Entries in the Category "tina fey"
Osssssssscars!
I am reading all these bloggers who’ve pledged to see all the Best Picture nominees, or all the films with a non-technical nomination (that’s Sarah Bunting, and she almost did it). Some of them spent two Saturdays in a row parked in a movie theater seat watching five wannabe Best Pictures back-to-back. My major regret going into Oscar night is that I haven’t seen enough of the nominated movies. Living virtually across the street from a limited-release haven like the Cedar Lee, just about every one of these movies has crossed my path (not something I could say back when I was living in Lansing, Michigan--sorry Lansing). I went to an Oscar party in which the crowd was generally well-versed in movies—not just the big ones, but independents, foreigns, documentaries—and I wished I could have given more opinions instead of continually saying, “That looked really good. I heard that was good. I was going to see that. Everything I’ve read online says that was overrated, actually.”
The real problem is this whole being-in-grad-school thing, which will be over soon enough. I’ll be a cultural civilian again by May, and then it’s seeing movies all the time, reading books all the time, just because I damn well want to. And maybe next February I’ll plan my own Oscar film binge.
This year, I had to content myself watching the Oscars having seen only Inglourious Basterds, Up in the Air, Julie and Julia, and one-third of The Hurt Locker. I'm catching up on the other movies at my usual snail’s-pace rate. (Oscar-nominated or Oscar-winning movies I have seen in the past few months: Valmont, Mrs. Brown, Frozen River, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Gangs of New York.)
Anyway, here are my totally uneducated thoughts on the proceedings.
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Movie Reviews: Talented Teens and "Actresses of a Certain Age" edition
This is kind of sick, but one night I was on Netflix Instant looking for a short movie to watch before bed, and I had read on the Internet that day about a girl who was killed by an Amtrak train. So, uh, I decided to watch Stand By Me, a great coming-of-age movie which is about, among other things, kids getting hit and/or almost getting hit by trains.
I’ve never read the Stephen King story on which the movie is based, but I’ve heard it’s great. The movie definitely charms with its 50s detail and foul-mouthed little boys. What’s really distracting, though, is looking at all those young Hollywood actors and thinking about how none of them ended up where people expected. Like, the fat kid slimmed down, is now a regularly working actor (I may have watched his former show, Crossing Jordan, a time or two) married to a former model. The kid who actually seems to have a future as an actor is the one who didn’t (instead he died from drug addiction). The smartass who was already a pretty big star is in the reality TV doldrums now. I especially like that the kid who, in the movie, grows up to be a writer, actually did. Wil Wheaton, one of the few teen Hollywood success stories.
More movies follow!
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Golden Globes Recap
This will be shorter and less detailed than my usual next-day awards show extravaganza. I had family visiting this weekend, and both my mom and aunt joined me for the Globes viewing, so we were able to crack jokes and comment on the clothes in real time, which sort of took away some of the excitement of doing it here. What can I say? SO SORRY INTERNET. We still have the Oscars.
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30 Before 30 (Six Month Progress Update), Part 2
Yesterday's entry was about achievement and progress and today's entry is about goals which may or may not be attainable, but which, in my naivete, I set for myself last May.
Here are the list items that I am scared to do or confused about how to do (as well as some which, through no fault of my own, have been modified) which, as yet, I still fantasize that I someday check off on "30 Before 30."
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The Most Sexist Season of Top Chef Ever! and the Spunky Blonde Lady Who Might Take the Whole Thing Home (and Dear God I Hope She Does)
I love Top Chef, I do, enough to continue to be addicted to it despite the fact that my personal taste is so pedestrian that I literally had popcorn for dinner tonight. The contestants are all, “Ceviche! Veloute! Scallops!” and I’m all, “Peanut butter! Processed cheese!” and yet, Top Chef and I, we remain the best of friends.
Still, this season has been getting on my damn nerves.
