Food for thought:

Here’s the president admonishing his former electoral rival, Senator John McCain that “we’re not campaigning anymore. The election’s over.”

But here he is today at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania:

Hm. Sure looks like a political campaign rally if I’ve ever seen one. So are we back to campaigning again? I sure wish the president would keep us notified as to when he changes the rules.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

The real way to distinguish a great actor from a mediocre one is to watch how he (or she) wears his costume in a period piece.  If say, it looks likes he’s dressed up for a costume ball, then, well, he really can’t get into the character.  If, however, it looks like he wears a doublet and hose everyday rather than just put them on to film his scenes, then there’s a good chance he can act the part as well as wear the costume.

See for example Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons and compare him to some of the other characters.  You really believe he dresses this way everyday.

And last night, it seemed that a number of the stars at the Oscars had put on their tuxes or long dresses just for the occasion.  Well, of course, they did, but the point is to make yourself look comfortable in such formal finery.  You know, that Sean Connery/James Bond thing going where you looked comfortable (and darn good) in a tux.  Now, Meryl Streep walked with great ease in her dress, but Molly Ringwald seemed mighty stiff in hers.   My lady Sandra Bee did seem a bit stiff when he walked the red carpet in her shimmering gown, but once in the auditorium, she moved with grace and class.

The same way she spoke.

Perhaps, the most annoying thing about the Oscars last night was the number of presenters who just read their lines from the teleprompter without emotion.  (It’s why the Cameron Diaz/Steve Carell schtick was among the evening’s most entertaining.  They mocked their peers.)  You’d think other actors would try to do a little more than just read, given that, well, it’s kind of their profession to show they believe it when they speak lines others have written for them.  Instead they just phone in their presentations.  (Is is that many of them were up-and-coming movie stars, screen presences more than gifted performers?)

And some of them didn’t even turn on the charm.  Ann Althouse wrote this morning “actresses with their hard, frozen faces and their sinewy bodies encased in lavishly ruffled dresses showed that movies are no longer a source of fresh inspiration about beauty, femininity and womanhood” (commentary which when I first read it on Instapundit inspired this post).  What is it with all these hard, frozen faces, this absence of emotion, this indifference to charm? (more…)

Dan blogged the other day on New York Democratic Congressman Eric Massa and the hypocricy of the gay Left in America today, concluding that:

[P]erhaps because of that all-purpose (D) after their names, they become immune to criticism from those who claim to speak for our community.

While possibly simply a lashing back, today we learn that soon to be ex possibly non-resigning Congressman Massa is accusing the Democratic leadership of bullying him out due to his “no” vote on health care and suggesting that he may take back his resignation after all. Honestly, it sounds kinda fishy. (Didn’t he say he was resigning because of his health? What? Is he suddenly feeling more spry?) On the other hand, who would put this past the Speaker and her minions?

So what side do you take? The alleged gay sex-accoster who can’t decide if he should stay or go? Or the clearly proven snake-in-the-grass Democratic leadership whose stated goal is to pass the Stalinization of Health Care Bill whether they have to pole-vault over or parachute in? With determination like that, and given she’s pretty much told her caucus to sacrifice their own jobs over it, what’s the destruction of an innocent man if it means one fewer “no” vote?

It’s hard to take sides in this one, isn’t it?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

UPDATE: Here’s something. Apparently Rahm Emanuel might be guilty of his own creepieness: Approaching other naked dudes in the Congressional Showers!

Until the end of the show, I thought that this may well rank as the most boring Oscars in the history of movie awards.  And then, the Dude won, then my lady Sandra Bee, then Oscar winning Director Kathryn Bigelow made sure to thanks the troops–twice.

Well, the show may have been kind of boring, but it wasn’t offensive.  Barbra Streisand and Sean Penn resisted the impulse to make political speeches.   The (apparently) most left-leaning of the documentaries did not win an Oscar.  Al Gore was nowhere to be found.

Steve Martin was frequently funny.  Ben Stiller looked great in a Nav’i get-up.  Jeff Bridges offered a rambling, but wonderful acceptance speech–and he’s been married to the same woman for 32 years!  Sandra Bullock delivered a classy speech.

