but also those far away through the pages of magazines that I write for.
And what makes my passion different, from let’s say music or cats or golfing, is that it encompasses SO much. It includes rural and urban spaces, it encompasses things that happen indoors and out, it covers two peninsulas, four Great Lakes, dozens of islands, thousands of miles of rivers and streams, countless buildings, thousands of faces, wonderful sights, sounds and tastes, and so much more. It is all encompassing, unwavering, undeniable love affair with my home state
So…can I shut it down? Can I turn it off? Can I disconnect? From Michigan? Never! I don’t want to, I don’t have to and I shouldn’t be expected to!
This article was republished with permission from Dianna at Promote Michigan. We do our best to help with the promotion of the great State of Michigan!
Welcome to this week’s chapter in the ongoing series by our world traveler, Lynn Strough. Let’s do some day tripping!
Not far from Dubrovnik, Croatia, is the country of Montenegro, and it’s easy and inexpensive to go day tripping there. Montenegro is known for its beaches and the old city of Kotor, and they’re both worth a look, although on the day I was there, so were three cruise ships and thousands of other tourists, so not the ideal circumstances for my visit.
In Kotor, you will find inside the city walls, plenty of places to shop and to dine –- it’s quite touristy. But you will also see some interesting architecture, and the inevitable beautiful doors and flapping laundry. An old fortress gives you some lovely views and more places to relax.
Many people go there to climb to the top of the mountain above Kotor, although we were told by our tour guide that we didn’t have time. Our guide also informed us on numerous occasions that Montenegro has become a playground for rich Russians. I don’t know if this is true, but there is certainly wealth displayed, in the marina in the form of large yachts, as well as on the nearby tiny island of Sveti Stefan where the 5-star Aman Sveti Stefan hotel beckons to those with deep pockets.
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It’s always fun to discover the local color of a new country, including markets and graffiti, and taking a day trip to Montenegro is certainly worth a visit, although it’s not on my top list of places to go. I’ve met people who love Montenegro and people who don’t, and to be fair, going on a tour — even a small group tour — isn’t the best way to get the full picture, although I hope you’ve enjoyed a few of mine.
Day trips to Mostar, Bosnia, are also available, although I was told it’s five hours on a bus round trip, with only an hour and 1/2 off the bus to see the famous Stari Most bridge, which is not the original but a reconstruction started in 2001. I skipped this.
More my style for Dubrovnik day tripping, it’s just a little leap to the island of Lokrum, a nature reserve where it’s possible to get away from the crowds of the old town. You depart from the harbor in Dubrovnik, and it’s only a 15-minute scenic ride by taxi-boat. 6.30 euro includes your ride and entrance into the island park reserve. Bring your bathing suit, as you can swim off of one of the many ladders that sink into the sea, or then again, you may not need one.
On the island, you can also go hiking, past the Benedictine monastery and up to the top to the old fort, for some interesting history and amazing views. Wear good hiking shoes, as the trails are dirt and rocks and slippery pine needles. It smells like sea and balsam, and I heard a young man with a guitar, sitting on top of the fort strumming and singing.
The only inhabitants of the island are feathered and full of eyes. Peacocks were brought over from the Canary Islands a century and a half ago, and wander the auto-less island freely. This guy strutted up to me, spread his fan tail, then turned his back on me. I wasn’t sure if he was flirting with me or mooning me.
There are a couple of restaurants on the island, but my recommendation is to pack a picnic and pick one of the many perfect rocky shores to dine with a view.
Day tripping from Dubrovnik is easy and affordable, so why not stay a few more days before heading off to the rest of the islands, any of over 1000 of them.
About Lynn Strough
Lynn is a 50-something-year-old woman whose incarnations in this life have included graphic designer, children’s book author and illustrator, public speaker, teacher, fine art painter, wine educator in the Napa Valley, and world traveler. Through current circumstances, she has found herself single, without a job or a home, and poised for a great adventure.
“You could consider me homeless and unemployed, but I prefer nomad and self-employed, as I pack up my skills and head off with my small backpack and even smaller savings to circumnavigate the globe (or at least go until the money runs out). Get ready to tag along for the ride…starting now!”
All images copyright Lynn Strough and Travelynn Tales
Many of you may not be aware that I was a teacher in a previous life – well, an educator, I guess, since I never actually received my certification to “officially” teach. I’m not sure if it is allowed today, but in the 1990s, if you had a degree in certain fields, you could still “teach” in that area. For example, a mechanic could “teach” auto shop, a chef could “teach” culinary arts, a sculptor could “teach” art. As a professional journalist—in both print and broadcast—I was given the opportunity to develop and advise a student-run newspaper program at Otsego Middle School.
I’ve been a writer since childhood. I still have my third-grade journal from Gilkey Elementary School, a selection of poems written for my grandparents, and reports from my middle school years.
My interest in journalism came my sophomore year at Plainwell High School. Kenny Zelnis was our teacher and advisor of the Trojan Torch. I remember leaving the very first class that year knowing what my career would be. The child of a long-time radio broadcaster, it seemed like a perfect fit. My natural curiosity, relentless communication skills and passion for writing were fueled by this specific teacher and his obvious inspiration for news.
For the next two-and-a-half years, journalism class became my #1 priority (until my senior year, when yearbook also came into play). I thrived on the research—before the internet, when we had to use the card catalog, microfilm machine and the telephone to conduct interviews and pull pieces together for articles. I looked forward to class, to telling stories, to attending conferences and entering stories in competitions through the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association (MIPA) at Michigan State University.
By my senior year, I was named News Editor of the Torch and business manager of the Trojan yearbook, where I also managed a new special “features” section. I was also working at a local weekly newspaper, typesetting copy, taking photos, covering news and writing my own column. If that weren’t enough, I also began working in broadcast news at Quixie, a local radio station co-owned by my dad, who now owns and operates WAKV. At that year’s MIPA conference, I was honored as one of the top four student journalists in the state of Michigan.
College took me to Western Michigan University where I majored in English (with emphasis in Community Journalism) and Communications (with an emphasis in Radio Broadcasting). Here, I also finally met Cheryl Kaechele, who owned newspapers in our community from 1982 until 2015. She was teaching a couple journalism classes at Western, and I had known of her my entire life.
You see, Cheryl and her husband, Walt, graduated from Plainwell High School with my dad. Not only was she a long-time family friend, but she was active with the Michigan Press Association. Even then, I knew the value of building a solid network! I would even coordinate my academic and work schedule just to get into her classes, knowing there were key things to be learned from her.
While finishing my degrees, I continued working at local newspapers (including ones owned by Cheryl) and the radio station, and also served as copy editor of the campus paper, Western Herald. My multi-tasking skills were being perfected in those days.
I realize how fortunate I was that my skills and passion lined up back in high school. I’ve known since I was 15 what I wanted to do with my life. Although it has changed slightly in focus over the years, the bottom line is I am still a professional communicator in a variety of platforms. I have Mr. Zelnis to thank for that first introduction into the world of journalism. Had I never been in his class, where would I have landed in life? The power of a dedicated teacher is so profound. I used to joke with him that someday I’d have his job. I didn’t exactly get there, but I did get close.
After college, I landed a part-time job as the PR person for Otsego Public Schools (the neighboring, rival school district). A couple of years in, at the request of former Superintendent John Kingsnorth, I developed a non-credit, elective middle school journalism program. Students were taught every aspect of the field, from ethics and writing styles, to the business of running a newspaper (including advertising, layout and design and distribution).
The Bulldog Express was born in March 1993 and went on, during its four-year life, to earn several MIPA awards for individual and group projects. MIPA really hadn’t focused much on middle school programs in the past, but with my involvement all that changed. A board position was even created for the Middle School Chair, which I served as for a couple of years.
In April 1996, the paper and its dedicated staff even won a coveted Spartan Award and was recognized as the #1 Middle School Student Newspaper in the state of Michigan. My students worked hard—they wrote grants to pay for equipment and desktop publishing software, they attended conferences, they gave up free time after school to work on stories, they spent their lunch hours selling papers and so much more.
That all changed during the winter of 1997.
Days before our next issue was to head to the printer, an incident on a school field trip created a last-minute editorial change to the front page. An eighth-grade girl was caught shoplifting, the police were called and the following day, teachers informed students that as a result of this incident, future trips were in jeopardy. Students weren’t happy and our news editor wanted to cover the story.
With the approval of the editor-in-chief and myself, content changes were made and the reporter set out in search of the facts. A police report was received, interviews were conducted, the story was written (and since the accused was under age, her name was never reported). The article was completed, the layout was revised and we were ready to go to print.
Hold the presses!
Hearing about the pending article, the new superintendent stepped in and made an executive decision. Publishing such an article could be seen as negative for the district, and therefore the paper was forbidden to run it. In our four years of operation, this was the first case of censorship that we were faced with. We had a reputation for covering “controversial” topics in the past, so this caught us off guard as it seemed so trivial.
After an office meeting with the superintendent and principal, I informed the editorial team of this new development. I provided my editor-in-chief with a list of case studies and resources provided to me by MIPA and the Student Press Law Center. We talked about the options, the laws and the consequences. Then, I sent him home to discuss it with parents and to think about his course of action, saying that I would support whatever decision he made.
I then contacted my journalism colleagues—including Mr. Zelnis at PHS—to get advice on how to handle the situation. I knew what needed to be done, but it helped to have their support and guidance as I moved through this uncharted territory.
A couple of days later, after talking with industry leaders and officials in Lansing and Washington DC, the editor-in-chief decided that the censorship could not be allowed to happen. He decided, with me and his parents by his side, to fight for his constitutional right to free press. Calls were made to the local newspaper, who were provided the article which ran that week under the headline: “You Couldn’t Read it in The Bulldog Express, But You Can Read it Here.”
The war had begun!
The exact sequence of events is a bit hazy at this point, nearly 20 years later, but the basics are still with me. The editor-in-chief retained a pro-bono lawyer out of Grand Rapids who filed a lawsuit against the superintendent, principal and board of education for violation of his First Amendment rights.
Local media listened.
Not only did the story hit the weekly newspapers (owned at the time by my former professor Cheryl Kaechele) but the Kalamazoo Gazette picked it up. The story went regional, with local radio and TV stations following it. WJR in Detroit and WGN in Chicago did radio interviews with the editor-in-chief. A story on the Associated Press wire lead to articles in Boston Globe, Dayton Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Patriot Ledger, Rocky Mountain News, Detroit News, Grand Rapids Press and Los Angeles Times. The Chicago Reader ran a story as well.
Printing of The Bulldog Express continued, but it had definitely changed. Now, in addition to the first case of censorship, the paper was subject to “prior review” on a multitude of levels. The editorial calendar had to pre-approved, the stories had to be pre-approved after they were typed into the computer, the final layout had to be reviewed and the principal or superintendent was responsible for delivering it to the printer (to prevent us from swapping out stories at the last minute). The job of producing the paper became much more laborious and time-consuming.
Yet, subscriptions and advertising increased dramatically. If I recall correctly, we had fewer than 10 ads in that issue where the story was originally pulled. By the next month’s issue, we were over 20—including a one-half page ad from the local VFW which said something to the effect of “Thank you for supporting our constitutional rights.” The ad ran, because I don’t think the administration wanted to take on the local veterans on this one.
As the school year ended, things continued to decline. After months of being reprimanded for supporting my editorial team, I was pulled as advisor from the paper. Not being a certified teacher (and not part of the union), I had no real recourse. When the new school year started that fall, my hours (and my paycheck) were cut in half, which forced me to look elsewhere for a job. I left in November of 1997, and the paper—under new leadership—eventually folded. The lawsuit continued throughout the school year, but was eventually settled out of court. The editor-in-chief was heralded for his efforts by many journalist organizations and he was even recognized by the Freedom Forum in Washington DC.
Yes, we lost the battle, but I think we still won the bigger war. Granted, the paper and the journalism program didn’t survive, but the students and I learned some valuable lessons that still play a role in our lives today. Defending your constitutional right is a big deal. Imagine doing that at the age of 13 or 14? Being a leader for students, making them think and challenge authority when appropriate are life lessons they’ll never forget. I learned those lessons in the classroom with Mr. Zelnis (although not to the extreme that my students did at OMS), but it all started with that one inspiring teacher.
About 10 years ago, when my daughter was a freshman at Plainwell High School, we stopped in to see Mr. Zelnis during fall open house. I wanted to introduce her to the teacher who helped shape my life—the teacher who inspired me, motivated me and encouraged me. The teacher who became a colleague and a friend.
With a fondness for writing herself, my daughter found herself interested in journalism and that year she became one of only two freshmen admitted into the Journalism I class that Zelnis was teaching. I remember her coming home from school a week or so into the class and I could tell she got it — she understood the impact that a great teacher can really have. Zelnis retired before she graduated, but I’m so thankful she was able to spend a brief period of time learning from him just as I did years before.
I’ve always been vocal about my role models—about those who have had such an impact on my life that even today their inspiration runs deep and is at the core of who I am as a person, a writer, a business person and a leader.
This article was republished with permission from Dianna at Promote Michigan. We do our best to help with the promotion of the great State of Michigan!
Here are a few from Star Wars Weekends. Top: Jake Lloyd, Daniel Logan. Bottom Jeremy Bulloch, Davie Prowse, and Ray Park
By: Katelyn Kohane
Today is Star Wars Day, May the Fourth be with you.
When I sat down to write this article, I was curious as to where the saying came from and how it got started. While doing my initial research, all signs pointed to Margaret Thatcher being the first to say it. The day she found out that she had become Prime Minister she said, “May the Fourth be with you,” in celebration of her victory. Star Wars fans immediately fell in love with the saying and henceforth it became known as Star Wars Day.
While “May the Fourth be with you” seems like an interesting, but random, Star Wars tidbit in the month of May, it’s actually just the icing on the cake. Most of the movies were released in May and George Lucas’ birthday also happens to fall in the month of May. It’s like it was all planned out a long, long time ago…
The relationship between Star Wars and the month of May continues from the silver screen to Star Tours at Walt Disney World. Star Tours is a Star Wars simulator at the Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. Every weekend throughout May is dedicated as “Star Wars Weekends.”
