Jude Will Never Work Again!

Ahh, the Oscars. They’re totally shallow and pointless, and yet I can’t stop watching. Usually I look forward to Oscar night, but this year I just wasn’t in the mood--which is weird, since my two favorite actresses (Natalie Portman and Kate Winslet) were both nominated. So I watched the show anyway, because I knew that if I taped it to watch later, I’d just come to work this morning, find out who won, and that would be the end of it. So I struggled through and actually ended up enjoying most of it--even though none of the people I was really rooting for ended up winning. But that happens to me every year, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. (I put no credence in the Academy’s picks anyway, since they’re always wrong as far as I’m concerned--and I’m always right. Right?)

Before the show, Orlando Bloom was talking to one of those red carpet monkeys (I wanna say it was Chris Connelly, but honestly I can’t remember if that’s right), and Chris had just asked him why Johnny Depp is such a well-respected actor. Orlando got about one and a half sentences into his answer when Chris interrupted him to say something like “Good to see you, Orlando; now let’s throw it over to that other carpet monkey who’s talking to someone more famous than you are.” Burn! (To borrow parlance from That ’70s Show.) The worst part, of course, is that Chris hadn’t even asked Orlando about himself, but rather about an actor he had worked with in the past. Double burn! I’ve often said that Chris Connelly is the only good thing to come out of MTV, but I might just have to revise my opinion.

Here’s something else that I thought was a bit tacky: Was it necessary to cut to Sean Combs when Chris Rock made the joke about the Source Awards? Cutting to every black person in the room during Chris’s opening monologue was to be expected, I suppose, but cutting to the one black rapper in the room after a joke about guns was ill advised in my opinion. Not that I’m into political correctness or anything, it just seemed uncool.

As for the show’s treatment of the ghetto awards (e.g., best art direction, best makeup, etc.), I’m a bit torn. It makes total sense to bring all the nominees on stage for the announcement since those poor suckers are always in the cheap seats, which means a full minute or two of airtime is wasted while we wait for them to walk to the podium. But the people who got their awards in the audience--and weren’t even allowed to go on stage for their acceptance speech--got screwed over. Let’s do some math. There are something like two dozen awards given out on Oscar night. Half of them are given to people we’ve never heard of, and they get, literally, 30 seconds to say what they have to say. The other half get maybe 45 seconds to a minute, depending on who they are. That’s somewhere between 15 and 17 minutes total for all the speeches of the night (if you don’t include Sidney Lumet, which I don’t). The broadcast lasts about 4 hours, which means the speeches account for about 6 percent of the broadcast. What is wrong with this picture?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong (‘cause I got opinions, in case I haven’t made that clear already). The problem is the musical numbers--and the problem with the musical numbers can be summed up in two words: Counting Crows. If you need a few more words, how about “Antonio Banderas.” I find it strange that “Best Song” is the award that always gets the most screen time during the Oscars broadcast. Even the “Best Picture” trailers don’t take up as much time as the songs do. It wouldn’t be such a drag if (a) the songs weren’t written by washed-up pop stars whom nobody cares about anymore (i.e., Phil Collins, Randy Newman, Sting), (b) the songs didn’t sound like they were written by washed-up pop stars whom nobody cares about anymore, and (c) the washed-up pop stars weren’t allowed to perform these songs during the broadcast.

That said, I wasn’t unhappy with Beyonce’s total domination of the musical numbers. In fact, my favorite “what the hell?” moment of the evening was when she sang in French while surrounded by a bunch of miniature movie theater ushers. Also, I didn’t see The Phantom of the Opera (because Webber’s musical is bad enough, and because the movie version was directed by Joel Schumacher, and because...well, how many reasons do you need?), but I laughed when the actress from that movie introduced the nominated song but didn’t get to sing it. Especially since it was Beyonce’s second appearance of the night, which made it seem like even more of a slap in the face. Welcome to Hollywood, sweetheart!

Back to Sean Combs: When he got up on stage and said he was there to introduce a song from a “hip” film, I assumed (based on the expectations the show had set up for me so far, i.e., by cutting to a black person in the audience whenever anyone said something about black people) that he was there to introduce a song from Ray. Then when he said “Polar Express” I wondered if it was the start of a lame joke. But it wasn’t. So I have to ask, Who invited Sean Combs to the Oscars? And why? He was the only guy there with absolutely no connection of movies in any way, shape, or form. Regardless, the dude who sang this particular song with Beyonce looked scared beyond belief, and at times he was as flat as a pancake. If the Counting Crows hadn’t showed up, this definitely would’ve been the worst performance of the night.

