Eleventh Annual Oscar blogging

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And the Oscars went to:

Multiple Oscar winners:

  • Hugo: 5
  • The Artist: 5
  • The Iron Lady: 2

For those who are unfamiliar with me doing this, you can find previous year’s Oscarblogging at:

Updates will be (mostly) placed at the end, so scroll down.

After a few years off, it’s great to see Billy Crystal back as host, and the opening movie montage worked for me. Hey, it turns out that I’ve been doing this for more years than he has (11 versus 9). And is anyone surprised that Billy sings most of his opening monologue?

Tom Hanks comes out to give the first award, and gives a shout out to an seat filler who’s been doing it for 59 years (maybe?). He gives the Best Cinematography award to Robert Richardson for Hugo, and the Best Art Direction award to Dante Ferretti (Production Design) and Francesca Lo Schiavo (Set Decoration) for Hugo. That puts Hugo off to a big start.

Back from commercials, and we’re into a movie montage. I have no idea what these films have in common, but they’re all great moments.

Cameron Diaz and and Jennifer Lopez come out to give the award for Best Costume Design. They quote Edith Head about how women should dress, and JLo’s outfit clearly shows what not to do. Cameron looks great, though, and Mark Bridges wins for The Artist. Cameron and Jennifer start off giving the Best Makeup award turned away from the audience to show off the back of their dresses (and their butts); while I think the shtick worked (and Tom definitely approved), it appeared that the live audience didn’t think much of it. The winners are Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland for The Iron Lady.

Sandra Bullock comes out to give the Best Foreign Film accent, and claims that she’s going to make the announcement in Mandarin—but with a German accent. Somehow, not quite. The Oscar goes to Iran for A Separation, directed by Asghar Farhadi.

Christian Bale is, sadly, wearing a tie versus a bowtie. But he’s gorgeous enough that I may give him a pass on this one. He’s giving the award for Best Supporting Actress, and it goes to Octavia Spencer for The Help. Tom and I are wondering why she needed to be helped out of her chair.

Billy Crystal shows what is ostensibly a focus group for The Wizard of Oz, proving what I’ve always thought about focus groups.

Tina Fey and Bradley Cooper—both looking gorgeous—come out to give the award for Best Editing. The winners are Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Turns out they’re all the way in back, as they weren’t considered likely to win again after their success last year for The Social Network. Good for them! Next, the Oscar for Best Sound Editing goes to Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty and the Oscar for Best Sound Mixing goes to Tom Fleischman and John Midgley, both for Hugo.

Kermit and Miss Piggy introduce Cirque du Soleil’s “Going to the Movies.” I thought it was pretty damn impressive, although I know there was a certain amount of flack about it.

Billy starts doing bits on old age. Meh. He’d be more interesting talking about age if he hadn’t dyed his hair for the gig.

Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow come out to present the Best Documentary award, and do a whole not-terribly-funny bit about doing a “live documentary”—i.e., the news. The award goes to TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Rich Middlemas for Undefeated. Ooh, we get to see the tape delay in action during their thank yous!

Chris Rock comes out to present Best Animated Film. After doing a bit on how easy working on animated films is, the award goes to Gore Verbinski for Rango.

Ben Stiller and Emma Stone come out to give the award for Best Visual Effects. She’s gorgeous, but I don’t know that that dress really works for me. Something about that bow, I think. The usual cute banter ensues; she’s a lot more charming than him. The Oscar goes to Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossmann and Alex Henning for Hugo. That’s what, five now?

Melissa Leo, who won Best Supporting Actress last year for The Fighter, gives the Best Supporting Actor award to Christopher Plummer for Beginners. Turns out that at age 82, he’s the oldest actor to win an Oscar. Me, I’m just trying to not break out into singing Climb Every Mountain.

After another so-so Billy Crystal bit, the President of the Academy comes out. Time for the bathroom break, everyone.

