Practice
I put together a quick little short with footage I shot at my son's little league practice.
This wasn't shot with any intention of doing something with it. I make a habit of bringing my camera to every event I go to so I can practice shooting. A few days after the practice I dumped the footage into Premiere because I now had CS5.5 and wanted to see what it could do. The first thing that jumped out at me was that it could use the DSLR footage right out of the box. Previously I had to convert all of my footage with Cineon to get something Premiere CS4 could handle. Even then it was a bit dicey. 5.5 was not put off by my footage at all. It ran smooth as silk. Awesome. It saved a lot of time by not having to convert the footage and it ran so smoothly the edit took no time at all. Love it. And CS6 is supposed to be even better. I can't wait to check that out.
Time Management
How do you attempt to become a professional writer while still earning a living? That's one of the eternal questions of the aspiring writer. And one I struggle with daily.
For me, the answer is simple. I don't sleep much. It's not a satisfying answer, nor is it the full one. But that's what it boils down to for me.
The novelist Dan Wells put it extremely well. It's a value decision. Do you want to be an author? Then you have to choose to give up things to carve out the time to write. As it turns out, I value becoming a filmmaker more than playing video games, watching much TV and getting a full night's sleep. My time is carved up into my my day job, my family and writing. There's not much else. It sounds sad when I describe it that way but that's not how it feels.
This website started the ball rolling years ago. I added a news section to talk about movies in production. It became a bit of an obsession after a while. Eventually it sank into my rather thick skull that the process of making movies was endlessly fascinating to me. That was the seed that grew into where I am now. Running the site kept putting me in contact with others obsessed with film. Some of them wrote scripts, which struck me as something that could be fun, if only I knew something about writing them.
And then I met a guy who could put actual scripts into my hands. I started reading a lot of them. It would still be a few years before I'd attempt to write one myself. When I finally tried, it was a disaster. It never got past a very shaky outline. Another year passed before I tried again. By then I had read William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade, a wonderful book that taught me the first bits about how to actually write a script. I had the idea to adapt a short story as a practice run, letting me try out writing in this format without having to come up with a story of my own. It worked well as an instructional process, not so well as actual screenwriting.
More time passed before an original idea hit me that I had to put down on paper. It came out of nowhere as two thoughts collided and just like that a story popped into my head. I got out of bed and wrote 8 pages that moment. The rest of the script took me another year. As time has passed, the ideas have come more readily and my writing has accelerated as well. Discovering the power of a rewrite burst the creative dam.
As that learning process unfolded, I started making value choices. Slowly a lot of things fell out of my life, until the present day when I live a pretty stripped down life. Yes, it would be nice to have some variety back. But that has to wait. The need to create is powerful and consuming. I can't give it up for something as trivial as a video game or watching another sitcom. Eventually, my creations should start paying me back, get me out of the cursed day job, and thus let me make different value choices. But it always comes down to those choices.
Do you aspire to something greater? Then you have to figure out just how much you value that and plan accordingly. I'd rather be a filmmaker than get a full night's sleep. And that's why I'm putting this thought down after 4 AM. Friends often see my creations and make the snide comment that I have too much free time on my hands. The truth is, I don't have enough.
Procrastination
There are days when I have a laser fine focus on what I need to do and take down tasks with extreme prejudice. And then there are days like this when I seem to have the attention span of a crack addicted housefly.
I did eventually lay down three pages of my new script. The goal had been ten. Here's what happened instead.
A guy I ran into the previous day recommended I check out a band called Volbeat. I did. I liked their stuff. I bought an album.
In so doing I saw that Nancy Sinatra's album Boots was on sale for $5 at Amazon. I didn't buy it. But it did make me think of a weird TV ad for the Virginia based record stores Plan 9 Music. That ad first introduced me to the song These Boots Are Made For Walkin.' So I listened to that a bunch of times. No amount of searching turned up video of that ad though.
Not entirely happy with the way that TweetDeck worked, I went on a search for a good desktop Twitter client. I didn't find one I liked. So I'm still using the old Adobe Air version.
I saw a tweet from Ryan Johnson, the writer/director of Brick, which I adore and The Brothers Bloom, which I merely like quite a bit. The tweet reminded me of the trailer for his next movie, Looper, which looks awesome. I watched that trailer several times. The music was pretty cool, so I tried to find out who made it. Turned out to be this guy.
