“From the animation studio that brought you Wonder Horseface now comes Green Lantern With Lockjaw (Not The Alien Dog, The Disease).”
Top comment: I’d still rather watch it than the “Superman: Doomsday” movie, which gave me brain cancer. — Matt
2
Mar
“From the animation studio that brought you Wonder Horseface now comes Green Lantern With Lockjaw (Not The Alien Dog, The Disease).”
Top comment: I’d still rather watch it than the “Superman: Doomsday” movie, which gave me brain cancer. — Matt
1
Mar
So the new Internet Nerd War is apparently between the Livejournal community that used to be scans_daily and Peter David.
Short version of events: a scans_daily poster posted half of the pages to the most recent issue of X-Factor, which PAD had told the entire internet not to spoil because he wanted the ending to be a surprise. PAD showed up on the community and apparently got someone telling him he sucked ass in response.1 PAD told Marvel, and Marvel complained to Livejournal, and Livejournal (or their Abuse team, one or the other) suspended the community, possibly because of Photobucket complaining or something instead. (Personally, the idea that Photobucket would all of a sudden complain about s_d using it after, what, five years, seems unlikely to me, and it seems far more logical that Marvel said something to somebody. But if PAD says otherwise, I don’t see the point in calling him a liar.)
People have been asking me for my take on it, seeing as how this site exists primarily because I used to be on Livejournal before I was kicked off for copyright violations along the same lines (although with far less legal certainty about the merit of any said copyright violation charge).
Anyway. Basically at this point you have a goddamned avalanche of bad argument erupting out all over the place, both from scans_daily members and from PAD. The combined force of this stupid is so intense I almost expect Joss Whedon fans to spontaneously show up and tell everybody off for complaining about Dollhouse being a bag of crap and not waiting until episode six when Joss “really gets things going with an episode he wrote himself.” So here is my message to all involved.
Dear scans_daily members: Jesus Christ just shut the fuck up and stop throwing tantrums. This was going to happen sooner or later.
Your entire community – and remember, this comes from a former (haven’t really been to the community since I left LJ) and enthusiastic member – was predicated on copyright violation, and only existed thanks to the whim and good will of every comics company whose material you illegally reproduced. Yes, it may often have been in said companies’ best interests to let you illegally reproduce that work, but that in and of itself is not an argument for why you should get to keep violating copyright if they choose not to let you do that.
Also, do not start talking to me about fair use like you actually know what fair use is, because it’s pretty obvious almost none of you know jack shit about fair use.
If you did know anything about it, you’d know that amount of the work used is a vital component of determining fair use, and that traditionally the amount of work used before a use becomes unfair is fairly low. In Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, it was about 300 words of a 30,000-word Gerald Ford biography, which was found to be unfair because those 300 words – or one percent of the total work – contained too much of the vital core of the work.2
Now, consider that the scans_daily “posting limit” rule was half of any given issue of a comic.3 Gosh, do you think that half of the whole work is going to contain too much of the vital core of the work? Because I think that’s some pretty good odds right there. In practice, anything more than ten percent will generally set off alarms. Ten percent of a comic is two pages. I mention this for when the next scans_daily at whatever shitty LJ ripoff site gets nuked for exactly the same reason.4
Short version of above: s_d existed only with the implicit permission of the works’ owners, and you should have been able to figure that out going in. If you were deceived (intentionally or no) by people who told you that the s_d posting policies constituted fair use, that’s understandable – but they, and you, were wrong.
Also: your collective response to PAD’s complaints? Entirely grown up and not making you look like a bunch of spoiled children at all. No, really. The collective maturity being displayed on the Internet this weekend is impressing me no end. I especially like the re-occuring “Pompous Arrogant Dickweed” joke, because HEY THOSE ARE PETER DAVID’S INITIALS! The cleverness on the internet, it just never stops. Seriously, guys, I know something you liked and enjoyed was just taken away from you, but every time you open your mouths and act like you’re three, you just validate the senses of superiority of the people trying to shut you down.5
Dear PAD: A quote.
“My year-long goal is to try and triple sales on this book; putting up free scans of the entire issue so that thousands of fans can read it without having to pay a dime kneecaps that goal. It’s “wow, this issue is great, you should go out and buy it” vs. “wow, this issue is great, you should hit this link and read it for free.”
