LIVE BLOGGING THE 2012 OSCARS

The snarkiness commences at 8:30

8:29 - "Mirror Mirror" looks fucking awful.

8:30 - I hope Al Green is enjoying the royalties from two consecutive commercials featuring "Let's Stay Together"

8:35 - Is Justin Bieber playing an underage male prostitute?

8:39 - James Earl Jones now looks like Admiral Ackbar from "Return of the Jedi"

8:45 - ROBERT RICHARDSON? AGAIN? No love for Lubezki?

8:54 - No Cruel Intentions in the kissing montage?

8:55 - This montage should be titled - "Remember When Movies Were Good?"

8:58 - "The Artist" for best costume design? He only had to work with two colors.

9:00 - BOOTY BATTLE!!!!

9:01 - Are they seriously getting all the technical awards over and done with up front? And why are they having all the directors and actors explain how great the techies are rather than letting them speak for themselves? Bad form!

9:08 - I want Sandra Bullock to play an evil Nazi kommandant.

9:09 - Congrats, Iran! We'll be bombing you next week.

9:13 - Berenice Bejo - hot.

9:15 - The opera boxes are reserved for sexy lady musicians.

9:20 - ABC's "Missing" - Because Ashley Judd can't open a movie anymore.

9:27 - Dragon Tattoo for editing. Didn't see that one coming.

9:29 - Sound editors are hilarious.

9:30 - Filmmaking runs on Diet Coke.

9:40 - Cirque Du Soleil - ummmmm.....

9:42 - Oscar Nominee Deathwatch 2012: Plummer vs. Von Sydow

9:43 - I love Chris Rock!

9:55 - Emma Stone is drunk.

9:56 - Oh, it's a bit.

9:57 - Hugo for visual effects... over Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Yup, Hugo's gonna win best picture.

10:01 - Kenneth Branagh is annoying.

10:02 - Sorry, Mr. Von Sydow. You're gonna have to stay alive and keep acting for a while.

10:19 - BRET MCKENZIE!!!! GO NEW ZEALAND!

10:22 - Popcorn whores!

10:27 - Angie's going for the Jessica Rabbit stance.

10:29 - I saw Nat Faxon perform at the Groundlings a while back. He was awesome. Congrats!

10:21 - Woody Allen over Kristen Wiig. Sigh.

10:40 - Milla Jovovich is perfect for the Nerd Oscars. All those techies have spent years fantasizing about her.

10:46 - Iran, Northern Ireland, Pakistan... Is your nation troubled? Make a movie. You'll probably get an Oscar.

10:53 - Michel Hazanavicius - Your name sounds like a sneeze.

11:01 - Yay! Death Montage coming up! Bring out your dead!

11:10 - No applause during the Death Montage? Bad form!

11:16 - "I've never had any of those feelings." Billy's best line so far.

11:17 - Jean Dujardin - Not sure you deserved it, but at least you didn't go The Full Benigni on us.

11:24 - Okay, I take it back. The Artist is gonna get it.

11:32 - Meryl!

11:35 - She's classy. You gotta give her that.

11:38: - The Artist - It was good. The Descendants was better

11:41 - When the biggest surprise of the night is that Meryl Streep won an Academy Award, it's a clear sign that things need to be shaken up a bit.

CANADA, EH, and MERRIE OLDE ENGLAND

There were nine goals that I set out to accomplish by the end of 2011. Only four were fulfilled to completion. Most of them were the cheaper endeavors, but I double-dipped on “Set foot in a foreign country,” which put me over the hump according to my selective logic. 

The first country was Canada. I had been to Canada before (if Toronto counts – it’s basically American City Lite - half the blight and even less flavor), but not to the French part. My buddy Scott lives in Burlington, VT, which is just a quick hop from Montreal. On a brisk April weekend we headed into Le Grand Nord Blanc. Once we had settled into our hostel, we stopped into a frozen yogurt shop for some treats. Besides all the French being spoken, the other obvious indicator that we had left our Puritanical homeland was a very NSFW song being played on the radio whilst I enjoyed my maple-licious dessert (enjoy Enrique Iglesias’ total lack of subtlety in the song's video posted below). There were plenty of kids around and no one seemed offended. Vive le Québec libre, I always say.