Then I saw this video about Adobe's Production Premium CS6 and did some serious drooling.
Finally, there was this video. Which pretty much summed up the evening.
The key part of all this is that in spite of this pitiful display, I still managed to get some actual writing done. There was a day when the procrastination would have just flat out thumped my ass and nothing productive would happen. It reminds me of a pitcher who goes and just doesn't have his best stuff. But he fights on and manages to at least not get blown out of the water so the team still has a shot at winning.
And on that note, I'll suggest that the stuff I did write tonight was awesome.
Script Frenzy
The writing grinder that is NaNoWriMo is one that I enjoyed enough to tackle its lesser known sister, Script Frenzy. It's the same basic idea. Instead of writing a 50,000 page novel in 30 days you attempt to write a 100 page script in 30 days. Being a screenwriter, this was more than a little appealing. Last year I considered doing it but being part way into a script at that point, it seemed like the wrong time. This year I was prepped, lubed up and ready to dive in.
The first thing required is a story idea. Not a problem. Ideas are cheap and easy to come by. Having great ideas is not the mark of a great writer. Executing on those ideas is. So I decided to take an idea that I had tried on three different occasions to turn into a script. None of them had made it past thirty pages. Pretty poor execution. I began to kick around ways to finally get the job done. Broke down previous failures. Game planned the approach this time around.
And then I threw the whole thing out. Maybe I'll take another stab at it some day. It's a good idea, I'm just not ready for it.
Something else drifted in from the ether. Well that's not true. I sat through a Die Hard movie marathon. What followed was a vivid and bizarre dream in which I found myself paired up with Bruce Willis as we stumbled through a series of misadventures. The next morning that dream loomed large in my mind. The details quickly faded, leaving me with just images and the final moment before waking up. In it, Bruce and I trudged through a snow covered field. We were bruised and bloodied, clothes tattered. And he looked at me and said, "I'm actually just a security guard."
For the next couple weeks I brainstormed based on those fragments of dreams. I watched a lot of action movies, mostly from the 80s. I watched East Bound and Down. Listened to my vast collection of podcasts, especially Writing Excuses and Creative Screenwriting. The goal was to turn my brain into a particle collider, a mental equivalent to CERN's LHC. I fed material in as fast as possible and waited for random ideas to collide and come up with something new. When April 1st rolled around, I had a pretty good mental outline.
As I write this, the script is at 68 pages. It has no title yet. And I don't know what the ending will be. That's a concern as I usually write toward a specific ending. But I have that snow covered field in mind. Maybe that's the ending.
What I've come to love about NaNoWriMo and ScriptFrenzy is that it provides pressure. Without pressure, a deadline of some sort, it's easy to put the work aside. The feeling that you can take a day off is always there. Having a goal to reach by a certain date means not having an excuse not to write. Most writers seem to excel at finding reasons not to write. Writing every day is anathema. But it shouldn't be. Watching a project grow steadily under daily attention is a huge source of satisfaction. And most important, the deadline forces you to finish. No endless tinkering. No constant rewrites of page one or chapter one. Just get in and plow straight forward to the end.
Rewriting is, for me at least, the most satisfying part of writing. The first draft is just to establish the vague idea of the script. Every draft after that fixes a problem, fills a hole, deepens a character, strengthens theme or cranks up tension or comedy. That's the real fun. But you can't have that fun without a finished first draft. So, what I'm saying is that I'd like NaNo and ScriptFrenzy to happen more often. At least until I get paid to do this, which provides a different sort of deadline.
That felt like a rambling speech but I'm not going to save it and come back later to refine it. This blog needs to update more often. To get there, I will accept some sloppiness. Plus, I'm curious what everyone thinks I sound like when I'm writing at 4 AM.
Applicating
I just finished applying for the Nicholl Fellowship. Yay.
This was my most recently completed script and easily my favorite so far. Will it be good enough for the Academy? Who knows. I'm not going to worry about it. The point was that it was the first script that gave me a sense of pride. It was the one where it felt like I had a grip on my craft and wasn't just throwing things randomly at the screen. It's the first one that provoked a strong emotional response from me.