Ahem. From Paul O’Brien’s Marvel sales recaps at The Beat:
02/06 X-Factor #3 – 48,307 ( -8.3%)
03/06 X-Factor #4 – 48,183 ( -0.3%)
03/06 X-Factor #5 – 46,490 ( -3.5%)
04/06 X-Factor #6 – 45,220 ( -2.7%)
05/06 X-Factor #7 – 44,315 ( -2.0%)
06/06 X-Factor #8 – 76,150 (+71.8%) [“Civil War” crossover begins]
07/06 X-Factor #9 – 68,799 ( -9.7%) [“Civil War” crossover final issue]
08/06 X-Factor #10 – 44,603 (-35.2%)
09/06 X-Factor #11 – 43,431 ( -2.6%)
10/06 X-Factor #12 – 42,909 ( -1.2%)
11/06 X-Factor #13 – 42,844 ( -0.2%)
12/06 X-Factor #14 – 40,208 ( -6.2%)
01/07 X-Factor #15 – 38,693 ( -3.8%)
02/07 X-Factor #16 – 38,240 ( -1.2%)
03/07 X-Factor #17 – 38,067 ( -0.4%)
04/07 X-Factor #18 – 37,851 ( -0.6%)
05/07 X-Factor #19 – 37,898 ( +0.1%)
06/07 X-Factor #20 – 37,105 ( -2.1%)
07/07 X-Factor #21 – 50,227 (+35.4%) [“Endangered Species” backups begin]
08/07 X-Factor #22 – 52,627 ( +4.8%)
09/07 X-Factor #23 – 53,311 ( +1.3%)
10/07 X-Factor #24 – 52,085 ( -2.3%) [“Endangered Species” backups end]
11/07 X-Factor #25 – 79,066 (+51.8%) [“Messiah Complex” crossover begins]
12/07 X-Factor #26 – 84,219 ( +6.5%)
01/08 X-Factor #27 – 81,350 ( -3.4%) [“Messiah Complex” crossover ends]
02/08 X-Factor #28 – 61,173 (-24.8%)
03/08 X-Factor #29 – 54,832 (-10.4%)
04/08 X-Factor #30 – 51,447 ( -6.2%)
05/08 X-Factor #31 – 48,231 ( -6.3%)
06/08 X-Factor #32 – 45,104 ( -6.5%)
07/08 X-Factor #33 – 53,088 (+17.7%) [“Secret Invasion” crossover begins]
08/08 X-Factor #34 – 50,416 ( -5.0%) [“Secret Invasion” crossover ends]
09/08 X-Factor #35 – 44,481 (-11.8%)
10/08 X-Factor #36 – 38,552 (-13.3%)
11/08 X-Factor #37 – 35,754 ( -7.3%)
12/08 X-Factor #38 – 34,425 ( -3.7%)
Not to get all next-generation-of-media/Cory-Doctorow-at-a-copyright-lecture on you,6 but…
…unless the title of that comic becomes X-Factor Starring Wolverine And Spider-Man And Batman, the evidence is pretty obvious you’re not going to triple sales on it without a major crossover, and those sales will quickly vanish after the crossover ends anyway. (And even with the major crossovers, you’ve never done better than to roughly double sales in any case.)
The existing comics market has spoken, and by and large they’ve said “X-Factor? Yes, yes, decent stuff, but where is my comic with Wolverine in it? Ah, yes. Sweet, sweet Logan.” That means if you want to achieve this (ludicrous but admirable) goal of tripling your readership, you’re going to have to actually try and get readers who are new to comics to give your book a try. Now, these “new comics readers” might quite enjoy your comic, but let us be honest: X-Factor is a comic staffed with the B- and C-level castoffs from other Marvel mutant books and so you cannot just say “it is a comic about Madrox and Strong Guy and Siryn,” because Potential New Comics Reader will go “whuh?”
Furthermore, you can’t just point to five-page previews on Newsarama or on Marvel’s website, because nobody who doesn’t already read comics goes there and they’re lousy for actually explaining the ongoing premise of the comic to new readers. Again, you want new comics readers? The existing market has failed you? That means you need alternative sources of marketing, variant methods to hike potential reader interest in your – let’s be honest – niche product. scans_daily was honestly an excellent method of generating new potential reader interest, because there are approximately six billion young nerds – mostly female nerds7 – on Livejournal who would totally be into your comics if only they knew that your comics existed, and some of them are even willing to spend money on them!8
And it’s worth remembering that s_d provided an arena for those young nerds to learn about comics of which they were unaware without first requiring a commitment to becoming part of the “comics fan community.” This is really kind of a big deal, because most of comics fandom seems to think they are not as offputting as, say, LARPers or Trekkers or furries,9 and this is often only marginally true at best. s_d, despite its occasional crankiness, was far more inviting to a noob comic reader interested in comics education and discussion than just about any other avenue available to them.
This is something comics desperately fucking needs in order to survive in any way akin to what we have now, because we’ve seen the results of relying on the direct market and comic book shops to advance the popularity of comics and it just doesn’t work. The fact that s_d was both run independently of any marketing effort by the big comics companies and was hugely popular and successful was not an accident: they have a skillset that DC and Marvel and Dark Horse and Image’s marketing departments do not have and apparently either cannot learn or cannot be bothered to learn.
Now, I understand that you work in comics and are therefore seemingly obligated to mostly not understand or ignore the same market issues that the music and movie industries have been dealing with for over a decade now and also to endorse the repetition of their mistakes,10 and that’s fine, but there’s one fine distinction between those two industries and comics.11 In your comment above, you argue that comics showing up for free on the internet essentially distinguishes the comics audience into “people willing to pay for comics” and “people who would be willing to pay for comics but are happy to read them for free instead.”
This is mostly a fallacy. The comics audience really divides into a bunch of segments: “people who are willing to pay for overpriced monthly comics,” and “people who are willing to buy trades but don’t want to wait for the trade to come out to read the story,”12 and “people who might be willing to buy the comics in some form but don’t want to commit to monetarily jumping into the massive history of a licensed property without reading a reasonable amount of it for free first,” and of course there are “people who just like stealing shit.” Plus a few other categories, but those are the big important ones.