Do not underestimate Canadian Winter. She’s a tough old broad who doesn’t know when to quit. Montreal in April is akin to Boston in March – cold, wet and unpredictable. Just as Scott and I reached the picturesque summit of Mont Royal, the heavens opened and blasted us with wind, snow and sleet. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes. Too bad I had left my winter coat south of the border. Damn it. Thankfully, Scott and I wandered into Café Bistro El Mundo not far from McGill, where the world’s loveliest barista (we call her Coco) made us the best Irish coffees we’ve ever had. Merci beaucoup, Coco. You are the enemy of Canadian Winter. Also, our hostel, Auberge de jeunesse de Montréal, served up a hell of a breakfast for just a few loonies. Take heed, travelers.

Other Montreal highlights included stumbling into a free art exhibition (lots of fashionable people sipping wine), Biodôme de Montréal (a groovy indoor zoo with five climate zones), and Le Sainte-Élisabeth Pub Européen (where the barmaid bought both of us a shot after she realized that she had falsely accused us of neglecting her tip – so polite, those Canadians). The very French neighborhood of Old Montreal was nice and atmospheric, but the weather was so nasty it made it hard to enjoy. Next time, I’ll bring a parka. And a camera (sorry, no pics).

Surprisingly Sunny London

My other international jaunt was to Merrie Olde England. Many of my best traveling buddies hail from Old Blighty, and I was dying to see them and their homeland. If nothing else, I wanted proof that my backpacker days were not a hallucination, and that these great people were still out there living their lives across the Atlantic. I was not disappointed.

London was very good to me. 

My first day was a fantastic, blurry marathon. I took the redeye to Heathrow and was greeted at the tube station by my buddy Zanda and his Kiwi girlfriend Michelle. I hadn’t seen Zanda since the Queenstown days and it was great to catch up. Our first stop was a pub in Chiswick. That it was high noon GMT (07:00 by my internal clock) didn’t stop me from having my first English pint. Room temperature brews took some getting used to, but the sun was shining and I’d just made a long journey after a killer week at work. It was all good. If that had been the whole day, it would have been a nice, busy memory, but we had many miles yet to cover. 

After dumping my luggage at Zanda’s flat, we headed into Central London. We walked across Waterloo Bridge to Covent Gardens, Leicester Square, and Piccadilly Circus. It was a Saturday evening, and vast swaths of diverse humanity were out and about. London has amazing energy – like New York, but closer to the ground. The next stop for refreshment was Waxy O’Connor’s, a fantastic pub in Soho. Imagine M.C. Escher was commissioned to build a subterranean pub, and only given fragments of old wooden churches with which to construct it, and you’d have an inkling of the architecture of Waxy’s. It’s a wonderful labyrinth of burnished wood and craggy stairways to nowhere. Check it out when you can, but don’t have too many ‘cause you’ll have lots of trouble finding your way out.

From Waxy’s we headed to King’s Cross (Ye Olde Whore District) where Zanda’s buddy Marcus assured us there was a house party in full swing. Exhaustion and jetlag were setting in, but I was determined to make it through that party (even if I had wimped out, there was no way I’d have been able to make it back to Zanda’s flat without help). With lots of help from Red Bull, I soldiered on and had a great night meeting fun people from all over the world. We left the party at 2:30 AM. Zanda miraculously guided me and Michelle through two bus rides (which felt exactly like this) and a 15 minute walk back to his flat. At 4:00, we crashed. The only word is “knackered.” Blissfully knackered.

Not a bad first day. I had fourteen more to go. Let’s compress this, shall we?