I actually worked on the ride for many years and my vast Star Wars knowledge came in handy when working there. During my time there I made many great friends and enjoyed being a part of Star Wars Weekends! They were so fun. I would camp in line with friends to meet the celebrities that would come and hold talk shows, walk in parades, and sign autographs.
This year, to celebrate Star Wars Day in all its glory, I will certainly wear a Star Wars shirt. Hopefully, if I’m not too busy, I will carve out some time to watch a Star Wars movie. So to all the Star Wars fans out there… May the Fourth be with you!
Katie works in the film industry as a camera operator and has worked on films like ‘All You Can Dream’, ‘Set Up’ and a TV show called ‘American Fallen Soldier.’ She loves helping WKTV with the Citizen Journalism team and working as a tech at Amway Grand Plaza Hotel. Katie loves working in the film industry and loves watching movies just as much!
In the beginning, he was WKTV’s mascot, always cheerful and unassuming. He often stayed into the wee hours of the night after everyone else had gone home. For months, we marveled at his always-sunny, can-do attitude, which is no mean feat in today’s dangerously depressing world. No matter what, Nigel was consistent in his utterances and deeds.
Lesser folk would have run chittering from the building, but Nigel put up with the station’s less-than-ideal working conditions like a champ. Our station director’s temper tantrums didn’t faze Nigel. He tolerated the bizarre antics of our managing editor. Even the newest CJ reporter’s grammar Nazi tirades didn’t crack him.
Ironically, it was a well-deserved promotion that did him in.
In his capacity as station mascot, Nigel thrived and excelled. His attendance was exemplary. When things got crazy around here, his easy-going manner and uplifting chirps kept the station on course. And he never got in anyone’s way.
Then we began taking him for granted. As often happens with mild-mannered folk in the corporate realm, Nigel was overlooked for plum assignments. He seemed happy enough. His chirps seemed genuine. But at WKTV, we do not stand for the status quo. We celebrate each team member’s strengths and help them overcome their weaknesses.
I believe it was on a Wednesday we first realized that Nigel’s talents were being wasted in such a limited role. The community needed to know about him, about what he stood for, about his very existence. Nigel needed to be celebrated and exalted for his simplicity and love for nature. It was sure to be a win-win.
And so we promoted him to broadcasting associate.
There is always a learning curve with any new position, and Nigel put up a brave front. He appeared to soak up new knowledge like a sponge, and we coached him in his new role. But it soon became apparent that Nigel, for all of his seemingly extroverted traits, was an introvert at heart. In his new, highly visible role, Nigel faltered. He couldn’t bring himself to attend meetings. I remember seeing him once by a pipe close to the window, but when I tried to talk to him, he quickly escaped down a tiny black hole.
No amount of persuasion could entice Nigel to contribute to our on-air broadcasts. He began wandering around the office, unseen. But we heard him. He chirped incessantly.
In any other situation, one might have considered Nigel mentally ill, but we knew better. Nigel was a unique individual, and at WKTV, we celebrate diversity. However, when someone’s happiness is at stake, swift action is required.
And so Nigel returned to the position where he was happiest, as our mascot. Two days later, he disappeared.
We believe a wolf spider sealed poor Nigel’s fate.
Click here to listen to an interview with Nigel. (Before he went missing.)
APRIL FOOL’S!
Post-script: Nigel was real. He was the office cricket.
So, there I was, just minding my own business pondering where the gray walls end and the gray skies begin, when Easter happened. I turned my head and when I looked back—poof!—people were all decked out in their Sunday finest, and there were countless clusters of chocolate bunnies and little baskets festooned with eggs and jelly beans snuggled in colorful nesting material.* More chocolate bunnies. Even more of them. Plus those peculiar curiosities called “peeps.”
Easter took me by surprise, I must admit, because I’m never prepared for it. The fault is not mine but that of full moons and equinoxes. I come from a family of Greek Orthodox people, which means “my” Easter quite likely isn’t yours. The date of Greek Orthodox Easter is determined by the Julian calendar, and it can vary wildly from one year to the next. It’s kind of cool except most other people use the Gregorian calendar. When I am asked what I’m doing for Easter, I say that I have no idea. Because I never know when it is.
(Wait. What?) OK, I’ve just been told that my Easter is scheduled for May 1 this year. But will there be any chocolate bunnies left?
A calendar by any other name
The calendar’s purpose is to keep people rooted somewhat in reality. Calendars tell us when we have to work, when to vote, when to go to church, when to celebrate a holiday, when to observe Thanksgiving and other feasts—you name it. Without calendars, surely humankind would be cast adrift, lost forever in contemplation and confusion.
Einstein really nailed it when he said that time is relative, because it seems that no one can agree on using just one method to keep track of days, weeks and months. There are many, many calendars.
Western civilians currently use the Gregorian calendar, which improved upon the Julian calendar (the source of “my” Easter), which had improved upon the Roman calendar. And then there are a multitude of different religious calendars, many of which disagree that we are even living in the year 2016.
Depending on the calendar, today is whatever day you’re reading this (Gregorian) or minus 13 days (Julian). By way of example, pretend that I’m writing this on the 12th of March (three days before the Ides). If we use the Julian calendar, I’m writing this on the 29th of February (assuming it’s 2016), which is a leap year day, all the better to confuse the issue.
Of moons and equinoxes and rotation
Putting together an accurate calendar is not for the faint of heart. It requires meticulous musings, knowledge of the phases of the moon and equinoxes, and the rotation of the earth. It also requires people with nothing better to do than argue over an overabundance of calculations. Key point: In the end, they must all agree. And we know how well that usually works out.
We want to control everything. It’s human nature. But despite this irrational obsession, the universe always has the final say. In the case of calendars, the earth’s rotation refuses to conform to a man-made system of measurement. Just when you think you have it under control, you find that you don’t.
Trying to tame time
Before the dawn of civilization, ancient peoples had no need for wall calendars, Blackberries and day planners. By monitoring the phases of the moon and observing weather patterns, these peoples knew when to plant crops, when to migrate, when to harvest crops, etc.
Enter the Romans, who demanded predictability. Mental illness—obsessive-compulsiveness, specifically—influenced the matter, and politics played a huge role as well. Some would argue that politics and mental illness are mutually exclusive, but this matters not because of at least one immutable fact: Credit for the invention of the original Roman calendar goes to Romulus, the first king of Rome, at around 753 BCE (Before Common Era). Scholars think it may have been a lunar calendar, but it was so fraught with flaws that this remains uncertain.
The Roman calendar began the year with a month that could be construed as a call to action—March (Martius). The calendar consisted of 10 months, with six months of 30 days and four months of 31 days. The winter season was not assigned to any month, so the calendar year only lasted 304 days with 61 days unaccounted for in the winter. Basically, winter was ignored.
I am not a fan of winter and would prefer to ignore it, too, but if everybody did that, many, many retail and online stores would go out of business. The economy would take a dive. More people would plunge into poverty.
Besides, it seems a bit extreme. Animals in the wild don’t ignore winter, they hibernate. As they sleep they are blissfully unaware, but winter exists nonetheless. Wild creatures don’t use calendars, and they’ve gotten by just fine over the centuries.
Predictably, the earth’s rotation would not cooperate, and as expected, the 304-day Roman calendar didn’t work for long because it didn’t align with the seasons. King Numa Pompilius—and, seriously, who burdens a kid with such a name?—reformed the calendar around 700 BCE by adding the months of January (Ianuarius) and February (Februarius) to the original 10 months. This increased the year’s length to 354 or 355 days.
The Julian calendar proved rather hardy and served humankind in good stead until 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the Gregorian calendar, because naming a calendar after oneself is irresistible, if not grandiose. Today, the Gregorian calendar is the most widely used civil calendar throughout the world.
Why did all of this happen? Blame it on Easter. Wait. That’s not entirely fair. It’s better to blame it on the pope, who wanted to bring the date for celebrating Easter closer to the time of year in which it was celebrated by the early Church. Because Easter was tied to the spring equinox, the steady drift in its date by the year being slightly too long drove the poor pontiff to distraction. With no treatment available for obsessive-compulsive disorder, he did the next best thing. He changed the calendar.
The (formerly) blissful equinox.
There’s always been quite the brouhaha over the relationship between the equinox and Easter, and it will be easier to understand the conundrum if you think of the equinox as a thing with feelings. Imagine, if you will, the equinox, before humankind existed. Close your eyes. Can you see it? Right over there, smiling in its ignorance, living in peace, perhaps even unaware of its own existence, but in a state of bliss nonetheless.
So, there’s the blissful equinox, just minding its own business when humans appear on the map. These people make up stories about Easter. Eager to harness something—anything—people tie Easter to the spring equinox. This seemingly harmless—and certainly thoughtless—act has far-reaching consequences. No longer does the equinox exist unfettered, and it is not amused.
Yet even this did not satisfy humankind. Over time, the date kept “drifting,” so the Roman Catholic Church promulgated a fateful rule—the full moon preceding Easter would not precede the equinox. Ever. Thanks to this rule, the equinox now remains fixed at March 21 for computational purposes, and the earliest date for Easter is fixed at March 22.
To further compensate for the drift, the Gregorian calendar also removed 10 days. If you lived back in 1582, you went to bed one night and woke up 10 days later. There is much more to all of this, but alas, space in this context—according to my editor—is finite. Go here to learn more.
As expected, the equinox resented—heck, still does—being stuck in place, forever. But the equinox was not the only thing to suffer—people suffered, too. We’re talking about 10 perfectly good days—poof!—just gone.
Things still aren’t perfect.
So, here we are, in the year 2016, accustomed to a 365-day year and a leap year of 366 days. We have scheduled the leap year day, February 29, to occur every four years to help synchronize the calendar year with the solar year (the length of time it takes the earth to complete its orbit about the sun), which is about 365¼ days. It sounds so cold and calculated because it is.
The length of the solar year is slightly less than 365¼ days—by about 11 minutes—and this cannot go unpunished, so we “compensate” for this discrepancy. Until the advent of the next calendar—whenever that may be—the leap year is omitted three times every four hundred years. What this means is that a century year cannot be a leap year unless it is divisible by 400. Thus 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but 1600 and 2000 were—and 2400 will be—leap years.
Ha! Surely you see the quandary. The universe will not be outfoxed.
*Where does nesting material go to live when Easter is all said and done?
Superhero movies have been in a bit of a creative slump. Marvel Studios has created the new standard in the post-Chris Nolan years of superhero adventures, for better or worse. But with a record five Marvel properties receiving a theatrical outing in 2014, it has been postulated that the formula Marvel has imprinted on each of the entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is growing stale in the over-saturation of such films released each year.
Thank goodness for Ryan Reynolds and company convincing Fox to up the ante by making the first R-rated Marvel movie. This is a unique step for a company that has been making the X-MEN movies, the most consistently challenging and socially conscious series based on Marvel properties.
With Deadpool, the socially conscious moralizing is tossed out as soon as the opening credits roll. Set to Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning,” the opening showcases the carnage Mr. Pool is most ready to indulge in, including torturing bad guys with cigarette lighters and atomic wedgies. This opening really conveys all the gleefully subversive brutality one will find in the feature to follow. But the whole of the movie is not just decapitated heads and one-liners, oh no. This flick is also a romance movie, the posters were not lying.
That’s right, a key plot of this movie revolves around the smart-mouthed mercenary attempting to reconnect with his fiancée, while also hunting down his nemesis, Francis. The romance is introduced after the initial opening action scene in a flashback to Wade Wilson’s life pre-red costume. Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is a low-rent mercenary who meets an equally acerbic escort, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), at his favorite dive and strikes up a romantic interlude, complete with things I cannot mention in this review due to decency standards, but all things aside, it is hilarious, provided you like joy.
Unfortunately, the twosome’s romance was cut short by that mood-killer of a diagnosis, cancer. At his wits’ end, Wilson leaves his girl in the teary rain and signs up for an experimental program that will give him superpowers while curing his cancer. But there is a cost – his personal freedom. Driven bonkers by his treatment at the hands of the vicious Francis (Ed Skrein) and his cool-as-ice assistant, Angel Dust (Gina Carano), Wilson adopts the persona of Deadpool to track down his nemesis with the aid of his bartender pal Weasel and a couple of X-Men who show up to critique Deadpool’s violent, anarchic methods. Along the way, he works himself into getting enough courage to visit his old flame and hopefully rekindle their kinky escapades.
The flick revels in tapping into childish exploitations of brutality and smugness that could easily backfire, as some disappointed audiences noted in reviews on various social medias, including Letterboxd, the social media for film lovers. To be fair, most of those critics likely had no idea what they were in for.
Deadpool has a history of subversive cultural savviness that frequently pokes fun at anything and everything – think South Park style. While the film does consider itself a superhero movie, it really is a fascinating hybrid of all sorts of genres: romantic comedy, action thriller, gross-out comedy, and superhero movie. The tone is still playfully anarchic, with star Reynolds as the titular anti-hero pointedly breaking the rules of movies constantly, looking to the audience, making smart comments, and cuttingly criticizing the studio that unwittingly gave Reynolds and the writers free rein to make the movie that Deadpool fans deserve, for better or worse.
The character of Deadpool originated as a straight-laced satire of 1980s and 90s action movie stereotypes, continuing this way until around 2004, when Marvel Comics executives chose to heavily exaggerate the already over-the-top cultural references and invincible self-awareness. While his escapades have attracted an audience of devoted followers, his character has not always received proper mainstream treatment. The 2009 film X-MEN Origins:Wolverine did include Ryan Reynolds as the pre-weaponized Wade Wilson, but in the third act decided it would be best to sew Deadpool’s mouth shut and turn him into the strange love-child of Frankenstein’s monster and the Abomination from Incredible Hulk comics. To put it mildly, fans were very displeased with the film, especially its treatment of the beloved ‘Merc with a Mouth’.
