51st Daytona 500

The 51st running of the Daytona 500 is in the books, and it was a decidedly lackluster affair. A rain-shortened race, overly aggressive “Digger” merchandising by Fox, a terrible rendition of the national anthem by Gavin DeGraw… and the general feeling that it’s starting up all too soon. Maybe with the ailing economy, NASCAR can finally get to shortening their 36 race season to something more compact that people look forward to when it’s all coming back after the break.
Congratulations to Matt Kenseth! Unfortunately, these are the two pieces of TV that come to mind first when remembering this year’s race:

That’s not good, guys! Not good at all. Let’s see how the rest of the season unfolds, though.

The Book Draught

I realized something as I was driving home last night: it’s been ages since I finished my last fiction book. In fact, I can’t even remember what it was. I’ve read some non-fiction in the meantime, for example The Elfish Gene, which I finished in December. But good novels? Not really. The last 5 months have been filled with books that I just couldn’t get into. Just look at this list of books I stopped reading:

Anathem
Boy did I have high hopes for this book. It was supposed to be my first Neal Stephenson experience since Snow Crash – 8oo glorious pages of it. And then… this. I don’t know what happened in the last two decades, but everything that made Snow Crash great is missing from Anathem. It’s slow. It’s cryptic. It’s boring. After 110 pages, I started skipping ahead. Still not finding anything that resembled drama, I put the book away. I guess between Snow Crash and Anathem, Neal Stephenson’s taste took a 90 degree turn from my own.

World War Z
Yeah, it’s neat. Well written, too. It’s still sitting on my night stand, and I’m sloooowly nibbling away at it. But reading World War Z made one thing very clear to me: I’m sick and tired of zombies. Really tired. The scenario is so old and used up that even a clever book like WWZ has little to add to the genre.

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New Budgies

We’re back to four budgies! Please join us in welcoming Max and Lesley to the bird cage:

Silent Reviews

American Idol – No (stopped watching)
Superbowl XLIII – Yes
Superbowl 3D Commercials/”Chuck” in 3D – No
Hell’s Kitchen – Yes
Grammys – No
NASCAR Budweiser Shootout – No

Best of Oscar, Part 2: Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire
Written for the screen by Simon Beaufoy, directed by Danny Boyle, and starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and Madhur Mittal.

(Mild story spoilers follow.)

Jamal and his older brother Salim are slumdogs. Born in the sprawling complex of shanty towns that surround the city of Mumbai, these street-wise kids are naturally-born survivors, whose life takes a turn for the worse when their mother is killed by an anti-Islamic lynch mob. Jamal, Salim and Latika, a girl joining the brothers in the chaos following the raid, have to look out for themselves, growing up in an Indian country that is unfriendly and sometimes outright hostile, but is also full of opportunities.

Fast-forward to several years later when Jamal, now a young man, becomes a contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, a show that not even academics and the educated social elite have been able to crack. Yet that’s exactly what Jamal, the slumdog, is about to do – he is one question away from winning the 20 million rupee grand price when the show breaks for the night with a well-timed cliffhanger ending.  Arrested for alleged cheating as he leaves the studio, Jamal recounts his life to the untrusting police officers as he tries to show why he knew all the answers leading up to the last and final question.

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Best of Oscar, Part 1: The Reader

Victoria and I are on a mission to watch all five Best Picture nominees before the Oscars! The jury is still out on whether we’ll succeed, but we managed to watch one movie for sure Here is the first mini review; you can read my introduction to this series here.

The Reader
Written for the screen by David Hare, directed by Steven Daldry, and starring Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes.

(Mild story spoilers follow.)

It only seems fitting that the first of this year’s Oscar contenders comes from the two men who pioneered the art of the Oscar campaign: The Reader, distributed by The Weinstein Company. Pushed as a “holocaust movie”, which is indeed the movie’s overarching theme, The Reader is really a character study of two people connected by a single summer in 1950′s Germany.

Michael Berg is only 15 years old when he encounters the unlikely first love of his life: Hanna Schmitz, who is easily twice his age. Reclusive, harsh and emotionally repressed – all for reasons that won’t become clear until later – Hanna breaks social taboos (as well as the law) as she engages in a physical relationship with Michael. She uses sex as a reward for his companionship, and eagerly listens as Michael reads out loud the many literary classics that are part of his school work. The relationship only lasts a summer, but Michael will be haunted by the experience for the rest of his life.
The former lovers’ paths cross again several years later, but this time Hanna is not aware of the fact. Now a law student at the University of Heidelberg, Michael attends the trial against five former guards of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who, after the the publication of a holocaust survivor’s memoir, now stand accused of murder. One of these guards is Hanna Schmitz, and as Hanna’s secret history unravels before the eyes of a German nation that is all too desperate to come to terms with its recent past, Michael is trying to reconcile his personal feelings for Hanna.

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Best of Oscar

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences hasn’t had it easy in recent years: public interest in their prestige event, the Oscars, is waning; TV viewership is shrinking… While it’s certainly way too early to write an eulogy for the Academy Awards, there’s the growing feeling that the academy needs to fix a few things if it wants to retain the relevance of its premier awards show.  Because Oscars’ problems are home-made: year after year, the academy nominates movies in the Best Picture category that almost nobody has heard of. Of course most summer blockbusters won’t have enough artistic merit or substance to qualify for the honors. But when even commonly held blockbuster master pieces like The Dark Knight and Wall•E get snubbed in favor of obscure titles with little exposure it’s hard to get excited for the show, let alone stay engaged through a four-hour TV marathon. That’s certainly true for Victoria and I, who hadn’t seen a single one of this year’s Best Picture contenders. All are supposedly great films, but that doesn’t count for much when you’re watching the ceremony and don’t have anybody to root for.

So this year we made a resolution to watch all five nominees before the big awards show on February 22. Our behavior is certainly debatable, because it actually feeds into Oscar’s fundamental problem: huge marketing campaigns specifically designed to sway the public’s opinion, as well as that of the voting members. The Oscar as a marketing tool, rather than a legitimate and objective acknowledgment of last year’s best work. Do we really want to reward that? But usually the nominated movies are good, and we have never tried this before. It’s a fun experiment – let’s see if we manage to squeeze all five movies into the next two weeks! I’ll post our thoughts on each movie as we go along. Up tomorrow, for the first review: The Reader, starring Kate Winslett, Ralph Fiennes and David Kross. See you then!