Lots of Little Golden Men
The Iraqi president flies to Jordan suffering from illness because the job of running a democracy in a volatile atmosphere may have been too much pressure, little buddy Iran is going "nan-nan" with a protruding tongue because Iran doesn't feel like taking a break from its nuclear weapons development program, and none of this matters today because it's OSCAR NIGHT!
Yep, that's right. Step right up and join the millions of fans from around the world for the 79th Academy Awards! Now, I had written up an extensive coverage of this year's nominees weeks previous to tonight for the school's paper, but due to issues beyond my control, none of my fellow peers at Mason and beyond will be privileged to reading it. It's a moot point as of this morning regardless.
So instead, to the very few who even know of this young and struggling blog, I present you with some of the greater highlights.
First off, we're talking Ellen Degeneres as the host. This is a very good thing. She is natural, and as such a confident and funny personality, both in casual conversation and in stand up - the latter being the strength she will rely on tonight. She is also only the second woman to host, following the pioneering footsteps of the great Whoopi Goldberg. I'm looking forward to Ellen jabbing a few jokes at the annoying orchestra music they blare in with every time a winner goes more than three breathes into their acceptance babble. Her improv is snappy, which is reason enough by itself for this blogger to watch.
And if you just happen to be a Mason person as you read this, there is a party happening down at the JC Cinema tonight as they put the big show up on the appropriately big screen. Fiesta starts at 6:00 pm!
On to the nominees now. I could list all their names here, or I could be efficient and just paste in a link of those in the nominee circle. I have to say how incredibly pleased I am with this year's selections. 2006 truly must have been a glorious year when the odd and eccentric "Little Miss Sunshine" stands shoulder to shoulder with "The Departed" and "Babel" for Best Picture.
Watch out for Ryan Gosling, nominated for Best Actor, as he sweeps in with his worthy performance in "Full Nelson." The ladies should remember him as the heartthrob from "The Notebook" - he's the guy who put all other romantic guys to shame. Leonardo DiCaprio also did convincing job in "The Departed" and look, Bilbo Baggins is up with a seventh nomination, though so far he's always been the nominee, never the winner. Will Smith and Forest Whitaker round out this bout.
Best Actress looks to be quite the cat fight this year, and its all high class and going Brit. Judie Dench in "Notes On A Scandal" was a destructive force of nature and Helen Mirren truly was a Britain's ruler in "The Queen." There is also Penélope Cruz and Winslet is the third Brit, but my money is on the matriarchial trinity that is Dench, Mirren and Meryl Streep ("The Devil Wears Prada"). You can catch up with these girls in recent conversation between the three of them. They be some bad girls.
"Pan's Labyrinth" is a must must must see, for it is a dark, underworld beneath the rabbit hole fantasy that is purely gorgeous to see and far more imaginative than any magic kingdom with a giant mouse. Guillermo Navarro should be made president of something important for his work, and if this film doesn't receive it's rightful recognition - then those who decide the winners do NOT know art when it's Mona Lisa spitting in their faces.
I love that for once many of the Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay nominations were also films that were either nominated for Best Picture and/or starred those nominated for individual performances. Four out of five in the Original Screenplay category are three of the five for Best Picture!
Who should win that big one? You decide, America! ...Wait, that's another show. Honestly, I would want for any of the nominees for Best Picture because they are all films YOU SHOULD BE WATCHING! But in the end that is reality, as much as "Little Miss Sunshine" stands to sweep through many of the other categories, I feel that the big Oscar will go to "Babel" or "Departed", which seems to be the popular favorite. Eastwood is always good with his films every time up to bat, but "Letters of Iwo Jima" just doesn't have that extra magic it needs to take the final lead.
So there you have it. I expect to see you all tonight dutifully laughing with Ellen's humor and expecting "Pan's Labyrinth" to win. For more goody goodies to read up on, check out WashingtonPost.com's page devoted to the event.
HOLLYWOOD, HO!
Bloggers as the News
Two bloggers are the subject of national and international publicity this week, and it's not a good thing for either of them. A film studio is suing a popular gossip blog that publicizes the personal details of celebrities' lives for the unauthorized posting of photos of Jennifer Aniston topless. Across the big pond, an Egyptian blogger has been tried and convicted for criticizing an Islamic leader.
This is a posting, of Bloggers Behaving Badly.
Mario Lavandeira, online alias "Perez Hilton", runs the celebrity blog and is being charged with posting stolen footage of Aniston sans shirt taken either during or after production of the 2006 film "The Break-Up." The owner of the film, Universal Studios, isn't too happy about it. They're going so far as requesting of the California court for both monetary damages and trial by jury.
As an aside, I didn't feel that the 'romantic-comedy' was all that great, as both co-stars seemed to be recycling previous work into their performance.