Speaking of worsts, the worst introduction was for Mike Myers, who was introduced as “the lovable Mike Myers.” What a ridiculous adjective to attach to a comedian, or to anyone whom you don’t know personally, for that matter. Or did they introduce him with an adjective because they were afraid we were going to confuse him with another Mike Myers?

Sidney Lumet’s honorary Oscar was nice, I guess. I like a few of his movies, but pretty much all I got out of his movie montage was the shock of seeing Vin Diesel with hair, and then deciding that Vin Diesel looks like a total nerd when he’s not bald.

You know what makes me sad? The “clapping wave” that takes place during the In Memoriam section of the show. Christopher Reeve gets claps and shouts and whistles--all of which he deserves--but the screenwriter who wrote two hits in the 1960s and then fell into obscurity is lucky to get those polite golf claps reserved for the unfamiliar. It’s great that they get recognized, but it’s sad that they don’t get recognized, if that makes any sense...

And now, to borrow a bit from the lovely and talented Kristin, I present a memo addressed to the stodgiest actor in Hollywood:

Dear Sean Penn,

Holy shit, man--you need to develop a sense of humor. Seriously, I am begging you. Jude Law doesn’t need you to defend him from someone who makes fun of people for a living. Especially since, as Chris pointed out, Jude’s been in quite a few popular movies lately. More, in fact, than you have been a part of for several years now. So relax! Jeezus.

Sincerely,
Mark

P.S. By saying “these are the Academy’s favorites this year” before announcing Best Actress, you basically diminished Hilary Swank’s much-deserved Oscar. Not that she cared (or even noticed), but still. Don’t be such a dick.

P.P.S. Please don’t punch me in the head. Thank you.

And finally, I was glad to see the Oscars continuing its tradition of recruiting whacked-out actors to announce the winner of the Best Film award. Dustin Hoffman was, without a doubt, completely drunk. He slurred every single word and seemed more than a little disoriented. Barbara was, as usual, of no help whatsoever--since she forgot to bring her reading glasses on stage with her. Talk about a show stopper.

So that’s it for my take on the broadcast. For the record, here were my picks:

Best Actress: Kate Winslet, my second-favorite actress. Though Hilary Swank certainly did a fine job and deserved to win, too.

Best Actor: I think both Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio are better actors than Jamie Foxx, but all three of them were nominated for playing historical figures and biopics tend to bore the hell out of me, so whatever. (And not that it matters, but the tattoo on the back of Jamie’s head is completely distracting.)

Best Supporting Actor: Morgan Freeman was the right choice, definitely. The man said “Heavens to murgatroid” when he walked up to the podium! I thought that was awesome. I mean, he’s suave, he’s gracious, and he has the coolest voice in Hollywood, so how can you go wrong? (I also enjoyed his sly wink to the camera during Al Pacino’s introduction of Sidney Lumet.) That said, I would’ve liked to see the dude from Wings win, if only because it would’ve been kind of funny to watch Lowell give a speech.

Best Supporting Actress: Natalie Portman, naturally. Cate Blanchett’s a great actress, but again I’m not a big fan of the biopic thing. Besides, this was Natalie’s first truly grown-up role, and she gave it her all (and no, I’m not referring to the stripper scene; or, at least, not just to the stripper scene).

Best Picture: I guess Million Dollar Baby was the right choice, since I really don’t have much of an opinion on the other four (biopic, biopic, biopic, and a movie about wine).

Best Director: With each passing year, Clint Eastwood reminds me of my grandfather more and more. So he’s okay by me. Oh yeah, and he made a pretty good movie, too.

Mr. Clippy’s Miraculous Vacuu-Cut!

The dreaded time has arrived.

I need a haircut.

