A Rant About The Decay of Our Culture

People never get sick of talking about the things they love. To me nothing is more interesting than to hear the passion someone has for a piece of art of hobby. To hear someone explain to me in detail why a certain movie or book or whatever is their favorite is music to my ears. That's one of the things that pains me about the death of independent record/movie/book stores. It would seem as though corporate America pulled a fast one on us. It wasn't Best Buy or Wal-Mart that destroyed these stores, it was Bestbuy.com and walmart.com. Why would we leave the house to get the new cd by The National when we can just order it online? We're even willing to sacrifice some album art, downloading the albums from iTunes where all we get is a small picture of the cover.

Soon the day will come when we can't even go into a record store and ask the person at the front what he or she recommends. Try asking your local Best Buy employee. I'm sure he or she will point you in the direction of the Billboard Hits. Or if he or she is ballsy they might send you to the "up and coming artists" section where you'll find Modest Mouses 7th album. Up and coming--get your head out of your ass.

Sure we have social networks that allow us to connect to entertainment gurus in one way or another but they still don't do the trick. Besides, it's not like people listen to critics anymore anyways. Transformers 2 was almost universally bashed by anyone with a brain cell, yet it went on to gross over $400 Million. Normally I wouldn't care, I'd say "oh well the people who I want to see make movies will make movies anyways because the production companies know that quality work is rewarded in one way or another." Then I read that a studio passed on the new Paul Thomas Anderson picture because it's budget (which was only $35 Million) was too high.

You're telling me that Micheal Bay can get $200 Million to make Transformers 2, and Paul Thomas Anderson can't get $35 Million to make what is sure to be a fantastic film?

I know this post seemed a bit scatter brained--but honestly I'm so fed up with my generation and their bullshit.

And don't get me started on Owl City...

The Academy Cheapen Their Most Sought After Category

So yesterday it was announced that the Academy Awards will now widen the competition for the Best Picture award from five to ten nominations. To most people, this will mean next to nothing. But to people such as myself, who love movies, love the oscars, and love to debate after the fact, this is a bit of a shocker. Why would the Academy do such a thing?

There are several reasons. One is that for years and years there have always been, at the very least one movie that was left out of the competition that deserved to be there. I really thought that the film Wall-E had a shot at being the second animated film to be nominated for best picture last year (the first was Beauty and the Beast). But alas, the Academy nominated The Reader (a good film but not the best of the year). One thing that opening up the competition could do is allow for more films that often get overlooked such as animated films and foreign films. One could say that these films already have their own category in the first place. But what happens in Wall-E's case where the film was easily better than the majority of the films that were out there by a long-shot.

However, my gripe is this. I love Pixar's films. But I don't want them to get a Best Picture nomination because the Academy decided to widen the field. I want them to get a nomination because they make damn good movies. Their films are easily in the top 10 each year. I want the Academy to put them up there with the Steven Spielberg films and the Peter Jackson films. Because in my eyes they are just as good, and in some cases better.

The other reason the academy is doing this is for a reason that makes a little bit more sense and sounds a little bit more like Hollywood with a capital H--money. If they can nominate more movies then more stars have the chance to walk the red carpet, which makes the event more "glamorous."

This is crap if you ask me. These awards ceremonies are not about the stars or the amount of glitz and glamour. These ceremonies are supposed to celebrate an art form and congratulate filmmakers on creating works that further our knowledge of ourselves and the world around us.

Are we forgetting why people love movies in the first place. It's because art has the ability to affect us and change us. Art has the ability to make us better people, to challenge our thoughts and our beliefs. These award ceremonies are supposed to celebrate the films that do this to the best of their ability. They are NOT supposed to be about the latest headline in Perez Hilton's blog.

I was all for a bit of a shake up in the way these award ceremonies were done because of the simple fact that phenomenal films like Wall-E get left out of the mix, but doubling the size of the race is not the answer. In my opinion, all that you had to do was add one or two more slots to the race and it should work fine. You wouldn't have snubs such as Wall-E, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, or Children of Men.

Also, part of the fun of the Academy Awards is arguing until your face turns blue that your favorite film didn't make the cut. And what happens when there aren't ten stand-out films in a year (something that happens more than you think)? Will the Academy stoop to nominating films like Transformers 2 simply because they made a ton of money?

After hearing the news yesterday I don't think I'd be surprised.

In Transition

So we have Iranian protests over an obviously fraudulent election, a governor from South Carolina who decided to spend Father's Day in Argentina to "get away" without telling anyone--including his wife and kids--and a prominent football coach in Idaho died after being shot in the weight room of his school.

These are the headlines of the day.

I'm sitting here watching my dogs play in my new townhouse, waiting for my new job to start. It's a shitty job--waiting tables at a Macaroni Grill--but it's a job no less and in today's economic climate one can't really complain. But still, sitting here waiting for a job to start feels pretty pathetic, especially when people are silently protesting for the voting rights to be reinstated in Teheran.

Boredom can eat at ones soul. That may seem melodramatic, especially considering that there are thousands of people in school or work that would kill for just one day to absolutely nothing, but I'll be the first to say it--to many days of doing nothing can slowly make one look at these four walls and wonder how they would look with soft white padding.

Anyways, enough with feeling sorry for myself, there have been positive aspects of being stuck with nothing to do. I've recently been reading a lot more, something I always wished I had more time to do. I also realized that I was one of those people who bought a lot of books at one time, but usually only had the time to read one or two. As I now look over at my bookshelf I'm realizing that there are a few books that haven't even had their precious spines cracked yet.

One other thing that I've found is that I've become even more fascinated with the way our world has become more socially connected through digital means. First you has the election of President Barack Obama which started the whole political fascination with online networking, but now Twitter--an online networking tool that has become the butt-end of most jokes due to it's unfortunate name--has become one of the most important and widely used weapons in the Iranian conflict.

Our world is changing and I'm sitting here watching MSNBC and reading a Che Guevara biography. I will admit that I am happier with where my life is going today than I ever have been. I know that is a pretty vague statement but I don't know any straighter way to put it. I'm ready to get things started.

One thing is for sure though: life in a transition can be rough but there sure is a lot to look at.