Maybe Hollywood has learned that its business is entertainment, not politics.  Though the producers of the show should have recognized that it should also be their business to entertain.

Where do I start?  What a wonderful touching speech.  And that she started out by a acknowledging her fellow nominees.

The way she spoke tonight shows why I–and so many others–were pulling for her.

Now, this is one great speech–totally spontaneous.  Loved the way he honored his parents.

And how he honors his wife–and daughters.

Nikki Finke nails it:

This dumbass dance number replaced having singers warble their songs. Blame Adam Shankman, who’s a choreographer and judge on So You Think You Can Dance. Please, don’t let him or Bill Mechanic EVER produce the Oscars again. The ghost of Alan Carr would have been better.

Steve Martin’s had a few good lines, but the show has been, well, kind of boring with a few nice speeches.

(Sometime last fall, I penned, well, technically pencilled, a reflection on acting.  Recalling, as I wrote my Oscar Reflections piece, that I had never typed it up, I decided to do so on a day when people are thinking about movies and acting.)

I often pick as favorite actors those whose brilliance in minor roles rarely (if ever) leads to popular acclaim.  Well before her Oscar for The Queen, I had been a fan of Helen Mirren, largely because of her brilliant, subtle performance in Gosford Park.  Fortunately, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences acknowledged her for that achievement with an Oscar nomination.

But, other performances which I appreciate often don’t get such acclaim.

Just this past week (that is, the week I wrote this reflection), I bought a DVD collection at Barnes & Noble because it was on sale and because several of the films featured three such actors, Ciarán Hinds in “Ivanhoe” and Jane Eyre, Jonathan Firth and Nigel Hawthorne in Victoria & Albert.

I first took note of Hinds in Titanic Town, later appreciated his performances in There Will Be Blood and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.  And then there was his Julius Cæsar in “Rome”.  Of all the actors I have seen play the celebrated Roman, Hinds least looked the part, yet most captured the essence of the complex tyrant, ruthless in politics and battles, magnanimous to his defeated adversaries, convinced he alone could save Rome.

I had first seen Firth in the 1994 BBC adaptation of “Middlemarch” were he captured the essence of Fred Vincy, the spoiled son of a prosperous 19th century merchant, a young man who most needed discipline and guidance.  We hear more about Firth’s gifted older brother Colin.  But, the younger Firth is no less a talented than his Oscar-nominated (for A Single Man) brother.  It’s just that he has excelled in less high profile productions.

Such men remind  me of another favorite of small-scale productions, Tobias Menzies whose turn as Brutus in the first season of Rome absolutely floored me.  He well captured the conflicted Roman aristocrat, particularly at the moment of Cæsar’s assassination in which he was a reluctant participant.

And finally, let me include an actress of yore, the late Gladys George whose turn as the aging chanteuse/barkeep is the real standout in the Cagney/Bogart gangster film, The Roaring Twenties.   (more…)

In Roger Simon’s piece on the Oscars (quoted in my previous post), that Oscar-nominated screenwriter observes, “human beings that we are, we desire, maybe even need, entertainment. It’s worth remembering that some of Hollywood’s finest hours were during the Depression.”  I agree.  (Read the whole thing for his reflection on what happens to neighborhoods around Hollywood Boulevard during Oscar week).

I would take that one step further–as human beings, we need stories.  They seem to serve no practical purpose, but in every culture of which are aware, our fellows told stories as a means to define their particular culture, transmit sacred knowledge and entertain.  Jesus himself was a great story-teller.  The first two books of Moses and much of the last three consist of a number of stories, over whose meaning wise men have wrestled for millennia.

What we call myths are really just the sacred stories of other cultures.  They help us define our relation to our fellows and to the cosmos as well as helping even understand our nature as human beings.  No wonder movies still have such a cultural impact.  They are just our era’s means of doing what our forebears have done as far back as we can tell.  Telling stories.  To be sure, with all the new media today, movies are just one means among many.

That perhaps makes our culture particularly unique–so many means to tell stories.  But, yet, we still tell them.

I am less interested in the Oscars this year than in any previous year since I moved to Tinseltown.  Most years, I would try to see all the nominees for Best Picture as well as those films whose directors and leading and supporting actors got nods.  This year, I might have seen all the Best Picture nominees had the Academy not decided to up the number of nominees to 10 (perhaps so as to include two pictures with the adverb/preposition, “up,” in the title).

