Three things about the Academy Awards

1. Beards. So many of them! George Clooney, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Jackman, Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones. I can’t remember an Oscars with so many. (Dear Friend: can it be…?)

2. Seth MacFarlane.

Dear Hollywood,

I know Seth MacFarlane is young, good-looking, and can sing. I know he looks like Mister Television, with that smugness and his way of pretending to let people make fun of him. 

But what you get when you care more about youth, good looks, and fame is an offensive dickwad who made as many racist, homophobic, sexist, and anti-Semitic jokes as he could possible squeeze in. He gave voice to hostile white people — the exactly kinds of people who run the Academy Awards and showcased people of color and women primarily as presenters or in special categories of their own. He represents truly the ugliest, meanest aspect of American culture.

Heads out of asses, please. Next year please tell me that you’ll choose Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

3. Inocente!

I hadn’t seen this film that won Best Documentary Short (look! it’s here, so I will watch it). But the filmmakers’ acceptance speeches about the importance of art makes me a little teary-eyed even now. Also because they brought the 15-yr-old undocumented artist, Inocente Izucar, who was the center of this film up to the stage with them and insisted that she appear with them in photographs backstage.

Did you know that Inocente was crowd-sourced through Kickstarter? I like the whole idea of this film.

So it was like that — the usual whiplash of the Oscars, as one’s head whips between disappointing choices and surprise triumphs. Why do I watch, again?

Best moment at the Golden Globes 2013

“It was a great year for film — for women in film. Kathryn Bigelow nominated tonight,” said Amy Poehler in her opening monologue with co-host Tina Fey, to applause and a nice cut to Bigelow in the crowd. “I, um, haven’t really been following the controversy over Zero Dark Thirty but when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron.”

 

Thoughts on the Emmy Awards as metaphor for broadcast TV

How ironic is it that the very show that purports to give awards for achievements in television is itself horrible?

It started with canned “funny” clips projected above on such themes as asking comedians “what would your high school teachers say about you?” These clips lasted too long and, like the writing for host Jimmy Kimmel and the presenters, was awful. I’m not sure I saw a single line that genuinely made me laugh.

Following these pre-recorded interviews the presenter would immediately announce the winner of … what? “Wait, what category is this? is this best writing for a comedy? or is it best comedy?” I’d ask, completely confused about where we were in the program.

The only funny bits were those invented by the attendees on the fly. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Amy Poehler switching their acceptance speeches — clearly a bit they’d cooked up between themselves — and Ricky Gervais, who obviously ignored what they’d written for him and went off on his own. Thank you, Ricky!

There was a particularly stupid moment when Josh Groban sang a “tribute” to host Kimmel. But that was no worse, really, than when Kimmel asked Tracy Morgan to come up on stage and lie there, as if he’d collapsed, to rein in an audience from Twitter. One might say that by getting Morgan on stage, we saw something other than a sea of white faces. Except that Morgan was prostrate and immobile.

Even worse, they spent so much time on these early-evening canned clips that by the end of the show, when they were getting to the very biggest awards (Best Drama Series, etc.), they had to rush through the lists of nominees so quickly one could hardly pause to consider. Isn’t the whole pleasure of watching an awards show to think, “If Mad Men doesn’t win, I’m going to throw a hissy fit”? I could barely absorb the list before they announced the winner and hustled hir through an acceptance speech. (In contrast to the early part of the show, which allowed winners to drone on incessantly.)

Also, how is it possible Lena Dunham didn’t win for best comedy writing for Girls?

Lest I sound like a big whiner — and lest you say, “well, what did you expect? It’s the Emmys!” — here’s my real point: the horrors of the Emmy Awards Show exemplify what’s going wrong with broadcast television overall. Writers have long noted the growing dominance of cable TV shows over broadcast network offerings, a dominance nowhere more evident than at the Emmys. It’s no longer just The Daily Show that wins an Emmy every year. The lists of nominees are dominated by premium channels like HBO and Showtime, of course, but also basic-cable stalwarts like AMC, TNT, and FX.

Broadcast TV’s ineptitude with this awards show is of a piece with its increasing incapacity to create decent shows. Broadcast TV has largely become, like trying to use the prone body of Tracy Morgan on stage at the Emmys as a “joke,” a tragically pathetic affair.

Which makes Modern Family‘s surprising wins last night in multiple categories all the more impressive. Now, I quite like that show (and especially Eric Stonestreet as Cam), but I have a hard time seeing its many awards as truly deserved given the strength of the competition (again, Girls.) So excuse me while I see Modern Family‘s success as the last gesture of good will to broadcast TV, while it is left behind by cable channels that throw their resources toward the unexpected.

