WHY ROBERT DOWNEY JR. WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR TROPIC THUNDER: Because he was a dude disguised as a dude playing another dude, and dude, he was brilliant at it. Because he was the funniest thing in a pretty funny movie (Tom Cruise’s shtick was overrated bombast). Because he hasn’t even gotten a nomination since Chaplin. Because he’s the only person other than Sean Penn who can realistically claim that he’s the best actor of his generation. Because he never actually claims that. Because he does whatever an iron can.

WHY ROBERT DOWNEY JR. WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR TROPIC THUNDER: Because it’s still a role in a comedy and Oscar don’t like the comedies, no sir. Because people are still leery of him no matter how clean he’s supposed to be now. Because genuine talent intimidates people, and especially intimidates Oscar voters. Because he probably doesn’t give a shit, deep down, if he wins or not. Because his name is not Heath Ledger.

WHY PHILLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR DOUBT: Because he had to convince an audience that his character was a closeted gay man without ever actually admitting it or even hinting at it and he pulled it off with flying colours. Because he went toe-to-toe with Meryl Streep and just wrecked house. Because he has three names and that always sounds classy. Because although he’s incredibly talented, he has the good sense to appear schlubby so not to intimidate people so much.

WHY PHILLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR DOUBT: Because he won a Best Actor trophy recently enough (in 2006 for Capote) that it’s a bit too soon to give it to him again. Because Doubt is an Actor’s Movie and sometimes the Academy gets suspicious of giving acting awards to that sort of thing because it seems like a bit of a gimme. Because his name is not Heath Ledger.

WHY MICHAEL SHANNON WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR REVOLUTIONARY ROAD: Because he plays a kinda crazy guy and kinda crazy roles always clean up at the Oscars. Because he dominates the movie for his brief time in it. Because he’s a relative unknown and giving him a statue would be a hell of a thing.

WHY MICHAEL SHANNON WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR REVOLUTIONARY ROAD: Because nobody knows who the hell he is. Because he only shows up onscreen for two scenes, maybe eight minutes’ worth of screen-time tops, and not everybody can be Judi Dench and score a statue for that small a role. Because Revolutionary Road wasn’t really that popular. Because his name is not Heath Ledger.

WHY JOSH BROLIN WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR MILK: Because he also plays a kinda crazy guy, but his kinda crazy guy is less showy and more workmanlike than Shannons’ obviously kinda crazy guy. Because he’s been on a roll the last few years with his work in No Country For Old Men, American Gangster, In The Valley of Elah and W. and now there’s this too. Because he got unfairly overlooked in the nominations department for No Country while everybody jerked off to Javier Bardem.

WHY JOSH BROLIN WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR MILK: Because “possibly closeted villain” is kind of a cliche, even if it was probably true in real life. Because Milk is Sean Penn’s baby first and foremost. Because James Franco and Emile Hirsch were both strongly competing for a supporting actor nod as well. Because his name is not Heath Ledger.

WHY HEATH LEDGER WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR FOR THE DARK KNIGHT: Because duh.

Hey all. Remember me? Will Entrekin. One of the guest contributors over on the side, there? Been a while since I posted, but some recent discussion of The Dark Knight and the mention of Ledger’s Joker Halloween costume, plus some comments discussion here regarding genre (not to mention: the upcoming Oscars), got me thinking. So I thought I’d crosspost the following here and on my blog. But I also wanted to say hi first, so there wouldn’t be any confusion. That out of the way:

Not long ago, I went to a Philly bar called Eulogy with my best friend. This bar is a Belgian sort of pub one feature of which is a private room with a table like a coffin, and this best friend is a guy earning his master’s in literature but who also moonlights as a keyboardist in one band and a lead guitarist in another, which I hope will intimate the overall atmosphere. If only because my buddy and I have the conversation where we discuss Derrida but totally admit to neither ever reading or understanding the guy.

Over the course of (several) fine Belgian beers (Rochefort 10 ftw!), we started talking about Heath Ledger and The Dark Knight. Now, what you have to know, straight off, is that while we’re good buddies, he and I rarely agree on anything related to either music or movies. We both like music in general and good music in particular, but we have very different definitions as to what that exactly means.

So, Heath Ledger. The Dark Knight.

I didn’t love the movie. I’ve read many people claim that the reason it’s so great is because Christopher Nolan, moreso than directing a good superhero movie, managed to make a good movie, overall, but I’m not sure. See, I think that what really happened is that Nolan managed to make a good crime movie out of superhero material, because I can’t agree it was overall a good movie; it’s at least twenty minutes to half an hour too long, the final twenty minutes to half an hour of which seem composed of a philosophical treatise on the nature of good and evil telegraphed through dialog to the audience because Nolan suddenly got scared his audience hadn’t picked up what he was saying. Still, I will admit I originally thought it was badly structured, but I’ve since realized it’s not, that the plot turns when it’s supposed to for the most part (given 3-act structure and 140 minutes, the first plot point should come about 35 minutes in, with another midpoint beat and then a second plot point, each coming 35 minutes after the previous).

Also: when did Two-Face debut? In the comics, I mean. He’s been around at least long enough that Tommy Lee Jones played him nearly a decade ago, but yet he lasts, like, fifteen minutes in this flick? Wtf? I suppose it’s possible Nolan was lolzing us and will bring Two-Face back for The Dark Knight Returns or The Dark Knight Again or The Dark Knight Lightens Up a Bit, Because, Seriously, Why So Serious?, but either way, I think Nolan blows his villain load by using two who merely serve as thematic foils to Batman/Bruce Wayne, rather than any story use.

Because I think that’s the problem I have with the Joker (and with Ledger’s portrayal of him). While he claims to both want chaos and have no plan (and I realize that his claim of the latter probably serves the former), I think that the two villains clash in a way that the Scarecrow and Liam Neeson didn’t in Batman Begins. The first movie was about Batman and how he foiled the plans of Neeson, whose subsidiary was the Scarecrow; this movie is not just about Batman anymore. It’s about Gotham City and heroes and good and evil (as Nolan seems to want so dearly for us to see). It’s almost like Nolan had the exact opposite problem as the brothers Wachowski: while the second two Matrix movies probably should have been combined into a single flick, Nolan probably should have taken his time with this story and let the second installment become two.

(which, too, would have solved the problem Warner Bros. now faces, because, sorry to be callous about it, but who’s going to play the Joker now?)