Penelope Cruz and Owen Wilson come out. I think without having seen all of them, she may win my best-dressed award. Why is it that so many guys still think that they can replace a tuxedo/bowtie with a black suit. Sorry, dudes; you’re just wrong. They give the award for Best Original Score to Ludovic Bource for The Artist.

Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis come out in white tie and tails and cymbals (is someone finally listening to my “appropriate dress” rant?) to give the Best Original Song award. It goes to Bret McKenzie for “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets. Are all Kiwis that nice, or does it just seem that way?

Angelina Jolie, “The Original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” comes out to present. Tom gives her dress an approving woof. The Best Adapted Screenplay award goes to Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash for the The Descendants. The Best Original Screenplay award goes to Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris who—unsurprisingly—isn’t there.

Milla Jovovich gave out the technical Oscars; once again they don’t get to attend the “real” awards show, but they do get to meet a lovely actress.

The cast of The Bridesmaids come out to give the short film awards, but apparently, only Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph get to talk. The Best Live Action Short goes to Terry George and Oorlagh George for The Shore. Okay, they only presented the first one, so they’re doing them two-by-two. The Best Documentary Short goes to Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy for Saving Face, and the Best Animated Short to William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

Michael Douglas comes out to give the Best Director award, which goes to Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist. I’m surprised; I really thought it would go to Scorsese.

Meryl Streep comes out to talk about the Governor’s awards. There’s only three Oscars left—are they skipping the in memoriam montage? That would be wrong. And… the voiceover tells me that it’s coming up.

Props to the Academy for including Steve Jobs—it’s easy to just think of him as the co-founder of Apple, and I’m glad they didn’t overlook how his years at Pixar helped to revolutionize how animation is made.

Natalie Portman comes out to give the Best Actor award. I would love her dress more if it wasn’t a print—black polka-dots on red are more appropriate for a swimsuit than a formal dress. She does a great little introduction to each actor and their movie, and the Oscar goes to Jean Dujardin for The Artist.

Colin Firth does the same for Best Actress, which goes to Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady. There’s another surprise; Tom and I both expected it to go to Viola Davis for The Help. But with seventeen nominations and three Oscars, it’s amazing to realize the range of roles she’s played.

Tom Cruise comes out (wearing a tux but no bowtie) to give the Best Motion Picture award, and the Oscar goes to The Artist.

While The Artist and Hugo both received 5 Oscars, it’s clear that the former was tonight’s big winner with three of the four biggest awards.

Overall, no big flubs or gaffes, but no truly wonderful moments either. Billy Crystal did a serviceable job as host; he wasn’t as bad as some of the Twitter sniping would have it, but he didn’t make me think he had it sewn up for the rest of his life, either.

Till next year!

When attacked by right-wingers, the correct strategy is…

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Kick their asses. Hard and repeatedly. Don’t complain about how “unreasonable” they are being, don’t moan about the “lessening level of discourse,” don’t clutch your pearls about “unfairness,” don’t whine about the lying.

Just stand up and rhetorically punch them in the nose. And don’t let up.

We saw what happened when right-wingers bullied the Susan G. Komen Foundation into defunding Planned Parenthood. Having lots of experience with right-wing attacks, Planned Parenthood immediately took control of the messaging, and within a week, Komen backed down, restored the grant funding, promised to change the process that singled out PP for defunding, and Komen’s chief anti-abortion staffer resigned. By knuckling under to anti-abortion, anti-contraception zealots, Komen suffered a blow to its brand from which they may never recover. Unless they have a political death wish, other organizations will think twice before they consider following in Komen’s footsteps.

After the Republican-controlled Virginia legislature chose to mandate state-sanctioned rape by object for women who wanted abortions, and also tried to get a personhood law on the books that would prohibit contraception, people stood up and made a big deal out of it. And the people responsible got their asses rhetorically kicked. As of today, the Virginia governor and legislature are backing off on the internal ultrasound portion of the bill, and now the personhood bill is dead for the year.