*DUN DUN DUN*
What should be taken away from this review is that Deadpool is a breath of fresh immaturity that comic book movies have been lacking. The pace is frenetic, the romance is cute and pleasing, the action is over-the-top and fun, and Ryan Reynolds has finally found a property to showcase his talents. It is a good time to be a fan of comic books and their adaptations…for now.
Well, Oscar season has come and gone. This year was a ridiculous year, good and bad, for films of all ranges of quality. The final showcase of such occurred on February 28th and landed with a few surprise aces up its pre-packaged sleeves.
Chris Rock made his monologue count with a takedown of the accusations of institutional racism by outside critics earlier when the nominations were announced. The only issue I had with his hosting was I could have done with less of the easy race jokes he made every time he was on-screen. Apparently everyone else thought he went far enough with his prodding of the stodgy Academy demographic, but I remain dubious in my belief that he could have been a bit more cutting in his commentary. That being said, I loved the payoff of the Girl Scout cookies gag with Michael Keaton scarfing them down after Spotlight stuck the landing, winning Best Picture. Long Live Betelgeuse!
Aside from Rock, I won’t be commenting on the presenters and various cameos spurred by his hosting (*cough* Stacey Dash), but I will say that there was still fat that could have been trimmed from the telecast. I noticed certain advertisements were repeated throughout the commercial breaks, showing there is an overlong amount of advertising time, which needs depleting, or the red carpet ceremony needs to start way earlier. I like my beauty sleep, thank you very much.
As for my personal ballot, I nailed 16 of the 24 categories, surprisingly getting the non-animated shorts and documentaries correct, though I was least sure of their chances. I missed both the Supporting categories, due to the surprise upset of sneaky spy Mark Rylance stealing the thunder from Sylvester Stallone’s gracefully aged perfromance in Creed. Alicia Vikander ended up impressing audiences and Academy voters who still rewarded her for the least of her work released last year, over Kate Winslet’s solid performance in Steve Jobs.
In addition, I lost faith in Mad Max: Fury Road over Costuming and VFX at the last minute, voting for The Martian in the latter category through my mLive ballot on Saturday night. Turns out Ex Machina had an effect on people after all, which is more than acceptable. I am more than happy to lose to a film I willingly support even though I made the mistake to count it out of my personal nominations.
Of all the surprises, the most pleasant was George Miller’s own wife, Margaret Sixel, winning Best Film Editing. In hindsight this makes sense, as Fury Road‘s breathless pace and structure deserved recognition. I still feel it was wrong that while the majority of the crew under Georgie was recognized, the Academy didn’t have the guts to give it to the director for organizing those people. Meh, I know in my heart who the real hero of the night was.
Regarding Best Song, I admit I was shocked to see the Spectre song “Writing’s on the Wall” win over the likes of Lady Gaga’s sexual assault survivor ballad “‘Til it Happens to You”. I was sure Gaga was on her way to finalizing her EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), but apparently that was not to be. D’oh! I’m pretty sure Gaga and Weeknd split the vote, leading the way for Sam Smith to sneak his way onstage and snatch it away.
With Best Animated Short, I’ll admit it was neat to see someone besides the soulless company that is PIXAR win the Oscar. I still wish Cosmos or World of Tomorrow had won, but a loss for PIXAR is a win for those of us who want more diversity in Academy Awards nominees.
It was an okay ceremony. I am sure that everyone else and their dog has written up better summaries of the ceremony than I could at the moment, as I am content that The Revenant didn’t win Best Picture. That being said, I am still upset that it won Best (Hamhanded) Director, considering how much of a sore loser Iñárritu is.
An angel was spotted yesterday at Blodgett Spectrum hospital. His name was Bob.
He was sitting in the Radiology waiting room next to me for well over three hours. I asked him if he also had a partner undergoing tests like my husband. Bob replied that he did not know the young woman that he brought to Blodgett for an ultrasound.
As we continued to wait, and visit with each other, he told me he was driving between job sites when he saw a young woman trying to walk in the heavy snow. She was stumbling, so he stopped to ask her if she needed help. The woman stated that she was walking to Blodgett Hospital. She was pregnant and had a 9 o’clock ultrasound appointment.
Bob drove her to the hospital and waited for well over three hours for the young lady to return from her test. She would never have been able to walk that distance from Kentwood to Blodgett.
I know I talked to an angel yesterday. He was disguised as a contractor.
You never know who you’re going to help with any random act of kindness.
This year is probably more straightforward in the big categories, but quite the troublesome hedgemaze in terms of technicals and short films and such. Here be my picks, complete witommentary, a confidence-inspired ranking system*, and binary Who Will Win/Who Should Win tags:
*The ranking system is based on confidence in each category. A score of 24 – since there are 24 categories – carries the most confidence, and therefore the highest point value. As the score lowers, start loading up on grains of salt. A perfect score will only make me look all the Wieser…
Documentary Short (2)
This is tough, as the offerings really run the gamut in terms of content. We have a Holocaust eulogy, an Ebola crisis piece, a piece on domestic violence in Pakistan, a Vietnam vet think piece, and a short on a Vietnamese teenage artist affected by Agent Orange. My gut tells me to go with Body Team 12, the Ebola one, though I feel A Girl in the River, the Pakistani film, deserves a look for the cultural horrors it produces on viewing.
Will Win: A Girl in the River // Should Win: A Girl in the River
Documentary Feature (20)
Amy is the one that will win. It’s inevitable, like other awards later on. Cartel Land and the Nina Simone piece were intriguing, but they lack the controlled manipulation that director Asif Kapadia holds in the tragic overview of the short starburst of a career that belonged to Amy Winehouse.
*The Hunting Ground was nominated for Song, and while I acknowledge some of its content is dubious and controversial, I feel the content and filmmaking should be acknowledged for its headway in dealing with collegiate sexual assault cases.
Will+Should Win:Amy
Should’ve Been Nominated: The Hunting Ground
Live Action Short (1)
I really have no opinion, having not seen any yet. But research is edging me towards Stutterer. Eh, might as well.
Will Win: Stutterer (??)
Animated Short (12)
History has taught me that if it has Disney plastered on the product (Sanjay’s Super Team), bet on it stealing the Oscar over usually much more interesting and rewarding things like Don Hertzfeldt’s jaw-dropping World of Tomorrow and the equally inspired Russian entry We Can’t Live Without Cosmos. They’ll listen to me eventually.
Will Win: Sanjay’s Super Team
Should Win: World of Tomorrow/ We Can’t Live Without Cosmos
Animated Feature (22)
Pixar has had this one in the bag since the film made a splash back in June when it was released. It is sad, because it was a really extraordinary year for feature animation, between the Ghibli coming of age drama When Marnie was There, the mimed hijinks of Shaun the Sheep, and the intriguing headpiece Anomalisa. Still mad that Peanuts wasn’t nominated, by the by.
Will Win: Inside Out
Should’ve Been Nominated: The Peanuts Movie
Sound Editing (19) +Mixing (8)
Source: variety.com
Fury Road really should have this in the bag, but research tells me assorted experts expect The Revenant to steal one or both for some reason that is unfathomable by me. Thing is, I remember the hellish soundscapes of the furious roadway, but aside from the bear attack, I remember nothing remarkable from The Revenant. Ugh, you people are all crazy, Academy.
In one corner, we have Best Picture front-runners The Big Short, The Revenant, and Spotlight. In the other, we have wild-card options Fury Road and the latest in the legendary Star Wars series. What to choose, what to choose…?
Twist my arm and I’d say The Big Short. If not, I blame John Serba.
Another one that I am proud to say Fury Road has in the proverbial bag. Just look at the level of creativity and imagination given to ol’ Immortan here.
Long Live Mad Max! Long Live The Wasteland! Sing, Brothers! Sing, SING!!
Will+Should Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Original Song (4)
Please don’t let Fifty Shades of Grey get past Oscar-nominee status. Just give it to Gaga and spare us the pain of remembering. My heart can’t take the strain.
Will+Should Win: “Til It Happens to You”, from The Hunting Ground
Best Original Score (21)
Tarantino’s little outburst at the Globes, spouting that Morricone has never won an Oscar, (technically untrue, he won an Honorary Oscar at the 2007 ceremony) basically ensured that H8ful Eight will garner one, and only one, award over the course of the evening.
That being said, Carter Burwell’s score for Carol was an exquisite treat that deserves to be recognized above Maestro Morricone, sorry to say.
Carol was a truly gross oversight by the Academy on two of the big categories (Director and Picture) and deserves every nomination and more. But I really want Fury Road to walk away with the night.
George Miller and his crew of lunatics crafted one of the craziest worlds ever in Fury Road. Frankly, nothing else comes close to its achievement in sheer world-building, even with its non-existent exposition.
Ex Machina and the under-seen Crimson Peak could also have benefited from some love here, but the Academy can’t help but shovel nominations out to lackluster things like The Danish Girl and Bridge of Spies. Heaven forbid we don’t give credit to the movies that will be remembered down the years as the best alternatives for sleep aids.
Ugh. Look, I like pretty pictures as much as anybody, but ‘Chivo’ has already won 2 consecutive Oscars, and his work on The Revenant proved more distracting than masterful. I much preferred the laid-back grain of Ed Lachman’s photography in Carol. Plus, lots of soft focus to increase the romantic tension.
Will Win: Emmanual Lubezki, The Revenant
Should Win: Ed Lachman, Carol
Foreign Language Film (18)
Son of Saul has been picking up a ridiculous amount of hype and awards buzz since mutterings of its power escaped the festival circuit early last year. Plus, it’s a Holocaust tale, and y’all should know how much the Academy loves that subject matter.
*Note that I haven’t seen any of the nominees yet, as foreign releases are negligible outside of the big, big cities (LA and NY), and Saul won’t see the silver screen in MI until March 4th. This is all gut instinct based on patterns in other award circuits. This is why there is no “should win” below. I feel I haven’t seen enough to make a confident choice.
Will Win: Son of Saul
Original (14) +Adapted Screenplay (15)
Another tough call. Typically, the Best Picture winner will pick up its assigned screenplay award, as with the case of the last few ceremonies. However, this is not always the case, as neither Million Dollar Baby nor The Artist picked up a screenplay award the night they won big.
In terms of original work, the Straight Outta Compton script could pick up the win as a peace-offering from the Academy for the #OscarsSoWhite debacle. But, Spotlight is the clear-cut victor of the bunch, seeing as it is neck and neck with The Revenant for the big prize. And Ex Machina gets a sympathy nomination knowing it won’t win anything. Cursed anti-science fiction Academy voters.
In the realm of Adapted work, critics and audiences have shown a lot of love for Brooklyn, the little movie that could, which could manifest into it’s only award of the evening. On the other hand, The Big Short had one of those scripts that was equally nutty and rage-inducing in all the right ways. Plus, Drew Goddard’s clever writing made The Martian the box office smash of the third quarter of 2015. This is a literal crapshoot, but with unbelievably high-quality pigeons.
Original, Will Win: Spotlight // Should Win: Ex Machina
In addition, Kate Winslet has been picking up mucho praise for her work in Steve Jobs; she even picked up the Golden Globe and was honestly shocked. This category, along with Best Picture, could go either way.
Will Win: Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Should’ve Been Nominated: Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina
Best Supporting Actor (23)
For the longest time, it seemed like Mark Rylance’s quiet spy from Bridge of Spies was the easy choice, but Sly Stallone is another one of those inevitable picks that only became apparent to me once the Golden Globes hit. When Sly picked up the Globe, there was a standing ovation. If that’s not a guaranteed in for Sly, I don’t know if such a thing exists.
Add in the fact that his performance is one of his personal best up there with his work in the seminal Rocky as well as his turn in James Mangold’s Cop Land. His Rocky Balboa is aged, but not down and out quite yet. Stallone’s journey through Hollywood has been a fascinating one, and it’s time he was rewarded for sticking the landing in such a graceful way.
Will+Should Win: Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Should’ve Been Nominated: Jacob Tremblay, Room
^+Steve Carell, The Big Short
Best Actress (16)
Brie Larson is, along with Leo and Sly, a shoo-in for her award.
She brings a true gravitas that speaks of her patience in the Hollywood landscape so far, and her role as ‘Ma’ was a star-making performance like nothing else offered to the Academy this year.
Now, that is not to say I wouldn’t be disappointed to see Saorise Ronan grab something for her delightful turn in Brooklyn. Both are equally deserving.
Will Win: Brie Larson, Room
Should Win: Brie Larson or Saorise Ronan, Brooklyn
Should’ve Been Nominated: Charlize Theron, Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Actor (24, Guaranteed)
Leo has finally got his Oscar, all for scowling over 2-½ hours.
11 years too late, as well.
–
sigh-
Will Win: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Should Win: I dunno. . .Fassbender?
Should Have Been Nominated: Michael Keaton, Spotlight
Best Director (9)
My dubious research into the depths of Oscar predictions gave me one significant bright spot/potential upset: George Miller will win Best Director.
At first I was in shocked denial, but then I thought on it more. The Academy loves to hand out career awards, and for once, this could work in ol’ Georgie’s favor. He’s been pulling his weight for nearly 40 years in the business after coming to it from being an emergency surgeon. And this career achievement award would coincide with his greatest, most impressive directorial work since Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior. Plus, AMPAS could see his effort as pulling off what Linklater did with Boyhood last year, with all his struggles, genius choices, and smart editing shining through his action-packed opus. Thank the Academy for that small relief.
Will+SHOULD Win: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Should’ve Been Nominated: Sir Ridley Scott, The Martian
+Alex Garland, Ex Machina
and finally:
~BEST PICTURE~ (6)
All right, let’s get this outta the way at the start:
My two favorites, Brooklyn and Fury Road, don’t have a chance at the top prize, unless the Big Three Choices split the vote, like what happened with Crash back in 2006. Frankly, that would delight me, but I’m gonna be safe and narrow it down from the Big Three: Spotlight, The Revenant, and The Big Short.
