Showing posts with label Oscars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oscars. Show all posts

Monday, February 23, 2015

The airwaves are alive with the sound of nitwits


Mein Gott, I haven't heard someone actually use the word "jigaboo" in, like, 25 years. But an anchor-blatherer at the Fox station in Cleveland just did this morning.

Like Kristi Capel on Fox 8, I was stunned at the vocal chops of Lady Gaga last night as I watched her Sound of Music medley on the Oscars. Like Kristi Capel, Mrs. Favog and I were thinking "Who the hell knew?"

We kind of had an inkling from her recent duet album with Tony Bennett. But apart from that and last night's TV performance, it's not like that phenomenal voice is evident from the music she usually performs.

But unlike Kristi Capel on the Cleveland airwaves, "jigaboo music" is not how we would choose to characterize Lady Gaga's normal fare. Then again, we're not perky, young TV blatherers . . . and we're old enough to know what the word means. We also are old enough to have sense enough not to use it.



IT'S LIKE Capel is the much younger, perkier reincarnation of the elderly Omaha neighbor who last used that word in my presence when describing folks who have more melanin in their skin than I do. Or he did. And I recall thinking at the time, more than two decades ago, "Who the hell uses that word anymore?"

It was almost more amusing than it was offensive, though offensive it was -- and is.

But wait, there's more. At least Mr. O'Hara didn't use the word when speaking to an African-American man, WJW co-anchor Wayne Dawson. Capel did. Behold the perils of TV-news "happy talk" as transcribed by Raw Story:
“It’s hard to really hear her voice with all the jigaboo music — whatever you want to call it — jigaboo!” Capel opined.

“She has a nice voice,” Dawson, who is black, said after a nervous laugh.

“She has a gorgeous voice,” Capel agreed. “I never knew. Very nice.”
I . . . I . . . I . . . uh . . . ummmmmmm . . . holy crap!

As God is my witness, I dearly wish Dawson had gone all Richard Pryor on her ass.


I REALLY, really do.

That said, I really cannot think of a better example of the "twit problem" American TV news has gotten itself into since the days of Ron Burgundy. Is it really too much to ask that the folks who purport of inform us on "TV news" actually, you know, know something?

This was Capel's response when viewers began to scream bloody murder. Really.


FURTHERMORE -- and this is a radical, radical thought, I know -- is it too much to ask that if television journalists have no idea what they're saying, they just say nothing at all?

We might all enjoy the peace and quiet.

Saturday, August 04, 2012

Life can be bright in America



Have I mentioned lately that I think Rita Moreno is the bomb?

And can you believe that this woman is 80?
Eighty??? Really?

The eighth wonder of the world, she is.
And she's here in America.

Monday, March 19, 2012

The big tearjerker of 1938


If you're my age, you remember Bob Hope as the funny older guy who entertained the troops in 'Nam and had a Christmas special on TV every year.

You remember him for old "Road" movies on the television -- in the afternoon, late at night or on weekends. You remember the friendly rivalry with old pal Bing Crosby.

If you're a generation older, you remember the movies at the Bijou, the Paramount or the Orpheum, Hope entertaining the troops during World War II and "Bye bye and buy bonds." You remember the radio and TV shows, and Bob Hope: Biggest Thing Ever.

All of us remember "Thanks for the Memories," Hope's theme song with lyrics written for the particular occasion. But do you remember "Thanks for the Memory," the duet with Shirley Ross in The Big Broadcast of 1938 that made Hope the star he was to be?

. . . thanks for the memory
Of lingerie with lace, Pilsner by the case
And how I jumped the day you trumped my one-and-only ace
How lovely it was!

We said goodbye with a highball
Then I got as "high" as a steeple
But we were intelligent people
No tears, no fuss, Hooray! For us

So, thanks for the memory
And strictly entre-nous, darling how are you?
And how are all the little dreams that never did come true?
Aw'flly glad I met you, cheerio, and toodle-oo
And thank you so much.
IT'S A PIECE about divorce . . . and about love, wistful memories and loss. As the story goes -- at least as handed down in Hollywood through the years -- by the time filming of the scene with Ross and Hope (and the song) was done, the production crew was in tears.

"Thanks for the Memory" won the 1938 Academy Award for best song in a motion picture. There was a reason for that.

Monday, February 27, 2012

The grandeur of fantastic flying books


A funny thing happened on television Sunday night. There were these couple of "swamp rats" from Louisiana on the high-def screen . . . and nobody was yelling "Choot 'em!"

They were dressed in tuxedos, not overalls.

No boats or guns were involved.

Books were.

And so was an Academy Award -- the swamp rats won one for one of the most endearing animated shorts you will ever watch, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. It is a treasure. And even a Louisiana native like me has to admit that "treasure" and "Shreveport" are not terms that often fraternize.