The Nicholl Fellowship is a great way to get a boost in the screenwriting trade, particularly if you don't live in or near LA, which I don't. But from this point on, I'm not going to think much about the application. If it goes somewhere, great. If not, I'm still continuing to plow forward. Mostly I just don't want to start obsessing about it and turning myself into a bundle of nerves. The work is done, the application is now out of my hands. I'm going to turn my attention to another script which I might submit as well. If I can manage a reasonably satisfying polish on it in the next couple weeks I'll send that one in as well.
April will be dedicated to Script Frenzy. It's NaNoWriMo for the screenwriting population. Oddly, this will be my first time attempting it. After that it's back to the novel and pre-production on my first short film.
Gluten Free
I have celiac. It was diagnosed when I was three years old because by a stroke of luck, my parents had found a general practitioner who was really on top of things and knew about this virtually unknown condition. I had been very sick, tons of vomiting and diarrhea and my growth had stopped almost completely. The doctor figured it out, prescribing a gluten free diet. It worked and my health improved dramatically.
My short hand for this growing up was no wheat, rye or barley. I'll give you a moment to digest that (sorry). Yeah, eating kind of sucks when you cut those items out. No bread, no cake, no cookies, no pizza. And no beer. That one has never bothered me much since I don't much care for the stuff, but it bothers people to hear it.
My school experience suffered for it. I ate sandwiches on rice cakes, substituting for bread. Kids, and adults believe it or not, make fun of you for that. I ate nothing at birthday parties most of the time. And the cherished pizza on Friday in the cafeteria? Don't get me started.
Slowly we discovered substitutes and reasonable facsimiles of cakes and cookies started to appear in my diet. The consistency of bread remained brick-like unfortunately. I continued to eat the rice cakes for sandwiches and my hot dogs and burgers went naked.
Somewhere in the 1990s I noticed an increase in gluten free products. Health food stores had been for years the only source of the stuff. This generally meant getting a heavy dose of eco-buzzwords and vegan propaganda along with my box of rice flour. Ugh. Dude, I don't care about your ideology. I just want to eat.
But suddenly grocery stores were starting to carry gluten free products. I was delighted. My diet started to improve. I cooked a lot, experimenting to find the best ways to imitate the things I missed most. A dim part of my brain wondered idly what caused the bump in product.
The answer gobsmacked me. There were people in the world who ate gluten free because they felt it was healthier. This was not a concept my brain could wrap around. What would possess someone to put aside perfectly good bread for the gluten free alternative that lacked all the qualities that made bread good in the first place? I met a couple who had adopted this practice and it was a bizarro world moment. They were convinced that gluten, which is what gives bread its consistency, was a poisonous ingredient, in spite of our entire civilization having been built on the stuff. It was making them sick they thought. It was also clear from talking to them that they didn't really understand the subject. They spent a lot of time extolling the virtues of spelt pasta as a gluten free alternative. Pitiful.
Now there are people like me who can't process gluten. It causes the walls of the intestine to break down, along with a host of other problems. Eating gluten tends to make us lethargic, suffer from severe cramps and constant diarrhea. Ignored long enough it tends to touch off cancer, which can lead to death. Not fun. If this is what you face, you put down the gluten and eat the other stuff, lame as it may be. I'm not bitter about this. It's the lot I drew in life and there's nothing to do about it but cope and move on. But man does it annoy me to find people who don't need to eat this way choosing this path.
But I have largely chosen to be annoyed in silence. These folks may be dimmer than a bag of broken light bulbs but their insistence on eating less satisfying food for some imagined health benefit provides me a benefit. It magnifies the percentage of the population that needs to eat gluten free from its rather anemic 1% to something large enough to interest large companies. Those companies smell a market and start churning out product to meet it. I can now buy Gluten Free Bisquick. Gone are the days when I had to endure long speeches from hippies to buy the sort of cake mix that wouldn't have me doubled over in pain. Now I can go into virtually any grocery store and buy Bisquick. That's amazing.
So let me thank you, unnecessarily eating gluten free person. I think you're an idiot, or at least of questionable reasoning ability, but you've helped me to eat better. My intestines thank you. Please continue to spread your gospel. I won't stop you. But I will probably mock you in private.
84th Annual Oscars Predictions
I'm a big fan of the Oscars. I know it's cool to dump on the Academy Awards and complain about everything they do wrong. But for me, that's a lot of their charm. As movie fans, there is little we like more than debating and arguing about movies. And so the Academy's imperfect record makes for good debate. As for the ceremony itself, the goofier and more weird, the better. Again, the quirks and flaws add to their charm. We have an extra debate every year about how to fix the Oscars. To my eye, the better run the show, the less interesting it is to watch.
