New Rules!

I just read that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which governs how the Oscars are handed out, has once again revised the rules for the Best Picture nominations.

From The Film Experience:

Just when we were getting acclimated to the new system of ten best picture nominees, Oscar is changing up their rules again. Deadline reports that after carefully studying their voting data, the Academy's governing board has decided that that Ten Best Picture Nominees thing was perhaps a little too generous. 'Shouldn't there be some threshold of passion for a film to win that coveted "best picture" title' they asked themselves.

Their answer was "yes".

How much passion will be required exactly? The magic number is 5%. In short, a film will have to win at least 5% of #1 votes in the nomination balloting in order to join the Best Picture Lineup. There'll be no less than 5 Best Picture nominees in any given year and no more than 10. So one could say they're splitting the difference between the old system and the new.

[…]

“In studying the data, what stood out was that Academy members had regularly shown a strong admiration for more than five movies,” said Davis. “A Best Picture nomination should be an indication of extraordinary merit. If there are only eight pictures that truly earn that honor in a given year, we shouldn’t feel an obligation to round out the number.”

If this system had been in effect from 2001 to 2008 (before the expansion to a slate of 10), there would have been years that yielded 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 nominees.

Can’t say I disagree with not feeling obligated to rounding out the number, but I fear it might still let average titles in (like say An Education or Winter’s Bone).  On the other hand, I don’t know how happy I’ll be in seeing a different number of Best Picture nominees every year.

There’s also this, which I’m not crazy about:

The number of Animated Features nominated will be more flexible too. Previously it was 3 or 5. Now it'll be 2 to 5 depending on the number of films released that are eligible and number of votes those films received.

Animated movies are so numerous nowadays, why only 2 nominees?  And, can it possibly be that there were years when they had to round the number to 3 and let a less deserving title in?!

V

Following my last post and rant against early cancellations, here’s another small gripe I have.  ABC canned V after 2 seasons, evidently too late for the producers to come up with a cogent ending, which left us with a fairly good cliffhanger and not much else.

V was one of my favorite series from the 80s, so I simply couldn’t pass up on the remake/follow up (I never understood which angle they were going for, and I don’t think they knew either), even though the new series was marred from the beginning.

For starters, the writing was poor and the show as a whole didn’t seem to have a good sense of direction.  At first it seemed to hold back too much, so they remedied by increasing the action and heightening the mystery/conspiracy level, but one thing that worked against the show was the advances in technology that have occurred since the first series premiered.  These made the visual effects cooler but also made us wonder why the rebels weren’t using a simple tool like the Internet to spread the word about the Visitors.

By the middle of season 2, the show had definitely gotten better, and by the end I was looking forward to each new episode, but it wasn’t meant to be.  Honestly, part of me is glad that they put it out of its misery, because it really did feel like there was no one who knew what the whole picture looked like.

The casting was off too.  While I loved Elizabeth Mitchell in Lost, I never bought her as the leader of the rebellion on V.  I’m not saying she can’t play tough, since she did it when necessary on Lost, but I never saw her actually disappear into Erica Evans.

Morena Baccarin as Anna, the Visitors’ leader, also was at times good but often just all-right.  On the contrary, when they brought Jane Badler (the original show’s V leader Diana) back to try and salvage the series, she owned every scene she was in.

The same mediocrity plagued many of the other principal actors, so I think that when it comes down to it, the writers and producers are to blame.  They weren’t clear on what they wanted to achieve and couldn’t make up their mind.  The series was lackluster and wanting and that’s unfortunate, because they certainly squandered one of the best properties of the eighties and a show that offered countless possibilities in terms of plot development.

Too bad.

Grade: 5

The Event

The latest TV show I dedicated time to only to be disappointed and frustrated by an early cancellation on the part of NBC.

The Event was one of the many attempts to capitalize on the void left by the very successful Lost, and like pretty much all the others (the very cool concept of FlashForward comes to mind), it failed.  Or rather, it wasn’t given enough time to succeed!

It’s true, it didn’t start out very well.  It limped at first, was confusing, and a bit odd.  This led to poor reviews and low-ish ratings, which led to a mid-season hiatus meant to retool and refocus the production.  Once it returned, I found it had improved quite a bit and the story was certainly getting more interesting by the end, even though it’s many characters were still pretty much one-dimensional. But this type of show needs time to grow into its own.  And the audience needs time to get used to it and understand its many facets.

Yes, there were many incongruences, some plot points didn’t hold much water, and others were hinted at and then abandoned.  But the concept was intriguing and I was quite disappointed when I heard it had been pulled from the fall schedule.

At any rate, it hopefully launched the career of the very cute Jason Ritter and a few other actors that did a fine job, but for me the bottom line is, Why bother investing time into watching this type of show (which I really like) if there’s a good chance I’ll never find out what the mystery is all about?

Grade: 7

Chile's Puyehue volcano

A beautiful shot of the latest big volcanic eruption:

“Consumers should stop buying and eating all processed meat products for the rest of their lives.”

That’s the conclusion of a report by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) on processed meats:

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has just completed a detailed review of more than 7,000 clinical studies covering links between diet and cancer. Its conclusion is rocking the health world with startling bluntness: Processed meats are too dangerous for human consumption. Consumers should stop buying and eating all processed meat products for the rest of their lives.

Processed meats include bacon, sausage, hot dogs, sandwich meat, packaged ham, pepperoni, salami and virtually all red meat used in frozen prepared meals. They are usually manufactured with a carcinogenic ingredient known as sodium nitrite. This is used as a color fixer by meat companies to turn packaged meats a bright red color so they look fresh. Unfortunately, sodium nitrite also results in the formation of cancer-causing nitrosamines in the human body. And this leads to a sharp increase in cancer risk for those who eat them.

