E. Allen's P.O.V.

Paul Giamatti, along with George Clooney, Matt Dillon, William Hurt (!?!*WTF!) and Jake Gyllenhaal (yay!) are in the Best Supp. Actor category. (As I am writing this, I’m looking on MSNBC, CNN and even Yahoo and THEY HAVEN’T UPDATED with this yet, making my blog one of the very first on the ‘Net with this news and my opinion on it. A fact that I am astonished by over and over again.)

Judi Dench gets a nod for Best Actress, Mrs. Henderson Presents. I bet Harvey Weinstein knew this would happen when he backed the picture. The nod for Felicity Huffman (Best Actress, Transamerica) makes number two for The Weinstein Company, which is rapidly distinguishing itself from its competitors. Keira Knightly's Best Actress nod has shocked the morning anchors, for some reason. Didn’t shock me. The other two for this category are Charlize Theron for North Country (defying the odds once again, and this has hopefully her naysayers helping themselves to a second serving of humble pie) and Reese Witherspoon, rightfully, for Walk the Line.

Imdb still doesn’t have this. Okay, let me keep typing here. . .

Terrence Howard for Hustle & Flow deservingly gets a nod in the Best Actor category alongside Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote (quite predictably), Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, and David Strathairn for being Edward Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck.

Best Director. Here we go. Bennett Miller (WTF!), Capote. Ang Lee, Broekback Mountain. Paul Haggis (Best Director? WTF!), Crash.
George Clooney for Good Night, and Good Luck. And Spielberg, Munich. To be honest, I thought (to my discredit) AMPAS was going to pass Spielberg over for this one. I really didn’t think he was going to get this nod. My bad. Anyone has some whipped cream to go with my humble pie?

Best Original Screenplay. Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco get a nod for writing Crash; Clooney and Grant Heslov for Good Night & Good Luck; Woody Allen (predictably) gets one for Match Point; Noah Baumbach (HOLY WTF), The Squid and the Whale; Stephen Gaghan for Syriana. The indies are, at last, gaining recognition!

Best Adapted Screenplay. Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana for Brokeback Mountain; Dan Futterman, Capote; Jeffrey Caine, The Constant Gardener; Josh Olsen, A History of Violence; Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner & Eric Roth, Munich.

Best Foreign Language Film. Italy, Don’t Tell. France, Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas). South Africa, Tsotsi. Germany, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Palestine, Paradise Now. And I have seen none of these, but thanks to the small miracle that is DVD I will get to see at least 80% of the nominated films in this category.

Ah, Best Animated Film. My category. Howl’s Moving Castle. The Corpse Bride. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. See earlier post for reaction.

Best Picture. Brokeback Mountain. Crash. Capote (long shot, heh). Munich. Good Night, & Good Luck. And look, none of you (that care, at least) should be surprised to see Brokeback Mountain win Best Picture.

Most of the major categories are here, but for purposes of time and other pressing obligations I must stop here—come back later, after (chances are) all of you have found out about the rest of the nominees. See ya.

Okay, now that they have been announced. . .anyone shocked?

Personally, why should anyone be shocked that Crash and Brokeback Mountain (Best Pic nominees) scored? Those were the no-brainers. The real shocker came when Madagascar, the odds-on favorite to snag a nod, was choking on the dust of its lesser DreamWorks sibling, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. All you guys pulling for Howl’s Moving Castle--just hang it the hell up. This is a sure a bet as one can ever make; The Oscar is Aardman’s all the way and beyond.

Amy Adams?!? For Junebug? AMPAS actually did it right this time! Holy shit. . .

And Frances McDormand? Again? Man, I’m about to go into cardiac arrest!

The other three aren’t that surprising, though.


Matt Dillon is finally recognized. Hooray! George Clooney is in the running with Dillon in the Supp. Actor category. So is William Hurt, for History of Violence. Um, yeah—who the hell thought he had a chance of being nominated.