A lawyer for Lavandeira released a statement calling the entire suit "unfortunate" and claiming that the Lavandeira "did nothing wrong." This is in consideration that he removed the content immediately following the learning of it's stolen nature. It also is noted that just last year Aniston sued another photographer for taking pictures of her, get this, topless. Its as if the defense is trying to say that people are lawsuit-happy. But instead they lead me to a new question - what is up with Aniston being caught with her shirt off so often?
Then again, just by looking at his smug mugshot I can clearly see why someone would sue the guy.
A few skips of the stone across the Atlantic and we have Abdel Kareem Soliman facing a four year prison term for using his blog - hope you can read Arabic - to voice his (negative) opinion concerning an Islamic university and it's president, Hosni Mubarak. Just by insulting Mubarak an calling him a dictator earned him one of those years behind bars.
This is a big deal! Soliman's trial lasted a total of five minutes and judgment was passed by a solitary judge and not a jury. Human rights activists are screaming up the wall over this. A website has already been set up to gather attention to his plight, and a recent interview of him can viewed on YouTube.com.
What at worst should have been a slap on the wrist and a removal of the libel from his blog instead results in hard time. A clear contrast can be drawn between an American blogger and an Egyptian blogger existing under different laws in their respective, native countries, yet they post on the same Internet. We are moving inevitably towards a confrontation between nations and universal policy that must result in a new standard of protections and freedoms for all who operate and interact online, because the lines between countries disappear on the Web.
Or let me put the situation this way: This and other cases of bloggers being convicted around the world is just the beginning. Governments, including ours, will continue to seek to control what happens on the Internet, with consequences for all bloggers if they are not wise to fight for their rights.
The Future of Community News In A School Missing Out On It's Community
The more elaborate and sophisticated the technology, the more prone it is to losing one link in the chain and jamming up. For example, two posts I uploaded this weekend do not seem to be showing their darling faces. I wonder where they went off to.
But that glitch is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about my school.
The idea is that much like the once upon a time idyllic picture of neighbors casually talking about local happenings from over the yard's fence, now those living in the same community can discuss whatever is happening online. You can post about a new event or service, as well as join in on a conversation about something else already posted - all things that are relevant to you because they are in your backyard. But then it was mentioned that we could have such a forum amongst the students of Mason.
Yet we don't. The school loves to promote their diversity, especially at pep rallies, Final Four basketball games and landmark events such as Senator Barack Obama's recent visit. But when the last streamer has been trampled and the last dance has had its time on the floor, the party's over and everyone goes home. A large percentage of the student body living off campus still makes us a commuter school, and commuter schools remind me too much of bedroom communities.
In a bedroom community, that social community spirit is threadbare because so many of the residents each week go elsewhere for their jobs, work long hours, and come back with barely enough time to rest before heading off again the next morning. And so many of the students at Mason do just this - they show up for class, and then they're off to where ever the rest of their lives happen. I used to be one of these commuters, and it was borderline mentally disabling trying to lead two full lives. So I sacrificed the campus life.
So the question I pose is this: Would enough individual students actually partake in such online "conversations" as opposed to just being interesting in casually reading them? The questions is not one of being able to to communicate, but choosing to communicate. We already have Facebook. Mason enacting a site much like Backfence would be a logical step forward in opening hundreds of rooms of communication - public forums that would transcend that ethnic diversity that we so proudly wear as a badge of honor yet it divides us. It divides us severely into clusters of likeness each time we think of our ethnicity, and we forget often that we are all students trying to get through the day, through the week and the semester.
We are all students with things happening around us that are relevant to us, yet we do not tell the whole of the body. Either that, or the entire student body is not listening.
The Question About Smith That No One Is Asking
It was last week when fellow Online Journalism classmates and I emerged from the broadcast studio room after a joint-conference interview with Helen Thomas that are phones beeped like neglected little children all at once. Despite what ever else had happened in the world that day, this was going to be the headline evening news: Anna Nicole Smith was dead.
My honest to god first thought: Who's the daddy?
Of course you all know of whom and what I refer to. Smith's second and only surviving child, infant Dannielyn is the only biological heir to Smith's fortune. But the five hundred million dollar question is one of the unknown and questionable identity of little Dannielyn's male genetic donor. It seems that more than one man is man enough to own up to the responsibility.
I wonder if the sparkling ring of a multi-million dollar inheritance has anything to do with their sudden fatherly interest.
Now BBC News reports that Smith's alleged 2001 will left her vast estate to her now dead son. Her will goes on to say:
""I have intentionally omitted to provide for my spouse and other heirs, including future spouses and children and other descendants now living and those hereafter born or adopted."
But here's the rub. No one seems to be all too concerned with how and why Smith died. The public must assume that such a death is expected of a 39 year-old former playmate and widow to a Texan oil tycoon (who was more than thrice her age when he finally bit the big dirt nap). Or perhaps people are too dazzled by the scandal to be concerned with the departed.