Can the Joker desire chaos but have no plan? I’m not sure it works both ways, but given a little more fleshing out, Nolan might have proven it can and does. As it stands, though, the problem with the Joker is that he’s merely the foil or the anti-self or the whatever-opposite of Batman. He’s reactionary, really, and I’m trying to come up with great characters who have been solely reactionary but not really succeeding. He wants chaos, but only seems to want chaos because other people have plans he doesn’t like.

(of course, the major argument there is there’s no such thing as order, anyway, given that the natural tendency of all things is toward disorder/entropy. Had the Joker taken any science courses, he might realize that life exists despite chaos, in which case he might file for unemployment by reason of redundance)

Given all that, Ledger arguably did the best job he could with a somewhat otherwise limited role; I’m not sure he’s the only reason The Dark Knight wasn’t a typical superhero movie, but he might have been. That and his premature death are, I think, a large part of the reason his performance has gotten the acclaim it has. Which might seem cynical or even callous, I fear, but the thing is, I keep thinking of his performance in Brokeback Mountain. Now, I didn’t like Brokeback; in fact, I shut it off after fifteen or twenty minutes, because I was bored out of my skull. And I think that The Dark Knight, despite its flaws, is a movie far superior to Brokeback if only because the latter commits the cardinal sin of movies, which is that it’s not at all entertaining, but still, I watch Ledger as Joker and I just don’t think his performance there is nearly as good as he was in Brokeback Mountain. In Brokeback, he wanted something (namely: Gyllenhaal) but yet restrained himself, and in that restraint is all the subtlety and craft that I thought the Joker lacked. The Joker seemed wall-to-wall Id. Creepy thrift-store drugged-out rockstar more likely to front an emo band, sure, and entertaining to at least the degree you expect him to be onstage lamenting about how nothing actually has meaning, but just being crazy-villain guy seems to require little effort. I mean, in some ways, it strikes me that his role was of the just-add-alcohol variety; skip all the inhibitions and the performance executes itself.

Do I think he’ll win (not that you asked)? I don’t know if it’s important, at this point, if only because I think there’s too great a disconnect between good movies and critically acclaimed, award-winning movies. And why do I think that?

Because the one thing my buddy and I could agree on, over those fine Belgian beers, was that Ironman might well have been the best movie all year, and Robert Downey, Jr. has always knocked every performance he’s ever given straight out of the park. I mean, the fact that he doesn’t have an Oscar yet is nearly as big a travesty as that Zodiac went completely ignored last year, and if he got one this year for being “the dude playin’ the dude disguised as another dude,” I wouldn’t argue. I’d say he could then dedicate it to Ledger, but didn’t Daniel Day-Lewis already do that last year?

All that said, I might also just be bitter. I still wish Nolan had cast Christian Bale as the Joker, too, because I think that would have been awesome.

Oh, god, this movie is going to be a classic piece of crap. I can’t wait.

(NOTE: Due to Flapjacks complaining vociferously, from now on I will not be editing his posts for clarity. You have been warned. — MGK)

so last time i posted here i was all “hey guys “max payne” is the best movie of the year.” but MGK was all “that is so anti-intellectual flapjacks, you should try watching the oscar nominees at least,” and he has a point because if it wasn’t for the oscars i never would have found out about arthouse hits like “gladiator” or “lord of the rings.”

so i went to my local theatre and paid honest dollars to go see the best that hollywood and independent hollywood have to offer, and my new pick for best movie of 2008 is “the reader.” cause kate winslet is in it and, basically, the first forty minutes of the movie is kate winslet boning.

she does full backal and you can see her tits. but it is not just about seeing kate winslet’s tits, because although they are great tits you have to admit watching kate winslet get naked and fuck is not exactly a new thing. after all there are top five lists devoted to kate winslet fucking on camera.

but there is forty minutes of it this time around! and although kate winslet boning is not new, kate winslet boning a lot makes this the best single supply of kate winslet doin’ it that exists known to man short of sam mendes’ private video collection. sure, in this movie she is boning some german teenager who looks like that guy from “cabaret” and that is kind of weird, but if you squint you can kinda pretend that he is george michael from “arrested development” and who wouldn’t want to watch that kid fuck kate winslet?

you’d download it off the internet if it existed. you really would.

but you can forget everything after the first forty minutes because after that there isn’t any boning and it’s about how the holocaust was bad and stuff. it is almost like they said “hey, we have this movie which has kate winslet getting fucked silly for the first half. how do we balance that out? oh, i got it, genocide.”

which just goes to show you that porn is almost always better than hollywood. cause no genocide.

WHY AMY ADAMS WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR DOUBT: Because the performance is nuanced and intelligent. Because Adams brings through the essential indecisive nature of the character without turning her into a puddle of jelly. Because she didn’t win for Junebug in 2005 despite having given the most deserving performance because she was a new face and because Rachel Weisz deserved a statue on a career basis. Because everybody really liked her in Enchanted and despite it not being a “win Oscars for acting” movie, people don’t forget performances they like and want to reward them later. Because it was a nice change to see “young nun” played for a reason other than “have crisis of faith” or “forbidden love.”

WHY AMY ADAMS WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR DOUBT: Because nobody can tell the difference between her and Isla Fisher. Because people have a mental image of what nuns should look like and “giant bonnets” doesn’t usually factor into that. Because she is over thirty and therefore the “give the young white ingenue the Oscar” motivation which would normally play in her favour is not there. Because Doubt, despite great acting, is really kind of a boring movie.

WHY PENELOPE CRUZ WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA: Because she’s made so many good movies for which she has gone unrecognized. Because her performance in Vicky won so much critical acclaim and so many critical awards this year. Because Woody Allen still has a lot of Academy pull, especially when it’s a movie he himself does not appear in (because Woody Allen himself is kind of creepy). Because she is arguably the cutest of the nominees in this category.

WHY PENELOPE CRUZ WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA: Because although she makes many good movies, they are all Spanish movies, and usually when she makes an English-language movie it is something like Sahara or Gothika or the upcoming G-Force, which is not about the famous anime team but instead about a group of superintelligent guinea pig secret agents, and do you really want to give an Oscar to somebody who makes a movie about talking guinea pigs?

WHY VIOLA DAVIS WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR DOUBT: Because her character gets the most emotional, most difficult scene in a movie that is an “actor’s movie,” and she not only nailed it but was indeed exemplary. Because the Academy (rightly) wants to recognize more black actresses. Because she’s kind of awesome.

