I am disappointed in the Oscars this year…as I am every year. The Departed is a good movie, but it was not the best movie, it was not the best directed, and I nearly threw up in my mouth when it won for editing. Here are some films that were overlooked that I reccommend you rent while we all wait for 300 and The Host to be released.

• Hard Candy – my pick for best movie of the year, best actress of the year for Ellen Page, and Patrick Wilson deserves at least a nom. This film was not overlooked as much as strenuously avoided. Dealing with the topic of an online predator of teenage girls was bad enough — as the film develops into an abstracted, but brutal, torture scenario it became easily avoidable for the Academy. Still if you have the will power to make it to the end you will be blown away that these two actors can so powerfully propel a film.
• Stranger Than Fiction – Will Ferrell joked about it in his song at the Oscars and he may not deserve an Oscar for this particular film, but he wasn’t bad and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Emma Thompson were incredible. The true high note, though, was the script. Zach Helm’s writing is almost as clever as Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation) and almost as touching as Guillaume Laurant (Amélie) and fans of either will enjoy it.
• Block Party – Dave Chapelle undoubtedly put together the best party of the year and this concert/documentary film delivers on every level.
• Awesome; I F*ckin’ Shot That! – speaking of concert films, this film may be just for Beastie Boy fans but it really was awesome. (How can you tell if you’re enough of a fan to rent this movie? Name the Beastie Boys DJ and keyboard player.)
• The Devil and Daniel Johnston – this may be for Austinites only, but the story of Daniel Johnston is hard knock and touching, plus the scenes from old school Austin music venues inspires nostalgia.

300 does come out next weekend, so be sure to go see it. It’s the Matrix all over again. A new way of delivering cinematic grandeur with an engagingly powerful if historically inaccurate story.

He’s as F&B as Fox, but Olbermann is standing on pretty solid ground when he lays into Condi Rice for comparing the overthrow of SH with the overthrow of AH.

“…It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.” -Condi

I’m just saying is all.

Analysis of Neolithic remains, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests no European adults could digest the drink at that time.

They say evolution, I say devolution.

I got up early Sunday a.m. and a buddy and I drove downtown and staked out a couple spots with our video cameras to catch the implosion of the never-completed Intel building.

Not as impressive as some implosions, but it was loud and explody (and ultimately implody.)

I found this plugin for FireFox which is supposed to simplify blog posting.  The publishers of this plugin are using it as leverage to sell their blog assistance services.


Performancing for Firefox | Performancing.com

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox * Works with all major blog software * Easy WYSIWYG Editing * Trackback, Technorati and Del.icio.us support Once installed, just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right of your browser window to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.

powered by performancing firefox

Wanna know what is cool about library school? I get to watch stuff like this and get credit for it.

I bought a new car last week — the 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid. It’s been a lot of fun to play with, watching the Instant Econ read-out trying to maximize my mileage. Also, I had a DVD/Nav system installed that I’ve been programming with my common destinations. While programming it this morning to take me to work, I noticed this unfortunate misspelling for a company that, coincidentally, my wife is interviewing with this afternoon.

The lack of evenhandedness by the US Attorney General in prosecuting politicians is overwhelmingly discouraging.

A study of reported federal investigations of elected officials and candidates shows that the Bush administration’s Justice Department pursues Democrats far more than Republicans. 79 percent of elected officials and candidates who’ve faced a federal investigation (a total of 379) between 2001 and 2006 were Democrats, the study found – only 18 percent were Republicans. During that period, Democrats made up 50 percent of elected officeholders and office seekers during the time period, and 41 percent were Republicans during that period, according to the study.

“The chance of such a heavy Democratic-Republican imbalance occurring at random is 1 in 10,000,” according to the study’s authors.

What is most disappointing is this is another mar on the record of the US’s first Hispanic Attorney General. Alberto Gonzales has brought shame to the office.

Jessica over at Indexed created this handy chart that explains how to match the seven deadly sins and increase your sin productivity.

My personal favorite: Gluttony + Sloth = Saturday.