No Award for This Year’s Oscars

This year, for the first time in over seven years, I lost my annual Oscar pool. Needless to say, I found the Academy Awards a bit upsetting. So forgive me if this review of the Oscars comes across as a little less-than-objective. But then again, I’m a film critic: it’s my job to be opinionated.

The recent Academy Awards belonged to the comedians. You couldn’t tell it from the actual awards — the Academy still loves their dramatic roles — but the highlights of this past Sunday’s show belonged to the funnymen. Jerry Seinfeld’s appearance added some necessary oomph to a first half that was otherwise blah, and even host Ellen Degeneres was relatively entertaining despite the lifeless script she was given. The most entertaining part of the night was clearly Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly’s musical take on how comedians always get shafted at the Oscars, proving (in a very meta way) that the Academy realizes it needs to humor to fuel its ratings, but still refuses to acknowledge its importance in film.

Other than the few flashes of comedic brilliance, the Oscars were pretty dull on the whole, and often suffered the fate of the old man trying too hard to be hip and then subsequently looking awkward when he fails. The shadow puppetry was a neat concept but added little if any value to the show, and having the animated characters in the crowd was just simply juvenile. This isn’t the MTV Awards. For an awards show that is supposed to celebrate excellence in film-making, the montages were relatively poorly-edited, and there was very little excitement in general during the broadcast, even when the major awards were being announced.

The Oscars weren’t all bad (though they could have been so much better if the Academy realized that Dreamgirls was a mediocre film at best) however: it’s not every day you see “too-hot-for-a-sixty-year-old” Helen Mirren crack a joke about Queen Elizabeth’s hairstyle. Canadian film The Danish Poet was the best animated film, feature or short, of the year, so seeing it win an Oscar was quite satisfying. And of course, Marty finally getting his Oscar due brought a smile to my face, but it still doesn’t make up for the year when he lost to Kevin Costner.

So sure, the Oscars were entertaining at times, but they definitely failed to reflect that fantastic year of film that was 2006. And I didn’t win the Oscar pool, so obviously the Academy got it all wrong. Next year, bring back Billy Crystal and all will be forgiven.

(This article was originally written for publication in The Woody.)

A Bit Too Coincidental

This was a bit weird: two days after I put up a birthday post featuring historical famous accomplishments that I culled partly from the Museum of Conceptual Art, Lifehacker decides to feature a link to the exact same site.

The really freaky part of all of this? They used most of the same accomplishments that I had put on my site because they chose 25 as the hypothetical age. Okay, so maybe it’s not all too weird, but you have to admit it’s still quite a bit coincidence. There’s a screencap of the Lifehacker article below, just in case you’re too lazy to click through to the article.

The Academy Awards and Great Films of 2006

It’s Oscar night tonight, so I know you all are thinking that it’s a bit late to be writing about picks for the awards. Rest assured, my picks for our annual Oscar pool went in weeks ago. What I want to do in this post is talk about my ten favorite films of 2006, most of which are nominated for awards tonight. From there, you can deduce most of my picks.

In all, 2006 was a good year for film; more filmmakers seemed to be prizing the importance of a good script and innovative directing rather than the whizbang of gadgets and effects. Sure, there were some massive duds (All the King’s Men, Pirates 2) but even usual action-oriented franchises such as the James Bond movies moved towards deeper character and plot development.

So while it was difficult for me to choose my ten favorite films from such a strong pool, here they are in reverse order:

10. After the Wedding
I’ve always been a fan of Danish film, but Susanne Bier, really stepped up her game in this intense drama. The performance by Mads Mikkelsen may be the best of his career.

9. Hard Candy
Ellen Page shines as the ‘victim’ in this story about a sexual predator who has the tables turned on him. This may not be a film for everyone — it is definitely unsettling and not for the faint-of-heart — but it is a wonderfully crafted film.

8. The Queen
While Helen Mirren may be getting all the buzz for the film, the true star of Stephen Frears’ film is the screenplay. Tightly-written and perfectly matched for the mood of the film, the screenplay of The Queen is by far the best film-writing of the year.

7. The Fountain
Darren Aronofsky’s film may have received very polar reviews, but there is no arguing that this epic film is visionary. A love story spanning a thousand years, The Fountain is a daring experiment in pushing the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. It also features Hugh Jackman’s best performance of his career.

