Very important thoughts on very important matters.

Opinions for you to merciless judge tomorrow morning:

Bold = will win
Italics = should win

Best Live Action Short Film

33% Tuba Atlantic
27% The Shore
20% Raju
5% Time Freak
5% Pentecost

Oscar shorts tend to come in two varieties: set-ups for single punch lines (Time Freak and Pentecost) or didactic narratives aimed at the afternoon special crowd (Raju). For whatever reason, the winner has trended towards the left-field candidate in the past few years. Thus even though The Shore has star wattage (Ciarán Hinds) and a unusually restrained emotional palette for a short, I'll bet Oscar voters remembered the off-kilter Tube Atlantic at the ballot box.

Best Animated Short Film

30% The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
25% La Luna
15% Dimanche
15% A Morning Stroll
15% Wild Life

I skipped the Animated Shorts this time around as they couldn't secure the rights for all of the nominees this year around (thanks Pixar!) so I am going to take an educated guess and pick The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore as it was a free download on iTunes. Clearly some secretive SuperPAC is running its Oscar campaign. Or it will just be the Pixar one. I couldn't tell you because Pixar clearly thought that adding its Animate Short to the iTunes collection would hurt box office receipts for its next big tent pole project. Clearly.

Best Foreign Language Film

33% In Darkness (Poland)
30% A Separation (Iran)
20% Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)
16% Footnote (Israel)
1% Bullhead (Belgium)

The Best Foreign Language Film winner is always a disappointment. In a Better World over Incendies? The Secret In Their Eyes beating out A Prophet AND The White Ribbon? Don't even get me started on Departures. So even though A Separation is morally challenging, thematically dense, and narratively complex - and thus better than just about every single Best Picture nominee - the Oscar is probably going to the Holocaust film (which I haven't seen mind you). Monsieur Lazhar has an outside chance in that its sophomoric message is most similar to last year's winner. Footnote is a delightful crowd pleaser that could have been a frontrunner until it got capsized by its languid third act. Bullhead has no chance of winning: it is the only movie I have ever seen that has actually made me physically nauseous. I can only imagine how Academy votes reacted.

Best Supporting Actor

70% Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
20% Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
5% Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn)
3% Nick Nolte (Warrior)
2% Jonah Hill (Moneyball)

An embarrassment of riches. All five nominees were outstanding… well, at the very least I assume Max Von Sydow was too but you couldn't pay me to see this year's Oscar pariah. Plummer will win the lifetime achievement award that the Academy is so fond of (and I can't imagine two Oscars going to silent protagonists in one year) but I think I found more delight in watching Hill playing against type and Branagh relishing the opportunity to play his dramatic idol. Then again, I am a sucker for Branagh.

Best Supporting Actress

64% Octavia Spencer (The Help)
25% Bérénice Bejo (The Artist)
5% Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids)
5% Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs)
1% Jessica Chastain (The Help)

Comedic performances have become increasingly shortchanged by the academy. It seems like decades ago… okay, I guess it was two decades ago that Marisa Tomei and Jack Palance won for such illustrious films as My Cousin Vinny and City Slickers. Not that I favor the Golden Globes award dichotomy but it is a shame that roles now need the requisite pathos to get more than the token honorable mention.

Best Actor

50% Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
40% George Clooney (The Descendants)
5% Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
3% Brad Pitt (Moneyball)
2% Demián Bichir (A Better Life)

I think the press is making this out to be more of a horse race than it actually is. Unless the ghost of Roberto Benigni still haunts the academy, Dujardin has to win because The Artist is inconceivable without him. I love Clooney but I found nothing particularly revelatory about his performance in The Descendants. And the only person who mugs for the camera better than him is Dujardin.

Best Actress

40% Viola Davis (The Help)
35% Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
15% Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs)
5% Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
5% Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)

I can't comment too much on this category because I skipped out on Albert Nobbs and The Iron Lady, two movies that seem to exist only for their lead actresses. Viola Davis is the frontrunner here but you can never rule out Meryl Streep.

Best Director

70% Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)
15% Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life)
10% Alexander Payne (The Descendants)
4% Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris)
1% Martin Scorsese (Hugo)

The only intrigue to emerge from this category is whether or not Malick and Allen will be in attendance. I actually think Scorsese did the best directing job with Hugo but he won not too far back and do you honestly believe that the Academy would deign to award a kid's movie?

Best Picture

The Artist - 50%
The Help - 20%
The Descendants - 15%
Midnight in Paris - 5%
Hugo - 4%
The Tree of Life - 3%
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - 2%
Moneyball - .99%
War Horse - .01%

Any movie that didn't receive a Best Director nod is dead in the water -- with The Help being the obvious exception. Maybe I am just being purposefully contrarian but there is no way The Descendants could possibly be in first, let alone second place. Do you know anybody who actually loved this movie? It is the Mitt Romney of Best Picture nominees: unloved and begrudgingly voted for (which I goes makes The Tree of Life Ron Paul). The Help at least has middlebrow precedents in Driving Miss Daisy and Crash, particularly if The Artist's long standing frontrunner status has curdled academy support.