WHY VIOLA DAVIS WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR DOUBT: Because she is one of two black actresses nominated in this category and they will either split the “socially conscious” vote or she will be ignored in favour of the Benjamin Button tide. Because Doubt, despite great acting, is really kind of a boring movie. Because as good as Viola Davis is, she’s not the sort of underrecognized black actress who has done tons of great work and who has missed out on many potential nominations, like Alfre Woodard for example.

WHY TARAJI P. HENSON WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON: Because she has an awesome name. Because her performance feels genuine in a movie that is frequently mawkish and formulaic. Because the Academy (rightly) wants to recognize more black actresses. Because Best Supporting Actress is often the category where surprise wins show up, and she’d definitely qualify as a surprise win. Because Benjamin Button got thirteen nominations and the overall success of the film will push her over the top.

WHY TARAJI P. HENSON WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON: Because potential surprise win or not, the Academy is leery of “TV actresses,” and her most notable credit other than Button is her season on Boston Legal. Because she is one of two black actresses nominated in this category and they will either split the “socially conscious” vote or she will be ignored in favour of Viola Davis’ superior work in Doubt. Because Benjamin Button kind of sucks.

WHY MARISA TOMEI WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR THE WRESTLER: Because it was a very strong performance, probably the best performance in this category this year, in a film that was gritty and real. Because she is 44 and still incredibly gorgeous in a town where any woman over 30 is somehow terrifying. Because critical momentum is on her side. Because although she won an Oscar already, that was ages ago and when she was a young ingenue, as opposed to now when she is a mature actress at the peak of her skills. Because she got overlooked for In The Bedroom, which still holds up, for Jennifer Connolly in A Beautiful Mind, which really doesn’t.

WHY MARISA TOMEI WILL NOT WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR THE WRESTLER: Because, regardless of whether you like it or not, it’s Mickey Rourke’s movie and the plaudits for it are mostly his. Because regardless of what she is now and what she is then, she already won a statue a long time ago and she might not be good enough to deserve another. Because she has a hardcore New Yawk accent that never quite goes away and there are people who don’t like that.

HEY EVERYBODY! I am Flapjacks, the one and only, coming to you LIVE (well this is not live technically) on the internet because MGK doesn’t close his browser windows and I know how to create a new user in WordPress (okay it took me three tries).

Now, sure, maybe he’ll delete this post and my new account once he sees what I done but I don’t think he will because all of you have been demanding that I do such a thing. Perhaps some of you have been demanding it silently in your hearts, but that is very nearly the same thing and our society is founded on such principles. After all, would Barack Obama be president now if it weren’t for people being willing to vote for a black guy only if they could be sure nobody would know they were voting for a black guy? I would totally vote for Barack Obama if I were American and I’m not ashamed to say it but come on – North Carolina? Really? That wasn’t gonna happen without people knowing nobody was gonna tell on them. And that’s why you all love me. I speak truth to power.

So anyway I thought I would talk about the best movie of 2008. MGK was all “well it’s probably Wall-E or maybe Slumdog Millionaire” but one is about gay robots (and they totally ripped off Heartbeeps) and the other is about the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Regis Philbin has a moustache for some reason and that was really strange, I thought.

No, the bext movie of 2008 is Max Payne because it has Mark Wahlberg shooting people in slow motion and saying gritty things (also possibly in slow motion, I am not sure on the technology). It is everything Punisher: War Zone wanted to be! Except without the Punisher and stuff. Now I know many of you are busy and cannot watch the best movie of 2008, so I will go over the high points for you.

Max Payne is a cop on the edge! Of a lake! And he is underwater! And he drowns. I thought this was gonna be a real short movie at first but then they went all “ONE WEEK EARLIER” and I was all “whoa, they are playing with time and space here, it is just like Kubrick.” And then there is some boring stuff I don’t care about but then Max Payne goes to the subway! I am pretty sure it was a Toronto subway. I recognized the way it looked shitty. Remember how people used to be all “Toronto is like New York but cleaner?” Now they are not all like that any more.

Anyway, it turns out he was in the subway ON PURPOSE, looking for a junkie killer who killed his wife. He beats up the gang of junkies and finds the specific junkie, but the junkie is all high from the blue powder drug they all do in this movie. Also another junkie runs into the subway and hallucinates angels and then gets killed by a subway train. THIS IS IMPORTANT SO REMEMBER IT FOR LATER. (The angels, not the train. Trains are just trains, mostly.) So Max goes to a party run by the guy who told him where the junkies were and threatens to beat up that guy, but then a Russian whore shows up and she totally wants to do him, but then Mona Sax (who is played by that girl from That 70s Show, but not Donna, the squeaky one) totally slaps her in the face. Then Max turns away for a second and they both vanish!

Max chases after the Russian whore and sees that she is in the Lesbian Room doing lesbian stuff with lesbians, and also the blue powder angel drug. (She is doing the drug, the drug is not with the lesbians. Well I guess the drug is with the lesbians in a geographic sense, but you get where I am going with this.) While he watches the Lesbian Room, Sucre from Prison Break shows up right behind him! Everybody in this movie is like Batman in that they disappear and appear out of nowhere and that is awesome. Max brings the Russian whore home and she is good to go, but she makes fun of Max’s dead wife so he totally kicks her out! WAY TO NOT HAVE ANY SEX, MAX! You can tell he is the hero because he avoids getting herpes. (She definitely had herpes.)

Anyway, the Russian whore heads home through alleys (bad idea, Russian whore! You’re a morally deficient character in a moralistic action movie! Shoulda stuck to more populous areas of the city) but then hallucination angels kill her. Man this is some amazing drug, if it kills you with hallucination angels and people still want to take it. So the next morning Donal Logue shows up in an undercover cop car wearing undercover cop clothes (IE he looks like he is a bum) and he takes Max to the crime scene where the Russian whore is all cut up into whore-bits. Sucre watches from overhead and it is very suspicious. Then Donal Logue and Max have a fight because they used to be partners and now they aren’t partners any more and Donal Logue is worried that maybe the other cops (who are assholes) will think Max killed the Russian whore.

Donal Logue figures out that the Russian whore might be connected to Max’s wife’s murder because of the wing tattoo she had (I probably shoulda mentioned that she had an angel wing tattoo, everybody who is bad in this movie has one, also Sucre has them on his face), but he goes to Max’s apartment to kill him and gets killed. Max nearly gets killed too (that’s what you get for not having electricity that doesn’t make lamps flare up dramatically, Max!) but he has a gun in his sock and he shoots the guy (maybe) but then Max wakes up in hospital and he’s not sure what happened.