Of the three, The Big Short has been picking up the most momentum since it was a surprise Golden Globe nominee. It also won the Producer’s Guild Award, but that is it so far. It could be the surprise winner that takes the audience off-guard, having built up speed over the holiday and corresponding awards season.
The heavy hitter out of the gate is The Revenant, having won the BAFTA (British equivalent of the Oscar), the Director’s Guild Award, the Golden Globe for Best Drama, and numerous others. But, it has no script nomination, and no film has won Best Picture without a screenplay nomination since Titanic in 1998.
Spotlight is the tried-and-true pick of the trio, having won the SAG Award for Best Ensemble, the Gotham Award for Best Film, the Critic’s Choice Award, and the Satellite Award for Best Motion Picture. Its cast is legendary, its script has been lauded all over, and the direction was exceptional, considering the director previously made the universally-hated Adam Sandler vehicle, The Cobbler.
Taking all of this into account, here’s how I narrowed it down. Bridge of Spies leaves no noticeable impression upon viewing, it’s outta here! Room is out due to story structure problems I mentioned in my review. The Martian proved to be a crowd-pleasing box-office smash, but the Academy is still notoriously and inexplicably anti-science fiction. My beloved Fury Road is just too weird for the old fogies of the Academy, so I’m resting on it picking up six other awards. Brooklyn is the quiet innocent among the cutthroat Oscar race, so it’s doomed from the start. On top of all that hype, I’m knocking out The Revenant due to superstition over that phantom screenplay, and plus Alejandro already won big last year.
Between Spotlight and The Big Short, my gut tells me to go with Spotlight, seeing as the Academy could give it to make up for snubbing All the President’s Men way back in ’76 (which lost to Rocky, humorously enough). Though, my subconscious instinct tells me that The Big Short could be the troublemaker that flips the night on its head.
Who knows anyway? We shall see, Sunday evening. Until then, Witness Me!!
Will Win: Spotlight, I guess.
What I Want to Win: Brooklyn // Mad Max: Fury Road
Of all the Oscar nominees, Bridge of Spies is the one I’ve been dreading writing about the most. My feelings on the latest Spielberg drama are complicated, due to my internal struggles to classify it by that terrible, outdated binary distinction of it being a “good movie” or a “bad movie”. It’s almost as if my inner film snob is trying to strangle itself, Dr. Strangelove-style.
In terms of technical craft, it is fine.
But I don’t talk technicals in my reviews. I talk about emotions, characters, stories, images, concepts, and interesting and memorable events. And when the first thing that comes to mind after a STEVEN SPIELBERG MOVIE of all things is the technical craft, the alarms start to go off. This is a director whose whole of his image is based in his innate ability to play the audience like the orchestra, swelling emotions like string sections under the hand of maestro John Williams. And yet, here is a film that left me feeling… nothing.
I walked out of the movie acutely aware that a craftsman, whom I have respected as an artist for years, had tried to manipulate my feelings for the characters and story before me, and he failed hard. Like the far, far worse The Danish Girl, I find that the more I think about it, the less I appreciate it. And I just loathed TheDanish Girl from frame one save for Alicia Vikander, while initially I did try to defend some of the more troubling aspects of Bridge of Spies as soon as I viewed it before Christmas.
The acting is just unimpressive on the whole. Tom Hanks played his role as you’d expect Tom Hanks to play any role outside of the realm of the Wachowski siblings, and I didn’t care. Amy Ryan as his wife makes no significant impression, whatsoever. Alan Alda makes his rounds as still relevant older actor, yawn. The kid playing Francis Gary Powers, of the U-2 Spy incident, doesn’t make any sort of impact that he’s supposed to. Character actors come and go portraying various degrees of hostility, strong-arming, and intolerance that you’d expect from any message movie.
Of the whole cast of characters, the only one who makes a substantial impression is Academy Award-nominee Mark Rylance as the incriminated spy Rudolf Abel. In a movie filled with stuffy and stale archetypes, he brings a quiet precision to his character, sighing at the complexities of American justice systems prejudiced against any semblance of equality for his petty actions. The direction is where this movie falls short in terms of audience sympathy for the American characters, or any characters actually.
Granted, a good portion of the screenplay was at one point in the hands of the Joel and Ethan, the Coen Brothers. They bring a fast-paced banter to the story that certainly lifts it above uninvolving period drama and upgrades it to a level of ambition that is still mildly entertaining, just not successful in winning me over. That being said, classy banter does not a good movie make. Take for example the 1992 remake of the classic, low-budget noir Detour; that movie had an excellent hard-boiled script, but the actors just couldn’t handle it and the movie completely fails as thriller and drama. The difference between Bridge of Spies and Hail, Caesar is there were characters and situations that intrigued me in the latter, while I was nearly bored to tears in Spies.
The direction is where I realized just how unhappy I was with the movie. Spielberg tries on multiple occasions to grab on to emotions that were nonexistent on my end throughout. At the big trial, Tom Hanks makes a grand old speech for liberty and justice for all, and it lands with a hollow thud. I wasn’t swayed to his side as I should have been because I was already there. I believe in liberty and justice for all, this isn’t that ethically dubious, spy or no spy. Later on, we view youths in East Germany being gunned down as they attempt to cross the Berlin Wall. And again, it felt hollow. I felt like I was getting reheated outtakes from Schindler’s List, in a lesser package. I felt Spielberg simply going through the motions rather than making an honest effort.
The reason I mentioned technicals above is that, on paper, this film works fine. The editing, camera work, sound, music all do their jobs, but they overshadowed the lacking sense of story and investment/stakes. That is the sign of a truly flawed script and directorial duties. Trying to get involved in the storytelling and coming up empty save for “it looked nice, and sounded nice” is not the reaction this movie needed.
~Now let’s change gears and talk about a truly excellent movie that was snubbed in categories Bridge of Spies picked up.~
Carol is a much smaller scale movie than the latest Spielberg project, being the tale of a unique relationship ignited between an amateur photographer/full-time department store clerk and a married housewife. The film stars Rooney Mara of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network fame, alongside screen demigoddess Cate Blanchett, two-time Oscar-winner and patron saint of screen actors, whom audiences may recognize from the Lord of the Rings saga and The Monuments Men.
The story does concern itself with certain subjects that are still in contention throughout much of the United States. The unique relationship of mention is a close friendship that does evolve into lesbianism. The first hour is foreplay and character buildup for the ingénue Therese (pronounced Teh-rezz) and the lovely titular Carol Aird. The film doesn’t jump headlong into the intimacies of the bedroom, rather it explores the intimacies of female relationships in the early 1960s.
The acting is utterly top-notch. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are radiant whenever they get a chance to steal the focus from Ed Lachman’s gorgeous photography. Also along for the narrative are Kyle Chandler as Harge, Carol’s estranged husband and Sarah Paulson as Carol’s best friend and confidante, Abby. The characters transcend their performers and take on actual existence on the screen, which is the goal of all great film performances. Under careful, consolidated direction from Todd Haynes, the cast work alongside one another, moving the story along at a good pace, keeping the performances front and center in tandem with the imagery and Carter Burwell’s ingenious scoring.
Seriously, the music is incredible. As much as I loved the thrilling tones of Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to The H8ful Eight, I feel the score to Carol is so much more moving and deserving of recognition. The score is most certainly Mr. Burwell’s most Burwellian score, since Fargo at the least. The best way to describe it is an Adagio for Love as influenced by Phillip Glass. The strings and piano combine to form a perfect ode of nostalgia and melodrama, like one’s memory of a first love.
Topping off my list of exquisite elements of Carol is the imagery, delivered through the lens of Oscar-nominated Ed Lachman. The film was shot on Super 16 millimeter film, exuding a sense of being shown a private stash of home movies. The generous amount of soft lighting and truly lush color adds to the dream-like quality of the pictures. I mentioned H8ful Eight previously, and I have to say, even with all of Tarantino’s grandstanding about his use of 70-mm film in that project, methinks this little film about love makes a better case for preservation of physical film elements than that film did in all of its bloated three hours.
Unlike Bridge of Spies, I was fully invested in the love story on-screen from the minute we are introduced to Carol and Therese. There wasn’t a single moment where I lost interest in what was unfolding between the lovers and struggled to reattach my attention to anything, be it a filmmaking or storytelling element. Through the emotional journey audiences are transported on, the romantic tension and surprising amount of dramatic involvement will catch audiences off guard.
See, Carol is going through a divorce over the course of the film, and her husband Harge does not approve of the relationship she initiates with young Therese. There is a single moment shortly past the halfway point where a betrayal takes place that truly puts the stakes of Carol’s marriage into focus. With such stakes present, the hardest of hearts will be hard-pressed to honestly say they can’t relate to Carol’s decisions, regardless of her lifestyle choices.
The Academy most ungraciously passed Carol over for Best Picture and Best Director. Initially, I felt
shocked and disturbed by the omissions. But then I thought about the Academy’s history with LGBTQ projects and then it hit me. The previous projects of queer intrigue recognized by AMPAS all contained a significant arc of tragedy. Brokeback Mountain, The Imitation Game, Midnight Cowboy, Dallas Buyers Club, and Milk were nominated for Best Picture, but only Midnight Cowboy took home the statuette, and all ended poorly for their characters. The sole exception to this pattern being 2010’s The Kids are All Right, but since that was a comedy, which the Academy has a terrible history of overlooking, it received nothing for its efforts.
Carol is not by any means a tragedy; it is a tad harrowing at times, but the tone of the film is not one of “woe is me, for I am queer”. And actually, the focus is not on the genders, but on the romance, something more queer movies should take note of. It’s an update on the Romeo and Juliet story with the tragic bits replaced with that of 1950s and 60s high melodrama, which director Todd Haynes mastered previously in the Best Director-nominated Far from Heaven.
The point of it all is that instead of gracing a daring and matter-of-fact presentation of queer romance with well-earned recognition, the Academy went with the lazy, easy choice of nominating the old-hat, typical choice that only points to how outdated and out-of-sync the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are with increasingly progressive movie audiences. For an organization that previously gave big awards and recognition to the likes of 12 Years a Slave and Philadelphia, the Oscars seem to act more like they are filling thematic quotas rather than actively recognizing quality film efforts that just so happen to push boundaries.
Brett’s Personal Picks: Championing the Un-Nominated
It is awards season, so I just gotta give some love to the flicks that the big Tinseltown award parades passed by, undeservedly so. Here be the nominations that Hollywood messed up, plain and simple.
Achievement in Sound Editing: Love and Mercy
As much as I adored the hellish machinations of the sound crew on FURY ROAD, I choose to champion the smaller movie that got absolutely no love at the Globes or the Oscars. Love and Mercy, the Brian Wilson biopic, was a truly engrossing and emotional journey through the life experience of the boy genius behind the Beach Boys. Paul Dano, John Cusack, Elizabeth Banks, and Paul Giamatti were great performers in the film, but the highlight was the sound score. Not simply the music, but the soundscapes that emulate the inner workings of Wilson’s musical intuition that permeates the movie like an anarchic blanket that constantly buzzes, hums, throbs, and rattles over and under the action. It provided a perfect aural compliment to the musical charms and the emotional peaks and valleys that were presented over the course of the film’s length. By all means look for this one. I’m sorry to have missed it in theaters.
Best Production Design +Costume Design, Crimson Peak
The artists who land the gig of working for Guillermo del Toro are among the most blessed individuals working in the industry, exponentially moreso than Kirk Cameron can claim to be. The settings and properties even outside of the massive mansion are dripping with period specificity. The film reeks of both Hammer horror and Victorian Sears Roebuck catalogue. Taking the horror elements out of the discussion, the film just looks right. The halls are as spooky as what you’d expect of a creepy mansion. The cities look classy, yet still natural without too much whitewashing of the presence of little things like mud and clay. And the costuming is simply superb, all threads looking lived in and actually wearable unlike those that Disney has it’s feminine characters clad in. It is a delight to see a slight case of naturalism injected into costuming, because your brain tends to flag things that just don’t look right in costuming, but Guillermo and his staff are already way ahead of that curve. I really need to own The Art of Darkness, the concept art book where I got the image from.
Best Supporting Actress of the Year: TIE Jessica Chastain, Crimson Peak + Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina
Both actresses had busy years, with Chastain pulling in double duty with Ridley Scott’s The Martian, and Vikander having the busy year to rival Ex Machina co-star Domhnall Gleeson, with roles in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Danish Girl, and Ex Machina. While Ms. Vikander is nominated for an Oscar for Danish Girl, I will argue to the last day that she was nominated for the wrong role, much like Leo is going to win for the wrong role. She only stood out in Danish Girl because her level of talent and ability was too good for that incredibly hollow and lackluster movie. I will say that she is an adorable dancer, though.
On the other hand, Chastain was the stand-out of the ensemble of Guillermo del Toro’s ode to gothic romance and ghost stories, exhibiting a mad tenacity reminiscent of the golden age of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford that some might call “scenery-chewing”, but I refer to as insanely entertaining acting. Every time Chastain’s Lucille Sharpe appeared on screen, all eyes are immediately on her, for fear if you don’t pay close attention she’ll sneak up and whisk you off to oblivion. Both actresses sent chills down my spine in an age when most movies are lucky to get someone pretty in them that can read lines with half-decent conviction. Alas, no one listens to the court jester when the enemies are at the gate. They’ll learn eventually.
Best Supporting Actor of the Year: Tom Hardy, Mad Max FURY ROAD
*Most probably expect me to go with Benicio del Toro in recognition of his harrowing turn in SICARIO, and while I did admire Benicio’s work, I take into account that he’s already won an Oscar before. My specialty is supporting those who have not yet been recognized; on that note, Tom Hardy!
