I learned five important lessons on Oscar night, y’all. They involve under-the-chin shots, apologizing for your youthful impulses, and thanking your mom.

To learn exactly what those lessons are, just join me here on NPR’s Monkey See blog.

 

 

By DOUG STRASSLER

Here we are again, on Oscar eve. What better time than to run another edition of The Best Picture Expansion Project? Below we time-warp back one-third of a century to 1977, a pretty important year in the annals of film. Before looking at the final five, take a gander at all of that year’s contenders.

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To start your weekend, let me offer a bit of silliness that I call… The Blankenshow.

Recently, some friends and I gathered in my apartment to make an episode of a pop culture web series. The idea was to approach pop culture from several angles, throw in some video effects, and see what happened.

Of everything we tried, I thought these three segments turned out pretty well, so I’d like to share them with you. First up, an ode to Shangela RuPaul’s Drag Race. (NOTE: This was filmed before I saw the last two episodes of the show, which made me realize that Shangela can be joylessly mean and transparently insecure as she insults people.)

The original theme of this episode was Second Acts in Pop Culture, which is what I’m referencing.

Next up, my friend Marya and I flashback to the top five songs from early February 1991. You might remember similar posts from previous months.

Finally, I use pop culture to give relationship advice to a viewer in trouble. (That’s Marya and my friend Matt playing the couple in love.)

I’m excited to report that I have just published my first story on TODAYshow.com, the website of NBC’s morning show behemoth.

Just click here to read my comparison of the original True Grit with the Coen Brothers’ remake. After they go head-to-head in several categories, one film walks away the champion.

Welcome to the final installment of Oscar Actors In Retrospect, a four-part series wherein Roommate Joe and I revisit the Oscar-winning performances from 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005 and see how they stand up to historical scrutiny.

Today, I’ll be taking you through our reactions to Best Actor and Best Actress from 2005. To look at how we ranked the supporting categories, just visit Joe at Low Resolution. In all cases, let us know your rankings as well.

And don’t forget to watch the Oscars on Sunday. In five years, will we judge them kindly? Stay tuned! For five years!
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I spent my adolescence with my heart just leaping out of my mouth. I was always so moved by things. In American Beauty, when Wes Bentley’s teenage character said, “Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in” I sat in the theater, not that far beyond my teen years, and knew exactly how he felt.

Age and experience have dialed me down, but even still, I cry from happiness several times a year. Like last December, when my partner and I had our first Christmas in our first apartment together, and I bought my own Christmas tree for the first time, and I suddenly had a holiday tradition with my own little family. The gratitude was so strong I just cried and cried.

Being a Happy Crier makes me susceptible to things like The “Little Miss” Project, a fan-made music video for Sugarland’s latest single. When I first heard it, I like the inspirational ballad well enough, but now that it’s connected to this video, I like it even more. The clip features a group of young women holding up pieces of paper that announce their personal hardships, and then on the flip sides of those pages, they’ve written words of support or encouragement or perseverance. It’s like PostSecret as a music video.

What really gets me about this video is that it’s so obviously made by everyday people. One of the young women isn’t visible because she’s totally out of the light. One has her piece of paper turned at such an angle that I can’t read it. Some of the teenage girls are over-emoting like yeah, obviously getting lost in the Size of Their Feelings, and one girl is hamming it up like a comedian.

But that’s what makes me believe these women. They’re not professionals. They didn’t get focus-grouped by a casting agent. According to Sugarland’s website (the band is wisely supporting the project), one of the girls just reached out to a bunch of Sugarland fans and asked them to send in video clips that represented what “Little Miss” means to them. Clearly, she had the artistic flair to give them some narrative guidelines—and do that thing with her shoes—but beyond that, she seems to have let everyone just be themselves.

So what I see, then, is shot after shot of genuine, unbridled enthusiasm. Maybe I don’t love the song as much as these women. Maybe I feel like some of their problems aren’t such a big deal, really. But I’m touched by their energy and their desire to be hopeful and helpful. I’m touched by how genuine they seem in their optimism.

I remember being them. I remember having my heart in my mouth. I hope these people hold onto that feeling and cry from happiness and even when they look back and feel silly about fretting over that “dream job,” they still celebrate the fact that they felt things deeply.

Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

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Do you guys remember that old SNL commercial for Bad Idea Jeans? Many characters in tonight’s segment, “D.I.V.O.R.C.E.” could front their new ad campaign.
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When we last discussed my marathon through Mad Men, I was halfway through Season 3. Well, look out people, because now I’ve seen every episode! If Don fucked it, then I saw it. If Peggy sassed it, then I was there. If Joan made it a hundred times more awesome with a single glance from her oh-so-knowing eyes, then I clapped in appreciation.

And if Pete continued his reign as the most perfect freak on TV… well, you get the idea.

I love the show, and I anxiously await Season 5. But here’s the thing: I still don’t see it as a meaningful rumination on the sixties.

But in previous posts, I don’t think I’ve quite explained what I mean by that. And my perspective has changed a little, too.

I know that it’s possible to experience the show a history lesson–to approach it as a dissection of what America was like back then—and I know that creator Matthew Weiner has stated that he sees the show that way. However, it is not necessary to take that approach. As a viewer, I’ve had a rich, entertaining experience with Mad Men, but I have never thought, “Oh, now I understand what America was like before disco.”

As I’ve said, I’m mostly besotted with the show’s melodrama. I’ve referred to it as a “soap opera,” but I think that term is too loaded. It implies hackery, and Mad Men is one of the most sophisticated shows around. What I mean is that I enjoy watching these character play out all their power struggles and sexual neuroses and inner turmoil. I enjoy watching Betty go apeshit crazy and Don drink away the pain and Peggy wake up to her own power. To me, there’s nothing greater than seeing characters I care about muddle through situations that resonate with me.

But for me, the sixties are the seasoning and the machinations of the characters are the meat. When I’ve learned something from an episode it’s been, “Wow, men are brilliant at creating systems that convince us our oppressive acts are helpful,” not, “Wow, men in the sixties are brilliant, etc.” Do you know what I mean there? Maybe this is just me, but I simply can’t trust the history in a fictional series that needs to bend history to the needs of a plot. I can use Mad Men as a goad to do my own research, but I can’t say the show is research itself.

Now… has anyone asked me to do that? No. Am I even certain that other people are doing that? No. But since I was making some pretty bold claims about this show, I figured I’d keep sorting things out. I feel like I’m touching on something pretty big here—the role of history in fiction—and I’m wondering what you guys think about what I’m saying.

So… yeah. In summary, I appreciate Mad Men as steamy fiction colored by the creative team’s and my perceptions of American history. I do think it has something to say, but to me, its messages are more trustworthy as larger statements on human behavior than on specific missives about times gone by. Thought-provoking? Yes. Sexy? Yes. Entertaining? Yes. A little trashy in its focus on booze, sex, and child-slapping? Hell yes! But a substitute for doing my own research into the sixties in America? No.

What do you guys think?

Welcome to the third installment of Oscar Actors In Retrospect, a four-part series wherein Roommate Joe and I revisit the Oscar-winning performances from 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005 and see how they stand up to historical scrutiny.

Today, I’ll be taking you through our reactions to Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress from 2000. To look at how we ranked the leading categories, just visit Joe at Low Resolution. In all cases, let us know your rankings as well.

And join us next week for 2005, the year that made it just a little bit easier out there for a pimp.

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Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

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I love this week’s episode. I even love the title, “The Special Relationship.” It suggests the political ties between the Mormon church and the Utah Congress, it suggests the romantic (and political) ties between Bill and Barb, it suggests Barb’s ties to God and the church’s tie to priesthood holders. This whole series is about special relationships, really, and the right to declare them, and I give props to writer Patricia Breen for corralling so many into an hour.

I’ve also got to give props to you guys. Your comments have been enriching my special relationship with the show, and I’ve particularly appreciated the texts I’ve been getting from a Mormon friend who has helped me see things in these episodes that I’d never see otherwise. For instance, he argued that last week’s dream sequence, where Bill sees his mother dressed exactly like the troubled wife of Joseph Smith, suggests Bill’s confidence is wavering. Apparently, the historical allusions in that scene are so specific and so potent within Mormon history that they make Bill seem much more uncertain than he might seem to a layperson.

I wish the show would communicate that complexity through channels that don’t require a dense knowledge of Mormon history—because he does seem awfully arrogant—but I’m grateful to have that insight moving forward. I’m no less irritated by Pompous Pomperson, but at least I see that he’s not functioning in the show as a pure blockade to the women’s desires or a pure manifestation of hypocritical, self-righteous ego. Those things are leavened. A bit.

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