Conflating “people not willing to buy the comics upfront without reading them first in some form” with automatically lost sales is an argument that’s so out of date by now that I am pretty sure it can be found sitting next to cases of New Coke. Arguing that an unauthorized reprint of a work automatically decreases sales potential is contrary to just about all the anecdotal and statistical evidence we have available at this point. And complaining that the reason X-Factor is selling notso-hotso is because people are giving away the thrilling plot twists online is just nuckin’ futs.
Oh, Spoiler Puppy! Now you have ruined that comic book for everybody forever!13
Another quote:
There are plenty of reasons to excuse something that is, at its core, against the law. You can rationalize it all you want. You can explain good things that could come from it… [t]here’s always benefits to someone from theft. But theft remains theft, whether people try to enumerate the benefits or not. As a general rule of thumb, the way you tell the difference between right and wrong is that when it’s wrong, you have to make excuses for it.
This is a bunch of moralizing (remember that any penalties suffered for being found to infringe copyright will be civil ones, not criminal, a point that annoys me every time someone says the s_d folks were “breaking the law”) that overlooks the simple point that there is a proud history of creative types allowing fans to bootleg. The Grateful Dead did it all the time, and they were one of the most financially successful bands ever. Frank Zappa only got involved in “official” bootleg releases because he felt the bootleggers were profiting too greatly from fans’ desire to get copies of his boots. These artists and others like them understood that bootlegs only increased their fans’ loyalty and desire for their official product.
Now, of course you can say “well, the Dead and Zappa and all those others gave permission and that wasn’t the case here.” And that is totally reasonable, as any company whose job is essentially managing (and occasionally creating) valued intellectual properties would of course have no idea about the existence of a web community, reproducing portions of their intellectual property, with membership in the high four to low five figures and readership potentially even higher, that also had multiple working professionals counted as members of the community. As a matter of fact I am dead positive that Marvel and DC had no idea about the existence of scans_daily, a community widely known and occasionally mocked throughout the comics web for its particular peccadilloes, and that their noninterference with that community would of course be ignorance and not implied permission to exist at all.
Or, more succinctly, “yeesh.” Here is a far more likely scenario: Marvel and DC knew about s_d but preferred to turn a blind eye to it.
I don’t see the point in excusing the behaviour at s_d. It was technically illegal and they got pulled down, because Marvel (or DC) had the right at any point to do that. And that is perfectly proper in the legal sense. But that doesn’t make it well-advised to do so, because it isn’t. It’s just stupid.
—
Anyway, I don’t want to repeat previous arguments that I’ve made before. Suffice it to say that this whole kerfuffle boils down to the “professional does something within his rights but tactically stupid, fans react with unfortunately predictable bile, professional says something ill-advised, fans say more stupid things” vortex we’ve all seen too many times to count at this point.
Oh, and one more thing: without scans_daily, I never would have discovered Rex The Wonder Dog. I also never would have bought The Immortal Iron Fist, Fables, The Walking Dead, Runaways, Agents of Atlas, Gotham Central, Phonogram, Dr. Strange: The Oath, .303, Bizarro Comics, Usagi Yojimbo, Banana Sunday, Ed Brubaker’s Captain America, Rex Libris or Garth Ennis’ Punisher MAX. So there you go.
Top comment: That’s where all the female nerds are at? Dammit. — Pat
28
Feb
Yes, yes, I’m going to write something about this whole scans_daily/Peter David brouhaha eventually. It’s coming. But come on, folks, last night’s episode of Battlestar Galactica isn’t going to watch itself, you know?
Also, I tried a can of the Jimi Hendrix Energy Drink, and it in fact tastes kind of like what would happen if you took grape drink and then ionized it with an electric current, so I am sure they could pretend that the electric current would then power a Gibson.
Also also: commenters have been taking exception to why I think conservatives like carbon taxation better than cap-and-trade. It is worth remembering that the original question was “why is David Frum so hot for carbon taxation?” I gave the answer. There’s no reason that carbon taxation can’t be used in a proactive, progressive manner – say, by pairing it with spending or tax initiatives to make it easier for low-income parties to live their lives in a more energy-efficient manner, for example. But David Frum isn’t going to advocate for that part.
27
Feb
Because if you like making cupcakes, and more importantly if you like making THEME cupcakes, then you should enter this contest and make a cupcake and try to win ACTUAL MONEY.
(Personally, I mostly dislike cupcakes. Most fancy cupcakes are vehicles for a huge mound of unpleasantly-made icing. But I know most people like cupcakes. So.)
Top comment: I will decorate mine like a hockey puck, and have it taste like shit. That’s what toronto is to me. (Yes, I live in Ottawa, why do you ask) — bunnyofdoom
26
Feb
A commenter over at Ezra Klein’s blog asks:
Again, I’m curious about the reasons for conservatives advocating a tax instead of cap and trade. Why is one more palatable than the other for them?
Because it’s a stealth tax cut.
Make no mistake, of course – when it comes to carbon control policy, conservative viewpoint for the past decade or more has been a variety of do-nothingism/free-market panaceas/”we need to study it more”/etc. However, when carbon control policy becomes inevitable, carbon taxation becomes the more popular alternative among conservatives and moderates as opposed to cap-and-trade.
This is because carbon taxation is inevitably paired with reduction in other taxes, to offset the overall tax burden upon the public. Which in and of itself is fine and good. However, the important thing about carbon taxation is that it is, in essence, a wide-ranging sin tax, and sin taxation exists both to profit off of behaviour society decides it wants less of and to serve as motivation to cease practicing that behaviour.