And THEN Chris O’Donnell is worried for some reason!

Old guy who is a friend of Max’s takes Max to Aesir Corporation (where old guy works and Max’s dead wife used to work) so Max can get all dressed up for Donal Logue’s funeral. Then Max goes to the funeral and Donal Logue’s wife (who is way too hot to be with Donal Logue incidentally) slaps him. Ludacris (fulfilling the “rapper quota” that every action movie must have nowadays) thinks Max is bad and so do all the other cops, but Max figures out what Donal Logue wanted to tell him by walking past all the other cops who just stand there while he breaks into Donal Logue’s office. Max is badass.

Mona Sax waylays Max with a machine gun and one of those metal sticks that extends out so you can smack people with it and she thinks Max killed the Russian whore, who it turns out was her sister. But Max convinces her otherwise so they go to a building with a screaming guy who is also hallucinating angels but maybe he is NOT hallucinating them and the angels kill him or maybe he throws himself out the window because he is hallucinating. See, this is why this movie is so good: it isn’t letting you decide one way or the other if the evil angels are real or not! It is ambiguous.

Sucre tortures and kills a junkie for some reason. But he takes his shirt off first because of junkie blood and he doesn’t want to ruin his shirt. That makes sense. I bet junkie blood is harder to get out than regular blood. It’s probably more clingy and persistent. You’d need to bleach it twice or something. So Max and Mona go to a tattoo shop and then a voodoo gun gang shop, and Max figures out that whoa, Aesir Corporation has a wing in their logo, and the junkies all have wing tattoos and it is CONNECTED!

Chris O’Donnell gives the Aesir boss lady a package with a photograph of Sucre when he was in the army. She tells him to “deal with it.” So he goes back to his office but Max is there! And Max beats him up so Chris O’ Donnell will tell him everything, but Aesir security forces show up just as O’Donnell starts cracking about how there was a horrible government conspiracy and they shoot him (the security guys, not the government conspiracy – well, maybe it is both, the movie is really ambiguous about that, much like in a Scorcese film except with hallucination angels everywhere), and then there is an awesome gunfight as Max shoots at the security guys who shoot at Max and it only took an hour of the movie for Max to really start shooting people’s asses off but it was worth the wait.

Anyway, this is where I should stop recapping the movie because from here on in it is all awesome with twists and turns and so forth, and also Max Payne does a backflip while firing a shotgun and then it turns out the old guy is actually bad and you get to find out how Max got into the lake to drown in the first place and how he stops hypothermia just by being that hardcore. Let’s see Harvey Milk do that.

A collection of Polish movie posters (as in “Polish posters for Hollywood movies”, not “posters for Polish movies”).

Seeing these reminds me of an old exhibition of hand-painted African posters for Hollywood movies; the artists took a lot of liberties (I notably remember a poster for The Empire Strikes Back where C-3P0 was wearing a tutu for some reason) but they invariably made the movies seem even more interesting than they were. “Repostering” strikes me as the sort of thing that could easily become the next big Internet trend…

“Pork and Beans” by Weezer and “So What” by Pink. 2008 was a really great year for “fuck you” songs, as the general frustration of the world with stupid bullshit finally hit its boiling point, and these were two of the best. Weezer’s song was “Fuck you, I’m a nerd” and Pink’s was “Fuck you, my marriage didn’t work out and who are you to comment.” They both had fantastic hooks (Pink’s “na-na-na-na” in particular will burn itself into your brain) and great musicality, and while Weezer’s video might have been a love letter to internet geeks, Pink’s video had Pink dancing naked and chainsawing down a tree, so at best the “best video” contest between these two is a wash.

The Incredible Hercules. Let’s face facts: 2008 was a remarkably shitty year for Big Two superhero comics. Other than the tail end of All-Star Superman‘s glorious twelve-issue run, what was there? “Event” comics repeatedly failed to impress (something which, at this point, should surprise absolutely nobody) and most superhero comics held up as this year’s exemplars of the form (Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider, say, or Geoff Johns’ work on Green Lantern, or Abnett and Lanning’s writing on Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy) are barely more than what should be expected out of the form – competent, entertaining storytelling that isn’t particularly revolutionary. The one bright light in all of this was Incredible Hercules, a comic which takes the mythological scope of Walt Simonson’s Thor and marries it to a humourous style not unlike that of Giffen and DeMatteis’ Justice League International (with the same core of pathos that that latter title had). Constantly wonderful and only getting better with time.

WALL-E. The single best film Pixar Studios have ever made – and considering this is the studio with Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles under its belt, that says something. Confident enough to wed most of its storytelling to physical comedy – and physical comedy created by a junky little robot no less – the scope and ambition of WALL-E is only more breathtaking. Yes, Andrew Stanton and company walked it back in public, claiming that it wasn’t “about” consumerism and the ecological destruction of the planet. The rest of us knew ass-covering bullshit when we heard it.

Nation by Terry Pratchett. Nobody knows how many swings at the plate Pratchett has left in him at this point, so that makes this home run of a book all the more glorious; a book which manages to be horrifying without being gory, romantic without being crass, sad without being melodramatic, spiritual without being moralistic, and praiseworthy of science without being annoyingly self-satisfied. As it is a Pratchett book, it is of course also very, very funny and clever throughout, and its message – of the possible comingling and even necessary interdependence of science and religion – is timely and welcome.

Leverage. God, how did John Rogers pitch this and ever have any trouble? “It’s Ocean’s Eleven versus evil corporations who screw over the little guy.” Why did it take so long for someone in Hollywood to throw money at him to get it made? But finally it happened, and this show is a glorious triumph – funny, exciting and most of all you never, ever have to watch it in Idiot Mode because the characters are doing stupid things for stupid reasons. Leverage is a show where the characters, at their worst, do smart things for stupid reasons. Or stupid things for smart reasons. And that makes all the difference.

Furr by Blitzen Trapper. I like music with energetic beats and operatic ambition, so the fact that I’m putting simple, folky, gentle Blitzen Trapper on my “best” list should serve as notice to how brilliant this record was. The title track is a love song about a werewolf, for crissake – just saying that should prepare you for some of the shittiest filk imaginable, but instead Blitzen Trapper makes it work, avoiding cute jokes and writing pure, eloquent poetry, and sounding all the while like a young version of Bob Dylan backed up by The Band. Just fantastic.

Berlin: City of Smoke. Jason Lutes’ epic continues to be absolutely fucking staggering. You should read this comic. Enough said.