A 2005 University of Hawaii study found that processed meats increase the risk of pancreatic cancer by 67 percent. Another study revealed that every 50 grams of processed meat consumed daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 50 percent. These are alarming numbers. Note that these cancer risks do not come from eating fresh, non-processed meats. They only appear in people who regularly consume processed meat products containing sodium nitrite.

And for those of us living in the US:

If sodium nitrite is so dangerous to humans, why do the FDA and USDA continue to allow this cancer-causing chemical to be used? The answer, of course, is that food industry interests now dominate the actions by U.S. government regulators. The USDA, for example, tried to ban sodium nitrite in the late 1970’s but was overridden by the meat industry. It insisted the chemical was safe and accused the USDA of trying to “ban bacon.” Today, the corporations that dominate American food and agricultural interests hold tremendous influence over the FDA and USDA. Consumers are offered no real protection from dangerous chemicals intentionally added to foods, medicines and personal care products.

Just sickening.

Check out the whole article here for more.

A Quote By

Marlo Thomas, author of the beloved, groundbreaking classic 1972 record album and illustrated book Free to Be...You and Me:

“Just how many dead teenagers, driven to end their own lives, is it going to take for adults to stand up and say,What the hell is going on? There was a time when the words "Free to Be" embodied a hope that whatever a kid was, was good enough. But "freedom" doesn't describe the world of this generation. Or of their parents.  [...]  For all the walls we thought we'd broken down with Free to Be -- and all the stereotypes we thought we'd shattered -- children today are not free to be anything they want to be, nor anything they are, and they are dying for it. And no beautiful lyric can fix that.”

In Memoriam

Bill Hunter (1940-2011)

A great character actor and a legend in his native Australia, Bill Hunter starred in over 100 movies in his lifetime.

I remember him fondly in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

America the Exceptional (?)

Ray sent me a link to this must-read article (it’s a little long, but totally worth it) about the many ways in which the US might seem exceptional, but not for the right reasons.

It also gives brief historical comparisons that shine a sad light on the downward path the country has been travelling for the past few decades.

Really sobering.

A few excerpts:

What is this American exceptionalism Republicans so venerate? After interviewing many Republican leaders, Washington Post Reporter Karen Tumulty concludes it is the belief that America “is inherently superior to the world’s other nations”. It is a widely held belief. Indeed, most Americans believe our superiority is not only inherent but divinely ordained. A survey by the Public Religious Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that 58 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “God has granted America a special role in human history.”

[...]

Indeed, to me there are two American exceptionalisms. One is the exceptionally favorable circumstances the United States found itself in at its founding and over its first 200 years. The second is the exceptional way in which we have squandered those advantages, in the process creating a value system singularly antagonistic to the changes needed when those advantages disappeared.

Americans did not become rich because of our rugged individualism or entrepreneurial drive or technical inventiveness. We were born rich.

[...]

Americans became the richest people on earth not because we were endowed with inherently superior national traits nor because we are God’s chosen people, nor because we have an elegant and compact Constitution and a noble sounding Declaration of Independence. We became rich because we were exceptionally lucky.

But the myth that we became richer than other countries because of our blessedness encouraged us to develop a truly exceptionalist culture, one that has left us singularly unequipped to prosper when our luck changed, when inexpensive land and energy proved exhaustible, when the best and the brightest in the world began staying at home rather than emigrating to our shores, when wars began to burden us and enrich our economic competitors.

[...]

Citizens in other countries are as critical of their governments as we are. But unlike us they do not criticize the importance of government itself or the fundamental role it plays in boosting the general welfare. They do not like to pay taxes, but they understand the necessity of taxes not only in building a public infrastructure but also in building a personal security infrastructure.

Far more than other peoples, Americans believe that skill and hard work are the keys to success and wealth is a measure of how hard you work or how skilled you are. Which leads us to believe that people should have the right to amass as much wealth as they can and view a graduated income tax as a punitive penalty on success and a sturdy social safety net an invitation to slothfulness, reduced productivity and an overall slowdown in economic growth.

[...]

The United States is also exceptional among industrialized nations not only in having by far the world’s most unequal income distribution but in believing that this inequality benefits us all, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

[...]

Conservatives proudly point to the Declaration of Independence as the foundational source of their guiding principles. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But American exceptionalism has bred a culture and value system that have in turn embraced policies that have made the pursuit of happiness exceedingly difficult.

[...]

America has been and continues to be exceptional. At first we were exceptional because of circumstances that conferred on us enormous advantages over other nations. Today we are exceptional because of our culture, a culture born of our unusually fortunate history and now perhaps the single biggest handicap to our collective survival and prosperity in the less favorable circumstances of the 21^st century.

And since a picture is worth a thousand words, a few of the graphs from the bottom of the article:

 

Overall, quite informative and, now that I live here, saddening.

Why we need immigration equality

This video made me feel very sad for the people portrayed, primarily because while Ray and I have never been in their situation, the possibility has always been there:

Light as a feather

Via Towleroad comes this incredible video of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo’s first “feather” reentry test flight:

During the test flight, SS2 was dropped from 51,000 feet and the change in configuration to the feather position appear to cause a significant nose up pitch attitude during the transition. Once the tail surfaces are raised to about 65 degrees and SS2 is established in the feather position, the space craft descends nearly vertically. In the feather position, SS2 appears to be closer to a flat pitch attitude with some oscillations in pitch, roll and yaw.

The feather position allows the space craft to reenter the atmosphere at a slow enough speed to reduce the heating problems that can occur as friction with the atmosphere increases. It also simplifies the process compared to needing a precise glide angle for reentry in order to avoid skipping off of the atmosphere.

This could completely revolutionize space travel, primarily by making it a lot safer, thereby increasing its commercial appeal.