Mister Hardy has proven to be a force of nature on-set, off-set, and online. And as with Vikander above, he is nominated for The Revenant. But I will argue he is actually more deserving for carrying the torch from Mel Gibson rather well in portraying “Mad” Max Rockatansky. He still has the anti-social ticks, the subdued to the point of repressed emotional responses, and the animalistic swagger that made Mad Max well and truly mad in all senses of the wording. Most viewers will tell you, Max is very much a supporting presence in the movie, though still important nonetheless. His name may be on the title but it could have easily been called simply FURY ROAD, had the bean-counters at Warner Brothers not insisted on name-dropping the franchise because why treat your audience like they are smart when you can double down and bet on the unintelligent flocking to your movie like sheep? Funny, CREED seemed to draw in crowds without Rocky Balboa’s name on the marquee…
One of the most memorable aspects of Miller’s epic action-fest was the smaller moments dealing with Max’s internal demons, taking form of a type of post-traumatic stress disorder, accentuating the times that he’s failed to save others from the dangers of the unruly Wasteland. These moments could easily have been throwaway moments, but they build to payoff after emotional payoff that only confirm the solidarity of Georgie’s storytelling and the wonderful dramatic presence that is Tom Hardy, Esquire. As good as Fitzgerald turned out in Alejandro’s brutally bloated take on the western, without Hardy or a similar Nick Nolte level of performer, the character would have simply come and gone as a decent villain archetype. Max needed proper and considered care in order to translate properly into a new generation, and Miller and Hardy undoubtedly succeeded in giving him that.
Best Screenplay: CREED, Ryan Coogler & Aaron Covington
People went into CREED expecting only the bare essentials of a Rocky-caliber movie, and most crowds came out shocked and pumped. Coogler and his partner-in-crime Covington didn’t falter in keeping the spirit of Rocky Balboa’s Philadelphia alive, while infusing it with a fresh and culturally diverse perspective that is lacking in too much of the current Hollywood fare. He acknowledges the past work while ushering in a sense of new directions for the denizens of Philly. The opening scene alone deserves a mention for never stepping to the level of cheese or corny revelations that Stallone may have infused it with had he directed or written it. Nothing against Sly, but his writing style would not have meshed well with what Coogler was trying to convey in CREED.
Best Actress: Charlize Theron, Mad Max FURY ROAD
The Academy has always had a problem with recognizing exceptional performances in genre films. The only exceptions have been in such films that have art-house origins, typically in their director, such as in the case of that little science fiction called G R A V I T Y a couple years ago. Charlize Theron truly owns FURY ROAD hand in hand with the visionary director George Miller. Her Furiosa marches, fights, and screams like a primal being from the tribal days. She is the main driving force of the story line. Furiosa’s sense of maternal anguish over the women in her care and the obstacles she has to hurdle are palpable just by a glimpse of her eyes and body language. She tries to keep it together, but she has moments of wavering, and it is devastating each and every time. It doesn’t hurt that she is also the legendary Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley levels of badass, coincidentally an Oscar-nominated performance. <– The More You Know
Point is, you don’t mess with Charlize Theron, period. I know she’s already won an Oscar as well, but her work as Furiosa was an exceptional performance that redefines the scope of action heroine. She transcends the mere confines of action cinema and becomes an key emotional center for the film, alongside the Wives she protects, with hermechanicalarm.
Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan, CREED
Of all the snubs that the Oscars could easily have avoided if they had made the effort, this one stings the most. Michael B. Jordan has been working his way up the figurative Hollywood ladder for a few years now, and unfortunately his 2015 resume was stained by the flop of Fant4stic, which certain critics, whose voice does not matter, will blame on the diverse casting of Johnny Storm in part. Frankly, an actor paired with a horrible script and sub-par direction is doomed to appear incompetent. With CREED, Jordan reunites with Ryan Coogler who directed him in his freshman effort, Fruitvale Station. And Jordan brings all the emotions to the forefront in his portrayal of the illegitimate offspring of legendary boxer Apollo Creed. Young Adonis has some abandonment issues, struggles with his personal anger and loneliness, and is not at all the gold-hearted bum like Rocky Balboa. And it never paints him as a jerk, with all his problems. He’s troubled, but not a bully. And that’s just what CREED needed in its protagonist.
Best Director: Ryan Coogler, CREED
As mentioned previously, Coogler’s handling of the Rocky universe really blindsided audiences and critics alike. As with his scripting, he keeps the material fresh through his kinetic sense of storytelling that hurdles over cliches like the pavement Adonis speeds down in training. The choices of direction shine within, never overshadowing the material like Alejandro’s visionary flourishes tend to in the likes of previous Best Picture BiRDMAN. He handles the camera similar to how Michigan-native Sam Raimi directed The Evil Dead in 1980, directing as if this was his last chance, though Coogler never strives into the extravagant as Raimi most likely would have. There are a few long takes in CREED, but they feel right for the narrative and don’t cry out for attention like certain directors would make them. They function more like fun Easter eggs that add to film lovers’ enjoyments on re-watches. Coogler was overlooked for Fruitvale Station back in 2013 and now it’s happened again. I hope this isn’t a shoddy pattern you’re starting, Academy.
Best Animated Feature: The PEANUTS Movie
I know I gave Inside Out a glowing review back in the day, and I do stand by that it is a marvelous comeback for PIXAR Animation. But, upon rewatch, several character and narrative flaws became evident that I was too starstruck to notice the first couple times I saw the film. That being said, the lifelong Charles Schulz fan in me will not stop promoting this gem of a film that was overlooked in favor of the PIXAR powerhouse, another example of how Disney just has the Oscars in their pocket. This film gets childhood like Inside Out gets mental development. But PEANUTS deals with interpersonal relations, carrying itself with good humor, fun for all ages to enjoy, and truly unpredictable aerial battles that give every recent war movie a run for its money. What makes me push for its recognition even more so is Blue Sky’s charming update of the classic PEANUTS animation style. The animation kept the style classic enough to keep audiences recognizing the classic characters, updating it but never pushing into the uncanny valley like PIXAR and Disney has been notable at fumbling into. All this present in a movie that at its heart is about a boy and his dog. What a film.
Best Comedy: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Yes, yes. Trainwreck was surprisingly good considering the track record of Judd Apatow and co., and it undoubtedly was the most popular comedy at the box office this year, but this is not a measurement of the popular picks. This is a subjective article on what some pudgy, Caucasian film snob from the Midwest thought of the cinematic year. That said, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is like a lost Wes Anderson coming-of-age film set in a high school filled to the brim with teens at the peak of their inherent awkwardness. This story of a socially misanthropic amateur filmmaker who befriends a leukemia-stricken classmate is told with the goofiest of hearts and honest themes that grip your heartstrings and takes no prisoners. Beware of films with “thematic elements”; those are the flicks that’ll give y’all the feels. And your cheeks will be very teary by close, thanks in part to the humor and the great characters you feel for.
Best Horror Film: Crimson Peak
The absolute best thing about watching Crimson Peak is the sense of detail and history that the director and his crew infuse everything with. Every set dressing feels real and like it was plucked from the best preserved Edwardian-era home on Long Island. Every costume breathes and ruffles appropriately without looking like it was just picked up from the local Kostume Room. The mood seeps through the celluloid and drips into your bones, like a harsh wind that subtly makes its way across the countryside. The cast glides through the brilliantly composed settings like specters of an age gone by. The sounds that reverberate down the cavernous halls of Allerdale Hall are super effective, like ice chips in homemade ice cream. And now every critic supreme will jump down my throat, demanding to know why It Follows, the obvious pick, isn’t sitting atop this title. Meanwhile, I’ll be enjoying myself just revisiting another Guillermo-helmed meisterwerk. More for me.
Best Science Fiction: Ex Machina
I will never get the Academy’s attitude against the science fiction and fantasy genre, as I’m sure there is a dedicated group petitioning for The Force Awakens to be nominated simply for not being disappointing as the previous entries. But this little film from the writer of the acclaimed zombie actioner 28 Days Later and bloody superhero reboot DREDD (a personal favorite of mine) stunned all with its lurking sense of curious anxiety. As the protagonist further studies Ava, the artificial intelligence created by an arrogant software baron, he comes to question his own station in life and the hierarchy of first-world humanity and the toys they create. Long story short, the film makes you think about the world we live in by making us slightly uncomfortable with the advances we are making in technology. Alicia Vikander is perfect as Ava, Domhnall Gleeson makes a great protagonist, and Oscar Isaac is also a likable sleaze as the carefree whizkid who plays God with his circuit boards and “wetware” android brains. The film’s pretty neo/post-modern architecture adds to the isolation of the mood, and director Alex Garland’s ingenious scripting just tightens the screws until the audience has no choice but to squirm.
Best Drama/Best Picture: Carol
Undoubtedly the biggest missed opportunity of this year’s award nominations, apparent racial discrimination aside. This small-scale romance about the affair between an affluent, but troubled mother and a department store ingenue was a perfect theatrical experience. The performances from screen goddesses Blanchett and Rooney Mara, plus roles by cult favorite Sarah Paulson, and television’s Kyle Chandler were spot-on and heartfelt, never straying into one- or two-dimensional caricature. The imagery was lustrous and just stunning from frame one. The music was the most ingeniously Burwellian thing Mr. Carter Burwell has ever composed. And to top it all off, the film is the perfect length. I can’t think of a single extraneous scene or situation that needed trimming. It is so rare to find a film that doesn’t overstay its welcome in the age of 3-hour length Transformers sequels and pretty but overblown Oscar-bait. If you haven’t yet, by all means see this movie before it disappears. CAROL deserves the big screen appreciation.
And, for the pièce de résistance:
Best Stuntwork, Mad Max FURY ROAD
What gives Academy? You have been flaking out on stunt performers for decades, and they actually made several of your movies classics. John Ford’s Stagecoach is legendary for the climactic chase with the Apaches, with guns a’smokin’ and performers leaping off and flying off horses. The Matrix owes its success solely to its originality in its stunt-work. Jason fricking Statham has been lobbying for recognition for stunt performers for years, and y’all just sit there pouting, refusing to acknowledge the people who actually risk their fragile well-beings for the sake of your entertainment. I anxiously await the day all the out-of-touch troglodytes are shuffled out of the system and we can retroactively give these people the respect and honor that the SAG Awards can manage to recognize, but the Hollywood Foreign Press and AMPAS are too self-centered to honor. Take my advice and don’t look both ways when crossing the street, you ungrateful snobs.
*Methinks I’ll do pieces on each of the Big Oscar Contenders, seeing as I have already done pieces on Trumbo, FURYROAD, The Martian, and The Revenant, as well as mentioned that little gem Spotlight. Expect a CREED review soon, as well as something on Room, The Big Short, and possibly Bridge of Spies. No promises on the latter.
As far as the Academy Awards go, one of the easiest ways to impress the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is to tell a unique, simple story really well, in a memorable way. Take as an example a movie about ambassadors trapped in a hostile country that have a fake film crew organized by the CIA to rescue them: Argo, the Best Picture winner from 3 years ago. A small-time boxer and low-rent enforcer overcomes his station in life to go the distance to spar with the heavyweight champion of the world of boxing, and finds romance along the way: 1976’s Best Picture and beloved franchise kick-starter ROCKY.
Now, I assume some readers presume the worst in me since I have been touting the praises of Mad Max: FURY ROAD since its release back in May of 2015, and could not be happier to see it as a big Academy Award contender. As an avid fan of genre films and the director’s work, I will chalk up a lot of my hype for the film as fan-boyish glee, knowing that one of my favorite things about film and fantasy is being recognized by the star-making industry event that is The Oscars(tm).
And while I hope it sweeps the technical categories (visual fx, sound, designs) instead of the STAR WARS juggernaut and possibly takes one of the Big 5 (Picture or Director) away from the clear favorite The Revenant, I don’t presume to call FURY ROAD the winner out of the gate, since I’ve been disappointed too often before by the powers that be.
And to those readers who curl their lips to my feelings on defending my post-apocalyptic ice-cream sundae of artistic chaos, I offer a concession: If the Oscar doesn’t go to FURY ROAD, I hope it goes to BROOKLYN.
BROOKLYN is a film I would refer to as the “little movie that could”. ‘Tis the dark horse of a most competitive Best Picture race. The small-scale romance movie tells the tale of Eilis (pronounced AY-lish) a young lady who moves to the United States in the early 1950s to escape the droll life she leads among the gossips and the matrons of Enniscorty, a small village in southeast Ireland. Leaving her mother and sister behind, after a slightly harrowing boat ride, she arrives in New York, passes through Ellis Island, and finds quarters at a boarding house in the titular borough, with some lively boarders including some shopgirls who help her get her start in the busy world of American life. She connects with a kindly Irish priest, who starts her in a night class to learn bookkeeping. At a community dance, she meets a handsome, slightly shy Italian boy named Tony, and the two quickly fall into love with each other.
We as an audience proceed to follow a delightful little treat of a romantic journey between two adorable people and the trials that come up between them when Eilis suddenly has to return to Ireland to deal with a bit of family drama. Once she arrives back to the land of her birth, she is courted by another young man and is expected to settle down in her old community for the sake of her little village standing. Eilis must make tough decisions that could decide her life’s journey for the better. And it is beautiful.
What most people don’t know about me, judging solely on what I present to the world, is that while I give off the air of a desperate, sardonic adrenaline junkie and hardcore action man, I am a hopeless romantic at heart. And I love a good romance movie. None of that rubbish that Nicholas Sparks sells in his recycled works, not the uncomfortably by-the-numbers that pass for romantic comedies these days, I mean a true blue story about human beings, not stereotypes, who fall in love, and the sometimes harrowing emotional journey that love takes them on.
A scene from the early Academy Award winner SUNRISE
Confession time: My favorite movie of all time is SUNRISE: A Song of Two Humans. The story concerns a farmer, tempted by a woman from the city, who becomes convinced he should murder his wife in order to move to the city with his mistress. It tells a low-key, low-stakes story with graceful storytelling, careful performances from its two leads, and gorgeous photography that influenced modern filmmaking all the way back in 1927.