A small moment of enlightenment: Maggie Smith won Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her endlessly quotable role as the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey. Smith disdained to attend the show, so will receive her award presumably by international mail. So perhaps there is a god.

Smart Girls At The Party

Okay, do you all know about Amy Poehler’s side project, Smart Girls At the Party? Because if you’re feeling blue, you need to watch this 6-minute video of 7¾-yr-old Ruby discussing why feminism is so important.

I feel as if I’ve discovered something useful: Amy Poehler is secretly still 10 yrs old herself, so she makes a pretty good interlocutor for 7¾-yr-olds. Also: she basically is Leslie Knope.

Now THIS will have bipartisan appeal to women.

thanks to a tumblr called Keep Your Boehner Out of My Uterus.

Why doesn’t Maya Rudolph have her own show?

Lady can sing and dance really well, but most of all she’s fucking hilarious. She can be Maya Angelou in a new show called I Know Why the Caged Bird Laughs in which Angelou punks her friends, like Morgan Freeman, Stephen King, and Jonathan Franzen (did I actually see that on TV?). Then she’ll turn around and be Beyoncé with all that curvacious mellifluousness such that you almost blink; or the sardonic Bronx housewife Jody Deitz, who has a gum-snapping, utterly pointless and perfect talk show with her best friend Betty Caruso (Amy Poehler). Last weekend’s Saturday Night Live was amazing, and it’s because guest host Rudolph commits to a skit like nobody’s business.

I know she’s got a supporting role in the Will Arnett/Christina Applegate comedy Up All Night (and no, I haven’t seen it) and had a background role in Bridesmaids, but really: she’d be funny reading the obituaries aloud for 30 minutes every week.

You wanna know what’s wrong with TV producers? No one has nailed Rudolph down for a sitcom of her own. Get on that, would you? And please, don’t rule out I Know Why the Caged Bird Laughs.

The quiet and “Secret World of Arrietty”

So I have this 5-yr-old niece who would love The Secret World of Arrietty (Kari-gurashi no Arietti). She’s got a twin brother and an older sister who take after their father — blonde, loud, socially charming, hyperactive. In contrast, this one is her mother’s child: dark-haired, quiet and imaginative, and prone to artistic focus for hours at a time. She would be entranced by the slow-moving beauty this film displays, because she’s very little, although not quite as small as Arrietty.I can’t help but watch Arrietty with a sense of regret. Hayao Miyazaki didn’t direct this film, but his hand is all over it as screenwriter, production planner, and having the whole thing done via his Ghibli Studios. Miyazaki refuses to make those computer-animated, jacked-up, and over-caffeinated films that fill theaters. In fact, our theater prefaced this film with at least ten previews for kids’ movies — Brave, Mirror Mirror, The Lorax, and The Pirates (a new claymation film by the Wallace and Gromit people) most notable among them — all supercharged and moving so quickly you feel like you’re missing half the action. In contrast, Arrietty takes its time, lets you pay savor every beautiful, hand-drawn and colored shot. The down side: it can get a little dull. Also: the dialogue can get pretty creaky for people over the age of 5. But mostly: it’s not weird, like Miyazaki’s best films, such as Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Princess Mononoke (1997), and Spirited Away (2001).

Arrietty is based on Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (1952), a book I remember only loosely — but what a great idea for little kids. Arrietty and her parents are tiny people who live under the floorboards of a country house. They are borrowers — that is, they take little bits of things that the family will never notice, like a sugar cube, pins, tissues, a bit of string, and only things that allow them to survive. It’s a kind of big fish/ little fish symbiosis scenario premised on a couple of things: they must borrow without being seen, and if they cease to be secret, they must move away to a new house. What child wouldn’t want to think of a tiny family cobbling together a mirror house underneath your own, and stealing a postage stamp or a fish hook here & there to make life a little easier?

It’s a strange film to see as an adult, as it’s really more appropriate for small children. Arrietty’s parents are voiced recognizably by Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, two of the funniest people in show business, but they’re weirdly low-energy and unfunny. It’s as if they’ve received mild lobotomies, which distracted me from the story — even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to think so much about the voices behind the characters. There’s also a prevailing sense of sadness in the tale that works together with the film’s slowness and visual wonder. Sadness because the boy Shawn arrives at the house to prepare for his upcoming heart surgery while feeling neglected by his busy professional mother; and sadness because Shawn spots Arrietty, offers her the gift of a sugar cube, and gradually becomes friends with her, making it necessary that the borrowers leave their lovely house for parts unknown.