In Bruges. Tanked at the box office, as people expected from the shitty advertising campaign that it would be another Lock, Stock-lite English gangster caper film, but instead this was by turns a funny and solemn story about two gangsters (in Bruges) taking cover after a crime gone horribly wrong, a crime that left scars. The comedy comes from razor-sharp dialogue; the pathos from absolutely brilliant work by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, and a story that inverts the usual heh-heh-we’re-gangsters tropes and unabashedly, without moralizing, points out that the criminal life really, really sucks at your soul. The best directorial debut of the year, by a country mile.

Northlanders. Brutal, vicious, and utterly fantastic Viking stories that only served to once again remind comics fans of why Vertigo still matters if you’re not interested in medium-dark fantasy (along with the equally fantastic Scalped). Totally hard-ass and uncompromising about both the virtues and flaws of the Viking world, and the lack of an overarching supernarrative means that Brian Wood can do what he does best – stories more connected by theme than by plot. (With Vikings in them.)

Fallout 3. Everybody else has already said everything that could be said about this game, so I’ll just throw in a backhanded compliment: the game is so crazily chock-full of content that I maxed out at level 20 when I was less than a third of the way through the main plot. Dear Bethesda: please to patch game to give more levels please.

Bob on Survivor. You have to love it when a 57-year-old physics teacher (and clearly still a very fit one) dominates the competition challenges over people half his age and invents multiple realistic-looking fake immunity idols to keep himself in play. Bob was the runaway fan-favorite of Survivor: Gabon and easily one of the most dominant players in years, his only failing being an early willingness to trust the wrong people (which merely made him all the more sympathetic).

The Boys. The next time somebody tells me that Garth Ennis just likes to take the piss out of superhero comics and that’s the only reason he’s writing The Boys, I will make them read #15, wherein Annie, undergoing a severe crisis of faith, demands that God give her a sign He exists, and leaves the church disappointed and on the brink of collapse when nothing happens – and then promptly runs into Hughie, who of course is exactly the sign she asked for. Then I will beat them to death with a lead pipe because I am sick to fucking death of people whining about shit that isn’t true. Be forewarned.

The Battlestar Galactica board game. An ingeniously designed board game, featuring the standard cooperative-survival mechanics one would expect given the setting, but with a brilliant twist: some of the players are actually Cylons and they are secretly trying to destroy humanity. The game’s system is designed to make hiding and striking against humanity a thing of subtlety and play-skill; if you’re really good you can even set up other players to take the fall for you, framing them as Cylons using nothing more than your own ability to lie. Similarly, it takes true observational skill to ferret out a really good Cylon player, as well as time your incarceration of them properly. Yes, it’s kind of a shame that Boomer sucks compared to most of the other characters, but other than that this game is seriously just about perfect in its execution.

Chuck. With a promising mini-season start last year, Chuck was already a solidly entertaining little show, but now? Far and away the most improved show on television; the plots are more clever, the dialogue snappier, the action higher quality and the unrealized romance between Chuck and Sarah satisfyingly boiling away behind a thousand actually-good reasons for them to not be together. Also good: the elevation of the Buy-More supporting cast to credits-level importance. Last season I was worried Chuck might waste them in favour of the annoying guy who plays Morgan. This season – well, less Morgan! That’s a start.

Metropolis by Janelle Monáe.

I trust that was self-explanatory, but if it wasn’t – that blend of nu-funk, futuristic soul and utter batshit craziness (it’s a concept album! Set in 2719!) is like what I think Legion of Super-Heroes should be if it were transposed into musical form. And she’s an obvious music nerd. Any other P.Diddy “discovery” diva-lite would want to be all pretty and sexified in their debut video. She wants to be Robot James Brown. How awesome is that?

2008 was a year that produced many singular and outstanding creative works. These were not those.

Waltz with Bashir. One of the most overrated films of the year, the recipient of far too many movie-critic blowjobs to count. Admittedly, the idea of a documentary presented entirely in rotoscopic animation is novel, but one novel idea doesn’t necessarily make a film good, and once you get past the gee-whiz factor of the cartoony Waking Life visual treatment of the film’s material, what do you really have? You’ve got a documentary that’s somewhere in between indulgent and boring, relying on the “oh this is serious stuff” aura that journalists will cheerfully hype about absolutely any inferior creative work related to the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict. Pretty cartoons do not redeem it.

“Lollipop” by L’il Wayne. L’il Wayne has so much awesome work under his belt that it seems a cruel trick that this, one of the most annoying songs he’s ever written, should be his biggest mainstream hit ever. It’s not catchy, it’s just repetitive.

Countdown. It seems almost besides the point to mention how fucking terrible Countdown was, because everybody remembers how fucking terrible it was. But people deserve to be reminded of how shitty, how absolutely crap every fucking week of this fucking shitty comic was, in case they are considering buying a DC “event” comic. So: Jason Todd spent a long time becoming Red Robin. Then he quit being Red Robin. Mary Marvel became a magic-eating psycho whore. Then she stopped doing that. Then she started doing it again. Kamandi finally got the origin story nobody ever demanded. God only knows how many pages were spent detailing the slow death-by-superdisease suffered by Karate Kid, which would have been compelling if the payoff hadn’t been “they fail and he dies anyway.” (Memo to Keith Giffen: I know you’re proud that you’ve managed to kill off Karate Kid twice, but at least the first time it only took you one issue.) We met the Earth-3 “good guy” version of the Joker. Then they killed him off. Jimmy Olsen fucked a bug. Then the bug dumped him. Then Jimmy Olsen fought Darkseid. Again: Jimmy Olsen fought Darkseid, and they were serious about this, which gives one new respect for George Lucas because as bad as the prequel trilogy was, at least he never had C-3P0 fight the Emperor. And finally, a series ostensibly intended to “count down” to Final Crisis in the end turned out to have absolutely jack shit to do with Final Crisis, which begs the question what the point of this shitty, shitty comic was in the first place.

Four Christmases. I sat through this when a friend of mine’s son and I couldn’t get into The Transporter 3 and we needed to see something. Sitting outside in the cold for two hours would have been preferable to sitting through this lifeless, unfunny waste of time, a movie which just screams out “we only did it for the paycheque” en masse. If I ever see Vince Vaughn in real life, I will punch him in the cock.