Consider a hypothetical. I am a citizen of Whereveria, paying twenty-five percent of my income out via income tax. Now, say Whereveria institutes a carbon tax, designed to replace a portion of my income tax, and that my carbon usage, being typically Western and more wasteful than it should be, generates taxation equal to, say, ten percent of my income. Whateveria, not wishing to create an onerous tax burden, institutes its carbon tax at the same time as it cuts income taxes by ten percent. Now, my tax burden personally hasn’t changed; I’m still paying out twenty-five percent of my income in taxes, it’s just that fifteen percent of it is income tax and ten percent is carbon tax.
But. Say also that I decide to be environmentally responsible and reduce my exposure to the carbon tax. I buy a hybrid car, install solar panels, re-insulate my home to make it more efficient, do other vaguely hippie-esque things, and so on and so forth. My carbon taxation payment drops from ten percent of my income to, oh, let’s say three percent. I’ve just dropped my overall tax exposure to eighteen percent of my income from twenty-five percent; in short, I’ve given myself a twenty-five percent tax cut, and the state has no option to recover more income from me short of raising income taxes for everybody, which isn’t going to happen both because it would still create an onerous tax burden for those unable to reduce their carbon emissions easily and because tax hikes have become something only Commie-Nazis do nowadays.
Furthermore, due to the nature of carbon emissions reduction, many of the most efficient methods of reduction are those most easily undertaken by – guess who – the upper classes. Rich people can more easily afford to buy an electric car, to rejigger their home to make it environmentally friendly, to buy carbon-friendly organic food, and all the rest of it. Poor people? Have to keep scraping along on a day-to-day basis because they have trouble generating the capital for a big lifestyle outlay that would positively affect their carbon taxation exposure. So they’ll just keep chugging along.
Does it make more sense that David Frum supports carbon taxation over cap-and-trade now?
26
Feb
Hosea? Really?
I mean, as usual the judging at the final round was head-scratchingly nuts. Stefan’s dessert plate – which looked perfectly tasty – was in fact excellent food, but got widely panned by the judges on the basis that it “didn’t feel fully conceived,” which is food-speak for “I wanted pie or something like that.” Not because it didn’t taste good.
(Gail Simmons’s return to active judging has just reminded me how much I do not understand that she is the editor of a magazine devoted to food.)
Sorry, but I like Stefan. He is full of shit, but he is entertainingly full of shit. He doesn’t hold grudges (unlike Hosea). Most importantly it was clear from pretty much the first episode that he was the best chef in the competition, both capable of doing his own thing and usually able to acquit himself well outside of his comfort zone. There was a reason he kept winning challenges! It was because he was the best at them!
In comparison, Hosea’s track record was medium-to-spotty and he had a firm preference for sticking to the seafood courses he was used to cooking in his work life. There hasn’t been a cheftestant who played it as safe as Hosea since Ilan in season two. Of course, Ilan at least never fucked up his endless array of Spanish courses and more Spanish courses; Hosea, in comparison, majorly screwed up seafood dishes – which are his specialty, remember – at least twice that I can remember.
Least satisfying Top Chef winner since Ilan – who didn’t deserve to beat Marcel, I have said it before and will say it again.
(As for Carla – taking advice from Casey, the most outmatched runner-up in the history of the show? No. Do not do that, Carla! Season three was a walk for Hung and Casey was part of the reason why! Look at every area Carla got fucked and you see that it was Casey’s idea – a more complex souffle instead of cheese tart, doing the sirloin sous vide rather than just grilling it, etc.)
26
Feb
Sometimes this column is difficult, because a concept is so sublimely wonderful. These are rare moments, but true ones, ones to be savoured.
Do I really need to explain how fantastic this is?
First off, it is a giant wheel. We all remember the brief villainous stint of Big Wheel in the Spider-Man comics fondly – he was the one who drove his wheel-like attack vehicle into the river and drowned because he was an idiot. But his giant attack wheel was nifty. Now take Big Wheel and multiply his novelty value by about ten million percent. That is the War Wheel. The Nazis did not fuck around when it came to war machinery in real life; therefore, comic book Nazis would obviously have to come up with even crazier shit.
It is a wheel made for warring. The War Wheel is eleventy stories high. It has spiked teeth, just in case its massive weight wasn’t enough to provide grip. Its axle provides a natural mounting point for machine gun nests. It is made of solid Holycrappium, the toughest element known to mad science, and it is powered by an occult fusion engine running on a million gallons of baby blood. Hitler used it to conquer Denmark all by itself, which is why now, in the DC universe, Danish people shit themselves whenever they see a unicycle.
The War Wheel knows no pity, no mercy, no fear. (Because it is a wheel.) IT WILL CRUSH YOU.
Totally deserved. You know this.
Top comment: The War Wheel turns when all the Nazis inside lean to the right or left. — Bill Reed
25
Feb
Top comment: I’m waiting for the Janis Joplin energy drink. The “Me and Blueberry McGee” flavor sounds scrumptious. — SilverMoonWolf
User Friendly creator Illiad caught plagiarizing his punchlines from Metafilter comments.
This cannot end well.