We later found out that George Clooney is up for a total of four Oscars this year. Damn. This is a record only shared with Orson Welles and Warren Beatty.

In a few minutes, I’ll write more about the other nominees, and congratulations to the long shots. God, some of them were real shakers. . .

Oscar nominations will be announced shortly. I’ll be standing by with a take on the (apparently, predicable) results after these guys are announced.

Oh, and this just in. Apparently Coretta Scott King has died at 78. Just in case, y'know, your home page isn't CNN.

Not too long ago, I discovered Gather.com, and now I am a member.

Anyone can become a member of gather.com, though the writers can be intimidating given their mastery of grammar and nearly error-free essays. It is my estimation that there is not a weak article to be found there (on the entire site), and if you are not careful nor disciplined you will lose whole chunks of your life reading all of these essays and brilliant book reviews, some so brilliantly written that I will never again look at an entertainment article on the Internet the same again. I have experienced what some would call a revelation.

Long story short. All you shitty writers, thinking you can get away with not putting periods at the ends of your sentences and misspelling known words and phrases, mangling entire logical passages with fragmented syntax and poor arrangement—your days are numbered. No, I’m not talking to those guys who work 13 hours a day plus, and their brain’s fried and they make a mistake here and there. I’m talking to the smart ass 15-year-old who think it’s cool to type “sk8er 4 eyef!” and take shortcuts by populating entire reports with alpha-numeric alternatives to common verbs. Gather, as it grows in popularity, will eventually become an unstoppable revolution. At the very least, it has captured the attention of academia.



http://e-allen.gather.com/

Today, I believe that (breakthrough of all breakthroughs) I have made the site more accessible to you 56K users. For one, it is done mostly in Flash, which obviously is dial-up friendly (unfortunately, it is not very forgiving on your computer’s memory resources). Secondly, the little bits of pre-arranged code packages that are naturally embedded into Flash 8 have been implemented into the overall scheme of the site. So, yay and success and all that. All that is left is that bitch ass horseshit-eating sheep-fucking of a rectal disorder that eventually will be my forum. A metric BATTLESHIP TON of a code there. Sometimes, do you ever wonder what it would be like to be assigned the task of having to find a needle in a haystack? Or even worse? Having to find a bent quarter that’s wedged in a crack in one of the rooms on the Queen Mary II cruise ship liner? And you don’t know which one, so unless you have a metal detector or a Palm Pilot with metal-detecting capabilities and peripherals you are thoroughly pwned by the dilemma. And you’ll have to use the long-way-‘round approach to solving the problem.

That’s what reading the code for my forum is like. Shit on a bicycle pedal.

So, at this point, before I shift the attention away from the endless moaning over my site, I would just like to say that the deadline for when the site will be done is now officially pushed to the day after Hell freezes over. Would that I had more to say about it, but less is better in this case. So, without further ado, let’s talk about. . .

Sexually active snails!

(I rarely laugh at my own jokes, but that last line—originally a thought in my sleep-starved brain—had me spurting Dr. Pepper from my nose. It is almost as funny as hearing French guys say “dude” and “motherfucker” in their broken English.)

Later, I will write more on how I feel about the purchase of Pixar. And why I think that Steve Jobs, who has possibly just become majority shareholder, will end up owning Disney.

And if that happens, how can that be anything other than good?

I said, earlier, that I would write about the Golden Globes and now, here it is. The write-up, six days after everyone stopped caring.

At the beginning of this show, a heavily-modified version of The Pussycat Dolls “Don’t Cha” (funny, the Dolls say “Don’t Chu” more than “Don’t Cha”) serves as the song to get everyone pumped. It was a weak song when it played in its original form on the radio and on the Net, and the Globes version don’t improve on it. It’s pointless talking about an offshoot of a product produced by a product of a record-label, or some music executive’s imagination. Naturally, anything musical and demographic-enslaved conceived by a team of corporate bitches, is just waiting to suck.