6. Babel
Inarritu’s film is ambitious to say the least: trying to create a movie in several languages with interwoven stories and a multitude of locations is not an easy task. Luckily, he pulls it off quite well, with a few flashes of directorial brilliance (Rinko Kikuchi’s scene in the night club is unparalleled anywhere else in film) that elevate Babel to the status of a great work of cinema.

5. Letters from Iwo Jima
Sure, Flags of Our Fathers was a bit of a mess, but that didn’t stop Clint Eastwood from releasing the follow-up film earlier than expected. And I’m glad he did, because Letters from Iwo Jima is a stunning film that not only tells a remarkably compelling story, but also features some outstanding cinematography.

4. Children of Men
The way that Cuaron decided to shoot this film — using long takes filled with raw action — makes this an atypical action movie where the motivations of each character are more important than explosions and chases. The story may be a bit pedantic at times, but the fantastic directing, editing, and art direction makes Children of Men one of the most memorable films of the year.

3. The Devil Wears Prada
It may seem odd that the best comedy of the eyar was about the bitchy world of fashion magazines, but there was no film funnier than The Devil Wears Prada. The casting was perfect (Meryl Streep, of course, shines, but oft-ignored Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci were brilliant in their roles) and the pacing is exquisite; this is clearly one of the most fun films to be released all year.

2. The Departed
Martin Scorsese has come back in a huge way. The Departed is clearly his best film in years, featuring an excellent screenplay, meticulous casting, and inspired directing. It is funny, intense, action-packed and intellectual all at the same time, and will make you want to watch the movie again and again. Seriously. I watched it eight times.

1. Pan’s Labyrinth
Clearly the best film of the entire year, Pan’s Labyrinth is a film-making wonder. The film is almost perfect technically (including visual effects, editing, makeup, and art direction), the story is compelling, the score is exquisite, the acting is amazing. Del Toro crafts the movie the way a sculptor would craft his clay, with a meticulousness that is so intricate it makes you shudder. I wish everyone made cinema like this.

I do want to point out that this list left out some other absolutely fantastic films which were so hard to cut off the list, including: Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace, Paul Greengrass’ United 93, Rachid Bouchareb’s Days of Glory, Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, Dayton and Faris’ Little Miss Sunshine, John Hillcoat’s The Proposition, and of course, the wonderful Paris, je t’aime. As I said earlier, 2006 was a great year for film, and I look forward to an excellent 2007.

Twenty-Five

Today, I turned twenty-five years old. A quarter of a century. To put that into context, I went and found what a few other people in history had accomplished by the time they were my age. Here’s a sampling:

• Orson Welles coscripted, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane.
• By this age, Charles Chaplin had appeared in 35 films.
• PT Barnum bought a “160-year-old” slave woman and began a career in show business.
• Janis Joplin made her first recording, “Cheap Thrills,” which grossed over a million dollars within a few months.
• Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic, thus winning a $25,000 prize.
• Fayette, N.Y. farmhand Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
• French engineer Benoit Fourneyron invented the first waterwheel turbine.
• JD Salinger began regularly writing for The New Yorker.

So I began thinking of what I had accomplished in twenty-five years of life. Compared to the people I’ve listed above, I was beginning to thing that my accomplishments were relatively insignificant. That was, until I received an email from my good friend that made me realize that perhaps I wasn’t all too insignificant at all. Here’s a small quote:

You are one of the most loving, wise, caring, compassionate guys I have ever known.
You are so thoughtful.
You are so loving.
You care so much about others.
You are sweet.
You are kind.
You are patient.
You are helpful.
I can talk to you about anything.
Anything.
For all of these reasons and others, I’m so glad that you were born.

And I realized that I didn’t need to invent something or be famous or even be a successful writer to have had many accomplishments. All I really want to do is help make people smile. As long as I can do that from time to time, then I know that I’ve accomplished more than I could have ever hoped for over the past twenty-five years. Thank you all for giving me the opportunity to do just that.

Paintings Below Zero by Gordon Halloran

Some of you may have noticed that the photo in the top right of this site was featuring colored pieces of ice for a few days. The pieces of ice were actually part of an exhibition called Paintings Below Zero by Gordon Halloran that was featured as part of the WinterCity celebrations this year in Toronto. The installation entailed an intricate arrangement of several pieces of colored ice, all which were housed in a cooled tent in Nathan Phillips Square.

