All posts by Steve Stern

Oscars

Americana, Film

The other day at lunch, Richard Taylor asked me to post my Oscar predictions – or, atleast, who I want to win. I have not seen all the nominated movies and have no insight on who will win. Who wins the various Oscars is really an Inside the Movie Biz political game. Who do people like, who do they admire but don’t especially like, who did they vote for last year and don’t want to vote for them again – you get the idea. 

I do obsessively read other people’s opinions on who will win, but, because I really don’t remember how accurate they were in the past, I don’t have much of an idea how good their predictions are. I sort of feel the LA Times is a good source because they seem to be the quasi-company paper; I like a website called the House Next Door because they seem to actually be thinking about the nominations; the New York Times because – well – its the New York Times and they have two different ways of predicting.

With those caveats, here are some predictions and what I liked the best of what I saw.

Visual Effects – Probably will win: Avatar; I hope will win: Avatar because that is what it was -and I mean this in the best possible way. 

Avatar

Cinematography – Probably will win: Inglorious Basterds; I hope will win; Inglorious Basterds – I just thought every shot in this movie was gorgeous.

Inglourious_basterds49-jpg
 

Best Actress: Probably will win – Sandra Bullock; probably should win – one of the actresses from one of the movies I didn’t see; I hope will win – Sandra Bullock

Best Actor: Probably will win – Jeff Bridges -his Dudeness – in Crazy Heart which I didn’t see; who I hope will win – George Clooney if for no other reason than he is willing to take a risk but he started off so off-putting and ended up so vulnerable.

Best Supporting Actor: Probably will win – Christoph Waltz; I sure hope so, he was great.

Best Supporting Actress – Mo’Nique; I hope will win -Vera Farmiga who was charming in Up In The Air

Best Original Screenplay: Probably will win – Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds; I certainly hope so. The only problem here, as I see it, is that Tarantino writes great scenes rather than great movies. The scenes don’t alway fit together into a great movie – he sometimes gets around the problems by putting the scenes out of order as in Pulp Fiction – but, wow, are the scenes great.

Best director: Probably will win – Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker; I hope will win – Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds

 


Best Picture: Probably will win – The Hurt Locker; Who I hope will win – Avatar. It was a staggeringly original total experience.

How does he get these people

Uncategorized

I love Jon Stewart but I am still constantly amazed at how much actual influence he packs. I'll see a bit, like when he goes after Fox and I'll think, Man, that's great, too bad people in the media who seem to think that Fox is real news don't see it.Then I'll see it referenced in Time or some other mainstream outlet. Here is a bit on a website that….well, I'll let Jon explain it.  

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
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Banking reform

Uncategorized

I just got my credit card bill and I am still wondering how they could have been more cynical. The new bill says, at the very top, in big type on a bold black background, We're continuing to make your statement clearer than ever. It then goes on to say that I'll see an estimate of how long it will take to pay off your current statement balance if you only make the minimum payment on each time period. Now that sound very nice of them except that is required by a new law that went into effect last Monday.

Now here is the cynical part – OK, it is all pretty cynical because the banks fought against this law and now they are acting like it is their idea – so here is the most cynical part. My statement came out just before the new law went into effect and it doesn't have the payoff information on it. They are telling me how they are continuing to make my statement better but they are keeping the information off the statement as long as they legally can.

Every once in a while, I'll get in an argument with somebody over how much big government is weighing us down. I think that Capitalism is great – and BTW, when people say Capitalism, they usually mean Entrepreneur-ism – and Capitalism is largely responsible for us having more shit than any other country, but one thing Capitalism will not do is protect us – or our environment. The purpose of business to make money and get bigger. And that is especially true about banks. 

To NOT pass bank reform is nutty except that banks spend billions to get Congress NOT to pass a bill. Check this out and call your Senator.

 

A pet peeve: F**K

Americana, Current Affairs

A couple of weeks ago, linguist Geoff Nunberg talked about pet peeves on Fresh Air. He was advocating that a pet peeve is only a pet peeve if it is particular to the peeved. It is not a pet peeve if everybody, or most people – at least – have it. For example not liking people who poison dogs is not a pet peeve.

The other day, I ran across one of my biggest pet peeves. A quote in Time magazine in which in the quote they had f**k. WTF? Why? I think they should either say fuck or @#%&. If they consider themselves a magazine that children, too young to read the word fuck, read; then they should not put it in, they should either put in @#%& or put in an innocuous word like gosh. But everybody but those small children know that f**k means fuck, so who are they kidding – why not just put in fuck.

The New Yorker puts in fuck when it is in a quote and, even occasionally, when it is deemed appropriate by the author. They seem to feel they are dealing with a mature reader. (As an aside, one of my favorite bits in the New Yorker was Anthony Lane’s  in which he says: Also, while we’re here, what’s with (Yoda’s) screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. “I hope right you are.” Break me a fucking give.end aside.)

But Time magazine, among others, just want to be cute and, I guess, not offend anybody but adults.

 

Quantity is quality

Photography

There is a story in Art
And Fear that goes:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he
was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of
the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work
they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would
bring
in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group:
fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those
being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one
pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of
highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for
quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning
out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group
had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to
show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

I first heard this story in a photography class given by the authors of  Art and Fear, Ted Orland and David Bayles and it seems to go against everything I have heard about Art Photography. Art Photography, almost by definition, is shot with a big camera on a tripod – think the great Ansel Adams. (double click for full impact)

Ansel 

The upside is that these pictures can be blown up to huge sizes – like 30×40 inches; the problem is – using a big camera, even a 4×5 (inch negative) – the photographer gets very few pictures. That means the learning curve is pretty flat. With digital cameras, after the initial investment, the pictures are almost free. The photographer can take lots of pictures and, if the photographer is interested, the learning curve can be much steeper.

As the following photos from The Big Picture ( Boston.com), at a place and time like the Olympics, where there are lots of photographers shooting digital and paying attention, the results can be pronominal. If you are at all interested in photography, check it out. (Again, they get bigger if you double click.)

Luge

Skaters