So lets get right to the picks.
Best Picture
Who Will Win: The Artist
Who Should Win: Hugo
There are nine nominees but realistically this is a three horse race between The Artist, The Descendants and Hugo. I saw The Artist back in October at a film festival and enjoyed it but wondered how well a modern silent black & white movie would play to general audiences. I still don't think we have an answer to that but it clearly plays well to purple who hand out awards. I don't expect the Oscars to be any different.
Lead Actor
Who Will/Should Win: Jean Dujardin
This one seems to come down Jean Dujardin and George Clooney. Clooney is probably about as well liked guy as there is in Hollywood, which makes it feel like folks are just looking for an excuse to give him an award. But that won't be enough to hold off Dujardin. His showy performance is the linchpin for a silent film that likely goes down in flames without him. Dujardin doesn't merely succeed, he shines in the role.
Lead Actress
Who Will/Should Win: Viola Davis - The Help
This is a tough deep category this year. When Tilda Swinton's amazing performance in We Need to Talk About Kevin can be left out, the rest of the field is formidable. I can easily see Michelle Williams, Meryl Streep or Viola Davis walking away with it. Normally I'd favor the young pretty starlet, in this case Williams playing Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn, because that's the tendency of the Academy voters, but the winds don't seem to be blowing that way this year. Streep has a lot of heat this year, playing British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, but the 17 time nominee has to overcome a lack of love for the movie The Iron Lady. Davis, on the other hand is in the crowd pleasing film The Help, and serves as its emotional core.
Supporting Actor
Who Will/Should Win: Christopher Plummer -Beginners
There are plenty of excellent performances in this category but the heavy favorite is Christopher Plummer for Beginners. His biggest competitor was the guy who wasn't even nominated, Albert Brooks in Drive.
Supporting Actress
Who Will/Should Win: Octavia Spencer - The Help
This is another category with a strong favorite. Octavia Spencer was a force of nature in The Help and won't be easily overlooked.
Animated Feature Film
Who Will/Should Win: Rango
The biggest surprise here is the lack of an entry from Pixar. Cars 2 wasn't a hit with critics but Pixar laughs all the way to the bank on that one. It will pay for the next few movies all by itself in merchandising. As for the actual nominees, this is a strange mix. Puss In Boots and Kung Fu Panda 2 are both fine films but not the sort that are remembered for the ages. A Cat In Paris and Chico & Rita are almost entirely unknown to American audiences at this point. We just don't know anything about them. That pretty much leaves Rango. Which is just fine with me since I declared it the favorite for the award when it first came out. It's a fun weird movie with something to say.
Art Direction
Who Will/Should Win: Hugo
I was tempted to pick The Artist for the simple reason that it seems to have a hell of a head of steam going. But I went with Hugo for the rather astounding attention to detail of the movie, not just in this area, but pretty much every element. If you learn anything about the making of this movie, it's just about impossible not to be in awe of the work done in it. I'm going with my heart a bit here, which is usually where I get pasted in picking, but it feels right.
Cinematography
Who Will/Should Win: Hugo
This category is a brute to predict. There is some exemplary work in all of these films. I could make a strong case for the photography of any of them. But I'm going to go with Hugo. For one thing it looks gorgeous. For another the camera moves in fascinating ways that will make you scratch your head in confusion if you stop to think about how they must have been shot. And finally, it uses stereo imaging and makes it work well. I am not a fan of the 3D craze and this is probably the first movie I've seen in 3D where I felt like it was adding something to the film and not just being a gimmick.
Costume Design
And let's make it three in a row for Hugo because it just rocks all these elements.
Director
Who Should Win: Martin Scorsese - Hugo
Who Will Win: Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
Hugo is a movie that grows on me the more I think about it and the more I learn about how it was made. It just seems like this bottomless well of fascinating choices and information. I really love what Scorsese did by pulling together all these craftspeople to build the delightful world of Hugo. Scorsese's deep love of film history and his campaigning for film preservation come together here in a way that just tickles me to no end. So he is my unequivocable choice for this award. He won't get it. Michel Hazanavicius made something that seems to have tickled Hollywood just a little bit more. It's a fine film and he has my respect for it. I hope he enjoys the win. He just wouldn't be my choice.