Gordon Halloran, the creator of the installation from Ontario, says on his website: “As Canadians, we have a personal and collective experience with ice and cold which is unique: we take pride in the beauty of our landscape and at the same time make peace with its harshness. We stare down into a sheet of frozen ice and see ourselves reflected clearly in a mirror the size of the sky.”

Craig has a few more photos from the exhibit on his Flickr photostream, and I’ve got about ten of them on mine too. Do be sure to check them out. There’s a few more photos of Halloran’s work on Flickr, and you can follow Halloran’s journey through Ontario on Caitlin’s weblog. For those of you that have emailed me already and asked where they can see the exhibit in person, I’d suggest emailing the Paintings Below Zero team directly, or visiting the project website.

The World According to Facebook

This weekend, Facebook has finally proven to me that it is more than just a really smart web application and it is, in fact, a truly great contact management tool. And it all started a few weeks ago when I started to find people from elementary school on Facebook and got back in touch with friends I hadn’t seen in almost fifteen years.

All that led to a mini-reunion this past Friday night which felt almost surreal. We looked at old photos and talked about our current lives while reminiscing about other friends that hadn’t come and memories past. It was a nice feeling.

After all that, I found my best friend from second grade on Facebook; I had been trying to locate him for over fifteen years. After adding him, I realized that I had actually worked with his sister at the City of Toronto for the past seven years. Yes, I had been looking for him and all the while I was working with his sister. And it was at that point when I realized that Facebook, despite being a trendy social networking tool, could actually be used effectively as a contact management tool.

Imagine this: a connected but distributed amalgamation of alumni networks, all in contact with each other and bridged together through personal relationships. Each school (elementary school, high school, college, etc.) would manage their alumni network through the Facebook framework, and each individual alumnus would manage their own personal relationships within and outside these alumni networks. If schools were responsible for maintaining their alumni database through a service like Facbook, there would probably be fewer privacy concerns, and it would be much easier to find people — I wouldn’t have spent fifteen years looking for my long-lost friend.

Of course, not only would this require a buy-in by all schools in North America (the world?), but also would require Facebook to introduce quite a few features such as downloading contact information for importing and school admin interfaces. I mean, it probably works better the way it is now — it definitely increases serendipity — but it would be interesting if Facebook was more closely linked to learning institutions…it would definitely change the dynamic.

Alright, that’s my random ramble for the day. It’s Sunday and there’s no football on television, so don’t blame me if what I wrote doesn’t make much sense. I do that sometimes.

Review: Music and Lyrics

The star rating for this film is highly deceptive. Sure, Music and Lyrics may not a great (or even good) movie, but it surely is a lot of fun. And because of that, i was torn with giving it two stars for relatively typical and conformist film-making or four stars for the high entertainment factor. Three seems like a good compromise. In all honesty, Music and Lyrics is a film you’ll want to see, not only for the delight of seeing Hugh Grant sing pop tunes, but because it will make you feel all warm and fuzzy all over — and make you crave some awesome music from the 1980s.

I think my friend Ariana said it best when she remarked, upon leaving the theater, that Music and Lyrics is just a long advertisement for the soundtrack. (On a not-entirely-unrelated note, the soundtrack to the film is fantastic. Go buy it.) But it is the kind of ad you like to watch: full of funny one-liners, awkward characters, and a feel-good story. Sure, the movie is remarkably predictable — which is to be expected from most romantic comedies these days — and the plot seems a bit contrived at times, but Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore are both so endearing that you can’t help be captivated. And of course, the music is quite catchy. If you can’t see it in theaters, be sure to at least watch it once on DVD. It makes a great date movie.

Plus, you can’t help but love a movie (no matter how bad it is) that opens and closes the film with the amazing ’80s-inspired video below. (And for those of you who may have been wondering, yes, that’s Scott Porter — Jason Street on hit television show Friday Night Lights — as the other lead singer in the video.)

My Best Friend Is A Married Man

My apologies for that super mushy post yesterday, I don’t know what came over me. That being said, here’s another post for my ‘personal’ category. I’m pretty excited about it, so I hope you don’t mind.

A week ago today, one of my best friends from high school, Sai Krishna Satyanarayana, got married to his fiancée Natasha Chopra. Some of you might recognize Krishna as the extremely talented guy who created the Wordpress theme that I’m using here on Eloquation. Well, last Thursday, he got married in a Hindu wedding in Mississauga, and I was lucky enough to be able to attend and celebrate his special day with him and his family.