Other London highlights: Westminster Abbey (the royal family’s overcrowded basement with an audio tour courtesy of Uncle Scar), Buckingham Palace (where people stare through a fence and wait in vain for the Queen to show up) and a bike trip through Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens (if the weather’s good, make use of Barclays Cycle Hire – a great, cheap way to see the city). The Millennium Bridge is also great on a sunny day – a pleasant stroll across the Thames from St. Paul’s to Shakepeare's Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern Museum. Best of all is the amazing Tower of London. It’s got history, horror, guys in funny hats, and the crown jewels – something for everyone. Great stuff! The Underground is easy to navigate once you get your bearings, and I never tired of hearing “This is a Piccadilly Line service to Cockfosters” over the PA system. Tee hee hee!

Thanks to my wonderful English friends, I was able to see more than just London. My southern travels took me to Chichester, Portsmouth, Brighton, and Aldershot. I then headed north to Leeds, Huddersfield, Marsden, York, Barnsley & Whitby. I sped down narrow country roads, wandered the lonely moors, got lost in medieval cathedrals, napped in the graveyard that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and took a dip in the North Sea. My hosts and hostesses could not have been more warm and hospitable. It was an amazing two weeks and I’m incredibly grateful to all of them for taking me in and showing me around!

Some random observations about England:

- Downton Abbey, it ain’t. In terms of cultural diversity, England might surpass the US - even the smaller cities are melting pots.

- It is impossible to walk around England without thinking of the countless movies and TV shows that take place there

- There is nothing particularly British about The British Museum

- America needs meat pies

- England has surprisingly big fucking spiders

- Hate to say it folks, but the stereotype about British dental hygiene is all too accurate (at least for older folks)

Hedley & Wyche by shundriad

Anyway, it was a great trip and I’d love to go back someday soon. I still have to see Stonehenge, the White Cliffs of Dover, Oxford, Sherwood Forest, Hadrian's Wall, Windsor Castle, Manchester, Wales, Scotland… the list goes on and on. I did, however, catch a glimpse of Susan Boyle at Heathrow while waiting for my flight home, so at least I got to see one sexy British bird!

The flight home took me over Wales and then Ireland. Unfortunately, thick clouds covered the entire length of the Emerald Isle. It was as if my Irish forebears were punishing me for going to England before exploring Ireland – Mick, ye fookin’ bastard! We won’t let ye get a peek of Ireland until you get yer arse here for a proper visit, ye cunt ye! Fair play to them, I say (although I do have some English ancestry, too). I’m sure I’ll make it to Ireland soon enough. I hope that trip will be as great as my English adventure. 

And as a great Englishman once said, now for something completely different: After a year away from the world of social networking, I made peace with Facebook. Yes, yes – I made a much-ballyhooed exit a few months back. Call me a hypocrite all you want, but Zuckerberg & Co. added some sorely needed privacy options of which I have taken full advantage. Starting an account from scratch allowed me to be more thoughtful of what I share and with whom I share it. Not everyone gets to see everything, and it’s a lot easier to keep stupid crap out of my newsfeed. Some people are baffled that I do not allow wall posts from outside parties. Too bad, bitches! Use your own damn wall. For some reason I’ve also signed up for LinkedIn. No idea why.


And here's a few more pics of England. Enjoy!

Yorkminster at sunset

Castle Hill, Huddersfield

Moors above Marsden

Cemetery in Whitby where Dracula bit Lucy Westenra

SUMMER OF '79

Where were the “Super 8” kids when I was growing up? I would have fit right in with J.J. Abrams’ scrappy band of Goonie-esque movie makers. I have no idea how autobiographical this movie is, if Abrams really had childhood buddies willing to do special effects, make-up, and act while he bossed them around from behind the camera. If that was the case, I am extremely jealous. Back in my middle school days, I would have killed to have friends like these. While I certainly had good friends back then, none of them were as obsessed with movies as I was.

My envy extends to the era in which Abrams got to be a kid. Thanks to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the late 1970s were a wonderful time to be a young movie lover. “Super 8” is set in the summer of 1979, and its heroes are about thirteen years old, Abrams’ age at the time (my own summer of '79 was spent teething and crapping my pants). These are exactly the kinds of kids who would have been terrified by “Jaws,” thrilled by “Star Wars,” and awed by “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” I grew up on those movies, too, but I saw them all on video a decade or so later. By that time, they were canon. I don’t remember a time when those movies were new and fresh, the way they were for millions around the globe.