Even when the medical examiner has yet to determine the cause of death.
NASA Reconsiders Entrance Exam
NASA astronaut Capt Lisa Nowak, 43, is trading in her spacesuit for a jumpsuit after driving 900 miles in an attempt to thwart another woman who she perceived to be a romantic rival. Now NASA is thinking that maybe they might have missed something during the screening process.
You think??
Or perhaps the geniuses in Houston need to remember that sometimes normal people have a momentary lapse of insanity. Then again, I wouldn't want such a normal person snapping while in Space.
Nowak, mother of three - who has been charged with attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, attempted vehicular burglary with battery - isn't looking so happy as in her NASA pre-flight photo. According to the February 6th, 2006 Washington Post, just "flew last July on a shuttle mission to the international space station."
You can check out her official bio here.
So in an effort to save face, NASA is both officially saying that they will reevaluate the psychological screening, and verbalizing their support for not only Wacko Nowak, but also the other two astronauts involved in this weird but yet oh so typical in normal life love triangle. They're calling it tragic. I call it hormones.
But then again, there's a reason why so very few are ever selected to fly into space. Consider Captain Nowak grounded indefinitely.
"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" Hits Roadmark!
Tonight's episode of Studio 60 struck an unforgettable road sign in the journey of the show. Everything up to this point has merely been momentum, as executive producer Aaron Sorkin hit full stride. His hands upon the helm purposefully steered the boat towards the horizon's storm - and a thunderous roar it will be.
Tonight, Harriet and Matt (Sara Paulson and Matt Perry respectively) arrived at a place in their antagonistic dance in which edged words and forced hands finally kinked his armor to the point of failure. And then one last stray blow cut deeper than he was ever prepared for. Divulging actual plot would ruin the experience, and the experience is what it's all for after all. It's enough to say that Sorkin is just beginning to tell his story.
To fans of this show and of his previous, it is barely secret that Sorkin is truly speaking of himself and his life in the television industry through the vessel that is Studio 60. That was apparent from the pilot's opening polemic speech against the destitute backsliding of the industry delivered passionately by the great Judd Hirsch. But the soul of the show over the first half of the its inaugural season revealed itself within the conflicted relationship of Matt and Harriet, two very opposites of the coin that is comedy.
You see, Matt is Sorkin. At least that is how this reviewer senses it. And Matt's heart has been made vulnerable and now injured, just as pickaxes dig and tear at the studio's stage. Planks yank away exposing an ugly hole, as if it had been shot through. Watch in the fading last shot of tonight's episode, and see in Matt's eyes that hole gnaw itself a wider and wider place inside of him.
The descent into the abyss will be both terrible and with casualties, but again, also purposeful. You must stare down the squall to reach calmer seas.
For those of you who by the calamities of fate have missed tonight's episode, it can be viewed free of charge online, courtesy of parent company NBC.
~ May good drama and worthy stories always have safe harbor on the small screen!
You Would Think He's Already President
As a man much larger than himself careened Obama around the parked sport utility vehicle sternly and quickly by the arm, the senator points to another, sportier car and says, "I think I'm going in that." Over the screams and cheers and confusion, his words were barely audible and soon enough he was inside the SUV nonetheless and departing.
Today, on February 2nd, the anticipated arrival of Senator Barack Obama (D-Il.) to the Fairfax, Va campus of George Mason University was heralded by crowded masses of students jammed inside the student lounge (some who had been camped out in front of the stage before the morning's first classes), blue banners announcing "Students for Barack Obama", and security blocking doors and stairwells. Half the school was there, violating I'm sure maximum capacity regulation.
When he spoke, the students applauded and affirmed and cheered. Like a true politician, he could captivate his audience. And though he touched upon all the issues that are of particular importance to the minds of today's academia and tomorrow's families, his platform today did not extend into the realm of action and strategy.
Yes, global warming and failing systems of education and health care need to be addressed and repaired, I as a member of the very community that he recognized as the one that will bring about changed, as generations have before in their youth, want to know the How.
How will he universalize health care? How does he plan to retract from the war we are neck deep in over in the Middle East? How will he reverse the effects of global warming and how will he improve education? I'm not looking to support and put my faith behind a personality, or even a good man with good intentions. I'm waiting to see something more than just motivational speeches. Don't get me wrong, as I would be pleased to see that something more coming from Obama.
But the way the crowds swarmed to him, and the way they afterwards hovered outside awaiting for his exiting appearance as he made his way to the caravan - he was a celebrity, he was a god descended from on high and they were worshipers hoping to place a hand on his sacred robes. It was as if he was already President even though that is a long and uncertain road yet ahead. Today on campus Obama was the perception of immortal significance in the hearts and minds of many, but today will shortly become tomorrow. It is tomorrow, that I'm more interested in.
Students for Barack
Obama to Visit Mason
Barak Obama Speaks at Johnson Center