Anyhoo, we get to Queen Latifa, who looks rather stunning. She feels obliged to comment on the fact that the Awards are taking place so soon after the official observance of MLK Jr. Day, which leads to the obligatory applause as it is politically correct to do after these types of comments are made. (Audience, I don’t wanna read e-mails about how racist and bigoted I am, because I am black and furthermore if I greeted another black male with the phrase “nigga”, he would greet me the same as well and there’d be no hard feelings; whereas if some of you did the same the outcome would be less desirable. So, nyah.*) After, QL does this embarrassingly inoffensive dance to suggest “hey, it’s time to party” and “let’s get this party started”, there is a slight pause and the pause is long enough for me to wonder, “did they get it? Do they feel pumped and excited now that Queen Latifa has done her cute little dance to get everyone in a festive mood? Did it work?” We’ll never know.

Adrien Brody and Natalie Portman present George Clooney with his statuette for Best Supporting Actor, Syriana. His acceptance speech is one of the few that got genuine laughs out of me. “I wanna thank Jack Abramoff”—chuckles, some nervous, others “I can’t believe he went there” type of chuckles—“you know, just because. First one up. [Just to] get this thing rolling.” Clooney chuckles himself. “I dunno why.” Earlier, Clooney says he hasn’t had his first drink yet, yet his mannerisms tell a different story. (It’s just me making these observations. I’m just trying to start shit up.) “Who would name their kid Jack with the last words ‘off’ (sic) at the end of—” and this is the dealbreaker for me. I start laughing. Only Clooney has the balls to openly mock a once trusted official who’s now getting pity looks from his peers and sympathy votes from some media outlets. Abramoff’s name just doesn’t serve as the “punch” for many “punchlines” these days. Clooney continues, amidst rolling laughter, “No wonder that guy screwed up. Uhh, heh, alright I just got bleeped. Uh, thank you all very much. . .” From here, I get a feeling everything goes downhill. It’s quite impossible to top an acceptance speech like Clooney’s. Well, not impossible. . .

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* If you yelled “hey, my nigga” to me on the street, I would give a friendly wave. Such labels I do not take personally anymore, not since the pilot for The Boondocks contained a record-breaking number of mentions of the word once thought to be the most inflammatory epithet in the English language. And besides, it’s very hard to offend me anyways, especially since I work so hard to offend others. It’s my life’s work.
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The same two presenters present Rachel Weisz with her statuette (Best Supporting Actress) for The Constant Gardener. She has a very modest and statesmanlike acceptance speech, which gets the job done. It’s funny—right after these two get off stage, we learn that one of the sponsors is “Hummer”. That’s right, the most gas-guzzling, fuel-inefficient vehicle on the market and one of the reasons why Syriana exists, is co-sponsoring the Globes telecast. What irony.

After the commercials, Jessica Alba and Luke Wilson present the Best Supporting Actor for TV movie/miniseries/show to Paul Newman for Empire Falls, who not surprisingly wasn’t there to get it. Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) and Teri Hatcher, a desperate housewife, present the Best Supporting Actress for TV movie/miniseries/show to a memorably hysterical Sandra Oh for Grey’s Anatomy. I can’t tell you how hot she looks, but anyway—she stumbles to the stage and gives another one of those quirky acceptance speeches. “I feel like someone’s set me on fire,” she starts after a lengthy battle with the letter I. After a Sally Field-type speech, she leaves, this time more in control of herself and there’s one more commercial break before we get to Drew Barrymore saluting one of the five Best Picture (Drama) nominees, Good Night, and Good Luck. (At this juncture, I shake my head and say to myself, “GNaGL probably won’t get a thing.”) Emmy Rossum walks out and introduces Philip Berk, the “hunk of the Hollywood Foreign Press” (her words). He’s the HFPA President. He gives the obligatory speech, and clears the stage for another desperate housewife, Nicollette Sheridan, who’s accompanied by Jesse L. Martin. Geena Davis is Best Actress (TV Series—Drama) for Commander-in-Chief. She does the best she can to shock her compatriots by saluting Donald Sutherland as “the God at whose alter I worship.” A few whoo-hoo sounds coming from the Peanut Gallery. Earlier, she gets laughs and applause for telling a completely fictional story, and another round of semi-claps for thanking her husband for coming to the set, and Rod Lurie gets a mention for creating this innovative series.

