2k4jan16 @ 11:20 pm

reaction pieces contain all the elements required for fun: knee-jerkiness, overanalysis, and mindless chatter. here's my almost-monday-morning-quarterbacking of this year's golden globes.

didn't see the best picture winner, partly because the soundtrack was a pick of some truly bleah jazz. maybe it all hangs together in the context of the film, but as a cd, not really. stupid "the aviator." i still need to see the howard hughes film that starred tommy lee jones. yikes.

i liked "finding neverland" better for best picture. :( even "hotel rwanda," unseen. i wish i'd seen "million dollar baby" and "kinsey."

why the hell are musicals and comedies lumped together? i remember when musicals had tons of comedy, but this is like excluding some comic books from "literature" because of their graphics-heavy format. i adored "ray" but also rather enjoyed the hell out of "the incredibles." what am i supposed to do, not vote? screw that. spoiled ballot, here i come. "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" was pretty good (but not a lot of credit goes to composer jon brion, whose "i [heart] huckabees" work sounds far and away better), but only entered ultra-brilliant territory in the last five minutes or so. "closer" possessed similar verisimilitude, but was populated by entirely unlikable, antagonistic protagonists.

"sideways" won though. its last half hour kind of screwed things up and actually managed to hollywoodize the story, sugar-coating things for a happy ending that was obviously ambiguous enough for the bleeding hearts who voted for it.

leonardo dicaprio sometimes bothers me something terrible. every now and then, he's invisible. but i still wanted johnny depp to win. hell, even don cheadle or javier bardem (a kickass felix in "collateral") or liam neeson, because they ooze charisma. it's hard to forgive don for participating in "mission to mars" or "after the sunset," even if he was one of the coolest things about either. i bet "sunset" was why he didn't win this year.

man, i can't really talk about the best actress category because i only saw one of the films from which there was a nominee. uma thurman was not one of the things i liked about "kill bill: vol. 2." thanks for almost ruining my initials, quentin tarantino.

jamie foxx deserved his win for "ray," i'm pleased as punch for him. jim carrey was a bit too subliminal for much of "sunshine" for my taste, i liked him better in "the truman show," i don't care how cloying that flick was. paul giamatti always kicks major boot-ee, and did just that in "sideways" (but his sidekick was even better). kevin kline and kevin spacey both got nominated for playing old, dead american music personalities notorious for their sexual proclivities. i have cds related to both films. i'm scared for the world.

kate winslet should have won for "sunshine," but i thought she was also relatively subdued for such a supposedly wacky film. maybe i'm just so off-kilter that the whole thing didn't strike me as particularly abnormalische. i was going to tell people all weekend long that though i could really relate to her character a helluva lot, i was actually nothing like her. i imagine i am sometimes, but i'm not. i think. i hope. i promise.

the rest will arrive "soon."

2k5jan17 @ 12:03 am

mark knopfler's "shangri-la" album (very mellow, in a very good way)