BilmBlog500

The Morning After... If you’ve watched Tootsie, the very long acceptance speech from Renée Zellweger ultimately started to remind me of Michael Dorsey’s when he wants to reveal the truth about his identity and knows where he’s going but is very lost in getting there.  As Renée is the co-star of Jerry Maguire, which is one of my all-time favorite movies, and gave a performance in Judy that shows her in utter command at very moment of a character who is clearly Judy in every moment and maybe Judy Garland in very few of them, and as she has had a career with quite a few bounces to it, some of them off the table and rolling around on the floor for a few years, I am deeply happy for her win.  And as someone who was raving up every acting award, I sure do wish her speech had been less improvisational than Michael Dorsey’s. Joaquin Phoenix’s speech also rambled.  I’m not entirely sure what he was saying though I heard every word of it, and am intrigued the morning after to disco...

I've said this a lot, but it bears repeating: When I was a teenager, the whole chain of events that ultimately led to me becoming JABbermaster started out when I was staying at the Boskone hotel, by chance and serendipity and coincidence.  So I'm happy that I've been able to go to Boskone for near on each of the past fifteen years now, participate on the program, and pay it forward.  And even happier that I have several clients as a direct result of my attendance at Boskone. And a quick thank you to the people on the Program Committee for Boskone.  The final schedule email they sent is 100% ready just to paste as is.  It doesn't have people's email addresses hiding in it or other things needing to be edited out.  So that's pasted below, exactly as I got it.   I hope I'll get to see some of you, and the Kaffeeklatsch I have is always a great opportunity for one-on-one in an intimate setting.  As always, I have a great bunch of co-panelists.  One of...

Here's a letter I sent to several reporters at the Washington Post about the, um, "struggles" of the Trump administration to tell the truth.  Curious when or if anyone will respond... Dear Messrs. Rucker, Hudson, Harris and Dawsey: I am writing about a line from an article of yours from last Tuesday’s paper which i find deeply troubling, which is  "The result is a credibility crisis for an administration that has long struggled to communicate factual information to the public.” Your colleague Margaret Sullivan, whom I am cc’ing, writes frequently about the media’s need to do a better job covering the Trump administration, and this sentence is a poster child for falling short of the mark. I understand the constraints journalists operate under.  I know, as an example, that there are strong legal reasons to use the words “alleged killer” prior to the plea or guilty verdict.  Even when it’s obvious. But I do not believe that the circumlocution you used in last Tuesday’s ...

12:05 AM - And we'll call this a wrap for the Live Blog.  I may have more to say about some of my favorite movies of 2018, but for the Oscars, it's a night.  I know I've done better jobs on the live blog than this year, but since they eliminated around a half hour of Stuff, they eliminated a lot of the down time when I could pay less attention to what was on the screen, and more to my typing.  I'll take that trade-off any day. 12:03 AM -- Best Actress.  Prior to going for a repeat viewing of The Wife a couple of weeks ago, I don't believe I've ever gone back twice to a movie just to see a brilliant performance by an actress.  I am deeply disappointed for Glenn Close.  I might have a hard time separating out Olivia Colman's performance from my overall dislike for the movie she was in.  But even allowing for that, I can't see Colman's performance as better than the third or fourth best in the category, because Melissa McCarthy is a knockout in Can You ...

Most of the films I liked most didn't get anywhere near a nomination for Best Picture.  There is 0% overlap between the Academy and my Ten Best list , and if I get around to posting a "worth mentioning" there might be three from that list.  But there are lots of things to be praised in the selections. And just to note, I signed up around Thanksgiving for this social media site called Letterboxd where I am listing every movie I see, and expect to review a good chunk of them. Black Panther was one of the best superhero movies in years, but that's a deeply degraded standard since most of them aren't very good at all.  But Black Panther is the work of a major filmmaker, who made a superhero movie steeped in influences from major works in the cinematic cannon rather than other superhero movies.  Sure! BlacKkKlansman is one of Spike Lee's best movies, it boasts great performances, it's timely. Sure! Bohemian Rhapsody isn't a good movie, but the last twenty ...

Excited to be heading up to Boston on President's Day weekend for Boskone 56.  It's forty years this day that I was staying by coincidence at the Boskone hotel, got free samples of the recently launched Omni magazine as a result, and started on the road to reading sf/fantasy that led to everything else.   Starting bright and early with my first panel at 4pm on 15 February, I've got a great schedule, with lots of great co-panelists.  I'll also be doing a demo of the Mistborn: House War board game, which Crafty Games was gracious enough to donate to the convention's games library, and doing a Kaffeeklatsch with Barry Goldblatt, which is a great chance to be part of a very small group getting advice from two really good agents.   I hope I'll get to see some of you. In part because I've attended Boskone with fair regularity the past dozen years, I have a lot of clients who are in the Boston area.  Dan Moren, Auston Habershaw, Greg Katsoulis, Suzanne Palmer, Kenn...

My second WorldCon in San Jose, and it's starting next week. Here are some things I remember from ConJose in 2002: John Hemry/Jack Campbell and I went looking for lunch, and we walked and walked and walked on a kind of hot day, and we never exactly found the restaurant.  John still holds this against me.  And I kind of can't blame him.  But, like -- there was barely MapQuest in 2002, let alone the wonder of Google Maps. Tobias Buckell isn't a client of mine any longer, but I had the honor of representing him at the start of his career, and we had a pretty long chat at the Starbucks in downtown, around the corner from the Waldenbooks now long since gone, about the wonderful novel that became Crystal Rain.  The Starbucks is still there, and I'll think fond thoughts of Toby and Crystal Rain every time I pass by. It was an adventure getting to the party floors at the Fairmont, finding the secret stairs to walk up and up and up because the elevator service wasn't up to i...