That just changed, thanks to director and writer William Joyce, co-director Brandon Oldenburg and their Shreveport studio, in business less than two years.
As Joyce and Oldenburg, the film's directors, walked the red carpet and mingled with stars in Hollywood, Moonbot employees held their own Oscar watch party, red carpet included, at Marilynn's Place in Shreveport. Emotions were high at the restaurant where around 70 people anxiously watched and waited for the envelope to be opened. A loud thunder of cheers and shrill screams followed the announcement.

"Look, we're just these two swamp rats from Louisiana," Joyce said in his acceptance speech. " We love the movies more than anything. It's been a part of our lives since we were both kids."

"It's been a part of our DNA since we were children, and it's made us storytellers," Oldenburg added.

Lead animator Jamil Lahham was in disbelief after Moonbot's victory. He said the Oscar win is just the beginning for Louisiana's film industry.

"These guys in the city and government started something and I think now it's paying off," Lahham said.

"Mr. Morris Lessmore" is Moonbot's first released animation project. Founded in 2010, the studios has also developed and produced the iPad application, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore."

The 14-minute long film follows Mr. Morris Lessmore during the aftermath of a storm in New Orleans. Through the power of stories and books, he finds happiness. It beat four other short films in the category including Pixar's "La Luna."
IN OTHER WORDS, what the story is really about is the power of beauty . . . and of love. Isn't that what all the best stories are about?

To tell you the God's honest truth, I meant to write this post hours and hours ago. I would have, too, had I been able to figure out why watching this little gem of a film left me with tears streaming down my face.
Every time.

The best I can come up with is that it's . . . the power of beauty.
And love.

It's similar to how you might get choked up and teary eyed upon witnessing an act of extraordinary kindness or sacrificial love. It's akin to how you might be wholly undone by becoming the recipient of extraordinary -- and unmerited -- grace.

We live as a defeated people, though willfully unaware of that tragedy, amid the ruins of a devastated culture. I think the way you recognize a devastated culture and a defeated people is by how cynical and ugly it --
they -- have become. Switch on the flat screen and the cable box and tell me what you see.

Turn on the radio and tell me what you hear.

That's all right. I don't notice the ugliness that much anymore, either. It helps that I try not to watch that much television, but even so, you get inured to it or you slowly go mad. This leads to the obvious question of whether madness by today's standards oftentimes would be considered sanity by some more objective gauge, but that's the subject of another post entirely.

Still, when you live in the sewer, you get to where you don't notice the sewage anymore. Or the smell.

When you live in a cynical, debased and dying culture, you don't notice the necrosis. Death and decay is the new normal.

WHAT YOU do notice amid death is life. What you do see amid the darkness is the light. What leaves you gobsmacked amid ugly is beauty. What undoes you amid the indifference of cynicism is the appearance of love.

About a century and a half ago, an English poet (and Catholic priest) had something to say about this:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
THIS POEM, God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins, found its way into books -- books that fed countless souls, words of man destined to become yet another manifestation of the power and the glory of what the Almighty hath wrought.

As random kindness or unexpected grace have the power to undo us in the face of our casual cruelty, so does any light amid this present darkness -- or any beauty arising to rebuke the grotesque we take for granted.

That's why I think
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore hit me the way it did. Like the prophets of old, one cannot stand in the presence of God and not be shattered -- especially when caught so unawares -- and that presence illuminates the intersection of truth, beauty and love.

As far as I'm concerned, and by that standard, every frame of Morris Lessmore is charged with the grandeur of God.

Better yet, the grandeur of God is a bargain. In a country where we spend thousands a year for the privilege of being slimed, this little bit of "the Holy Ghost over the bent world" costs but $1.99 on iTunes.

And just $2.99 for HD.

'Death to the West!'


Admiral General Aladeen rules!

Not only that, the latest alter ego of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen delivered the greatest (and funniest) example of social commentary in the history of the Oscars' red-carpet ridiculousness:
"Now if somebody asks who you are wearing, you will say Kim Jong-il."

My only regret is that it wasn't really Kim Jong-il in that urn. That would have been
really awesome.

Monday, February 28, 2011

And the Oscar for Best Presenter goes to . . .


. . . Kirk Douglas.

Let me just say this: I want to live to be 94 years old. And at age 94, I want to be screwing with the minds of a bunch of people half my age.

I also want to be funnier by half than all the people half my age
(or a third my age) trying in vain to follow my act.

And I want to be flirting with all the young gals.



AND I'D LIKE to think I had some small role in causing one of them to drop the F-bomb on live, worldwide television.

Just like Kirk Douglas.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Simply '70s: Showing his shortcomings


Hello, everybody, this is your action news reporter with all the news that is news across the nation, on the scene at the 1974 Academy Awards. There seems to have been some disturbance here. Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?

"Yeah, I did. I's standin' overe there by the paparazzi, and here he come, running across the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, behind David Niven, nekkid as a jay bird. And I hollered over t' Ethel, I said, 'Don't look, Ethel!' But it's too late, she'd already been incensed."