While posting here is never easy, at times yet another new Blogger problem crops
up or I forget about an older glitch because I’d been avoiding it for a spell or I just don’t have the patience to deal with the workarounds and troubleshooting, so it seems even harder and plans get kicked down the road again. That’s when I’ll put up the bottle of Devil Tylenol from Hell or its predecessor the Campbell’s soup can — which you may recall is an ancient Internet tradition begun by Mark Evanier — and when I share another batch of word-verification definitions. I’ve explained the phenomenon before in my first such post and more recently on the dedicated page of this blog that collects them all to date.
• ashible — [ash ih bull] adj. Made of such substance as will be reduced to powder by burning.
• Boxidect™ — [boks ih dekt] It’s ten — ten — ten boxes in one!
• caticeph — [kat ih sef] n. A being with a feline head.
I can see why so many folks in the American movie biz have both admiration and affection for The Artist as well as why it’s received almost universal acclaim from critics. While it does drag a bit in the middle, I found the film a delight on the whole — and I love the fact that the audience at my show clapped at the end.
Applause when a movie concludes, based on the unscientific sampling that is my own theatergoing experience, is much rarer today than when I was a kid. I’m not sure if that’s because people are more used to watching movies at home (in smaller parties and/or alone) or because there are fewer films that rouse an audience to applause than there used to be; either way, it’s one of the fun, communal aspects of seeing a flick on the big screen in a packed house. The Artist is definitely one to savor in such a setting, surrounded by other film buffs in near-darkness with the smell of popcorn in the air.
I won’t spoil anything here. You likely already know the gist of The Artist and, if you haven’t seen it yet, know whether you want to.
David Letterman has been goofing about Twitter for a while now. He acts more befuddled than he really is — mistaking the 17 feeds that the official Late Show Twitter account is following for the number of followers it has, for example, or literally typing in the words “hash tag”.
I was merely bemused with this ongoing bit, however, with one exception — until the moment frozen in the above screencap struck me.
I stated at the end of yesterday’s post that any write-up of this year’s Golden Globes telecast would be short and scattershot. Here’s me trying to make good on that claim. For a more in-depth reflection on many of the Globes’ quirks, see my write-up from last year.
Overall, Ricky Gervais as host was once again fine if hardly stellar. Most of his
barbs didn’t have the bite that I think he wanted them to, as he — and NBC, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — seemed to promote his return this year as a
go-for-broke train wreck waiting to happen, which is quite a silly thing. Gervais was, y’know, invited back. Of course he comes with a certain amount of edginess, but he’s a professional and there must have been negotiations and he knows how far he can push it. This isn’t an accidentally “tweeted” nude photo; it’s three hours of prime-time network programming on a Sunday night. We can all feign anticipated shock only so far.
Ricky Gervais is hosting the Golden Globes ceremony again after all.
Last year there was foofaraw from some — including The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the Globes and was one of Gervais’ targets — about his barbed material being distastefully sharp. Many of the world’s most prominent humorists rose up to defend him. I was in the minority position, expressed in my writeup of last year’s telecast, of not minding the acerbity of the jokes but feeling a lack in their overall quality and even quantity; Gervais didn’t seem as sharp to me as usual (in terms of keenness of delivery, not pointedness of content) and he was AWOL for long stretches.