I understand that The Artist is a Weinstein production and thus immediately presumed to be Oscar-bait but let's take a levelheaded view: It is in black and white. It is silent. The main actors are unknowns to American audiences. It is French. The team behind it is most notable for a series of James Bond spoofs. This would be like Mel Brooks winning the Oscar for Silent Movie.

Castles Made Of Sand

Super Mario Land 3D
I'm not quite sure why Nintendo forgot or chose to ignore the simple alchemy formula for early console success: affordable price point + Mario launch game = gold. Instead Nintendo was backed into an embarrassing price cut along with a rushed addition to the Mario franchise to boost holiday sales. As such, Super Mario Land 3D serves as a belated apology letter to fans and a financial ballast to right the leaky Nintendo ship.

As long as portable consoles serve primarily as vehicles for cashing in on Millenial nostalgia, Super Mario Bros. 3 is certainly not a bad game to use as the ur-text. That game was the apotheosis of Nintendo's stranglehold on the gaming market, forever memorialized with the 100 minute informercial The Wizard. Unfortunately, beyond the appearance of the Tanooki suit, this game bears little resemblance to its best selling predecessor. It's simply a streamlined Mario 64 in furry costume drag. In Super Mario Bros. 3, the Tanooki suit was a brilliant addition because it allowed the levels to be stretched vertically, creating an entirely new dynamic in the Mario franchise. In Super Mario 3D, it just enables you to more easily navigate troubling platform sequences.

As for the console itself, the 3D effect is certainly eye-catching but at this stage it is a gimmick in that it doesn't serve the gameplay. In fact, at most times it hindered it. Any slight movement of the console can break that visual parallax which is not only a distraction but also produces considerable eye strain. It also caused me considerable trouble in judging the z-positioning of ledges which is certainly not what you want in a platformer.

All of the ridiculous completionists tasks that Nintendo shoehorned in to artificially extend the playtiming (now play every level as Luigi! now play every level but be sure to touch the top of the flagpole!) just highlights the difference between the two games: to this day people still argue about the best world in Super Mario Bros. 3 (it has to be this one, right?) because each one had its own distinct personality and game dynamic. In Super Mario Land 3D, every world is just a random bricolage of levels that I won't remember in a week let alone want to play ever again.

Grade: B-

this has been your time to shine.

An unexpected note slipped under my motel door:

ive learned that things dont always work out as planned this allows me to always stay a step ahead I knew that it was time to try something new… i am headed right for the top


this is just between us.



see you.

Ever since the Nobeyama solar flare hit, SpamBots were sporadically become sentient. Most joined the Yohkoh suicide cult.

I wished I could have reached out to this ãÍãÏ ÇáÖæíäí. But part of me secretly wonder if the bot had a point.

Playlists not Podcasts

I'm throwing my cheap-o youtube playlist up right there at the beginning there's one song from every album.  Simple countdown from 10 to 1.  Adele's at number 9 on my list (number 2 in the youtube list), but I threw in one of her less Adeley songs just to save us all from another of her hits.

I find myself listening to podcasts way more than music these days. When I'm doing the dishes I put on one of Slate's gabfests. Walking up to the grocery store I rock out to the latest Radiolab, not the latest Radiohead. But you know there's nothing like a really solid track to get that head nodding, get your shoulders moving back and forth a little bit. . . I miss that. So for the past few weeks I've been back up on my music listening grind. And, in this criminally tardy edition I give you some of my favorite albums of the long since expired year.

First as a disappointing opening act, a list of albums I thought I'd like, but did not.  These are illustrated, bear with me.

Take the Black Keys, remove their soul and sincerity and you get El Camino.

When I listen to Radiohead's King of Limbs I picture Thom Yorke looking like this for some reason.

After 2008's superb The Stand Ins I was hoping Okkervil River could maintain their gritty "wall of sound" folk rockiness.  Much of I Am Very Far sounded like someone doing a lounge cover of an Okkervil River song instead.

Now that that's done, and without further adieu, my top ten albums of 2011.  In ascending order from least good to most good, or descending order if we're talking numerically.