Heroes. Okay, yeah, Heroes always sucked, but I am gratified that this was finally the year where everybody else figured out that it sucked too. Masi Oka, one of the few actors on this show capable of more than two facial expressions, got saddled with plotlines and dialogue apparently designed to make everybody hate his character. (It worked!) The writers continue to come up with new ways to not deal with the fact that right out of the gate they created three characters (Sylar, Hiro and Peter) who are massively overpowered compared to everybody else on the show and who need permanent power-downs or else the show’s idiocy level will rapidly become terminal. Of course, before they do that they need to figure out how to write a basic plot worth a damn. Also, if I ever see the guy who plays Mohinder in real life, I will punch him in the cock too.

The AI in Call of Duty: World at War. When I play the solo mode I want to really feel like I’m in the middle of the biggest war of all time. This is tricky when you have American GIs and Japanese banzai solders shooting at their respective opponents while standing literally shoulder-to-shoulder because the GIs are stuck in “shoot pointlessly at enemy” and the Japanese are stuck in “shoot pointlessly at you.” Do not even get me started on the Russians and their propensity to throw grenades at the same time they’re calling for you to charge something.

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Introduced “nuked the fridge” into common parlance to complement “jumped the shark,” wherein the former means “movie franchise jumping from beloved icon to joke nigh-instantaneously,” but the phrase could have just as easily been “swing with the monkeys” or “watch the alien spaceship.” This movie is stupid, where previous Indy movies were so pointedly not, and that is the greatest disappointment imaginable. Shia Labeefs’ status as “Next Big Thing In Hollywood, No Really, We Mean It” aside, he sucked in this. Of course, everybody else sucked in it too – even Harrison Ford for god’s sake – so he’ll probably be fine.

DCU: Decisions. What was the point of this comic, anyway? Never mind that simply getting Judd “I’m A Liberal!” Winick and Bill “I’m a Conservative!” Willingham to tag-team-write a comic doesn’t actually ensure any sense of political balance so much as it boils down political positions to ludicrous cariacature (Lois Lane and Power Girl are Republicans because they’re for “strong national defense,” and Green Arrow is a Democrat because he’s a big enviro-hippie!). Forget that the plot made no sense. But seriously, who was going to care about this comic when real life was more important and interesting than figuring out who Batman would vote for? (And before anybody says “well, they scheduled it months before anybody knew Obama was going to be a candidate” – whatever, any real American election would be more interesting than this comic.)

The third season of Dexter. Oh man I have never seen a show go this badly off the rails before. What was previously sharp and savage got dull and indulgent real goddamned fast. And Jimmy Smits? Jimmy Smits is never bad in anything. What the hell happened? Did they put something in his water? Who is poisoning the waters of Jimmy Smits? I will discover who is doing this thing, and I will harm them!

“I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry. Any music critic talking about this piece of shit being “catchy” is trying to earn populist cred. Sometimes shitty popular songs are just that and nothing else. The only thing more annoying than the chorus and the lyrics was the ginned-up “controversy” about Katy Perry (WHO IS TOTALLY STRAIGHT EVERYBODY AND IT IS JUST A SONG) endorsing bisexuality. Christ, like James Dobson needed something else to get him hard?

Comics fanboys pre-emptively whining about The Dark Knight getting ignored by the Oscars. Heads up, guys: Heath Ledger is already practically a lock to win Best Supporting and that’s great. But you know what else? The movie is half an hour too long at least, the sonar thing was distracting and hard to watch, and that middle bit where Jim Gordon is dead and Bruce decides to quit being Batman then Harvey says he’s Batman then it turns out it was all a trick to catch the Joker except why did Bruce tell Alfred he was quitting being Batman – that bit made no fucking sense and Christopher Nolan, that clever little bastard, was just figuring we’d all cream our pants over everything else so much we wouldn’t notice and he was mostly right about that. The Dark Knight is a good movie, close to being a great one, but it wasn’t even the best superhero movie this year (that would be Iron Man). So please shut the fuck up.

BEST PICTURE:

In order of likelihood:

Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Milk
The Dark Knight
Wall-E

I think Slumdog and Button are locks – they both have a shitload of critical acclaim, a lot of awards and award nominations, and most importantly they’re getting award nominations at the right time (the Golden Globe and Screen Actors’ Guild award noms were very favorable for both films). Milk isn’t quite as strong because it got mostly shut out at the Golden Globes, but it’s critically as popular as Slumdog or Button is and Sean Penn carries a lot of Academy weight. The Dark Knight is The Dark Knight, but it’s not as strong a contender as the first three films, mostly because at this point it’s only getting nominated for Heath Ledger’s performance and Christopher Nolan’s direction (which isn’t entirely fair to the film, but whatever). My fifth pick is Wall-E, mostly because I like to pick one longshot every year and this year Wall-E is a longshot despite being an astounding popular critical and popular favorite, mostly because, hey, cartoon. Sure, it’ll win Best Animated Picture in a heartbeat, but winning the ghetto category isn’t hard, you know?

If there’s any deviation from my picks, it’ll probably be either Wall-E or Dark Knight getting replaced with either Frost/Nixon (which really isn’t strong enough to merit a win in most categories and hasn’t done well in critical awards or major award nominations, but it’s a Ron Howard movie and I think Ron Howard could film his cock for ninety minutes and then Ron Howard’s Dick On Film would get a Best Picture nomination with a little luck) or The Wrestler (which is getting a serious push late in the game as it capitalizes on surprise crowd heat, to put it in wrestling parlance).

BEST DIRECTOR:

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Gus Van Sant, Milk
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight
Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler

Best Director picks usually mirror Best Picture picks with one exception so everybody can talk about how “X can be Best Picture but its director isn’t Best Director, what’s up with that?” Boyle and Fincher are locks just as their respective movies are, I think, and I think Christopher Nolan gets a nomination for Best Director even if Dark Knight doesn’t get a Best Picture nod because most of the acclaim for that film that wasn’t given to Heath Ledger was given to him (and rightfully so). Van Sant is a pure if-his-movie-gets-a-BP-nod pick; if Milk gets knocked out, I think he does as well. Aronofsky gets my longshot pick in this category for The Wrestler on the “everybody likes his work and thinks he’s due for an Academy nod of some kind” tip.

Other potential nominees are Ron “my milkshake brings the Academy voters to the yard” Howard for Frost/Nixon or Sam “suburbia sucks, guys, did I mention that” Mendes for Revolutionary Road. Bear in mind that the DGA announces their award nominees on the 9th and that has the potential to introduce an underdog in the mix (maybe Andrew Stanton for Wall-E, say, or Jonathan Demme for Rachel Getting Married), but my list is probably pretty close to what Oscar ends up recognizing.