Rod Lurie just doesn’t get enough love. He almost lost his mind while he battled with the studio for control over The Last Castle, a film that did lukewarm business at the box office but was a critical darling. He then began his adventure in television with ABC, Line of Fire, a series which began strongly but then precipitously lost favor among audiences. His second go-round with the network, Commander-in-Chief, is rumored to be on either the auction block or the chopping block. Either way, the descriptor “short-lived series” is likely to be permanently associated with it. Previous box office efforts The Contender and Deterrence were once-again highly-praised but not widely seen. Again and again, Rod Lurie is described as being among the most talented screenwriters and directors in the Industry and yet, consistently gets the small end of the funnel. The lack of awards recognition for Lurie’s work only further substantiates the possibility that Rod Lurie is Hollywood’s most underappreciated artist.

Ian McShane (Deadwood) and Evangeline Lilly present the Best Actor Globe (TV Series—Drama) to Hugh Laurie, for House. It’s quick; he decides to randomly thank three people, all staff members of House, and says the rest can “lump it”, which gets a chuckle or four. Script Supervisor Ira Horwitz, hairstylist Diana Akrey (possibly wrong spelling), Laurie’s agent Christian O’ Dell (possibly misspelled) all are recipients of the random drawing, and then Laurie moves on to thank a few others (including his family—betcha didn’t see that one coming). It’s product-hawking time.

Hour 2. Melanie Griffith comes and talks up The Producers soon after she calls out her daughter to the stage. A humorous pairing is found with Matt Dillon and Queen Latifa. I feel sorry for Dillon. If Dillon was the character he played in Crash, Latifa would smack the fucking shit out of him, chew him up & then shit him out—metaphorically speaking, but probably literally as well. They hand over the Globe to Empire Falls for Best Made-for TV miniseries or movie. Next one. William Petersen and Pam Anderson show up. (I groan, “Here we go.”) For Best Actor (TV—Musical or Comedy), Steve Carell for NBC’s The Office. Evidently, Carell’s wife wrote his acceptance speech for him. It’s not that funny, but Carell gives it his best shot and hey, the audience laughs along, however canned the laughter seems to be.

Again, some commercials before we get to Tim Robbins, da’ man. He salutes another Best Picture (Drama) nominee, The Constant Gardener. Another thing I like about Robbins is that he‘s a fast talker, so it’s pretty much guaranteed that he’s not going to be spending long delivering his presentations. Jamie Foxx shows up. He says it’s such an “unpredictable night”. That’s actually a genius plug, even though it was groan-inducing. Not even Madonna got the opportunity to plug her albums at awards ceremonies. Well, maybe the Grammys, but every artist gets that opportunity in that venue.

He gives it to Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line, a Best Actress (Musical/Comedy), her performance being neither too funny nor too dramatic, but all-around great. Of course, if she were eligible for consideration only in the Dramatic category, she wouldn’t have stood a chance of even being nominated. I know, that would not be fair. Her husband gave her a gleeful push to the stage; she gives a rather standard acceptance speech; time for Chris Rock. I grin like a guy getting ready to score with a chick at a party.

By now, Chris Rock’s comment “I want everybody to relax, you only have to be nice to black people for two more hours, okay?” has made the rounds with the media and on blogs and on talk shows. If anyone holding a notable position in the Industry is reading this, let me just say to you—if you invite Chris Rock to say anything at any event, chances are he’s going to say something that you’re going to have an issue with. His job is to get under somebody’s skin, while making them laugh at the same time. A job that Rock excels at.

