BilmBlog500

Which sign of the apocalypse is it when the 2nd best newspaper in New York City might now be The Onion? Many years ago I used to buy multiple newspapers every Friday to devour movie reviews and see what was going on in the weekend, and I'd cart around hundreds of pages of newsprint quite happily.  In the early years of JABberwocky I cut back a bit on how often I'd buy papers but would still decamp to the Sunnyside branch of the Queens library and read my Newsday, Post and Daily News.  Now I get my NY Times home delivered, and get the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post sent to my Kindle , and whatever's left in the NY tabloids I just don't much care about any more.  There's less and less news in any of them.  The San Francisco Chronicle wasn't much even several years ago when Worldcon was held in San Jose , and at this point it's probably so devoid of content that I don't know if it would be missed should Hearst kill it.   The long and short

Well, for starters, brown could deliver packages to my apartment when I'm sitting in it. When I was working at Scott Meredith a long long time ago, I used to think UPS was the most wonderful thing in the world.  Vinnie the driver would cheerfully come by day in and day out bearing packages and it seemed to be the model of efficiency. Working out of my home office, I have generally come to loathe and detest UPS. Today I was expecting a new toner cartridge for my photocopier.  UPS says they couldn't deliver it at 3:36 PM because nobody was around.  The only thing is, I was sitting at my desk at 3:36 PM.  So why don't I have my package?  I don't even have an InfoNotice that should have been lurking in the lobby. And this is not the first time this has happened.  Phantom delivery attempts are a frequent occurence.  This is the second package this year with a phantom delivery attempt.  In December, UPS managed to deliver my new kitchen faucet to somebody else somewhere else

Midnight Eastern.  This was a very good Oscar telecast.  Not perfect.  Curtain over screen doesn't want to open, the Heath Ledger and Memoriam things.  But awfully danged good.  3:30 from beginning to the end of the credit roll, which is not bad at all for an Oscar telecast.  They did it tight while recognizing that the telecast isn't long and boring because of the acceptance speeches which the producers have no control over and which thus must be kept to 30 seconds max but rather because of the things they do have control over.  So Jerry Lewis didn't have the longest Hersholt presentation, perhaps sometimes they've actually gone on too long.  The acting awards were presented in a new and different way that lasted no much longer than if they had given that same time to the usual 30 second film clip, but this seemed much nicer and more affecting, in part because actors many of them don't lack for ego and this allowed them all to have it indulged for a few seconds.  W

Having now seen The Class and Frozen River, I've seen pretty much an Oscar nommed movie I'm intending to see and blogged accordingly.  Best Picture is less than a day away.  It's time to talk some about the nominations and go on record before the envelopes are opened. I've seen "only" 85ish movies that opened in 2008, but that does include virtually every feature-length film with an Oscar nomination, except I think a total of 4 noms for these 4 films: The Duchess; Hellboy 2; Happy-go-Lucky; and The Visitor.  I walked out on Kung Fu Panda.  Some films I may have been more awake for than others.  Some of the films I might have skipped if not for the Variety Screening Series.  I'm pretty certain I'd have skipped The Wrestler, and I may have caught The Reader only reluctantly after the nominations were announced.  I'm so glad Melissa Leo got a Best Actress nom for Frozen River, giving me an excuse to see a movie I'd missed, instead of Kristen Scott

Frozen River.  Seen Saturday afternoon February 14, 2009 at the Quad Cinema, Aud. #2.  2.5 slithy toads. This was a movie which opened in August of last year to some solid reviews, especially for the lead performance by Melissa Leo, an actress mostly known for TV work but who ended up getting an Oscar nomination and just today winning the Spirit Award for her role here.  I was kind of interested, but August was a very very busy month and the movie wasn't at the top of my to-do list.  By the time I finally had time to actually see it, the movie was pretty much gone.  I was glad then that the movie did pick up 2 Oscar noms for screenplay and best actress, which led to a select re-release of the film, which gave me a second chance to see it.   Since I'm on a theatre history kick, some background on the Quad Cinema , which opened way back in 1972 and was the first 4-screen theatre in NYC.  4 very small screens, 100-150 seats, with aisle down the center and no more than half a dozen

The Class, seen Saturday February 14 2009 at the City Cinemas Angelika 6, Theatre #1.  1.5 slithy toads. Beware of French Films!   Every once in a while there's a genuinely good one, and in fact this director Lauren Cantet even made one of them several years back.  It was called Human Resources .  It played at the New Directors New Films festival in NYC nine years ago, and I seem to recall its actual theatrical release was in the dead of night -- OK, forget the "I seem to recall,"  I can check in my Quicken file that goes back to 2000 that I saw this at the Loews State, so yes...  it's one of those new ideas that everyone recreates every once in a while where you take a bunch of art films that haven't found a distributor and do an entire release program of a bunch of them together in hopes that you can get a brand that will keep people coming back for more.  This was some program in 2000 that rented out space in quiet little Loews theatres across the country, the

Maybe I'd be more sympathetic if this wasn't the 4th iteration of this problem, but now that we fnd out Hildy Solis' husband has tax problems of his own, I don't want her in Obama's cabinet, either.  I'm just getting really really bored with all of these people who don't know how to pay their taxes.  Did we hear that Joe the Plumber might have had a tax lien, too?  So maybe Hildy Solis' husband deserves a pass, too.  But standards, people, standards!  I spend a lot of time running my business and keeping track of the books and keeping on top of my obligations to my clients and to my employees, and I just don't have much patience for all of these excuses.