Top comment: To make so many people outraged, it must be worse than that Mohammad thing! — nickshogun
24
Feb
Most people don’t get to see recent comments to much older posts for obvious reasons, but I thought this, from Nina, on this post, was hilarious:
I could really do with a “fuck this shit” button on my browser. You know, one I could click every time I come across something so mediocre that I never, ever want to see anything that is even associated with it ever again. Like, I would press the button on Megatokyo.com and then everything that Fred has ever scribbled or written will be magically blocked and I can just pretend that this abomination of a comic never happened.
24
Feb
Recently, in discussing the proposed bill before Congress to require ISP and wifi providers to keep records of all user access, several commenters made smug “not in Canada” comments.
I didn’t have time to mention it then, but this is not the case, as an Ontario Superior Court judge recently ruled that no warrant is necessary for police to demand access to ISP records. Of course, the ruling is going to be appealed (and let me tell you right now this one will go all the way to the Supreme Court – major new interpretative decisions of how far police search powers extend are always heard by the Supreme Court), but as it stands, in Ontario right now police do not need a warrant to demand access to record logs. (Of course, we haven’t yet crafted a law demanding that ISPs maintain logs, so for the time being we are one up on you there.)
It’s actually a very interesting issue from a legal perspective, because the cases for and against are fairly obvious. The case for this decision, to my mind, is fairly simple: you can’t demand privacy where privacy doesn’t technically exist. The idea that an IP can constitute anonymity (as advanced by James Stribopoulos, who is my boss over at The Court and one of the leading voices on privacy law issues in Canada) only exists in the mind of the general public, who don’t know how well or easily you can be tracked via your IP. Without specific legislation making it illegal to interrupt or monitor cell phone communications, for example, there would be no reason that the police couldn’t follow cell conversations via tracking the airwaves, because the airwaves aren’t private. In this interpretation, privacy via IP is a fraud and therefore the public should not be allowed to argue for it.
Of course, the argument against this is that from a normative standpoint, we expect that our IPs constitute anonymity, and therefore the law should act accordingly so, even though this really isn’t the case. Normative public expectation has a mixed record in Canadian legal decisionmaking, though. After all, I think most people would agree that they have a right to privacy against search while in their significant other’s apartment when said significant other has given them a key – but according to R. v. Edwards, you don’t have that right to privacy, because your right to refuse entry into a private domicile is predicated on ownership and other elements of property law. (Which is very fine parsing, or, to put it another way, kind of bullshit. But that’s the law for you.)
It’s going to be an interesting – and important – set of appeals on this one, and the die is far from cast. So don’t go celebrating how awesome this country is re: privacy rights. Because, well. Not so much.
23
Feb
My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
Also, to answer a question a bunch of people have asked in email: because the Deep Space Nine and Voyager covers are, respectively, boring and boring plus ugly.
23
Feb
FLAPJACKS: So first you did those Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: And then you did all that nerd-lit from years gone by.
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: You realize there remains only one true realm of nerd-bookery left to you.
ME: Unfortunately.
FLAPJACKS: A final frontier, if you will.
ME: Yes, very clever.
22
Feb
8:14: We are informed that nobody will ever forget the name of Viola Davis for her performance in Doubt. I would suggest that just maybe this is optimistic and that in three months’ time Viola Davis will be a hard-to-answer trivia question.
8:15: Some schmuck kisses Miley Cyrus’ ass. How much self-worth does one lose by kissing up to Miley Cyrus, for god’s sake? If that were my job, I would cry myself to sleep at night. Every night. Forever.
8:16: Apparently a bunch of designers had a contest to see who could dress Miley Cyrus. There is an entire kissing-Miley-Cyrus’-ass industry now. Are they affected by the economic downturn at all? This is what I wonder about.
8:17: Because people asked: Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle, Mickey Rourke, Kate Winslet, Heath Ledger and Penelope Cruz. (EDIT: Slumdog and Wall-E for adapted and original screenplay, Wall-E for animated and Waltz With Bashir for foreign film.)
8:19: The accountants guarding the winning envelopes with their very lives walk down the red carpet. This is the MOST IMPORTANT THING THEY WILL EVER DO YOU GUYS. The voiceover people blather about their choice of tuxedo, because – I don’t know. “They make it work,” apparently, which now means “they look awkward and nerdy.”
8:21: They are using special computer technology to show the history of Penelope Cruz’ Oscar dresses. Somewhere, a space shuttle is not flying because of this, you realize.
8:23: Miley Cyrus’ schmuck confirms that he is gay by explaining how he loves to see Marisa Tomei with her clothes on. (Marisa Tomei, incidentally, looks early-to-mid-twenties tonight. Damn, is that woman aging well.)
8:25: Apparently they redesigned the Kodak Theatre so it doesn’t look like a boring high school auditorium with a lot of money. The musical director explains how he’s going to do tons of Oscar-worthy themes with a big brass band motif. This can only end in tragedy.
8:31: Hugh Jackman’s monologue. Mock-bitter joke about Australia (which I think really got way too much flack – sure it’s too long, but it’s ambitious and more fun than a lot of critics gave it credit for).
8:32: And now he’s singing. Much like Billy Crystal, minus about ten thousand pounds of ham and all the horrible Bruce Valensch jokes, plus actual musical talent. I’m not gonna bitch about this – no, wait, now he’s spelling “M-I-L-K.” Oh, Hugh.
