Ten Quick Thoughts on...The King's Speech

1) The first two times I tried to watch The King's Speech, the story of King George VI and his struggle with his speech impediment, I fell asleep. I thought it was because I was tipsy both times or I turned it on too late. The third time, I made it through and I realized that the two times I conked out during the film were not due to alcohol consumption or need for shut-eye. No. It was because the film is kind of boring.

2) Colin Firth is a darn fine actor, and he does a very good job in the movie. This being said, I don't see why people were in such a rush to crown him with Oscar for this performance. I went into it expecting to be blown away by his work, and really it was a little underwhelming. I am now convinced that he was given the Oscar for portraying a guy with a speech impediment (the Academy loves characters with physical handicaps) or as a make-up call for not rewarding his incredible performance as a gay college professor struggling to recover from the loss of his partner in A Single Man. Maybe they should have given Firth the Oscar last year, and Jeff Bridges the Oscar for True Grit this year.

Ten Quick Thoughts on...127 Hours

1) Danny Boyle is a very talented director. If he never makes another great film he has earned that distinction for Trainspotting alone. However, sometimes he can get in his own way as well. I'm talking about stuff like the opening split screens and the countless shots of the water being drained away or the mechanisms inside the camera slowly moving when Aron Ralston pushes record. It's all very cool and gets critics to write adjectives like "kinetic" or "inventive" in their reviews, but as far as serving the story, it can often be just plain distracting.

Random Thoughts about the 2011 Oscars

Usually, if I were to write about the Oscars, it wouldn't be in the form of a wrap-up. Instead, I would write something predicting all the winners. When I was proven to be correct, I would return the next day to gloat over my superiority in the area of trivial knowledge. If I were proven to be wrong, I would never mention the predictions again, promptly pretending that they never existed (I would probably remove the post for good measure because I am very insecure). Alas, I can not publish these sorts of predictions anymore. You see, we have a party for the Oscars every year, and this party includes a ballot contest wherein the person who gets the most correct wins a wonderful prize. Since my friends now know about this blog, if I were to print my thoughts, dishonest scalawags could invade the blog for clues and the contest would therefore be compromised (plus, you would have a lot of people dumb enough to vote for the True Grit Girl over the shoe-in of the year, Melissa Leo). This, by the way, is the circuitous route to saying that a commenter (WE HAD A COMMENTER!!! PLEASE KEEP READING AND COMMENTING!!! AND INVITE FRIENDS!!!) asked us what our thoughts were on the Oscars. Well...here they are in a completely random yet incredibly voluminous manner.

1) It is nice that a lot of people have seen fit to get in Kirk Douglas's corner. They say that he was charming. They say that he was witty. They say that he was a good sport. But let's be honest: Dude had no business being on that stage. His appearance was trainwreck television of the highest order. It couldn't get more uncomfortable if you asked Mel Gibson to cut the ribbon at the groundbreaking for a new Holocaust museum. By saying this, I in no way disparage Douglas, who suffered a debilitating stroke and is 94 years old for God's sake. But the douchebag producers who put him in that position probably should have been tarred and feathered in the middle of Sunset Boulevard.