10. Clams Casino - Instrumentals

10
I had the opposite experience with Clams Casino's Instrumentals as I did with the albums I listed above.  When I first heard about a mostly instrumental mixtape from a guy who has produced a few tracks for some crappy rappers, I thought there wasn't much of a chance that I'd like it.  But for some reason I gave it a shot. It's pretty damn good, and pretty pretty, and pretty haunting.  Dude from New Jersey making beats in his moms' house, sells some to Lil B and Soulja Boy, then puts this out.  I'm pretty sure his demand is skyrocketing right about now. (get it for free (legitimately) here.)

9. Adele - 21

9
I'm not really out in front of the Adele thing like I used to be.  In fact I'd say that 21 contains some of the most overplayed tracks of last year, Rolling in the Deep spent 56 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was the top-selling single in the U.S. last year.  The album spent the most weeks at number one since the Titanic soundtrack.  She is currently number one on the Hot 100 with a song off of an upcoming live album.  But I still don't hate hearing her songs, a real testament to Adele.  You certainly know by now whether you like her or not, but I'm still on board.

8. Typhoon - A Different Kind of House

8
Maybe I'm cheating with this one, as it's only a five song EP, but I've listened to those five songs about as much as I've listened to anything this year.  Typhoon is a Portland band with a bunch of members, kind like all Portland bands.  Kind of got a Sufjan feel to it, but less experimental, more Northwesty. . . you know?  Like, more beards. . . and sewing machines.

7. Danger Mouse & Danielle Luppi - Rome

7
A high concept album from Danger Mouse and an Italian composer, inspired by the music from old spaghetti westerns?  Sounds like a recipe for some hyper-indulgent shit soup.  Thankfully the two artists showed a great deal of restraint.  The instrumental tracks aren't mind-numbing in length and solo vocalists Jack White and Norah Jones (who are only on five tracks between them both) stay within the theme.  The whole thing is surprisingly tidy and listenable at just over 35 minutes.  I'm not in the know, but listening to the album I get the feeling that Danger Mouse deferred to Danielle Luppi quite a lot, if that's the case it turned out to be a very wise decision.

6. Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch the Throne

6
It's no secret I've got a crush on both Jay and Yeezy, and while this is no Black Album or Late Registration, it's still two of the best doing it pretty well.  And it doesn't hurt that the best song features excessive sampling from Try a Little Tenderness by Otis Redding one of my favorites songs of all time.  They get good stuff out of Frank Ocean, who adds some freshness to the stodgy duo, they're kinda like rap's Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and a little Beyonce never hurt anybody. . . the whole album's just a lot of fun, don't hate.

5. Gillian Welch - The Harrow & The Harvest

5
If you don't mind yours a little bit slow and maybe even a little bit country I really recommend this album.  Gillian Welch teams up with long time writing and performing partner David Rawlings to serve up her best album to date, and before you get scared off it is really better described as folk than country, although sometimes the line is pretty blurred.  This is probably the album on my list that is most likely to contain classic songs that will continue to be covered for years.  As a side note, Gillian Welch's set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass was probably my favorite live performance this year.

4. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up

4
As much as I love Hova and Kanye, Watch The Throne wasn't exactly inventive.  A criticism that could certainly not be placed on Seattle rap collective Shabazz Palaces debut LP.  Black Up was released in June last year by Sub Pop, the label that first signed Nirvana and currently sport acts like Fleet Foxes, The Shins, No Age, and The Postal Service, Shabazz Palaces is the first hip-hop act to be signed by the label.  In my mind it seems like a pretty good match, neither party seems afraid to change the game up a little.

3. Youth Lagoon - The Year of Hibernation

3
Boise, Idaho.  Who knew?  The nice thing about this dude Trevor Powers being from Boise is that it appears he plays SLC pretty frequently.  Although The Year of Hibernation is more the type of album I like to listen to while I read a book or have a stimulating chat, not sure how it would play live.

2. Kendrick Lamar - Section.80

2
I heart Kendrick Lamar.  Best rap album of the year, easy.  The only problem with it is that it lacks some editing.  The album is 16 tracks long and just shy of a full hour.  If Mr. Lamar could have cut 3 or 4 of the weakest tracks I think this would have been my number 1.  Still a stellar debut LP for the eccentric 24 year old native of Compton, who claims Tupac came to him in his sleep a la angel Moroni and told him to write Section.80.  Whatever, the beats are great, the lyrics are strong, I hope JFK gets in on the next album.

1. William Elliot Whitmore - Field Songs

1
I think I have a soft spot for folk artists who got started in the punk scene.  Just saying.  William Elliott is one of those, and while there isn't much punk about his aesthetic these days, unless you count the tattoos on his arms, his lyrics still have that uprising sort of feel.  Power to the people and all that.  Whitmore's sound is pretty rudimentary, I guess that's kind of punk.  It's him and a guitar or banjo.  Maybe a kick-drum. But his vocals are what does it, the tone and quality of his voice shines on every track, and he gives it room.