None of this would have happened had mainstream people and progressives not stood up, said, “That’s enough!” and fought back hard against the anti-abortion forces. For some reason, Republicans have been acting under the belief that being anti-contraception is a winning strategy (we saw that again in the GOP candidate debate last night). They’re discovering that people see these things as being anti-women’s health, and it’s the losing side.

Virginia Republicans require women seeking abortions to be raped first

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Virginia Republicans want women to be raped with this device.

Virginia Republicans want women to be raped with this device.

This is a transvaginal ultrasonic probe. Normally, it is a valuable diagnostic device that promotes women’s health. It is used by putting it into a woman’s vagina. The Virginia legislature now requires its use on women seeking abortions, whether or not she or her doctor agree, and for no medical reason. The only motivation for this bill is to obtain and force the woman to look at ultrasound pictures of the fetus, hear possible fetal heart sounds, and get a detailed description of the fetus’ gestational development, with the idea that she will then be dissuaded from having the abortion.

So I’m thinking that what the Republicans who have rammed this through (yes, I’m aware of the imagery) have done is legalized “rape with an object for political purposes.” Yes, I think the courts will have something to say about this. But that doesn’t make it any less extreme, or any less disgusting or shameful.

The bill requires that women will be furnished with a list of facilities that will perform the rape at no charge. I suspect that no insurance company will be willing to pay for the procedure (since it’s not medically necessary), so the facilities will just so happen to be the phony “pregnancy crisis centers,” which are scams by anti-abortion fanatics that act as medical facilities, but really only exist to coerce women into not having abortions.

Virginia’s governor, the execrable Bob McDonnell, has said that he plans to sign the bill into law. Bob is term limited out of his office, and he really wants to be picked as someone’s Vice President. So he’s all for any insane right-wing idea that will give him a boost. Let’s hope he pays a serious political price for this abomination.

Attack of the Return of the Kindle Plunging

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A while back, I mentioned how I had ordered a $99 Kindle Touch, and said that I’d report back after I’d had it for a while. Here are my mostly positive thoughts.

Size: I like this thing a lot. It’s smaller than my iPad, which needs to either be in a bag or under my arm the whole time I have it out of the house. Because if I’ve taken my iPad for reading purposes to a restaurant, there’s just no way in hell I’m going to leave it unattended if I need to go get another plate from the salad bar. Yes, I have a particular jacket that has a pocket big enough for the iPad, but you know, I don’t wear that jacket all the time. The Kindle is smaller enough than the iPad that I can stick it in regular-size pockets in other coats, and into the thigh cargo pockets of the shorts I like to wear in hot weather.

Readability: Turns out I like e-ink displays like the Kindle’s. The type looks good, though because of the variability of the ebooks I’ve put on the device (some books converted from Calibre, rather than gotten from the Kindle store), sometimes I have problems getting exactly the type size and format I’d like. I think I actually prefer reading books on my iPad a bit more from the readability and font standpoint. It’s better to use the Kindle outdoors, versus the iPad. The Kindle’s matte screen is great. And the naysayers who moaned that the screen would get all mucked up with fingerprints turned out to be wrong. I notice fingerprints on the glossy iPad screen way more than on the Kindle. On either device, a quick wipe is all it takes anyway. At the beginning, I had a bit of trouble with the Kindle because I’d tap the screen and it would advance two pages, and I’d have to go back one. I just needed to learn a bit different, and lighter, tap behavior.