8:33: Back into the plus columns with a nice dance with “the Craigslist dancers,” a good bit about The Dark Knight and a funny setup about Benjamin Button.
8:35: My adoration for Anne Hathaway continues unabated. Why is she in shit like Bride Wars? She’s fucking funny, people, the first genuinely talented comedic actress to come along in a very long time. Give her a funny script and she’s gonna deliver.
8:37: “The Reader! I haven’t seen The Reader!” Okay, Hugh Jackman can now host this show forever, or at least alternating years with Jon Stewart or maybe Steve Martin if Steve Martin promises to stop making Pink Panther movies.
8:39: “Mickey Rourke! You look great!” Hugh Jackman is as good a liar as he is a singer and dancer!
8:40: They have trouble opening the curtain of the theatre for the Best Supporting Actress acceptance montage, which amuses me tremendously.
8:42: As is traditional, the first award is a Best Supporting award, and I think it’s almost always Actress, isn’t it? They get Tilda Swinton (who is apparently wearing a shopping bag), Eva Marie Saint, Goldie Hawn, Angelica Huston and Whoopi “Oscar’s Greatest Mistake” Goldberg to present the award in as long a manner as humanly possible, because we have been informed that only elitists and nogoodniks want to see the more technical awards get even a slightly reasonable amount of time.
8:45: Whoopi Goldberg makes a joke about Amy Adams being a nun! Because before her career went to hell, she had a hit movie about being a nun, you see.
8:46: If they present every fucking acting award like this, with five actors giving the five nominees massive motherfucking blowjobs, I may vomit.
8:47: Penelope Cruz wins, thus disproving the “leaked Oscar list” that was making the rounds earlier in the week with the very first award. She thanks Woody Allen for writing great female characters, which is code for “thank you for not trying to fuck me, you disgusting old pervert.”
8:52: Steve Martin and Tina Fey present the screenplay awards. Good jokes, with a dig at Scientology (thank you, Steve Martin, for absolutely refusing to treat it seriously – an honorary “V for Vendetta” Guy Fawkes mask is yours!). You will note the lack of blowjobs for the writers.
8:56: Original screenplay: Dustin Lance Black for Milk. I was rooting for Wall-E, but the Milk script is quite good, so this is a perfectly acceptable choice of award. Dustin Lance Black pretty bluntly slams the Mormon church in his speech and pretty movingly uses his whole speech to slam homophobia right in the nuts, as is appropriate.
9:00: Adapted screenplay: Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionare, and if you believe that this is when Oscar juggernauts begin – well, it’s not looking good for Benjamin Button, shucky-darn.
9:02: Jennifer Aniston and Jack Black remind everybody that Jennifer Aniston exists, which is very important for some reason. Black makes a vicious joke about Dreamworks’ continual asskicking by Pixar which accidentally makes the audience go “oooh.”
9:04: An animated montage sequence. Why did we need to be reminded that Space Chimps came out last year? Anybody? Can anybody explain that one? Was this some vitally fucking important point we had all forgotten? God knows I tried to forget about Space Chimps.
9:07: Wall-E wins Best Animated Picture, which surprises absolutely nobody.
9:08: Jack Black doing comedic banter with Jennifer Aniston is like Roger Federer playing tennis with Stephen Hawking.
9:09: And Best Short Animated Film: La Maison en Petit Cubes. No, I haven’t seen it either. Japanese winner guy, acutely aware of his very poor English, ends with “Domi arigato, Mr. Roboto,” which just goes to show that Styx have contributed something to society after all.
9:12: You know, only the Canadian viewers will get this, but they just aired a commercial for the new Petro-Canada Olympics glasses, and don’t those new glasses suck? The Calgary glasses were nice because there were so many different types of glass, so you could pick and choose. These new ones, there’s only one type of glass and it’s a pretty lame glass. My point here is that I want nicer commorative glasses from my petrochemical industry giants, please.
9:14: The set and design awards! Apparently this whole night is going to be thematic for the non-major awards. Maybe they mentioned it earlier, who knows.
9:17: Art direction: Benjamin Button. Anybody hoping for some Dark Knight technical awards – not here, this almost always goes to period dramas. The two art director people give a boring speech and are not cut off. That’s about as much as I can hope for.
9:20: Costume design goes to The Duchess, because it’s a romantic period drama with lots of ruffles in it and people assume that lots of ruffles means tougher costuming, which is so not the case but whatever. Costume design winner thanks everybody except his family. Maybe he lives alone. On a hill. With a dog. A dead dog, which he doesn’t feel the need to thank.
9:23: Benjamin Button wins Best Makeup, and two technical wins gives it a bit more oomph. Maybe it’s still in the running! (Meh.) The makeup winner does the “read everyone to thank from a card” thing before the demon time-counters scream at him and call him names.
9:25: The dork from Twilight and the dead girl from Veronica Mars introduce a recap of the romantic movies of 2008. Boy, I sure am glad that these BLATANT FUCKING COMMERCIALS are taking up telecast time! God knows we can’t do without the montage sequences, but can’t they at least be vaguely historical montage sequences? Is that too much to ask? Christ.
9:28: Included in the “romantic moments” montage: Bruce and Betty’s reunion in The Incredible Hulk and actual footage from such notable films like High School Musical 3 and Marley and Me. I will find the person who did this and cut them to death with a rusty spoon. No, really. A rusty spoon.