Not that I was deprived of pubescent cinematic joy, mind you. In the summer of 1989 alone, at the age of ten, I was completely swept away by Tim Burton’s “Batman,” James Cameron’s “The Abyss,” and Spielberg & Lucas’ own “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” I saw each one of them three times, and each has a special and formative place in my movie-going heart. All were rated PG-13, which gave my ten year-old self the tasty satisfaction of seeing something that was ever-so-slightly forbidden. They were also three very distinct visions – one a fantastically Gothic urban nightmare, another a sunny globe-trotting adventure, and another a plunge into the depths of the ocean, with glowing alien visitors. All very cool. And each movie won a single Academy Award apiece (Art Direction for “Batman,” Visual Effects for “The Abyss,” and Sound Effects Editing for “Indiana Jones”).

But still, as much as those movies from ’89 resonate for me personally, they don’t seem to evoke the same transcendent cultural nostalgia as do the early works of Spielberg & Lucas. Some will say that they’re just not as good as those older movies. A fair and arguable point, but every movie fan has rose-colored goggles for the films that first got him or her excited about cinema. Thankfully, I had big sisters who, like Abrams, were old enough to experience those Old School Spielberg movies first-hand on the big screen. When they were kids, home video was not an option, and online streaming was as sci-fi as a tricorder. If they wanted to see a movie a second, third or fourth time, they’d have to seek out the local second-run theater. When VCRs emerged, they thankfully educated me in the “Lucasberger” classics, but I still wish that I got to see those movies when they were new. The Big Screen mattered more then, and that is a vital part of why those movies are so beloved.

Back to “Super 8.” The screening I attended was at 8:15pm, on the movie’s third Saturday in theaters. It was projected on one of the multiplex’s mid-sized screens, and the place was packed, with many people struggling to find a seat after the lights went down. Interestingly, for a movie primarily concerning the plight of middle-schoolers, more than half of the audience members were in their forties. These are the same people who were awed by Spielberg as children. My guess is that they were all feeling nostalgia for those early days at the movies, when fantastic things emerged from summer night skies and your best friends were there to witness them with you.

Eventually, I did find my own band of “Super 8” kids at a summer filmmaking program when I was seventeen. And like the kids in the movie, we used monster make-up, fake blood, and stolen shots to make our own goofy visions. We had a lot of fun doing it, and many of us still do it today in one way or another. “Super 8” remembers what it is like to find your tribe, however unusual it might be, and how wonderful it feels. I hope all my movie freak friends go see it.

LIVE BLOGGING: A VERY FRANCO OSCARS

Here goes, my first attempt at live blogging. I'm not gonna bother with the red carpet crap... just the Oscarcast itself.

This year, it's personal. As an uncredited production assistant from the Cambridge shoot of "The Social Network," I am unashamedly rooting for myself. I've see seven of the ten Best Picture nominees. Many of them are very good, but my movie is better than all of them. My guess is that the boring old fuddy duddies of the Academy will give Best Picture to "The King's Speech." Whatever. My hunch is my boy Fincher will still squeeze by with Best Director.

If nothing else, we'll have the glorious goofiness of Franco as our co-host for the evening.

See you at 8e/5p.

8:38 pm - You can't lose with Franco in a bear suit.

8:40 - Morgan Freeman really needs to start having more fun with his soothing voice over persona.

8:43 - Franco missed a golden opportunity - he really should have come out with a bloody stump of an arm.

8:45 - Gone With The Wind Sucks. Scarlet O'Hara was a whiny, slave owning, gold-digging bitch.

8:49 - Art Directors shouldn't speak.

8:50 - YAY! WALLY PFISTER!!!!!

8:51 - It's official. This is the year of The Stammer.

8:55 - Kirk Douglas has gigantic earlobes. And he's still horny. He must really love his daughter-in-law.

9:00 - Poor Melissa Leo. She'll be the last person to see Kirk Douglas alive. And she'll have hefty fines from the FCC.