Another one of my favorites for this ceremony comes when Chris says, “. . .Desperate Housewives is one of the biggest shows on the planet, and [referring to nominee Mary-Louise Parker] Weeds is only watched by Snoop Doggy Dogg!” And Mary-Louise Parker gets to use her Globe as a fancy doorstop.

A monstrous five-minute long commercial break follows, literally a torrent of commercials are hurled at you before you see Emma Thompson walk onto the stage to talk about Pride & Prejudice. Eric Bana and Kate Beckinsale gives the next elegantly-crafted golden skullbreaker to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Best Actor (TV miniseries/movie) for his performance in CBS’s Elvis. He beat out Kenneth Branaugh as FDR, Donald Sutherland as an agent helping Mira Sorvino bust a Human Trafficking ring, Ed Harris in Empire Falls, and The Girl in the Café’s Bill Nighy. Any one of these actors was better and more believable than Meyers as Elvis. And, since this is my blog, I get to say things that other people might find unfair. I felt that Meyers did great just to get people to tune in to the first hour of Elvis. But no more than that.

But he gave a modest and humble acceptance speech. I know its standard, but this guy is known for being fairly cocky. Humility from these kinds of guys are not the norm.

The same Bana/Beckinsale duo give the Best Actress Globe, same category, to S. Epatha Merkerson for Lackawanna Blues. I have to admit, it felt pretty good to see her win. She’s one of the hardest working actresses in TV.

Another astonishingly-long break follows. After, Colin Firth explains to us what Match Point is all about and Harrison Ford with Virginia Madsen give Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana the award for their Brokeback Mountain screenplay adaptation.

Jill Hennessey gives the award for Best TV Series-Musical or Comedy to Desperate Housewives. And that’s about all I’m going to write about that.

Penelope Cruz reminds everyone that Mrs. Henderson Presents is actually among the nominees.

Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker read out loud Paradise Now. The volume of the clapping is surprisingly modest for such a win.

Hany Abu-Assad, the film’s Palestinian director, thanks the “Foreign Press (sic) for [their] recognition of the film, for the crew and cast. . .but also as a recognition for. . .the Palestinians deserve their liberty and equality unconditionally.” His grasp of English is pretty good. Now I need to hurry up and brush up on my Arabic, because I suck at speaking it.

Epic commercial break.

When the show finally comes back, Catherine Deneuve talks about A History of Violence.

Ah shit, my fingers hurt. I’m gonna just pump this bitch out as fast as I possibly can.

Julian McMahon and Rosario Dawson come out and John Williams wins in the Best Score category for Memoirs of a Geisha. According to the IMDb, there is 23 years between his last Globe win for E.T. and this win. He had been nominated numerous times in the years between.

Mariah Carey presents the award to Gustavo Santaolalla, in the Best Song category for “A Love That Will Never Grow Old” a song that he shares credit with Bernie Taupin for. Oh yeah, that song was written for Brokeback Mountain.
Anthony Hopkins gets the Cecil B. DeMille award, Lifetime Achievement, AKA the “you’re almost through, so we’ll hurry up and honor you” award. His speech is much shorter and much sweeter than I expect it to be. Would that I had the energy to transcribe every single word he said.

Mandy Moore does a great job talking up The Squid and the Whale.

Clint Eastwood feels lucky enough to be allowed to be a presenter for Best Director, which goes to Ang Lee. You could sense that he has almost perfected his ability to speak English, his occasional stammering being the result of nervousness more than anything else.

John Travolta gives the next eye-gouger to Pierce Brosnan for The Matador. Well, that’s how it happened in my hallucination. It actually goes to Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line.

Tim McGraw rubs more of Walk the Line in our faces, after the preceding commercial break.

Renee Zellwegger, looking even slimmer than the last time I saw her on TV, reads off the nominees for Best Film—Musical/Comedy. And we just know Walk the Line is gonna hit this one out of the ballpark.

Just 19 minutes from the last commercial, and already we have to brace ourselves for an onslaught of Lexus and Target ads. Some commercials are shown for the third time.