(I agree with Roger Simon on the expansion of the number of nominees:  ”It’s kind of like movie business ‘grade inflation.’ And like most ‘grade inflation,’ it waters down the results.“)

Given that I’ve only seen two of the movies with best acting nods (Crazy Heart and The Hurt Locker), three with best actress (Julie & Julia, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire and The Blind Side), one for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Inglourious Basterds), two for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Crazy Heart and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire), perhaps I am not the best guy to comment on all this.

Of all the performances I’ve seen, any of the performers could honorably take home the Oscar.  I’ll be pulling for Sandra Bullock, largely because, among this talented group, she is the eldest who has not yet taken home a statuette.  And, well, because I like her.  I saw Crazy Heart this weekend and absolutely loved Jeff Bridges‘ performance, but then I always love him, so I’m pulling for “The Dude.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal was, as always, wonderful and particularly charming, but, well, I’m pulling for Mo’Nique.  She spent the entirety of Prccious, well, almost the entirety, playing an unloving bitch, a domineering mother who couldn’t show the least bit of maternal affection for her daughter, then, in the penultimate scene, reveals the vulnerable human being behind the bitch.  It is a heart-rendering scene and well played, very well, played.   (more…)

In writing about a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about three Muslim men charged with “firing a BB rifle at the face of a man they believed was gay,” our reader Jenny asks, “when will gay activist groups actually start being activist in aid of saving lives by ending the mass immigration of anti-everyone Muslims?”

Now, I certainly wouldn’t go as far as her, but she raises an interesting issue:  will gay groups cover this with the same degree of frenzied fervor they would if the three men were evangelical Christians?

But, then again, while some evangelical Christians say some pretty hateful things about homosexuals, they don’t go around videotaping themselves firing BB guns at gay men.

Via a link on Instapundit, I found my way to an editorial Meg Whitman penned for the Orange County Register where the former eBay CEO outlined her plan for fixing the mess in which the once-Golden State finds itself (well, it didn’t quite find itself there–politicians put her there).  The Republican gubernatorial candidate clearly recognizes that the public employee pension program is a drain on state resources (i.e., taxpayer dollars):

On pension reform, we need to align public employee retirement benefits to those available in the private sector. New state workers should receive a 401(k)-style defined-contribution plan. For most existing state workers, we need to increase the retirement age from 55 to 65, require longer vesting periods, and ask them to contribute more to their retirement benefits.

Emphasis added. She’s right on the money here.  With even the mainstream media reporting how much compensated federal government employees are than their counterparts in the private sector, it’s clear our elected officials must look at cutting salaries and benefits of those working for the government.  And not just at the federal level.

Let’s hope Whitman is also willing to take on the public employee unions and perhaps move to limit the amount they may skim off the salaries of employees while preventing them from donating to political candidates and lobbying public officials, you know, that conflict of interest thing.

And at the federal and state level (at least here in California), we need an across-the-board salary cut for all public employees, say a 5% cut of income earned over the state’s median income and 10% on income earned above twice that median.

While Whitman has not yet gone as far as I believe we should go, she does appear to be headed in the right direction.  One more reason, I may be less undecided in this race than I make myself out to be.

When Dan Riehl mentioned Wikio ratings, noting that his blog is on the up and up (and well it should be), I decided to check to see how we were doing.  Well, we’re inching up in the world, now at 78!

Last month, we were 81; I’m just plum pleased that a conservative blog which identifies itself as a gay blog is even in the top 100 political blogs.

What the Hill reported today:

President Barack Obama’s budget will lead to deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, the CBO estimated Friday.

Via Instapundit.

What the Democratic nominee for president said in October:

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.

Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

And you wonder why the tea parties have taken off.

Here are the pups….. in order of seniority:

Saxby.

Shadow.

Marley.

All say “woof” and send their doggy breath in love…

Imagine you’re Chief Executive of a company.  A year after you’ve put a product on the market that your product development team said would sell like hotcakes and well, it isn’t even selling like cold cereal, you’d probably think about restructuring that department.