A few years back, when I was living in northern Jersey, getting a haircut was no big deal. I had the perfect hairstylist. Her name was Linda and I was in love. She was a bit of Jersey girl, sure, but she had cool tattoos (as opposed to, y’know, sailor tattoos) and a decidedly non-Jersey girl coif. And she was cute. Did I already say she was perfect? Anyway, she was not only fun to talk to, but she’d also do exactly what I wanted, haircut-wise: Extremely tight in the back and on the sides, and just a little bit off the top. Simple. She’d massage my scalp with a little shampoo, shave me like a sheep (using a #2 clipper attachment, if I recall correctly), then take a little off the top and send me on my way. Then I could ignore her for 6 to 8 months, and the next time I made an appointment it would be like catching up with an old friend.

Then I moved.

For two and a half years I’ve been searching for a decent hairstylist. The first guy who cut my hair (actually on the day before I started my new job) didn’t use scissors. He uses only the electric clippers, with some of the weirdest attachments I’ve ever seen. It’s a system, I suppose but, I’m sorry--it reminds me of the infomercial for that Vacuu-Cut thing you’re supposed to attach to your vacuum when you want to cut someone’s hair.

When he was done he said to me, “I bet you’ve never had your hair cut that way before!” True enough. And I really didn’t want it to be cut that way ever again. Don’t get me wrong, my hair looked fine when he was done with it, but it was still a little too long and it looked a little too uniform in its length. Basically, it just didn’t seem like something for which I should be paying $25.

[An aside: At the time I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and she said, “Twenty-five dollars?!? What the hell are you bitching about?” Apparently women spend a shitload of money on haircuts. I did not know this, but Tara’s pretty much made sure I’ll never forget...]

The other problem was that I think this guy is the owner of the salon, but I’m not 100 percent sure--so I didn’t know if I should tip him or not. It made for an awkward moment at the cash register:

MR. CLIPPY: Okay, that’ll be $25.
ME: [look in wallet, see a $20 and two $5's] Okay... [hesitate before pulling out $30, finally relent and hand it to him] Here you go. Um, thanks.
MR. CLIPPY: [gives me a look that could signify either appreciation or contempt--I honestly couldn’t be sure which] Have a nice day.
ME: [nod curtly, turn around, and sprint all the way to my car]

As I’m sure you can imagine, I’d really rather not suffer through that exchange again.

So the next time around I called for an appointment and asked which women were available. Perhaps this is a stereotypical assumption on my part, but every woman who’s ever cut my hair has known what she was doing and did an excellent job--even if she’d never “met” my hair before, if you know what I mean. So I figured asking for a woman was a foolproof plan. This time, though, the gods of haircare proved me wrong.

I had made an appointment with a woman whose real name eludes me, since I have referred to her only as The Butcher ever since I left her chair. Here’s what happened: I sat down, told her what I wanted, and she said, “So you want me to use clippers?” Since that’s what Linda had always done to ensure a close fit in the back and on the sides, I said “Sure, whatever works for you.” Ahem. Please note the full meaning of that phrase. What it really means is, “SURE, WHATEVER WORKS FOR YOU.” As in, do what you need to do in order to give me what I want. As in, don’t fuck up my hair, please.

Unfortunately, The Butcher totally misinterpreted this extremely complicated and nuanced sentence of mine. Obviously I need to work on my communication skills...

[Note: The following takes place in the present tense for maximum impact] About ten minutes in, she still hasn’t switched over to scissors and I’m settling in to the assumption that my hair is being cut by Mr. Clippy’s apprentice. No problem. Whatever works for her. But one thing that kinda bothers me is that she’s been gabbing with her closest coworker pal to our left for quite a while, and the clippers seem to have been rubbing up against the left side of my head for an inordinate amount of time. Meanwhile, the right side of my head is getting lonely. Then she turns around to Mr. Clippy and says, with a perplexed kind of tone, “Hey, John. How do you—” but the rest of her sentence was lost in a haze as my brain screamed Holy shit she doesn’t know what she’s doing, you trusting fool! She is butchering your hair!

And so she did. Mr. Clippy, who was busy creating his own electric-clipper masterpiece, distractedly answered The Butcher’s question, not realizing that what she was really asking him was “How do I fix this guy’s head now that I’ve made it look like a weed whacker was used on it?” Nonetheless, surprisingly unconcerned by the lack of an adequate response, The Butcher merely shrugs and goes back to, well, “finishing up,” for lack of a better phrase. Then she hands me a mirror.