Main cast members from Will & Grace present Best TV Drama to Lost, and everybody—we’re talking whole tables of people here—crowd the stage. I almost made the mistake of assuming the stage wasn’t wide enough to accommodate everyone, and that some would have to share space with the teleprompter.

Dennis Quaid talks up Brokeback Mountain. I love the part where he says the genre of the film rhymes with “chick flick”. I guess that means it’s a “dick flick”. Heh heh.

Leonardo DiCaprio announces Felicity Huffman as the recipient, Best Actress (Drama), Transamerica. She sobs a little, but the Niagara Falls equipment is malfunctioning somehow.

Hilary Swank, after another round with the commercials, hands over the statuette to Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote. Awesome speech from him.

A torrent of commercials later, Denzel Washington gets it over with by handing the Best Picture (Drama) statuette to the producers of Brokeback.

And seriously guys, I have just enough energy to type these final words. Between the commercials and the length of the awards show, and the probable length of the Oscars, I may not be doing this again. If I do, remind me to boil a gallon of coffee and hire a dozen ghostwriters. After all of that is done, I may have to buy new keyboards as well.

The Looney Tunes director, apparently the last of them, was 94. Dates for the memorial service are forthcoming.

I know I didn’t write about Wilson Pickett’s passing; that’s only because his death was so widely reported that there was scarcely an area you could turn to that didn’t scream out “Wilson Pickett died of a heart attack at 64!”

Anyway, I’m fashionably late with this information, but better late than never.

Okay, so Brokeback Mountain won Best Picture (Drama) at the Globes, and Walk the Line won Best Picture (Comedy). Surprise, and no surprise, respectively.

This is the first awards show that I have ever recorded to my hard drive, and the Oscars will be the second. Well, hopefully, will be the second. Will write more about the upsets (of which there were few) and the speeches (why do I get the feeling that many actors and actresses who actually won something were trying extremely hard to be funny?) as time permits.

One of the upcoming Justice League episodes feature Supergirl fighting alongside, well, The Legion. A Legion. Something like that. Anyway, that’s not as important as the fact that Paul Dini wrote it, which ramps up the episode’s COOL-AS-SHIT factor to a stratospheric unit of measurement only the E.T.s know about. Suffice it to say, I would break every international law known to man for the opportunity to get an early peek at the animation roughs for that episode.

And thus concludes my posting duties for the month, as I am still enslaved to the dilemma that is debugging my huge contribution to human civilization. My website.

(Just kidding. I will post more as time permits. Keyword here is time permits.)

I looked on my computer calendar today, and was blown away by the fact that today is January 8, and my website is still in the testing stage.

I have officially lost track of time.

So now, Lou Rawls is gone. My condolences.

Even Rawls himself said that what he had was treatable. So, while I am not too shocked to hear that what he was fighting evidently claimed him, I still held out for some eventual reassurances that maybe he was going to pull through after all. As you can see, that did not happen.

I had a post ready for this morning, but in restarting my computer the document containing the words to be cut and pasted onto here was lost. Aaaand. . .this post is completely useless.

I noticed that, as I watched the New Year (ABC) on my computer, that Dick Clark’s voice was especially weak. Complications of a stroke and other related health problems, I know, but. . .it was bittersweet to hear him talk again, the best way he could. I hope he can do it again for us next year, one more time.

Ryan Seacrest is okay. To avoid massive amounts of flame mail and the like, I’ll just stick to saying that. Seacrest is okay, not spectacular.

And so it is, 2006, another year for revelations, for milestones, and I sure as hell hope for achievements—namely, that I can finish testing this damn website and bring it all to you, and start what will be the hugest and most illegal advertising campaign I have ever launched for a single endeavor. What will be so illegal about my campaign? Well, for starters, since I don’t have much of a budget. . .ah hell, I’ll explain it to you dear readers in a future post. Suffice it to say that the practice of guerrilla marketing has always been frowned-down upon.

I hope 2006 is the year that your life changes for the better. If it was good to begin with, I hope that it will become even better.