9:05 - Mila's Kunises are trying to escape from her dress. And that's okay.

9:09 - Yeah, yeah, Pixar rocks... snooze.

9:13 - Screenplays! Go Nolan and Sorkin!

9:14 - YAY!!!! I have officially worked on an Oscar Winning Movie!

9:18 - You know The King's Speech is a movie for old people when the writer can't find the microphone to give his Oscar speech.

9:24 - Leave Hugh alone!

9:25 - Franco in drag. It was just a matter of time.

9:32 - Yay! That's two Oscars for actors who successfully pulled off Massachusetts accents!

9:43 - Trent Reznor just won an Oscar!


9:51 - I'm glad I saw Inception at the Imax theater with vibrating seats.  That's Oscar-winning taint stimulation!

9:56 - "That's gross." I love you, Cate Blanchett.

9:59 - Colleen Atwood. Moley, moley, moley.

10:02 - Obama?

10:09 - Shut up, Adrien Brody. Stop making commercials.

10:12 - Short films = I gotta pee.

10:17 - I actually want to see the Facebook Autotune Musical. Go JT!

10:18 - Oprah's boobs are each bigger than her head.

10:27 - Billy Crystal should still be given the option to host.

10:32 - You rock, Downey.

10:35 - Yay! Even though they left me on the cutting room floor, congrats to Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall!

10:43 - Country Music's newest star... Gwyneth Paltrow? The fuck?

10:47 - Best acceptance speech - Randy Newman

10:52 - Ahhhh, the death montage featuring Celine Dion. Their hearts didn't go on.

10:56 - And the award for the hottest dead person goes to Lena Horne.

11:03 - Tom Hooper. Whatever. Your Mums got your movie for you.

11:14 - I'm getting some Winter's Bone for Jennifer Lawrence.

11:21 - Sandra, you've made some crappy movies, but I still love you.

11:23 - Waaaaaah! I'm the King of England. Waaaaaah!

11:25 - Franco would've given a way better speech.

11:33 - During the Best Picture montage, Dayna and Paul's cat decided to lick her vagina in front of the television. It kinda stole the king's thunder.

11:36 - The King's Speech. Whatevah.

11:38 - You know that you haven't won the crowd when a Best Picture winner has his speech cut off by the band.

11:39 - These kids didn't need to lip synch.

11:41 - Again, whatevah. 

REDRUM

THE SCENE:   FRAMINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, USA




THE PLAYERS:   MUM, DAD, AND ME

THE FORECAST: BLIZZARD WARNING, STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED IN MASSACHUSETTS, 8 TO 16 INCHES OF SNOW, POTENTIALLY DAMAGING WINDS, CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF SNOW

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

PRAISE, I THINK

"Mike's the kind of guy you WANT to fuck your mom." - My manager, 4 days after I got a raise.

Mother Lover (Uncensored) - watch more funny videos

THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK

The photo above was taken on a night on the town back in early 2009 in Perth, Western Australia. I’m the douchebag in the stupid “Drunk Chicks Think I’m Hot” t-shirt (truth be told, that shirt was a great icebreaker at the pubs). The young lady in the photo? We’ll call her Julie (not her real name). Julie was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. If memory serves we shared a few drinks, danced a bit, mugged for the camera, and parted ways. My friend Anthony (pictured on the right, whilst texting) tagged me in this photo on his Facebook page. I promptly de-tagged myself from the photo, but have now resurrected it to make a point – the world needs to see FEWER photos of me like this, not more. In all likelihood, I will never see Julie again since she lives on the other side of the planet. I wish her well. However, I don’t need for all of my Facebook “friends,” including co-workers, 12 year-old cousins, and Mom, to see unflattering images of my fleeting shenanigans from a long time ago, in a country far, far away. For that reason, and more, I am quitting Facebook.

I know what you’re gonna say – Mike, why don’t you just adjust your privacy settings?