“Is that what you were looking for?” she asked--then had the gall to interject, “I think it looks great! It’s really short!”

It was short all right. And lopsided. And there was not enough hair left on the other side to even it out without making me look like those poor saps at the beginning of Full Metal Jacket. So I couldn’t very well ask her boss to fix it for me. It was obviously a lost cause. Instead, I nodded with a stone face, got out of the chair, paid my $30 (yes, I still gave her a tip), and sprinted all the way to my car.

Once I was home I spent half an hour in front of my bathroom mirror with a pair of scissors, trying to even out the few remaining bits of hair that hung vaguely in the direction of my forehead, while my girlfriend at the time hovered in the background, trying not to laugh. Then I spent the next day at work fielding a constant stream of “Whoa, that is a short haircut!” exclamations from my colleagues. Joy.

The last few times I’ve tried to make an appointment with the elusive Melissa, whose actions I studied from afar throughout my third haircut (courtesy of Mr. Clippy, who I knew would do a less-than-stellar job--but at least it would be reliable). I had determined Melissa was fairly talented with a pair of scissors, but while making an appointment for my fourth haircut I learned that she was out on maternity leave. The last time I’d seen her she didn’t even look pregnant, so that tells you how often I get my hair cut. On the fifth time I successfully made the appointment with her, but whoever wrote it in the book screwed up the times and I ended up getting worked on by Sarah instead.

Sarah actually did an okay job, but she’s no Linda. So I’m hoping to finally give Melissa a shot this time. All I have to do is make the call...

It may be a few days before I can work up the nerve.

Lord of the Couch Potatoes

I did something on Saturday that, in retrospect, might not have been the best use of half my entire weekend.

To set the stage: Several acquaintances of mine think the Lord of the Rings movies are the best movies ever made in the history of cinema. Or close to it, anyway, judging from how they talk about them in hushed, reverent tones. I’m not even as obsessed with Blade Runner as these folks are with LotR (and that’s saying something!), but I certainly enjoyed the movies well enough when I saw them in theaters.

Perhaps my lack of obsession stems from the fact that I never read the books. Or, more accurately, I should say that I haven’t read all of the books. I read The Hobbit as a kid and loved it. So imagine my surprise when I cracked open The Fellowship of the Ring and slowly came to realize that (a) there were no dragons in this one, and (b) I was going to spend the next three hundred pages reading about people sitting around sumptuously stocked dinner tables, trying to figure out what to do with a little ring that could apparently destroy the entire world, even though it only had the power to turn Bilbo invisible when I'd last read about it. Simply put, my 12-year-old mind just wasn’t interested. Needless to say, my copies of the second and third books in the trilogy remain unread.

Anyway, I seem to have matured recently, and as soon as The Return of the King came out on DVD I decided I needed to see all three of them back-to-back. I was especially interested in watching the director’s cuts of the films, since I had been assured by the aforementioned acquaintances that the longer versions didn’t contain any extraneous bullshit the way a lot of DVD releases sometimes contain extraneous bullshit. (Pontification time: James “The Abyss” Cameron knows how to release an extended version of a movie. Russell “Highlander 2” Mulcahy does not. [Nor does he know how to direct, period. But that’s another blog entry altogether.])

So once the foul winter weather set in, I asked a friend of mine if I could borrow her collection of the extended DVDs for a snowy weekend, and in the process of asking her, I explained my intentions to watch them straight through. This was her reaction:

HER: You’re going to watch them together?
ME: Yeah.
HER: [pause] You know they’re each 3 1/2 to 4 hours long, right?
ME: Yup.
HER: You’re going to sit on your couch for 11 hours straight?
ME: [doing my dad’s thing of answering a question with a question] Remember when Amazon put the first season of 24 on sale for $15 and I told you I was probably going to buy it and watch the whole thing in two sittings?
HER: [horrified] I thought you were kidding!
ME: It ended up taking me just a day and half.

A word of advice: Don't bet against my ability to sit on my ass for extended periods of time. You will lose.

So when she handed the DVDs to me, shaking her head in disbelief as she did so, I reminded her that she was the one who supposedly loved these movies so much--I was just watching them the way Peter Jackson intended. (Right, Peter? Back me up, here.)