Fun fact that few people know or remember: At the first Academy Awards in 1929, they gave out two Best Picture Awards. AMPAS gifted SUNRISE the second one, titled “Unique and Artistic Production”, but scrapped its legacy by retroactively declaring the other winner, the war drama Wings, to be the better picture that year. I have seen both films, and I have to say, like too many times, the Academy is Wrong.
BROOKLYN reminded me heavily of the romantic tale at the center of Sunrise. I, along with other audiences and critics worldwide, was caught up in the beautiful story of love that blossoms among the backdrop of the big city, and the youthful tenderness that accompanies early love. The performances by the whole cast is superb, from Julie Walters as the head of Eilis’ boarding house to accomplished character actor Jim Broadbent as the friendly priest that Eilis confides in. Even Actor of the Year Domhnall Gleeson is enjoyable to watch as the bashful suitor awaiting Eilis back in Ireland.
But undoubtedly the heart of the film is the two leads, Saorise Ronan, (pronounced SIR-shah) and Emory Cohen. Ronan is charming to boot as the feisty young lady determined to make her own way in life with or without the aid of others, though she continually receives it because she’s just so adorable and admirable to those around her. And as much as I applaud the awards buzz Ms. Ronan is receiving for her darling role, the Academy missed out not nominating Emory Cohen for Supporting Actor. As Tony, he obviously aches for Eilis whenever she isn’t around and exudes an old-fashioned chivalry that transcends his humble roots as a poor plumber’s apprentice. To add to that, Indiewire included him on their list of the 16 Best Characters of 2015, among the likes of Furiosa from FURY ROAD, and Jack, the little boy from Room, another approaching Oscarwatch subject.
I adored this little movie, and am most happy to have caught it while it was still humbling its way around the theatrical circuits. Catch it if you can while the Oscars are still promoting it, at the likes of Woodland mall, where you can see it for only $5! Peace and Love, y’all.
All right, it’s your favorite time, it’s my favorite time: It’s Unpopular Opinion Time! -wow- ~awesome~
Today’s first topic is that infernal Oscars controversy and then I’ll get on with my thoughts on the latest Iñárritu. Sound good? Alright.
–ahem–
Y’all should know by now that the Oscars are run by a group of middle-aged white men who tend to hand off awards to a specific type of movie [vanilla, slightly trendy period drama or ham-handed message movie about the environment/war/poverty/racism/mental illness/cultural malaise] and are as willing to change their ways as the modern Republican party. Is it any surprise these people are nominating prominently Caucasians instead of more than worthy people of color?
In the previous 25 Oscar ceremonies, Best Picture has gone to a movie prominently featuring non-whites only 3.5 times*. I count Dances with Wolves as half, since it is still primarily this guy’s movie:
‘Murica
by Kevin Costner
In defense of the current nominations, I will say this. I’ve seen a fair majority of the nominees and can’t fault the choices for the most part. That is not to say there is not room for improvement. On the contrary, I spotted a few spaces where the Academy stooped to the lazy nomination choice, for example Eddie Redmayne for that abomination The Danish Girl took a place that could, And Should, have been occupied by Michael B. Jordan for CREED. In addition, Ryan Coogler should have gotten a director nod for said film in place of Iñárritu, who already won last year for a slightly better film, plus Benicio del Toro should have easily secured a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his devastating turn in SICARIO.
Other than that, a lot of the people of color performances just couldn’t top what was chosen. I love Idris Elba as much as the next person, and I appreciated his role in Netflix’s flagship title Beasts of No Nation, but I can’t say he’d have been a better choice than Benicio or Mark Ruffalo’s turn in Spotlight, or Tom Hardy. The only one Elba had a chance to overcome was Christian Bale, who I feel was put on a pedestal above Steve Carell’s equally, if not more, compelling performance in The Big Short. Other than that, Straight Outta Compton was exceptional, and had a surprisingly good cast, but it would not have been on my personal list for Best Picture, and no one from the cast truly stood out. That is not to say the acting was lacking, far from it. But the strength in the performances was in the sense of ensemble that came about whenever they were together on screen. At least I would have considered the movie, unlike what AMPAS did.
I am now stepping down from my soapbox; we now return to your regularly scheduled movie criticism.
Getting this here joke outta the way now.
The Revenant is a good movie. I will not dispute its worth as a piece of entertainment to be viewed au cinema. It is a frustrating, self-importance-touting, frontier art-house flick that, at the end of the day, I feel deserves to be nominated as one of the 10 (8 *cough*) Best Pictures of the Year. But, it does not deserve to win anything.
What’s it all about, you ask?
Hugh Glass and his half-breed son are tagging along with a crew of frontiersman transporting furs, when suddenly a troupe of renegade Arikawa tribesman attack the men and send them fleeing down the river with massive casualties. Fitzgerald, one of the brigands whose sole livelihood was the abandoned furs, takes out his frustrations on Glass, causing tension to fill the group. While hunting further in the wilderness, Glass is viciously set upon by a mother grizzly, in one of the most anxiety-inducing action scenes of 2015. Afterwards, Glass is laid up and left in Fitzgerald’s care until he either regains his strength or dies and is buried.
But the treacherous brigand tries smothering Glass, is caught by Glass’ half-breed son, and dispatches the boy so as to wipe all evidence of his wrongdoing away, escaping to a fort to claim his rewards for “doing what had to be done”. But Glass is still quite alive, and now thirsts for revenge. He limps his way through the wilds of frontier-era territories to find retribution as well as civilization, dodging the renegade tribe after his fellow crew, and struggling to heal his wounds and survive long enough to confront his nemesis before nature claims him as well.
Let’s talk the look of the film as a whole: People get messed up, a lot. Arrows fly, men’s faces are bloodied in the worst of ways, people on horseback fly off cliff sides, Glass has to treat a horse like that poor Tauntaun from The Empire Strikes Back, he eats raw buffalo liver, it all gets pretty intense. The film looks great, in all its brutal glory. This is to be expected; it’s shot by now 8-time Academy Award-nominee and 2-time winner Emmanuel ‘Chivo’ Lubezki, who shot both G R A V I T Y and last year’s Best Picture BiRDMAN. Here’s the thing though, the entire movie reminded me of another very flawed, visually epic film adaptation: Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth.
Now, those of you who read my things will know that I mentioned that film as one to look out for come its release sometime in December. Welp, I saw it, and here’s one of the problems with both movies: Both films are filled to the brim with “trailer fuel”, shots that look amazing and will look great in the trailer for the film. But the whole film just screams “Look at me, I’m so interesting and pretty” and the audience tiredly nods like parents with over-excited children.
I feel most film should be like a good meal. The meat should be hearty and excellent, that is here. Every single shot is the photographic equivalent of a blue-ribbon slice of filet mignon. But, everything in the movie is a perfect shot, and I love filet mignon, but I can’t make a whole meal out of piece after piece of filet mignon. I need a side dish, one that’s not filet mignon. My champagne glass should not be filled to the brim with steak juice is what I am saying.
Wow: That’s a great shot! The MOVIE
Onto the little director that could: Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu. He proved last year he was a visionary, with wit, charm, and a limit to his pretense that made The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance a neat treat of narrative and visual flair that was certainly worthy of a nomination for Best Picture.
Here’s the rub: He thinks too much. Seriously, there could be a good 20-25 minutes cut out of this movie for the sake of making it less pretentious and slightly more palatable. I hold no issue with the brutal nature of the violence or things that happen to Glass and his fellow frontiersman. I hold issue with the fact that there can be small cuts made here and there to keep the flow going, narratively. The Pirates of the Caribbean series also has this issue. The director refuses to sacrifice a frame of their vision and it can be aggravatingly slow-paced.
This does not mean Alejandro doesn’t know what he is doing. I can see what Alejandro is going for, after all one of my all-time favorite flicks is Lawrence of Arabia. That film was later described by one of its stars as “four hours long…no women, and no love story, and not much action either, and he wants to spend a huge amount of money to go film it in the desert”. I can appreciate his efforts, but he ends just short of the mark. Please don’t give him another Oscar simply because he made something that looks nice.
^Long story short: The Man Won His Oscar Last Year. Give it to Georgie.
Oh, Leo. You under-appreciated over-achiever, you. I appreciate all you’ve done over the years to entertain us. Catch Me if You Can is still a delightful romp of fun and intrigue, The Aviator showed your acting chops just right, Inception gave you a little something different that still had strengths for you to flex, and Django Unchained was psychotic fun from the moment you arrived onscreen. I truly appreciate your breadth of work.
I think you could’ve done better here.
My problem is not what Leo does in this movie. It’s what he doesn’t do. The character is two-note: Cautious Experienced Hunter & Revenge-seeking Revenant. He screams occasionally, like when he’s attacked by the bear, or when he finally confronts his adversary at the tail end of his journey. But in between those bursts, he is stuck with this comical scowl on his face that is supposed to stand in for emotion as he treks through the wilds of the American frontier for the sake of REVENGE.
At times, he will dream of his dead wife and his recently-deceased son, then he looks sad for a moment’s time. Then he wakes and he keeps on trekking, scowl plastered back on his face. There is no defined range that we saw in the likes of The Wolf of Wall Street or the under-appreciated grindhouse throwback Shutter Island. We’ve come to expect a range of things from this actor, and the film hobbles him by limiting him. That is wasting your talent. Not as in Leo is wasting it, but the film is wasting the talents of a gifted performer.
Now I expect a fair amount of backlash over my feelings on Leo along the lines of, “But you loved Tom Hardy’s rugged mug in FURY ROAD, and he spends most of that movie looking desperate and grunting every few minutes. You hypocrite!”
But, with Mad Max FURY ROAD, we have a franchise backlog of 3 other movies that contain Max’s backstory and experience to reference, and even with that the movie does a good job of catching us up without clunky exposition. Mel Gibson wasn’t exactly the most expressive Rockatansky after the first Mad Max. Tom Hardy did well carrying the torch as previous.
Speaking of Tom Hardy’s rugged mug, much like the similarly troubled H8ful Eight, this movie does have its share of excellent attributes. The cinematography, as noted, is par for the celebrated course. The cast is really good, with Tom Hardy providing a great character in Glass’ nemesis Fitzgerald, with a hefty swagger and true grit in acting that shows him as worthy of a Supporting Actor nomination, having been snubbed for previously excellent work in the likes of The Drop and Nicholas Winding Refn’s Bronson. Also of note is Actor of the Year, Domhnall Gleeson, as the expedition leader who pulls a few bad-ass moments out of his brief screen time. Keep your eyes peeled for Grand Rapids native Joshua Burge as an expedition member. The music is properly ethereal and never takes audiences out of the moments onscreen.
People and critics keep heaping praise on this work, citing how “it was such a difficult film to shoot”, “Leo had to eat bison liver raw, and he’s vegan”. Well, this is what happens when the director and ‘Chivo’ decide the film needs to be shot using only natural light, limiting their locations and schedule as per. I don’t know what to say about Leo’s life choices, but he signed on to make the movie. He knew what the hardships would be. He’s a big boy. He’ll survive.
In terms of difficult films to make, George Miller started pre-production on FURY ROAD in 2000. He spent nearly a dozen years location scouting, raising money for the production by making the Happy Feet films for the big studios, recasting when delays set in due to lack of funds, and designing props, vehicles, costumes with his crew. FURY ROAD was finally shot in 2012 and released to cinemas just last year.
Alejandro and His Films Do Not Need Defending. He Has Already Won Big. Long Live George Miller!
Overall, The Revenant is a good one. I think it is definitely worth seeing in the theater and ruminating over afterwards with friends by a fireplace, over a glass of Jack Daniels, neat. I will insist however that it is not the Best Picture of the Year. It is flawed, it is portentous, it is twenty-five-odd minutes of frontier action inflated with over two hours of artsy imagery. And I do hope Leo is finally rewarded, so he can relax for a few years before he decides he needs another Oscar. I wish they’d give it to Michael Fassbender or Bryan Cranston who had better performances overall, but I will be satisfied if they give it to Leo just so he can stop scowling at us.
Recently, Amazon.com started selling grocery items, available using their trademarked Prime Shipping, even though it isn’t technically available in 2-day shipping. To me, this new step seems inspired, what with the increasing levels of laziness in the millennial generation, myself included, but the system still has plenty of fine-tuning to be made until I personally proclaim it a successful venture for the internet shopping giant.
First of all, as mentioned above, the shipping takes too long. I experimented with ordering something the other day, but once I arrived at checkout for my measly package of Fanta, Pringles, and Dove soap, the site announced that the package should not be expected before Monday. This was Wednesday. For something called Prime Pantry, I expect a better status of shipping than using a third-rate electronics outlet operating out of Jakarta.
Second of all, not every grocery and health and beauty item is available for PP yet. For a system to work to the fullest, the majority of Prime-worthy items, lest they be on back-order, should be available to pick out and ship out together. It says something that I could use normal Prime shipping and get non-Prime Pantry grocery items more quickly than the heavily advertised Prime Pantry, Amazon’s prime outlet for grocery items. Um…
Third, the newest option for Prime Pantry is the following: The Dash Button.
Now, in theory, this tech sounds downright brilliant: press a button, groceries appear. Brilliant!
I can appreciate the leaps in technology that bring us those couple of steps closer to The Jetsons. However, there is still the issue at hand regarding the reliability of unregulated Dash-ing.
The device is a simply designed tab with a single button and single operation:
But what happens when little Donny Jr. gets his hands on the shopping button and presses it to his heart’s delight? What if the analog apocalypse strikes your house and you are unable to access your Amazon account and suddenly your checking account is slapping you with multiple overdrafts while gallons of Gatorade are dropped off in front of your residence, barricading you inside the dwelling with only Gatorade to sustain yourself on while anxiously awaiting rescue? Can we protect ourselves from such a promising, yet volatile new technology that connects itself directly to our financial arteries?
What happens if you accidentally set your tablet next to the device and suddenly your e-books have been corrupted, replaced by multiple incarnations of vintage Sears-Roebuck catalogs and Amazon promotional guides from 1995? Are you going to be hypnotized by the overt consumerism on display and spend all your hard-earned Monopoly Monies on dog-eared copies ofThe Bold Vegetarian: 150 Inspired International Recipes?