I don’t know how many of you have attended a Hindu wedding before, but this was my first one. And let me tell you…it was quite an event! What caught my eye most impressively was the sheer amount of color everywhere. And not only the decorations and the setting: even the clothes people were wearing were fantastically vibrant. Absolutely stunning.

Anyhoo, here are a few photos from the event, just to give you a glimpse. Enjoy these, because I’m definitely not getting married for a while.

Happy Valentine’s Day

I love Valentine’s Day. Yes, I do. I love the pre-packaged goodness that oozes red everywhere. I love the Hallmark cards and the overpriced chocolate. I love the whole mood and atmosphere. Sure, I don’t buy into the fact that you need one day of the year to prove you love someone, but I still love the fact that a day like this exists.

And as someone who loves Valentine’s Day and loves the world and pretty much is in love with everything around me, I just wanted to wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day. And for those of you who are hanging around moping at the fact that you’re alone yet again for another February 14 (it’s a common occurrence in my life, don’t worry) I say… smile. And love. You don’t need to be with someone to share your love today — whether it is your love for the way the sun reflects off the side of your car door, or your love for the way the barista at Starbucks pours your morning brew, or your love for the way the snow sounds as it crunches under your feet. So smile: it’s Valentine’s Day.

And on that overly mushy (I don’t know what has gotten into me recently) note, I leave you with one of my favorite postcards I saw on PostSecret this week. And check out all their Valentine’s-themed postcards this week.

UofT Community Gets Blogging

There’s a new blog in the already crowded Toronto-blog scene, and it’s called blogUT. And while blogTO, Torontoist, Reading Toronto, Spacing Wire, and Metroblogging Toronto (to name a few) all cover the various ins and out of the city, blogUT has decided to focus on a small — albeit important — part of the city: the University of Toronto. I recently had the chance to ask blogUT founder (and electrical engineering masters student) JP a few questions about the new blog and the impact that he hopes it will make.

When and how did blogUT start?
I had the idea for it about a year ago, when I was still an undergrad student at U of T (I’m a grad student now). It felt like there was something lacking in my U of T experience. U of T’s a really big school, and what happens is everyone is tuned into their little sphere of activity: within their faculty or their residence. But there are so many great things going on at U of T at large. The idea of blogUT is that it’s a central, accessible, up-to-date hub of information about relevant U of T happenings. I talked to a few friends about the idea, and the general feedback was very positive.

So I put up the site in January of this year (had to learn how to work Wordpress over Christmas), and talked a few friends into contributing posts. It’s taken a year to put the idea into action, but I’m glad we’re here now! I was inspired by what blogTO and Torontoist did for my Toronto experience. I’m hoping to do the same for U of T.

In a seemingly crowded Toronto blog market how is blogUT unique, distinct and relevant?
blogTO and Torontoist are both great sites. I check them every day. blogUT is different in that it focuses specifically on student life at U of T. For example, we give coverage to on campus events, campus issues and campus groups. Of course, student life at U of T is very much tied in with life in Toronto. After all, we’re in the heart of the city. So there is some understandable overlap with blogTO and Torontoist. But I think that’s fine. If they post something we find intersting, we would just have a post and refer to them, like the Winterlicious post, instead of duplicating content.

What are your goals for blogUT?
Improving student experience at U of T by providing a central source of relevant information. I just want everyone to have more fun at U of T. There are a lot of great things going on here.

Other than simple site statistics, how will you measure your impact on the UofT community?
I think the best measure of impract so far has been the feedback: people telling me they like the site, that they find it useful. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. David Topping, the co-editor-in-chief of Torontoist and fellow U of T student, sent us an email as soon as we set the site up, and he was very encouraging. He’s the one who wrote an article about us on the Torontoist that got the word out. I had the chance to talk to U of T president David Naylor at a graduate student lunch event, and I was surprised he mentioned blogUT. He was also very encouraging.

Are you looking for people to help out, and what kind of people are you looking for? Where can people who want to get involved get more information?
We’d LOVE contributors. We’re hoping to get a good coverage of all of U of T, so we’re looking for people in all the disciplines and all the residences: people from all over U of T. It’s an informal, fun kind of publication, so we can write about whatever we want. If you’d like to write on blogUT, send us an email! If you don’t want to write, you can still send tips of upcoming events and news to us. That’ll be really helpful!

One more thing!
Just want to thank all the contributors at blogUT. We have a great team. In fact, since the site started, I’ve found out about things thanks to other people’s posts on blogUT.