Sadness is a strange mood to prevail over such a lovely film. I love what the Ghibli filmmakers decided to do in creating this world: although the characters big and small are all obvious cartoons, the backdrops are beautifully realistic, if idealized. When Arrietty climbs the ivy up the side of the house, the ivy is portrayed in all its colorful, light-filled, twisted majesty. The camera occasionally scans a meadow full of flowers and bugs. Or it scans upward to watch light coming through the leaves of a tall tree. For tiny children, such scenes must be even more entrancing than for adults — a reminder to observe the world around you with even more attention in case you might catch a glimpse of a tiny girl in a red dress, slipping amongst the leaves.

But for the rest of us Miyazaki fans, it’s beautiful yet disappointing and oddly tame. What I love about his sometimes ponderous films is the way they take strange turns, display strange and dark motivations, and feature female characters who must address scary situations they’re not really prepared for, either emotionally or physically. At times, as in Spirited Away, the girl is not even very likeable for a while. Considering that Arrietty clocks in at a tidy 94 minutes (speedy by Ghibli standards), it’s kind of boring.

As much as I found myself disappointed by the film, I’ve got it on my list for the next time I see my little niece, who has all manner of weird things going on in her little mind. She’ll love it. It might even be one of those films that hits her quiet 5-yr-old mind in that way that means something beyond the shape of the actual film. Because really, how do we know how film works the way it does? How do we know what will stick in our minds as meaningful long after the fact?

Ladies: take back Halloween!

I know what you’re thinking: hell, here comes another Halloween and I feel pressured to go as a Sexy Witch. Or a Naughty Evil Librarian. Or a Playboy Bunny of Death. Girls’ and women’s costumes have been completely hijacked by Proctor & Gamble, porn culture, and the Beauty Industrial Complex such that if you’re not showing a lotta T&A when you go to that cocktail party, you might as well kiss goodbye any chance of getting a date, ever (or so we are led to believe).

It’s at moments like this that I suggest you ask, “What would Leslie Knope do?”
(WWLKD for short) — that is, put yourself in the sensible shoes of Amy Poehler’s character in Parks and Recreation, that bullheaded feminist whose desk is covered with photos of great women like Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright. Leslie Knope says that when you’re wondering how to dress for Halloween, think Athena!

I mean, having a spear and shield is always handy for parties, and going as Athena means you get to say things like, “I was born from my father’s head with all this great armor on already!” or “Say that again, and I’ll stick my spear straight up your nose into your brain.” Plus, you get an owl.

If you’re not really the knowledge/ reason/ heavy armor kinda gal, maybe you’d prefer going as Marie Curie (just figure out a way to glow in the dark — how awesome would that be?), or Carrie Nation, the turn-of-the-century temperance crusader who marched into bars with a hatchet and chopped them to pieces as a way of making her point that the nation needed prohibition laws.

Let’s pause on the Carrie Nation idea for a moment (I mean, that Ken Burns series, Prohibition, was just on TV this fall — people will actually get that reference!). Can you imagine how great it’ll be to show up to a cocktail party as Carrie Nation?!? That’s way more scary than a Sexy Zombie or Sexy Vampire. Plus, you get to wear that lace collar! (Sadly, the Carrie Nation outfit does not come with an owl.)

So show some imagination, people! Strike envy into the hearts of those poor wispy types shivering in their Playboy Bunny or Air Hostess from the 60s outfits, even as you steal their potential dates. Hold up your hatchet / spear / glowing arm and ask, “Did you forget to ask yourself, What Would Leslie Knope Do?”

I mean, who wouldn’t want to date the glowing Marie Curie or the woman with the hatchet? I’m turned on just thinking about it. Your potential dates will mutter to themselves, “I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew. I feel impossibly transfixed by that amazing woman in the helmet. Is it possible she could tell me as much about weaving as the art of war?”

Amy Poehler, on my A-List

She’s my favorite woman on TV right now. I love everything about her, such that when this month’s New York Magazine appeared with a silly slideshow of great photos, I clicked through every one (that’s where I found this one). I’m even considering pre-ordering the new book written by her Parks and Recreation character, Leslie Knope, entitled Pawnee, the Greatest Town in America.

One of my favorite running gags in the show is a description of the town of Pawnee, Indiana’s murals, which seem to show — invariably — offensive aspects of the town’s history (and they’re on display in a different slideshow at Details magazine). Take, for example, this one:

The show’s characters explain:

Leslie: What you doing in these parts?
Dave: Oh, I just, uh, I came by to see the murals. This one is pretty amazing.
Leslie: Yeah, this one’s a beauty. You know, in the 1880’s, there were a few years that were pretty rough and tumble in Pawnee. This depicts kind of a famous fight between Reverend Bradley and Annabeth Stevenson, a widowed mother of seven. The original title of this was “A Lively Fisting.” But y’know, they had to change it for … obvious reasons.
Dave: She’s got him by the hair pretty good there.
Leslie: Yeah.