Here’s why - There are 173 photos and 4 videos in which I am currently tagged, and I never uploaded a single one of them. They are how the world sees me, for better or worse. I don’t have the damned patience to go through each one of my 335 “friends” and decide who is worthy or unworthy of seeing this photo or that video. That an image can be tagged and put on semi-public display without a tag-ee’s prior full consent has always been my main quibble with Facebook.

Another gripe (although it’s not really Facebook’s fault) – Some people put interesting links and intelligent comments in their status updates… and some others don’t. Actually some others put up unbelievably mundane crap about their lives about which absolutely no one needs to know. No, I don’t care if the baby wouldn’t let you sleep! No, I don’t care how many calories you burned in your aerobics class! No, I don’t care about your hangover! And no one else cares either! Just because something is up on a computer screen doesn’t make it amusing or important! Get back to work and shut the fuck up!

Phew! Okay… calming down.

Speaking of work, Facebook became a major sucker of time and productivity for me when I was unemployed. Many days when I could have been aggressively job hunting, writing, or educating myself, instead I was nostalgically (read: voyeuristically) looking in at other people’s more interesting lives rather than improving my own. It was my own damn fault for getting sucked in, but how many millions of others are doing the same thing? No wonder the economy’s in the crapper.

A big question… If I stayed on Facebook, what would happen to my page after I died? Someday all 500,000,000 of today’s Facebook users will be dead. Will our descendants care that we “liked” Waffle House or thought that the Patriots played a shitty game one day back in 2010? When he’s having a quiet day in the Oval Office On The Moon, will Michael Moran III check out old photos of his namesake and Julie and wonder - if things worked out a little differently, could that Australian chick have been my Grandma? I dunno. It’s all a bit creepy. (I didn’t mean you, Julie. I meant the concept of a digital pseudo-autobiography that lives forever in cyberspace was creepy… not you. You're just fine).

Oh, but Facebook has its good points, too. If it had never existed, Betty White might never have hosted SNL, and I might never have gotten to work for (cue shameless namedropping) David Fincher. One year ago, I was working as a production assistant on the “The Social Network.” The movie turned out great and I am proud to have worked on it (although it is difficult to prove that I actually did work on it, as my name isn’t in the credits). So, thanks for that, Facebook. Also thanks for re-connecting me with one of my best childhood friends and for vindicating my theory that the girl I had a crush on in 3^rd grade would grow up to be a stunner. But in the end, the bad stuff outweighed the good for me and I’m pulling the plug.

Among many great lines in “The Social Network,” one that stands out is “The Internet isn’t written in pencil; it’s written in ink.” If so, I’d like more control over the pen. So, I’m regressing back to a time when if there were embarrassing photos of me floating around, I was blissfully unaware of their existence, as were my family, friends and casual acquaintances – a time when it took a bit more than sharing a beer at that party that one time to qualify as my friend – a time when people didn’t feel the need to inform everyone they know that the baby just farted. Ahhhh.... 2005! It's good to be back!

So folks, if you have something to share with me, do it as nature intended… with a letter, phone call, email, text message, or - ahem - blog comment. And please, for the love of Gawd, “follow” my blog. I still crave some attention!


AN AMENDMENT (11/01/2010): In case I offended any parents of babies on here, let me clarify my point of view. Maybe "shut the fuck up" was a little harsh. I have absolutely no problem with parents taking cute photos and videos of their children and showing them off to close friends and family on Facebook. Nor do I mind it when people write things like "Junior said his first word today! It was 'platypus!'" in their status updates. That stuff is fine and good. I love kids, especially my adorable niece and nephew and I cherish every photo that their parents send me. Its when parents (particularly new parents), write down every single detail of their progeny's development, no matter how trivial, (ie "the baby cried all night, the baby won't eat peas, the baby has diarrhea") and broadcast it throughout the world that I get annoyed. Someday, those kids are going to grow up, and not all of them are going to like the fact that their childhoods were on display, especially if their parents were complaining about how irritating they were or are. I am not yet a father, so I cannot speak to the joys and frustrations of parenthood. Facebook allows parents to share those joys and vent those frustrations. I just wonder who's really listening, and who might get hurt.