Well, just over a year ago, the president’s economic team promised us that  if we adopted their “stimulus,” we wouldn’t see unemployment climb above 8%–and it would have reached that peak oh, about nine months ago.  And now it’s stall at 9.7%, with jobs still being lost even though that economic team promised us new jobs would be created.

And now we’ve got the president following in Harry Reid’s footsteps and saying that his economic plan is working!?!?!  Doesn’t he realize that by saying it’s working, he’s admitting that, well, just over a year ago, his economic team got it wrong?  They predicted an unemployment rate for February  two full points below where it is right now.

(H/t for chart: Gateway Pundit.)  And heck, the unemployment rate is even higher than they predicted it would be without their “recovery plan.”

Methinks it’s time for a new economic team.  Don’t you?

From the Washington Examiner:

Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., who is under investigation by the House Ethics committee for sexually harassing a male staffer, has announced he will resign immediately rather than serve out the rest of his term.

H/t, K-Lo at The Corner on NRO:

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

Today marks the 240th anniversary of one of the pivotal events of American history, an event which would put one of the greatest patriots, for the right reasons, briefly on the side of the British, against those Bostonians agitating against British oppression.

And while those patriots were right to protest the quartering of British troops in the heart of Boston, the citizens went overboard with their taunts.  They began by taunting one sentry, standing guard outside the Custom House.  Later the crowd grew; Captain Thomas Preston, then in charge of the British garrison, dispatched several soldiers to relieve the sentry.  

Not content just to protest the soldiers, many patriots let their passions get the best of them and started pummeling the troops with snowballs and other objects.  In a panic, the troops fired on the crowd, an event which became known as the Boston Massacre.

This is not to say that the soldiers conducted themselves appropriately.  Some fired directly into the crowd instead of trying to use different means to respond.  And while Preston did not issue the order to fire, he was not able to control his men.  (Someone did yell, “Fire,” but the cry may have come from the patriots taunting the troops.)  Three men died that day (with two dying later of wounds suffered that night), with Crispus Attucks being the first to fall.  This man of mixed race (having both African and Native American Indian blood) is considered the first American to give his life in the American Revolution–even though he died five full years before Lexington and Concord.

When the soldiers were arrested, Preston, having trouble finding representation, asked  John Adams, the aforementioned great patriot, to defend him.  And reluctantly, that great man did.  He argued that the soldiers fired in self-defense, provoked by an unruly and increasingly violent mob.  Of the eight men indicted, only two were convicted, but on the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Even as Adams’ defense spared the lives (or at least ensured the freedom) of the soldiers and reminded Americans that the soldiers did not act out of malice, the incident still served to harden sentiment against the British. It reminded Americans that the British had stationed troops in the heart of the City of Boston, an unwarranted (or so it seemed to the patriots) assertion of royal authority. (more…)

A couple weeks ago, you know about the time the citizens of Massachusetts elected a Republican to fill a Senate seat Democrats had held since the twilight of the Truman Administration, I thought I had read somewhere that President Obama planned to pivot away from health care and focus on jobs and the economy.  And while he may have given a speech hither, thither and yon on the economy, his focus at least since last June has been on overhauling the nation’s health care system.

Of course, he’s taken the occasional break to focus on other (more) pressing issues, like the war in Afghanistan, but he really seems bound and determined not just to effect some reform in health care, but to enact some major changes to the system.  While it might be smart politcally, as David Freddoso put it in the Washington Examiner yesterday, for Obama to retreat from his ambitious overhaul and seek instead “a cosmetic victory, after which he should privately acknowledge defeat and run like hell from this issue as quickly as possible,” the Democrat ”has already shut himself off from this path by committing to the position that incremental health reforms would be ineffectual.”

As another pundit put it, he “has put all of his eggs in the healthcare basket.”

Remember, the president, like all of us, only has a limited number of hours in the day, so he can’t devote his attention to every issue.  But, in recent days, it seems it’s been all health care all the time.  He held all all-day health care “summit” with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders.  It not only took time to convene and conduct the summit, but it also took time to prepare for it.  Meanwhile he’s been having meetings in the White House, trying to strong arm wavering Democrats to support his overhaul.

Soon, he’ll be traveling to Philadelphia and St. Louis to stump for reform. (more…)