There is one guy on the show this season who is such an obnoxious ass that I’m not going to print his name. I don’t want to increase his Google hits, a number I’m sure he keeps track of in some kind of retro little black book that also has the phone numbers of his favorite escort services and the female cousin he took to his prom. Anyway, this guy should know that I’m on to him. The rude and sexist things that come out of his damn mouth are so clearly designed to rile people up and grab him attention, and I am pissed that this show is giving it to him.
Even though the need has been more than met, other guys are continuing to step up and be bastards, including one in tonight’s episode who blathered on and on about how his dish was more refined and creative and special than anyone else’s and who didn’t even crack the top four. The only two guys who haven’t given me any trouble so far are Kevin (AKA Beardo, AKA Young Santa Claus) and Ash, the quippy gay guy who seemed like a nice guy but not a very good chef, and whose past-due elimination came tonight.
There are four front-runners right now (in addition to the bastards, who seem to consider themselves front-runners without tons of evidence of this): the Voltaggio brothers, and who seem too intent on beating each other to worry about the presence of women in the kitchen, nice guy Beardo, and Jennifer, who is my girl crush. The first couple episodes seemed to be trying to position her as ‘the bitch,’ overplaying footage of her talking about how competitive she is, and how she’s not there to make friends or whatever reality show cliché the producers coaxed her into saying.
Let me suggest, as Tina Fey did in a really funny rant on Hillary Clinton, that YEAH. SHE IS A BITCH. BITCHES GET STUFF DONE.
Jen gets stuff done
She really came alive in the third episode of the season, a challenge in which the entire crew had to fix a big buffet-style meal for an entire airport hangar full of military people and their families. She had won the Quickfire, the mini-challenge that takes up the first ten minutes of every episode, and her reward was immunity—the “you can’t get eliminated tonight” prize. On account of that, the rest of the group nominated her as the head of the kitchen (there’s some fancy name for it, I forget what it was), who would not make a dish of her own but would supervise and manage and just in general keep everything hot, refilled, on plates, on time. She stalked around the kitchen like General Patton, negotiating arguments over the use of equipment, asking people things like, “Can you cook and have this conversation at the same time?” She was alarmingly impressive.
I wouldn’t be so aggressively girl-power if this particular season hadn’t made it necessary. Women have been getting eliminated twice as fast as men have been—and I’m not saying the judging is crooked or anything, but that the contestant pool was thick with mediocre ladies. If you don’t put good female chefs on the show, good female chefs can’t win, and that bugs me.
The second episode of the season pitted “boys” against “girls” (and yes, that’s what they continually called it even though these are all men and women legally able to purchase alcohol and rent cars) and featured tons of trash talk from the “boys” about how they didn’t feel threatened by any of the women. Several episodes in, the designated punching bag has become older woman Robin, who regardless of how annoying she is does not deserve the vitriol that gets hurled at her, especially when she’s not in the room.
Even super-capable Jennifer is not immune. In the very first episode, when the chefs were milling around getting to know each other, she named the restaurant that she works at, and was immediately asked, without a hint of irony, “Oh, are you the pastry chef?” Without a hint of surprise—or bother, for that matter—she replied, “No, head chef.” No offense to pastry chefs, but yeah, that’s a slight. She’s become the Peggy Olson of this show—I am invested now, and if she loses, FEMINISM LOSES. Even if she loses to the talented and utterly inoffensive Beardo.
(Tonight judge-in-love-with-his-own-one-liners Toby Young compared Jennifer’s dish to a hairy armpit. Strangely, this was a compliment, meant to be on par with a more conventional adjective like “earthy.” She just smiled with amusement and said thank you.)
GO TEAM JEN.
Emmys Day-After Recap
I’ve got my Emmy food (pizza and mint creme Oreos) and I’m ready to go!
The Host
Neil Patrick Harris is totally cool. He’s singing and dancing, he’s wearing a white dinner jacket, and I think he just insulted Two and a Half Men. (Theme songs are getting so short, next year’s theme to the show will just be "meh." HA!) Later: I love the way he keeps introducing people from their obscure early credits (“from the 1987 Afterschool Special…”).
Click ahead for much much more!