Responsiveness: The iPad is faster, no doubt about it. The Kindle takes a second to change pages when I tap it. But I got used to that pretty quickly. It hasn’t turned out to be a big deal except when I want to do anything other than read on the Kindle, like browse the Kindle Store, or change settings, or the like. Then I get impatient with the slow screen redraws. But that’s generally offset by the next category. I’ll typically buy books on the Kindle Store on the Amazon Web site (rather than on the device), and send them to the Kindle or other devices running a Kindle app. I understand that the Kindle Touch Software Update Version 5.0.3 helps with speed issues, but it just came out yesterday, and I haven’t updated yet. Update: OK, so I installed the software update, and yes, it improves the Kindle’s responsiveness quite a bit. For example, the Kindle Store is now usable, rather than feeling painfully slow. I expect this update alone will end up selling more books for Amazon.

Battery life: No contest here; the Kindle is good for at least a month between recharges. The iPad is good for about a day. I’ve put the Kindle down for a week or so, and the battery indicator has barely moved.

Other stuff: The Kindle Owners Lending Library for Amazon Prime members is a gateway drug like you can’t believe. I used it to borrow (for free) the first two books of The Hunger Games in November and December. I said I had the $99 version of the Kindle Touch, which is the version that displays ads. They don’t intrude on the reading experience, and I’ve taken advantage of two of the ads, including one that offered a good deal (50% off) on a Marware case for the device (I decided I wanted this case because I wanted to protect the screen, and it has a hand strap that improves one-handed reading).

So there you have it. Though I already had two other handy devices I could use to read ebooks (my iPhone 4 and iPad 1), the Kindle Touch has proven its worth to me. I’m happy I got it.

iCloud: Visual QuickStart Guide is now available!

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iCloud: Visual QuickStart Guide CoverI’m happy and proud to announce that my latest book, iCloud: Visual QuickStart Guide, from Peachpit Press, is now widely available. It’s one of the newer breeds of Visual QuickStart Guides, with all-color screenshots.

It covers virtually all of the aspects of iCloud, from setting up the service on Mac OS X, iOS devices, and Windows, to using iCloud to synchronize email, contacts, calendars, and reminders. It also covers using iCloud with iTunes (and iTunes Match), iPhoto, the iWork programs, and using iCloud’s people and device location features. For a book that took me only a bit more than a month to write, I’m pretty happy with it, and I think it will be useful for your favorite iCloud newbie. Please join me in spreading the word that the book is out.

You can find it in the following places:

Nuclear Weapons Storage

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If you’ve ever wondered about where nuclear weapons are stored, here is an infographic that shows where they are (nothing too specific; no interest to spies here). There’s general info about the number of weapons storage sites per country, and a breakdown of US storage locations.

Like most folks, I think that any nuclear weapons are too many; it’s all but unthinkable that they will ever be used in war again. And I find the graph of the declining numbers of stockpiled weapons heartening. It’s one of the good things that the first President Bush did with the START treaty, and that work was continued by President Obama (with the New START treaty).

Full disclosure: this was pitched to us as a paid ad placement. But I thought that it was interesting enough in itself that I agreed to put it up.

Via: Mozy

Taking the Kindle Plunge

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I’ve written here about the Kindle twice before. When it was first released in late 2007, I predicted that it was going to be a hit, and many really smart friends (and my wife) told me I was dead wrong and that it was going to be a flop.

Then, when the Kindle 2 was released in early 2009, I wrote about it again, and said that the only reason I didn’t buy one was that I had gotten used to reading books using Stanza on my iPhone. Now, of course, I have an iPad, and I read ebooks on that. But the iPad has some significant disadvantages as an ebook reader. It’s heavy in the hand; you have to prop it on something or put it on a table. It’s too big to fit in a jacket pocket (except for my ScottEVest jacket), and the iPad, having email, tends to interrupt my reading experience. And the Kindle has that just-about-forever battery life.

I’d been thinking that I was going to try a Kindle when it hit the magic $99 price point. So after today’s Amazon announcements, I sprang for the $99 Kindle Touch (the one with the ads, because I’m pretty good at ignoring ads, the ads don’t interfere with the reading experience, and I didn’t mind saving $40). I’ll report back when the thing arrives in November. We’ll see if I like it or not. But my track record so far has been pretty good.