Is there no end to the ridiculous consumerism that permeates the pores of our pauper-ish patriarchal penitentiary? Can Brett finish this editorial before he leaves for the evening? Is there no end to the madness?
I have a huge–HUGE–pathological aversion to words like “resolution” and “resolve.” This may not seem like a big deal to many, but I’m an attorney, so it somewhat limits my field of practice. I have other shortcomings, too, but they are far too plentiful to list here. Suffice it to say that I defer from resolving to do anything specific in any given, coming year.
Now, if I put away my laptop and left things here, this would be a very short story, indeed, but that seemingly simple and non-malicious act would have far-reaching ramifications. If law school taught me anything, it’s that one must consider every single last consequence an action could possibly produce. (Well, that’s what I got out of it, and my GPA reflects this.)
For example, my boss would not be happy with a mere paragraph of an article. I would get fired, and I wouldn’t have any income so I wouldn’t be able to afford rent and to feed my cats. Months later (because let’s face it, I’m a hermit), a neighbor–or maybe not a neighbor because who knows to where I may have wandered off–would discover my tattered, lifeless body (face down), shredded to bits by those two back-stabbing felines, because we ran out of food and the ingrates were too lazy to go out and catch their own. The fate of my boys would likely remain a mystery, but my guess is that they would be initiated into a feral cat colony where they would live out their nine lives in the company of similarly ungrateful felines.
In the interest of conserving space, I have skipped a few steps in this scenario. When you think about it, we are all but a step away from a horrific disaster, but that has nothing to do with the subject of this story.
The evolution of resolutions I now divert your attention to the tale of Sam, Christy and Nigel, each of whom New Year’s Resolutions have affected in a very big way. There is at least one lesson to be learned here. As an incentive, I leave it to you to figure that out.
Every year, Sam gains at least 20 pounds porking out at Thanksgiving and Christmas parties because he lacks self control and simply enjoys eating. (Shhh. If you listen really, really hard, you can almost hear him smacking his gelatinous lips. Wait! Is that a grunt I hear?) Sam has many, many friends, thus many, many visits, which results in eating many, many meals. But Sam has absolutely no personality, so I am baffled as to how he manages to get invited to so many places year after year.
Then, there’s Christy. Each year on January 1, this spry gal pours the pennies out of her 10-gallon penny jar, drives to her favorite tattoo parlor, and gets a fabulous new tat. She’s only 30, but Christy loves BIG tattoos, so she’s running low on real estate. Plus, her mom is really mad at her and has threatened to evict her from the basement for months now.
Nigel? Well, Nigel just can’t stop chirping.
One of these individuals feels guilty, but not for any obvious reason. One is pretty darn pleased with herself. And one is a cricket and should have nothing to do with this story, but he is here to prove a point.
Of the three, Sam is the most likely to make some sort of resolution. In his defense (or by way of explanation–take your pick) he no longer fits into his designer suits, which he bought before the Great Recession, and he can’t afford to buy a whole new wardrobe. He’s stuck, so to speak.
Christy will save up more pennies and after saving and contemplating and designing another tattoo, she will blissfully go out and get inked again.
Nigel will get eaten by a wolf spider.
The resolutions: January 1 Sam vows to eat less. He’s a Type A personality, so he doesn’t stop there. He makes another resolution: He vows to lose weight. As with food, he just can’t control himself because–poof!–now there’s a third resolution: He vows to lose 20 pounds. Wait. He isn’t Type A at all. The truth is that he feels obliged to make three resolutions because that’s the tradition in his family and Sam is a follower. He can’t bring himself to break tradition, and he is too oblivious to realize that he could resolve to break tradition and thus change the course of his life’s trajectory in a very big way. Alas.
Christy doesn’t think she needs to make any resolution at all. She’s pretty happy with how things stand: Free place to stay, cool ink. But everybody else is making resolutions, and so she succumbs to peer pressure. She resolves to save money to get another tat. Perfectly legitimate. But Christy is currently unemployed. So, she has to make another resolution: Get a job. Now, a third resolution is needed: She resolves to be nicer to her mom so that Christy doesn’t get evicted until at least after winter’s end. You see how these things can snowball out of control very quickly.
Nigel is but a dried-out husk, so he is incapable of making decisions, including resolutions. In legal terms, Nigel is incompetent. Nigel is also a decedent. Well, he’s not a person, so “decedent” isn’t entirely accurate, but you get the drift.
The wolf spider who has drained the life–and juices–out of that gallant little cricket realizes that something must be done, so he makes a resolution: To find another cricket. As with the above individuals, the wolf spider doesn’t stop there and finds it necessary to add a second Resolution: To drain the life and juices out of that cricket. Because, let’s face it, what’s the use of finding a cricket if you don’t drain the life and juices out of it?
What’s the point of making a resolution if it doesn’t have a consequence?
December is finally here and soon we will be swept into a swirling snow globe of love, laughter, family, and magic. This is the month where all of those traits culminate in the greatest get-together that planet Earth offers us: ugly sweater parties. ’Tis the season indeed!
Ugly sweaters are a paradox: the uglier they are, the more beautiful they become. There is really no such thing as an “ugly” sweater this time of year. The more neutral and seemingly normal your sweater is, the less attention you will receive. Not receiving attention at an ugly sweater party is just un-American.
If you want to be the beautiful swan at the party, make sure you’re willing to go all in. Fortune favors the bold.
If you’re worried about where your sweater currently resides in relation to what else the world has to offer, let me introduce you to the Ugly Sweater Spectrum (USS). The USS is on an easy-to-follow 10-point scale ranging from -5 to 5. A score that approaches the fringe on either end of the spectrum is more desired. Remember, with an ugly sweater party you need something that stands out and says “look at me!” That can be acquired through something truly awful or ingeniously crafted. On both ends of the spectrum, it’s a perfectly crafted cocktail of both.
Let’s take a dive into the collage and barrage of color and Christmas:
USS Scale: 5
Who needs a sweater when you can have a suit?
This is cool. You are cool, and don’t you dare let anyone else tell you otherwise. When it comes to ugly sweaters, you’re all in. A trip to Goodwill wasn’t enough. No, you needed a full suit and a matching tie to boot.
Yes, the suit is ugly, but yet it emanates cool from its very core. Like that guy in college who you KNOW spent hours perfectly crafting his messy hair. Is it perfect, or is it a mess? It’s perfectly messed up, and it’s the style of greatness all of us mortals wish we could achieve.
This suit makes you the focus of every person at the party. Instagram was made specifically for you in this suit. Enjoy the moment, it’s all downhill from here.
USS Scale: 4
Remember, an ugly sweater party isn’t solely about being ugly, it’s about standing out. This sweater is inherently unique in its take on Christmas. First off, cats aren’t the first thing that comes to your mind when you think “Santa” and “North Pole”, yet here we have a cat as the main character on a gorgeous light blue backdrop we call a sweater.
Not only is it a cat, but it’s an evil cat SHOOTING LASER BEAMS OUT OF ITS EYES AND DESTROYING THE NORTH POLE! The elf running away in horror is just icing on the cake as the North Pole goes up in flames behind him. This isn’t ugly. This is genius. This is a sweater you’d wear at least a handful of times during the Christmas season. The colors are simple and work together seamlessly to make it easy on the eyes. It’s a work of art, and showing up to a party wearing this sweater instantly makes you a hit no matter the audience.
USS Scale: 3
Will Smith is one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars and has been around for what seems like an eternity. While Will Smith in his current state is a credible and immensely successful actor, nothing quite touches on cool like young Will Smith.
The ’90s Will Smith was royalty. The man was a Prince for goodness sake! Bel-Air became a monarchy simply because he decided to show up. Throw in retro phones and cassettes littering the background, and this sweater is a winner no matter what the time of year. The only thing making this a Christmas-themed sweater and not everyday attire is the Santa hat.
USS Scale: 2
A 2 on the scale is right at that threshold of standing out and falling back into the abyss. Five years ago this sweater wouldn’t even be in the conversation. Five years from now it might fall back to the wayside because that’s the way pop culture goes. But right now, this sweater has power because Game of Thrones has a stronger touch than Midas.
Is the sweater ugly? No. Is it particularly cool? No, but Game of Thrones goes a long way. Trust me.
There is irony in wearing this sweater as winter is already here. Because of that, those who don’t know Game of Thrones might get a slight chuckle. However, those who are in the loop will be filled with instant envy that they didn’t find the sweater first. You will be asked no fewer than 15 times where you bought said sweater. Honestly, just purchase a handful of them and bring them to the party with you. They’ll sell and you’ll walk home with some extra cash.
USS Scale: 1
College apparel can never be ugly. A college campus is the one place you can dress as crazy as you like, and as long as it’s school colors it will be deemed “school spirit.” Both of these sweaters could be worn to football games. Now that I think about it, I’ve seen both of these worn at football games!
The sweaters are unique enough because they are more of a novelty than anything. They sway towards the cool side because school spirit is always cool on game day. However, don’t expect to turn any heads or make many waves at your ugly sweater party wearing one of these. The best you can hope for is a “Go Blue” or “Go Green, Go White”, and that’s not a bad consolation prize.
USS Scale: 0
This is not an ugly sweater, nor is it particularly cool or interesting. This sweater screams, “I bought this for one reason, and it was solely to have a sweater to wear to this party.” You thought, maybe this sweater is ugly enough, but you toed too close to the line of normality to make any true statement with your attire.
This sweater can be worn once a year, yet it is not memorable. You and your attempt to be ugly and cute will be easily forgotten. Better luck next year.
USS Scale: -1
Diving into the negative numbers, especially towards the end of the spectrum, signals a dive for the worst. These sweaters don’t fit the typical definition of cool or hip. These sweaters are going to make you the Belle of the Ball the crazier they become, but if you swing for the fences and miss, prepare for a long evening. Creativity is appreciated.
Scoring a 1 or a -1 is weak. It shows a lack of risk and confidence in yourself. Standing out isn’t important, you’d rather slink into the shadows. This sweater is ugly because there is too much going on, it’s really that simple. What makes this choice even worse is it’s a sweater that was probably purchased for $40 simply to wear to an ugly sweater party. Buying an ugly sweater because it’s aware that its ugly is bad form. Don’t show up giving 50 percent.
USS Scale: -2
This is why ugly sweater parties were created! This right here is a work of art. It is a sweater with no attempt at being ugly. In fact, it was probably purchased as a nice, thoughtful gift. It’s not as crazy as some of the sweaters coming up next, but it’s an original. It’s like watching grainy videos of the first Super Bowl. Was the product as good as it is now? Of course not, but without it there is no foundation to build on. Sweaters like this set the stage for our annual ugly sweater parties. It’s a classic.
USS Scale: -3
We have finally reached the section where truly being ugly can only be captured with imagination and creativity. You can’t buy this kind of awful in a store, it can only be created with hard work and desire.
One second you notice the tinsel and ornaments hanging off a forest green sweater, and then the sweater magically transforms into a Christmas tree with a star on top! Sheer genius! A sweater like this, while beautiful in its own right, cannot be placed on the positive end of the spectrum because it can only be used once. A perfectly good forest green sweater was sacrificed in order to create this tinsel tree of holiday perfection.
Bonus points for creating an ugly piece of clothing while staying within the spectrum of cute. That is flawless execution. Bravo!
USS Scale: -4
Welcome to the deep end. Make sure to dive in headfirst.
This young lady decided a sweater wasn’t enough to satisfy her style. No, a full dress was needed to truly incorporate all of the awful she could get her hands on.
Where do you even start? The long sleeves throw off the feel of a dress that is already riding above the knee. That sweater-dress is odd enough without the add-ons that it could probably win some awards as a standalone. Throw in Psy from Gangnam Style sporting a Santa outfit and the design takes a turn for the worst. The Santa and snowflakes are so distracting that it takes a minute to register that there is no hint of pattern used to spell “Gangnam Style.” Four colors were chosen (red, white, blue, and green) and placed onto the sweater-dress with no rhyme or reason. For all the work put into this, it comes across as a serious oversight.
This sweater-dress is mission accomplished at an ugly sweater party. You will never be forgotten.
USS Scale: -5
We have reached the opposite end of the spectrum to find the greatest holiday sweater of all time. This is USS Hall-of-Fame worthy. You may look at this and think, “He didn’t have a good idea so he just cut a sweater and things fell into place”, but you would be dead wrong. More planning went into the making of this piece of art than went into the Sistine Chapel.
The face of Rudolph had to be perfectly groomed so it was on scale with the nose, eyes, and antlers. But before the grooming could begin, the entire plan had to be mapped out around the nose. Something like that doesn’t fall into place. Extensive man hours were needed to pull off that feat.
While your eyes are naturally drawn to the beautiful red-nosed Rudolph–don’t be ashamed, beautiful works of art are meant to be enjoyed–the perfect cut in the sweater is equally impressive. The sweater has been modified to reveal enough skin to show off Rudolph while also keeping every unnecessary inch of the body kept under wraps. Take a quick glance at the arm sleeve on the right arm. Like men lost at sea eating every part of the fish they catch, this man has wasted no part of the sweater that didn’t need to be.
You, sir, are an American hero and will never be forgotten. Merry Christmas to you!
No sooner did the ghost and goblins of Halloween get back to their homes to feast on their newly acquired sugar collection that Sleigh Bells started ringing. That’s right, the big push of the last holidays are upon us, and wow has technology changed the ways we celebrate.
The holidays seem to require three important ingredients – Shopping, Food, and Family.
First, let me start off by saying that I have never, ever participated in the Black Friday Madness. I have witnessed it but I haven’t woken myself up at 3am to make it to a store that was opening at 5am so I could buy a $50 Blue-ray player for $15. I will admit to looking through the black Friday ads and even looking them up online ahead of schedule. In fact, there is a website you can visit that is fully dedicated to Black Friday Ads that not only posts the ads for Friday’s event, but also the toy books that retailers put out and other deal specific items. Extra Kohls cash anyone?