BEST ACTOR:

Sean Penn, Milk
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Penn, Rourke, and Langella all have a 99 percent chance of getting nominated; all three performances are brilliant, Langella’s never won an Academy Award despite being an acting force practically his entire life, Rourke has the magical comeback story and Penn is the recipient of “hey, this guy is the best actor of our lifetimes, maybe we should give him more awards” buzz (and rightly so). Jenkins’ work in The Visitor is a career best from a veteran character actor; I was worried it would get overlooked but then he got a SAG nod, and SAG nods tend to translate to Oscar noms. The final slot probably boils down to either Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio for Revolutionary Road – both are popular actors, both are relatively underrecognized by the Academy despite strong bodies of work, and both would look really good accepting an Oscar. I’m going with Pitt, who had a better year than DiCaprio thanks to a critically popular role in Burn After Reading in addition to Button, and who got the SAG nod.

(Yes, I am aware that my list is a straight copy of the SAG best actor nomination list. Fuck off.)

Other than DiCaprio maybe swapping in for Pitt or Jenkins, I don’t see this list differing too much. Maybe, if Dustin Hoffman (Last Chance Harvey) or Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges), both nominated for a Golden Globe, get lucky… but it would take an awful lot of luck.

BEST ACTRESS:

Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky

Hathaway, at this point, is a lock not only to get nominated but also probably has very good odds to win the award: she’s a critically acclaimed young ingenue, and Oscar loves critically acclaimed young ingenues. This would bother me more if Hathaway weren’t so inherently fantastic. Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep and she will get a nomination because she is Meryl Streep and there is nothing at all wrong with that. Jolie has the critical heft behind her, but here’s the thing: the Academy actually doesn’t like her that much, mostly because – and this is stupid – she’s “tabloidy” in that she acts out and cusses and and has a vial of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood somewhere and she does action movies and she steals Brad Pitt from people. I think she’ll get the nom anyway, though.

Kate Winslet isn’t going to win this year, not in Best Actress, and I’ll be the first to say that the fact that Kate Winslet does not have seventy billion Academy Awards right now is a bigger crime against humanity than Darfur. Well, no, not really, but it’s pretty bad. But she has a good chance at getting nominated. Hawkins didn’t get a SAG nomination, but her performance has gotten a lot of critical attention, and it’s a really cheerful movie that people like watching, and that helps a lot.

If there’s any differing from my list, it’ll be a swapout of Winslet or Hawkins for Melissa Leo in Frozen River (because she got a SAG nomination, despite nobody actually seeing her movie) or Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy (which is actually probably the best female performance of the year overall, but it was released really late and thus missed the opportunity to build up steam). Note that Williams also gets a little “grieving widow” cred (morbid as it might be to say that, but the Academy does pay attention to that sort of shit).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
Josh Brolin, Milk
Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionaire

Ledger is a lock and 99 percent sure to win it as well, and something like that means the rest of the nominations get taken more on a “performances we want to honor with a nomination” basis. Doubt is an “actor’s movie” and Hoffman has the Golden Globe and SAG nods already, so he’s in. Downey Jr., like Hoffman, has the double-double of SAG and Golden Globe nods, and plus it is a performance where they can put up a clip of him on the broadcast in his blackface and everybody will laugh, and the Academy loves that shit, so he’s probably in. (He gets a lot of help from the “Ledger is winning this” factor, given that his performance was the sort that, in another year with no Ledger, might not have gotten nominated because people wouldn’t actually want it to win.) Milk had three separate performances the Academy might choose to honor (Brolin, James Franco and Emile Hirsch) and Brolin has both the most cred and the most acclaim. Dev Patel is the only serious chance that Slumdog has for an acting nomination, and it’s really, really popular with the awards crowd, and he got a SAG nomination too. So he’s probably in.

Patel and Brolin are the likeliest candidates for not getting the nomination, and if they don’t it’ll probably be one of Franco (for Milk or possibly even Pineapple Express), or juuuust maybe Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder because he was very funny and got a Golden Globe nomination for it.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Amy Adams, Doubt
Viola Davis, Doubt
Kate Winslet, The Reader
Rosemarie Dewitt, Rachel Getting Married

Pretty straightforward. Cruz has won, like, everything for her role in Vicky Cristina (as much as I disliked that movie). Adams and Davis are both actors in the “actor’s movie” this year and both were excellent and critically hurrahed. Kate Winslet is Kate Winslet, except this time she has a Golden Globe and SAG nod. (She won’t win, because she is Kate Winslet, AKA “the Susan Lucci of the Academy Awards.”) Dewitt is the second fiddle to Anne Hathaway, which is a good place to be.

Marisa Tomei might sneak in there for The Wrestler, but other than that, it’s pretty straightforward, I think.

EDIT TO ADD:

By multiple request:

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire (from Q and A by Vikas Swarup)
Eric Roth for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story)
Peter Morgan for Frost/Nixon (from his stage play)
Justin Haythe for Revolutionary Road (from the novel by Richard Yates)
David Hare for The Reader (from the novel by Bernard Schlink)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

Jenny Lumet for Rachel Getting Married
Charlie Kaufman for Synecdoche, N.Y.
Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon for Wall-E
Robert D. Siegel for The Wrestler
Thomas McCarthy for The Visitor

