February 25, 2008

Oscars

Enjoyed the Oscars last night, although I sped through them a fair bit. Was happy with pretty much all the winners, especially "Once" for Best Song (although disgusted with them for not letting Markéta Irglová speak at all - at least they brought her back out and it turned out to be about the best acceptance speech of the night). Even though I haven't yet seen it, I was greatly rooting for "No Country for Old Men"/the Coen brothers and very glad it won the major prizes - I'll see it as soon as comes out on DVD. The only winner I kind of disagreed with was Tilda Swinton in "Michael Clayton", who I think is an excellent actress but didn't think her role here that interesting. Wilkinson in the same film was far more impressive. However, I guess the competition (many of which I haven't seen) was far greater in the male Supporting Actor category than the female one, which is very sad but often the case.

I also noticed in watching the Best Picture montage that I have seen every winner (again, briefly excepting this year) going back to 1972 (although some ages ago and don't remember at all really). Given that, I just added "The French Connection" and "Oliver!" to my Netflix queue which would push it back to 1966.

Also, I hadn't so much directly noticed it but really was a great year for Europeans, taking all of the acting prizes and Best Song and probably some others.

Posted by aarondf at 12:01 PM | Movies | Comments (0)

February 13, 2008

Movie: Diggers

This is a small but excellent movie about Long Island clam diggers, set in 1976. It is filled with atmosphere, of both the time and place, and the acting is all excellent. There is nothing amazing or that unusual about it but very well crafted. ****

Posted by aarondf at 06:04 PM | Movies | Comments (0)

February 12, 2008

TV: Sarrah Connor Chronicles

Today isn't the best day to be recommending this, given a couple of minor things in last night's episode, but Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles I think is absolutely excellent, MUCH better than I expected, and I highly recommend it. I like it much better than BSG and think it is probably the best SF show in years. Summer Glau in particular is incredibly good (like her more here than in Firefly where she oddly played a similar character).

The problems in last night's episode were basically the standard problems when media uses chess for anything. The ridiculous, but movie cliche, 'surprise mate' in a game supposedly at Grandmaster+ level and the completely wrong use of the term 'zugzwang' were boneheaded errors but a minor thing overall.

Posted by aarondf at 11:35 AM | Television | Comments (0)

February 06, 2008

Superdelegates

Although I knew about the concept before, Superdelegates (much more used in the Democratic party primary system than the Republican) seem a pretty awful thing. These are 'party leader' delegates like Bill Clinton who are not chosen by the people at all and there are a TON of them, like 25% as many as elected delegates. Currently, depending on which CNN page you go by, Hillary, if you ignored the superdelegates either has a TINY lead (like 7 delegates) or is behind by a similar amount, either one given that Edwards has 26 delegates, would lead to a brokered convention. However, Hillary has a like 200-100 lead in superdelegates so is ahead by around 90 overall. Showing Hillary with a 90 delegate lead is really misleading, as it turns out the voting by the people is as close to 50-50 as it could possibly be but most people won't realize that and will think she has a small but not insignificant lead.

I strongly prefer Obama to Hillary but, even if I didn't, this system seems really bad. A person could win more than 60% of the elected delegates and still lose the primary if all the superdelegates were against him. The "Democratic" party should be ashamed of this system imho.

Posted by aarondf at 01:18 PM | Miscellaneous | Comments (1)

February 04, 2008

SuperBowl - Great Game!

Wow, great game. Every single score caused a lead change. Came down to the very last minute. Neither offense played great but the game overall was amazingly good. The only thing I thought was crazy was Eli Manning getting the MVP. There is no way, imho, he deserved it. I would without question have given it to the Giants defensive front line as a group who put pressure on Brady pretty much all game and thereby kept the Giants in it. Manning at the end seemed several times to just toss up balls and hope his guys got to them, with Tyree doing so in the most important and difficult catch of the game. Anyway, great game and thanks to C & C for their hospitality and all.

I personally didn't feel strongly about which team won and was mostly just happy to have a good game. Upon thinking about it after, I think my personal choice for things would have been if the Giants had won the final regular season game and the Patriots had won the Super Bowl but this result was fine too.

On the commercials side, my favorite by far was the Underdog/Stewie/Charlie Brown Coke commercial. I thought it sweet Charlie Brown won.

Posted by aarondf at 04:12 PM | Sports | Comments (0)