While a lot of people still trek out on that Friday, more people are opting out and staying in for Cyber Monday. The first Monday after Thanksgiving is now dedicated to an online shopping bonanza of epic proportions. Many of your favorite retail stores will put on extra sales on Monday as well, but the online retail giants make a serious play for your holiday cash.
With Amazon being one of the biggest names in online shopping, the company makes Cyber Monday a big, big, BIG event. Certain deals highlighted and change hour after hour. It’s enough to make even the most seasoned shopper spin around with glee.
Smack in the middle of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is now known as Small Business Saturday. A day in the weekend where your local small business owners hope to attract and entice you. This can be done in a physical location as well as through a website. Just a quick search using the “shop local” option on Etsy.com allows you to see what some of your own neighbors have brilliantly made themselves.
When all your shopping is done, the focus goes back on the two most important parts of the holidays, food and family! It seems like a no-brainer that you’re going to need food. Food that you can make while you host the holiday at your home, or something a little easier to transport as you go through the woods to Grandmother’s house.
Then there’s family. It’s suppose to be the most important ingredient in the holiday recipe. While technology can help, it can also hinder. Sure, through the power of Skype or FaceTime you can video chat with your niece or nephew who is serving overseas. However, is will also keep your 14-year-old niece or daughter from looking up the entire time you’re at Aunt Kathy’s.
So, a holiday challenge for you. Can you and yours set aside technology for the holiday gathering and have little to no smart phone or tablet use while you are surrounded with extended family? No Facebooking, no tweets to be sent, and no text to be read?
Some may find this hardly a challenge at all while others will struggle not to pick up their phone when there is lag in the conversation. Putting the technology aside might be tough at first, but the end result will be lifetime memories with family and friends!
Deidre owns and operates Organisum: Technology Services, a business serving the West MI area. In her free time she likes to hike & bike local trails with friends and family when she isn’t pinning, instagram’ing or Netflix’ing.
Thousands of Philadelphians live their lives online. Coordinating with coworkers. Connecting with family. Pursuing education. Searching for affordable healthcare. Maybe reading this blog, getting the information we need to make our city better.
Our West Philly neighbor Ms. Tracy Emerson lost her job while dealing with a major foot injury and pursuing a degree. Her Comcast service cost too much – so she cut it out of her budget. Now she tethers her phone so her son can look for work. Her daughter stays late at school to fill out college applications. “Even if I go to the laundromat, I bring my computer so I can do my homework,” says Tracy. Similar stories abound citywide.
At a recent City Council education committee hearing, Superintendent Bill Hite noted that new computers were needed by many principals and their schools, alongside nurses and counselors. While some schools have great technology, many classroom machines are over 10 years old, he said. And the teachers who volunteer to maintain tech systems and integrate tech into curricula understandably struggle to do that while also serving as substitutes and dealing with other crises in our underfunded schools.
In Comcast’s hometown, we should never hear these stories. But though access to the internet is a veritable utility for most of us – something we can’t do without – choices are shrinking for broadband in many communities, not growing. Sprint bought the CLEAR network, which provides fast wireless to thousands in Philly – and is shutting it down November 6th. FIOS still isn’t available to many.
For years, the City has been trying to improve this as they work to renegotiate Comcast’s “franchise” – the lease that lets Comcast use city-owned streets and utility poles to sell their services. That 15-year agreement expired this month. The city likely won’t get another chance like this for another 10 or 15-years.
Federal law requires that cable franchises nationwide include special provisions to provide channel space and other resources for public access, government, and educational (PEG) television. The report also showed great appreciation for and commitment to PhillyCAM, our public access television station. In only 6 years of existence, our station is seen as one of the most vibrant in the country – with over 800 students, seniors, artists and musicians, and others receiving access to training and facilities to produce content that changes lives. One show has solved three cold case murders. Another has provided irreplaceable job training to low-income youth of color.
Comcast provides important charity and should be praised for doing so. Donations to nonprofits, tech innovation, and other projects matter.
A draft deal should come from Mayor to Council soon. Nutter, Kenney, and Council have expressed thoughtful interest and leadership in this historic negotiation – and have stated their intention to put consumers and communities first.
But Comcast is a Fortune 50 company; one amply supplied with franchise lawyers and lobbyists. Comcast will not improve Philly’s communications infrastructure for everyone unless we show them we’re united to get everyone online, affordability and reliably. As the draft negotiation comes to Council for consideration, they need to hear us describe in clear, concrete terms what our city needs to truly break the digital divide.
With enough public support at Council for these issues, the City could win the best franchise in the country.
A contract that guarantees redress when our bills skyrocket and promotes competition. One that upgrades communications infrastructure citywide for the city government itself, and for all homes and businesses – making it possible for every business in the city to access high speed internet over the next 15 years – not just those in Philadelphia’s richest neighborhoods.
One that expands affordable internet to every home that wants it. Internet Essentials should be available to all low income households, using the many ways we already test for benefits eligibility to expand this program broadly to seniors, people with disabilities, people in public housing, and others.
One that invests in our schools – developing graduates into tech leaders by ensuring each school has a technology teacher with time and resources to integrate up-to-date computers and hardware into all our classrooms. We can also invest more in our Urban Technology Project youth – giving recent Philly high school graduates the chance to learn tech support and to provide it at schools across the district. Expanding this program district-wide would be a big help to schools, and a great job training program for young grads, to boot.
One that commits to fully funding public access and all PEG TV – including PhillyCAM, our schools’ education channel, and our government channel. This will expand and protect local news, culture, and community media – vital services that let low-income communities speak and be heard. With the right resources, these channels could provide great information to all Philadelphians on the workings of government, and the cultural riches of our neighbors; and a great educational experience for public and local university students.
If we ensure City Hall hears us now – next time we negotiate this deal, we’ll be proud of Comcast’s record of service, access, and accountability. And Comcast can point to Philadelphia as the gem in its crown of digital inclusion to any community it wants to serve nationwide.
Hannah Sassaman is the policy director at Media Mobilizing Project, which coordinates the CAP Comcast coalition. Gretjen Clausing is the executive director of PhillyCAM, Philadelphia’s public access television station. The op-ed first appeared in the Citified section of phillymag.com.
One of the enduring principles of comedy is juxtaposition.
Take, for example, this joke from actress Sara Silverman:
“When I was 14, I started dating my father’s best friend. It was weird.”
“But not as weird as my father having a best friend who was 14.”
So, too, is juxtaposition in the comedy of life.
On October 20, Kent ISD hosted a screening of the film “Most Likely to Succeed” at Celebration Cinema. It’s an engaging film that poses this question: Our schools were designed at the turn of the 20th Century by business and educational leaders to prepare workers for the mass production of products. Can these schools prepare today’s students for the jobs of tomorrow?
All in attendance agreed it was thought provoking. There was great dialogue about an education organized around rote memorization in a world of search engines, the critical thinking and problem solving skills required in today’s workplace, and the failings of an accountability system built on the standardized test.
Heady stuff, indeed. And the next morning, I find this in my email inbox:
LANSING, Mich. — State Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair Township, announced Wednesday that the Michigan Senate Education Committee will conduct a series of hearings on Michigan’s academically failing schools, beginning Wednesday, Nov. 4.
Juxtaposition. From dreaming about what education could be, what it should be, to what it is in a world where our schools are governed by students’ scores on standardized tests. Their performance on a single test, on a single day, is the determining factor in whether a school building, and typically a district, is considered a success, or a failure.
There are so many more factors to consider. All of the research shows children of poverty start kindergarten well behind children from middle-class suburbs because they’re exposed to fewer early learning opportunities, they’re more likely to suffer health and nutrition deficiencies, etc., etc.
In the early grades, there are developmental issues and differences between genders. Boys are generally behind girls. Some boys really don’t have the biological building blocks in place to be proficient in reading at third grade. Few learn well by sitting quietly in rows reading books.
As the writers and producers of Most Likely to Succeed point out, grouping students by age and, later, by age and subject, are organizational tools, not educational tools. There is no evidence these organizational tools are anything more than an easy way for adults to manage large groups of students.
The research indicates all students are different, all develop in different ways and all would benefit from a system based on competency. A competency based system would make learning the most important factor in a student’s education. Some would master concepts faster, some slower, but none would be judged as failures because they were unable to master a concept by a certain age or a date marked on a calendar for standardized tests to be administered.
Forgive me for this overgeneralization, but mostly, our elected officials believe our current education system is expensive and our scores on standardized tests are too low. Virtually everything in education policy orbits around these two bits of information.
Please, don’t get me wrong. All of our elected officials are well intentioned people. I admire their public service. I’m all for efficiency. But most of the discussion surrounding education is focused on the wrong things.
What should we focus on? I’m not the expert. But let’s go back to juxtaposition.
Think of the excitement of four or five-year olds when they first go to school. And then, think of the dull and disinterested response you get when you ask a teenager what he or she learned in school today: “Nothing.”
Shouldn’t that be the focus of education reform? Shouldn’t we ask what happened to the love of learning?
Why do the majority of students say they’re bored every day in school? We should be looking for ways to fulfill the wisdom of William Butler Yeats, who famously said “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
Let’s light a fire. Please watch Most Likely to Succeed. Please ask your legislators to watch it too. And then let’s have a conversation about how we can make our schools better.
Be sure to check out School News Network for more stories about our great students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan!
Schools should be gun-free zones, just like daycare centers, athletic stadiums, bars, casinos, churches and college dormitories. With the exception of armed law enforcement officers, schools should be able to prohibit anyone — students, staff, parents and all others — from carrying a gun on the premises.
If you go to the Michigan State Police website, schools are listed as “pistol free” areas. Unfortunately, a glitch in state law regarding pistol-free areas prohibits gun owners from openly carrying guns in schools unless they have a concealed carry permit. Then they cannot carry a concealed weapon, but they can carry it openly.
Yes, you read that right. Open carry is prohibited in schools. So is concealed carry. But if you have a concealed carry license, you can carry openly. The obvious answer is to just close the loophole so schools — the very first entity listed on the list of pistol free areas — are truly gun-free zones, right?
Wrong. After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after so many horrible school shootings that there are just too many to remember — if you don’t believe that, check out this list of school shootings — Sen. Mike Green (R-Mayville) believes the best way to close the loophole is to allow anyone with a concealed carry permit to bring their weapons into schools.
SB442 would allow those with a concealed carry permit to bring their guns to parent-teacher conferences, board meetings, daddy-daughter dances, basketball games, any activity in a school.
This is the point in the column where I’m required to cite the data on suicides, homicides and accidental deaths related to the prevalence of guns in our society. There is no shortage of data. I’d encourage readers to visit the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence web page to review the staggering evidence the exaggerated extension of our right to bear arms to virtually every venue is deadly, destructive and costly.
But this is also where the Second Amendment advocates make the claim that an armed society is a polite society. That the presence of guns would have prevented many of the murders, murder-suicides and outright massacres cited in the Wikipedia list of school shootings cited earlier.
Data tortured will confess to anything.
Here’s what I ask of you. If you believe schools should be “pistol-free zones,” as originally intended in state law, and the only people who should carry guns in schools are sworn law enforcement officers, please contact your legislator and your school board member to make your opinion known.
To borrow a famous phrase from the past, I suspect you’re part of the silent majority. There’s no shortage of Second Amendment advocates willing to test their right to carry weapons, but those who believe otherwise would rather avoid the fight. We live in a state where hunting is part of our lore, where the first day of firearm deer season is virtually a state holiday. Suggesting we should limit the right to own and bear arms is almost sacrilegious.
I’m not saying gun owners shouldn’t have the right to own guns, to protect themselves, their families and to use them for recreational purposes. I’m just saying they don’t belong in schools. I suspect most of you agree.
Please contact your legislator to let him or her know how you feel. If you’re from Michigan, click here.
Be sure to check out School News Network for more stories about our great students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan!
Thanks to the tremendous response from fans, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band’s show at SMG-managed Van Andel Arena on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018, has SOLD OUT. As a result, a second show has been added for Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019, at 8pm.
Before you know it, the bright fall foliage will be here.
By: Dianna Higgs-Stampfler – 
circumstances, she has found herself single, without a job or a home, and poised for a great adventure.
By: Dianna Higgs-Stampfler – 
The Bulldog Express was born in March 1993 and went on, during its four-year life, to earn several MIPA awards for individual and group projects. MIPA really hadn’t focused much on middle school programs in the past, but with my involvement all that changed. A board position was even created for the Middle School Chair, which I served as for a couple of years.
Ironically, it was a well-deserved promotion that did him in.
Of moons and equinoxes and rotation
To further compensate for the drift, the Gregorian calendar also removed 10 days. If you lived back in 1582, you went to bed one night and woke up 10 days later. There is much more to all of this, but alas, space in this context—according to my editor—is finite. Go 
lifeless body (face down), shredded to bits by those two back-stabbing felines, because we ran out of food and the ingrates were too lazy to go out and catch their own. The fate of my boys would likely remain a mystery, but my guess is that they would be initiated into a feral cat colony where they would live out their nine lives in the company of similarly ungrateful felines.
rt of resolution. In his defense (or by way of explanation–take your pick) he no longer fits into his designer suits, which he bought before the Great Recession, and he can’t afford to buy a whole new wardrobe. He’s stuck, so to speak.
n’t control himself because–poof!–now there’s a third resolution: He vows to lose 20 pounds. Wait. He isn’t Type A at all. The truth is that he feels obliged to make three resolutions because that’s the tradition in his family and Sam is a follower. He can’t bring himself to break tradition, and he is too oblivious to realize that he could resolve to break tradition and thus change the course of his life’s trajectory in a very big way. Alas.
resolution: To find another cricket. As with the above individuals, the wolf spider doesn’t stop there and finds it necessary to add a second Resolution: To drain the life and juices out of that cricket. Because, let’s face it, what’s the use of finding a cricket if you don’t drain the life and juices out of it?