FLAPJACKS: I downloaded the Star Trek trailer! Let’s watch it!
ME: But I already saw it.
FLAPJACKS: You can’t watch it again? Come on.
ME: Oh, all right.
FLAPJACKS: So we start out with Young James Kirk driving across the desert in a classic Chevy.
ME: How do you know it’s a Chevy?
FLAPJACKS: I don’t. Maybe it’s a Ford.
ME: We’re not car guys.
FLAPJACKS: No, we aren’t.
ME: But it’s probably worth a lot of money in the year 23-whatever. It could be a Geo and it would be worth millions.
FLAPJACKS: So you’re saying young James Kirk is driving a million-dollar collectible off a cliff for kicks?
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: That’s cool.
ME: That’s retarded.
FLAPJACKS: But in a cool way.
ME: It really isn’t.
FLAPJACKS: He’s going to smash a priceless piece of history for no better reason than because he can? That’s totally punk, man.
ME: You don’t know that he doesn’t have a reason, though.
FLAPJACKS: This is true.
ME: Hey, look! Deadshot’s a cop now!
FLAPJACKS: Floyd Lawton is going to shoot Young Kirk!
ME: How will Young Kirk escape his deadly aim?
FLAPJACKS: By flash-forwarding!
ME: Now Less Young Kirk has a motorcycle, I see.
FLAPJACKS: Boy, I can’t wait to see him crash THAT off a cliff!
ME: Aw, he’s looking up at the unfinished Enterprise.
FLAPJACKS: Probably planning to have sex with it.
ME: What?
FLAPJACKS: This is James Kirk we’re talking about here.
ME: Baby Spock!
FLAPJACKS: Teen Spock!
FLAPJACKS: Teen Spock will not be judged by your Vulcan courts!
ME: How do Vulcan teenagers rebel against their parents, anyway?
FLAPJACKS: Maybe they do math with irrational numbers. Up high!
ME: You do not get a high five for that joke.
FLAPJACKS: Aw.
ME: Old Spock!
FLAPJACKS: You want Spock? We give you Spock! What kinda Spock you want?
ME: Okay, the transporter looks hella cool.
FLAPJACKS: It would not be a new iteration of Star Trek without a new transporter special effect.
ME: What happens when they run out of new transporter special effects?
FLAPJACKS: YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH! YOU SHUT YOUR FILTHY WHORE MOUTH!
ME: And we’re in a hangar filled with people wearing red.
FLAPJACKS: Does the hangar blow up?
ME: Don’t be silly. They wouldn’t deprive us of all those individual death scenes.
FLAPJACKS: Montage! The Enterprise! Fighting stuff! In space!
ME: The inside of the Enterprise looks like an iPod.
FLAPJACKS: J.J. Williams is warning us all about the future!
ME: Huh?
FLAPJACKS: All I’m saying is that the phasers have clickwheels.
ME: NO, KIRK AND SPOCK! DO NOT FIGHT EACH OTHER! YOU ARE FRIENDS!
FLAPJACKS: Maybe Spock is in pon farr and he feels the need to defend his territory and then mate with Uhura.
ME: Maybe J.J. Abrams couldn’t find a way to fill up part of the script and he took an old episode of Lost and renamed Jack and Sawyer.
FLAPJACKS: I like my theory better.
ME: Are those people skydiving or are they using jetpacks?
FLAPJACKS: If they’re using jetpacks then this is the best movie ever and all the nerds complaining that the Enterprise isn’t exactly the right shape or whatever can fuck off. Star Trek with jetpacks is Even Better Star Trek.
ME: Well, I – no, I have to agree with you one hundred percent about that.
FLAPJACKS: That’s because I’m not wrong about jetpacks.
ME: Hey, the emergency siren!
FLAPJACKS: Oh, the Enterprise emergency siren! How I’ve missed you! And the doors that go “wsssssh.”
ME: Hey, that’s Bruce Greenwood!
FLAPJACKS: I understand he is playing Captain Pike before Pike ended up in a box that spoke through a little red light.
ME: Kirk with his shirt off!
FLAPJACKS: Uhura with her shirt off!
ME: Scotty – thankfully with his shirt on.
FLAPJACKS: You can tell they think Simon Pegg is a draw because he gets to say something.
ME: You know what would make this movie better? If Scotty fought zom – actually, no, it wouldn’t, never mind.
FLAPJACKS: Caught yourself just in the nick of time there.
ME: John Cho as Sulu, having a sword-fight in a spacesuit!
FLAPJACKS: Didn’t a girl you dated once say she wanted to bone John Cho?
ME: She also wanted to bone Kal Penn.
FLAPJACKS: So she wanted to do both Harold and Kumar?
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: Did she ever talk about wanting to be the filling in their sandwich?
ME: Why do you care?
FLAPJACKS: Why wouldn’t I?
ME: Karl Urban IS Leonard McCoy, and he’s intense!
FLAPJACKS: Is McCoy intense?
ME: He is when he is Karl Urban. Karl Urban can stare through metal until it melts.
FLAPJACKS: I bet that comes in handy in surgery.
ME: Montage! Kirk hanging off the edge of a cliff!
FLAPJACKS: A weird-looking monster thing!
ME: Kirk saying “buckle up!”
FLAPJACKS: And not the unmentioned “your pants after I gave you a good rogering.”
ME: Uh huh.
FLAPJACKS: Because he had sex with that person, you see.
ME: No, no, I got it.
FLAPJACKS: Are you sure?
ME: Spock strangling Kirk, Uhura just standing there –
FLAPJACKS: May I just say that Uhura just standing there, ineffectually, really captures the essence of Uhura.
ME: That’s mean.
FLAPJACKS: But not inaccurate.
ME: She did love Tribbles.
FLAPJACKS: Yes.
ME: And she distracted the enemy with a sexy dance in Star Trek V.
FLAPJACKS: I was trying to forget about that entirely.
ME: Sorry.
FLAPJACKS: You should be.
ME: Space-warpy thing, ship being blown up, Kirk fucking some girl…
FLAPJACKS: See? See? Kirk will fuck anything that moves!
ME: Yes, I got it.
FLAPJACKS: And we close with Erik Bana as a Romulan with a Swedish accent.
ME: Holy shit, you’re right, he does have a Swedish accent there.
FLAPJACKS: “Und zeen ve-a teke-a zee vurmy-hule-a tu zee pest, und ve-a cunker hoomuneety. Bork bork bork!”
ME: And… logo.
FLAPJACKS: So what do we think?
ME: Takes liberties with the source material?
FLAPJACKS: Is this an issue?
ME: …no, I do have sex every once in a while, so I have better things to care desperately about. You?
FLAPJACKS: Wait, you have sex?
ME: Shut up. You?
FLAPJACKS: I’m going to go line up at the theatre right now. I figure if I get in before the rush I can get oodles of free stuff from people willing to sponsor my lonely vigil.
ME: Who?
FLAPJACKS: Stupid people, and the people who sell things to stupid people.
ME: Ah.

FLAPJACKS: So guess what I saw today?
ME: I am fairly sure I don’t want to guess.
FLAPJACKS: Aw, come on.
ME: The new Bond flick?
FLAPJACKS: Nope!
ME: Watchmen six months early?
FLAPJACKS: if that was the case, why would I spend valuable lording-it-over-you time making you guess?
ME: Porn?
FLAPJACKS: Other than porn.
ME: Then I have no idea.
FLAPJACKS: Tomcats!
ME: I thought you said it wasn’t porn.
FLAPJACKS: Google it.

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