And I did it. I started a little late (just before noon on Saturday), but I slogged through. Sure, I took a few minutes of break time in between each disk, to eat or whatever, but I pretty much stayed on my couch until a little before midnight. (I even did my standard thing of watching all the credits—until I realized that the studio had tacked on a “Thanks to the Geeks” list at the end of each movie, naming each charter member of Tolkien’s fan club. I sat through the first one, which crawled up my screen for over 20 minutes. Even I’m not dumb enough to sit through that two more times....)

All in all, it was an interesting experience. One might even call it mind altering. Not in the “Whoa, dude, that was trippy!” way, but in the “I think my brain just turned to mush” way. You see, although I can easily suspend my disbelief within the first 30 seconds of any given movie (even a really bad one), I’m usually capable of retaining some subconscious level of understanding that what I’m watching isn’t real.

Not so in this case.

Allow me to illustrate: As I was expecting, Legolas’s various x-treme sports-type stunts in The Two Towers (most notably, surfing down a staircase on top of a shield, and using his arm--in a way that categorically defies the physical laws of how an arm bends--to mount a horse mid-stride) were still utterly dumb and kind of broke the mood for me. But by the time the Battle of Minas Tirith rolled around, I’d been staring at my TV for nine straight hours and had become completely mesmerized. So when Legolas started jumping around on that oliphaunt like a monkey, the last vestiges of my “it’s just a movie” skepticism had been replaced with wide-eyed, unblinking submission and the occasional chant of encouragement to my fictional friends. “Yes, Legolas. Kill it.”

Put another way: if I’d been watching an all-day zombie epic, I would’ve been hunting for fresh brains come midnight.

Fortunately, I didn’t dress up in a fur cloak and a wizard’s hat when I went back to work on Monday. That’s what Sunday was for.

Here are some things I learned while watching LotR for a second time:
1. First and foremost, I need a bigger TV. I love letterboxed movies, but on my 21” screen the big battle scenes were somewhat less than impressive, to say the least.
2. I still can’t tell the two “comedy relief” hobbits apart. Though thanks to ABC’s Lost, I could at least identify one of them as “Charlie” whenever he popped up on-screen.

(Hm. That’s not very much, is it? See, this is where the “Was this the best use of half my weekend?” question comes into play...)

Some things I already knew:
1. Smėagol, or “Gollum” if you prefer (i.e., if you’re an insensitive, heartless bastard like Sam, with no empathy for the frail vulnerabilities of human/hobbit-kind), is the most tragic character in cinema. Perhaps the biggest disadvantage to seeing these movies in the theater was having to suffer through the audience’s ignorant laughter during the heartbreaking scenes in which Smėagol tries to overcome his darker side. “Oh, ha ha. The funny little CGI creature is arguing with itself. How mirthful!” Ugh.
2. I don’t like the elves. They are a bunch of cold, calculating übermensch fascists (blue eyes? blonde hair? relentless talk of being the “superior race”? that’s a teensy bit scary, isn’t it?). Even when they showed up at Helm’s Deep, I got the feeling that they were there because it was The Right Thing to Do, not because they wanted to help out the humans or anything. What smug, self-righteous dicks they are... (Legolas excluded, I suppose. Oh, and the one played by Liv Tyler. Risking death to get it on with a human? How scandalous! Then again, I’ve been told--often--that Viggo Mortensen is what’s known as a “hottie,” and therefore well worth dying for.)

In the aftermath of my epic ass-planting session, I was too exhausted to do anything but watch more television. Naturally. (This is, I think, the fundamental problem with television. It’s like a narcotic. Watching it only makes me want to watch it some more. Until I pass out.) So I watched Saturday Night Live.

The Scissor Sisters were the musical guest, and they performed a cover of Pink Floyd's “Comfortably Numb” redone as a disco song, complete with Barry Gibb-style falsetto in a grating duet by the band’s two singers (male and female). They even had a bit of a disco look in their wardrobe.

It was terrible. Really terrible. In fact, it was so terrible that if I had been in another room and someone else had turned on the TV in the midst of this song, I would’ve shouted, “What the fuck is that noise?”

Speaking of songs, Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It” got stuck in my head on Sunday, and wouldn’t leave until I blasted it out with Juno Reactor’s “Nitrogen, Pt. 2” while on my way to work yesterday morning.