9:31: Natalie Portman and Ben Stiller introduce the cinematography awards. Ben Stiller does a Joaquim Phoenix impersonation. OH BEN STILLER YOU ARE SO TOPICAL!
9:35: Slumdog wins Best Cinematography, and I have no comment, mostly because my professional chef roommate just handled me a professional chef quality Manwich. (The difference between your standard Manwich and the professional-level Manwich is meat quality, re-spicing, and the braised cabbage mixed in.)
9:38: Jessica Biel was apparently this year’s “official pretty girl” for the Scientific and Technical Awards, which are held off-site so that the nerds don’t get within smell-range of the beautiful people. Hooray for the nerds! And now they will not be mentioned for the rest of the evening.
9:43: James Franco and Seth Rogen do a bit as their characters in Pineapple Express, minus any actual pot jokes. What is the fucking point of something like this?
9:45: Hey, how long do you think before they decide that categories like Best Live-Action Short Film would be better served by airing on the web, so they have more time to tell us about the upcoming highlights at Blockbuster? I give them five years, tops.
9:53: Hugh Jackman and Beyonce do a musical tribute to… uh… musicals, I guess… which doesn’t really make sense, to be honest, but what the hell.
9:54: You know, I finally figured out what I like about Hugh Jackman’s hosting style – it’s a return to old-school gladhanding happy-talk, just like Bob Hope used to do back in the day. We’ve come so far into the era of irony that traditional smarm is cutting-edge now.
9:58: Baz Luhrmann is apparently to blame responsible for creating that musical number. Easiest paycheque in history. Next year they can call me for a “history of hit singles from soundtracks” musical montage! I’ll take four words from “Miss Misery,” six from “Into the West,” eleven from “Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me”…
10:01: And now it’s time for blowjob montage #2, because it’s clearly time for Best Supporting Actor. Your fellatioteers this time around are Christopher Walken, Cuba Gooding Jr. (presumably they found him on a street corner begging for change somewhere), Alan Arkin, Kevin Kline, and Joel Grey in the designated “Older Person Who Won A Long Time Ago Who Works Cheap” slot.
10:05: I hope Christopher Walken gets to do the Heath Ledger tribute and just says “He’s dead. So he should win. Fuck you.”
10:06: And of course Ledger wins, because come on, this was a fucking lock. Heath’s family accepts the award for him. The audience gives them a standing ovation because Heath Ledger is dead. In a moment of tasteful montage, the directors decide to cut away to famous people reacting to their speech rather than stay on the speech itself. Hey, did you want to know how Adrien Brody would react to this sad moment? Were you curious to see if Brangelina would show emotion? WELL NOW YOU KNOW!
10:11: I actually don’t have a problem with the documentary roundup of 2008, because come on – they’re documentaries. Celebrating what people don’t watch (but should) is inherently more valuable a use of time than reminding us that Stepbrothers got made last year. I remembered Stepbrothers. I was fine without it.
10:13: And Bill Maher is presenting the documentary awards, because… I dunno, Bill Maher “keeps it real?” Then he plugs Religulous multiple times. Which sucks shit, by the way.
10:15: Man On Wire wins best doc, which is no shock because it was so universally adored. Including by me. It’s awesome. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should. The doc-makers thank their families, and the last guy hams it up by disappearing a coin from his hand.
10:17: Smile, Pinky wins best doc short. See comment at 9:45. Repeat.
10:19: Trailer for Angels and Demons. Flapjacks has a theory that Tom Hanks spent fifteen years making mostly excellent movies so that he could viciously surprise everybody by starring in Dan Brown adaptations, making him the most sadistic person in the universe.
10:21: Hey, did you know there were action movies in 2008? I know! (And this makes the third montage The Incredible Hulk has appeared in tonight. Truly, the Hulk is all things to all people.)
10:25: Will Smith! Because he loves action movies! Because he gets a lot of money to be in them! And because Seven Pounds sucked! It’s time for the computer-and-sound-effects awards, folks!
10:26: Benjamin Button wins best CGI over Iron Man and Dark Knight, because – I dunno, probably because it’s more “respectable.”
10:29: Sound editing goes to The Dark Knight even though Slumdog is nominated in the same category. Do not ask me to explain the Academy, people. I can’t do it.
10:30: Sound mixing goes to Slumdog. Now I really can’t explain it. Trends? There are no trends! Not this year!
10:32: The guy accepting for Slumdog is giving exactly the type of speech I like from a technical nobody. “This is not just an award, you are making me a part of history.” That’s what I call thanking.
10:34: Editing goes to Slumdog as well. (I got nothing. It happens.)
10:41: Jerry Lewis gets the Humanitarian Award this year, because of his work with muscular dystrophy. It’s a good cause and he’s done a lot of work for it. But Christ, he is such an asshole. So let us all remember that assholes can do good things. (Also, he looks like he’s gotten a lot of work done just for the occasion.)
10:46: Trailer for that movie where Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds are in a romantic comedy except it’s not romantic or funny.
10:50: Time for the music awards. It is an orchestral Whitman’s Sampler of the Best Score nominees! Which actually serves to remind me how much I liked the score for Milk, oddly enough. (It’s not exactly a movie where you think, “oh, hey, that’s a movie with an awesome score!”)
10:53: Zac Efron and Alicia Keys are presenting the awards, because one of them sings badly in movies and the other… does not.
10:54: A.R. Rahman wins Best Score for Slumdog Millionaire, which makes sense because it was a movie with a fantastic score and soundtrack (although it sounded really lame coming out of a Western-style orchestra with one lousy sitar). He thanks his dead mother, and what can you say about that other than you would do the same?
10:55: WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE NOT EVEN DOING THE WHOLE SONGS FOR “BEST SONG”? There are only three nominees for this award now! But NO, we can be informed of all the wonderful ways that The Incredible Hulk can touch us, because that’s far more important than giving us full performances for the songs. This is total bullshit.
10:58: John Legend covering Peter Gabriel is like someone who is not very good covering somebody who is.
11:00: And now it is a fucking live mashup of “Jai Ho” and “Down To Earth” (which, incidentally, are two of the best songs to be nominated for this award in years). I am vaguely ill.
11:01: “Jai Ho” wins, because come on – the moment you saw that Bollywood dance number you knew it was gonna win this.
11:05: Liam Neeson and Oldest Latika From Slumdog present Best Foreign Film, because they are foreigns. Departures wins, and wouldn’t you know it it’s the only one in the category I haven’t seen yet? What the hell can I say? “A classic musician in a mortuary – that’s so Japanese!” Nah.
11:10: Queen Latifah (hey, remember when she was a rapper?) introduces the In Memorial reel. And then she sings, because what the In Memorial reel really needed was some glitzing up. Jesus H. Christ. On top of that, the whole thing is set on smaller screens with panning camera angles, because that makes death more exciting or something, I’m not sure. Cyd Charisse’ entire tribute gets lost in a long-distance shot. I want the fucking heads of the show directors now, because they are fucking up absolutely everything I like about the Oscars.
11:16: Biggest applause rounds: Michael Crichton, Harold Pinter, Roy Scheider, Isaac Hayes, Stan Winston, Sydney Pollack and (by far) Paul Newman.
11:18: The Academy president declines to make a speech. Good.
11:19: Reese Witherspoon is giving away the Best Director award? Wait, it goes before the Best Actor and Actress awards now? You know, the reason it usually goes second last is because it almost always telegraphs the Best Picture winner, guys…
11:20: And Danny Boyle wins it for Slumdog Millionaire, and I have absolutely zero complaints for a bit here because Danny Boyle is one of my favorite directors of all time (yes, I even liked The Beach), and he even apologizes to the guy he left out of the credits by accident, which is class because every second spent apologizing is a second he could have spent thanking Important People For His Career but instead he glossed over most of them. Boyle is awesome sauce.
11:25: Best Actress time. This time around the Circle of Five is comprised of Sophia Loren, Shirley MacLaine, Halle Berry (who was sitting next to Cuba Gooding Jr.), Nicole Kidman and Marion “I won this last year and you already forgot about me didn’t you” Cotillard. Blah blah blah we love you ladies blah blah blah. Hey, program director: it’s called “show, don’t tell.” It applies to television like this just as it applies to any other story, real or fictional, you might want to fucking tell.
11:29: Melissa Leo is luminous, yo.
11:30: Sophia Loren looks disdainful to even have to say the words “Meryl Streep.” Which is kind of awesome in its way. Sophia Loren does not give a shit, everybody, and she wants you to be sure you know she doesn’t give a shit.
11:32: And Kate Winslet FINALLY GETS HER FUCKING STATUE. And because she is Kate Winslet of course she has to hug all the other ladies and kiss them on the cheek. Standing ovation, entirely demanded. Then she asks her dad to whistle so she can see where her parents are and he does and that’s fantastic. And then she thanks everybody in the whole world, or it seems like it anyway. And then she says Meryl Streep is awesome and that’s great too.
11:36: Best Actor reception montage, which of course means that the new cast of “Voltron” must assemble: Robert De Niro (Hunk), Ben Kingsley (Pidge), Anthony Hopkins (Sven), Adrien Brody (Keith) and Michael Douglas (Lance).
11:39: Robert De Niro tries to rattle off a list of Sean Penn’s various characters, but can’t quite do it, so he substitutes “Dead Man Walking” in the middle as if that was the name of the character. Which was funnier than his for-real joke.
11:43: Sean Penn picks up his second statue for Milk. “You Commie, homo-loving sonsaguns.” Heh. Then he admits that he can get on people’s nerves (heh), thanks the people he really cares about and doesn’t bother with the studios at all. And he winds up by telling everybody who voted for Prop 8 “fuck you” (in so many words), and specifically gives Mickey Rourke props. Good speech.
11:47: Steven “The King Of All Hollywood” Spielberg introduces a montage that is part a tribute to the Best Picture nominees and part using old quotes from previous Best Picture winners to comment on said pictures. It’s a little overdone, but pretty clever. (Unintentional comedy moment: using the famous William Wallace speech from Braveheart in the Milk montage. Methinks Mel Gibson would object if he thought he could get away with objecting.)
11:52: And Slumdog ends the night with the big win. And that’s perfectly all right, since it was a very good movie – not as good as some might have argued, perhaps, but good, and certainly not an embarrassment to win this thing. And that, for tonight, after a largely dreadful Oscar telecast (seriously, the worst in years, with a parsimonious attitude towards running time that’s become downright embarrassing), is enough. Good night, Weehauken!
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