Documentary Feature
Who Will Win: Pina
I haven't seen any of these so I have no direct opinion of them. I'll be rooting for Danfung Dennis and Hell And Back Again because he shot it on a Canon 5D and that's pretty cool. But I'm guessing Pina will win for the very simple reason that it's the only one I've heard people talking about. That must mean something.
Documentary Short
I'm sorry to say I haven't seen any of these either. Generally, this category goes to the most "important" topic so I'm going to guess the winner will be Saving Face because scarring women with acid is just wrong.
Editing
Who Should Win: Moneyball
Who Will Win: The Artist
If you ask me which movie has the best editing I'll answer Moneyball without hesitation. It was a tough task to pull that movie together and it was pulled off with style and grace. But it won't win. More likely it goes to The Artist or Hugo. I'm giving the edge to The Artist simply because I'm calling it for Best Picture as well. But don't be surprised if legendary editor Thelma Schoonmaker takes the prize.
Foreign Language Film
I'm picking A Separation because I hear people talking about it a lot and speaking very highly of it. But I haven't seen it or any of the competitors so it's purely a guess.
Makeup
Old age makeup is tough to get right and by all accounts The Iron Lady accomplishes the job effectively. But I suspect the award goes to Harry Potter 8 for being flashier and because it needs to win something.
Original Score
John Williams is nominated twice here, for Warhorse and The Adventures of Tintin, so he'll probably cancel himself out. Not that it matters because the easy choice here is The Artist. It's a silent film. There's no dialog to drive the story, leaving the score to do all that work. And since it works well, that inescapable score stands out much more than any other film.
Original Song
Man or Muppet from The Muppets. Duh.
Short Film - Animated
I've seen only one of these, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. And based on that diverse knowledge, I'll pick it to win.
Short Film - Live Action
Who Should Win: Time Freak
Who Will Win: Raju
For the first time ever, I've seen all of these before the ceremony. And instead of randomly picking one, I actually have to think about this. My favorite is Time Freak, mostly because it made me laugh the most. Pentecost is funny too but slight. Actually, all but one of these are comedies. Raju is serious and has a social conscience, making it a serious contender. The Shore is sweetly funny and has lovely acting, but it feels lacking in weight to me. Tuba Atlantic is a nice mix of laughs and sadness which could make it the best crowd pleaser. I'm going to go with Raju though. It has an emotional weight the other four can't match and wrestles with some tough moral quandaries.
Sound Editing
Who Should Win: Drive
Who Will Win: Hugo
At this point in my predictions, it's starting to feel like Hugo will run wild through the technical awards. I'm pulling for Drive just so it can win something though.
Sound Mixing
Who Should Win: Moneyball
Who Will Win: Hugo
I really loved the work in Moneyball but as I said, Hugo is on a rampage.
Visual Effects
Who Should Win: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Who Will Win: Hugo
I'm going out on a limb on this one thanks to this guy. My gut is loudly screaming that he's wrong and Rise will get its richly deserved win. But man do I want to be on the right side of an upset win, so here's the stab at that.
Adapted Screenplay
Who Should Win: Moneyball
Who Will Win: The Descendants
In case you haven't noticed by now, I loved the hell out of Moneyball. Considering that it took a book about sabremetrics, an area of baseball even a dedicated fan like myself can't get interested in, and made it into a great movie, that's some genius work right there. But every time I pick what I think is the best script, I get it wrong. So let's go with The Descendants. It's a fine film and I'm a big fan of Alexander Payne. I suspect a lot of Academy voters feel the same way.
Original Screenplay
Who Will Win: The Artist
Who Should Win: Midnight in Paris
The Artist is great work, particularly when hampered by the lack of dialogue, and it deserves a lot of praise. It will win. But I would personally go with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris which is utterly charming and smart as hell. And I'm not even much of an Allen fan, so that's high praise. The dark horse is Bridesmaids which represented a bit of a tidal shift in Hollywood regarding how it thinks women should be treated as material and served as an audience. But Hollywood only tends to get that sort of thing a few years down the road, so it's probably way too soon for an award this year.
Live Bullets
I've been a fan of cinematographer Shane Hurlbut's work for some time now. And his decision to shoot the movie Act of Valor primarily with Canon 5Ds had me more than a little interested to see that movie. I shoot with that camera's little brother, so the notion that a stills camera could be used for this level of action movie was pretty exciting.
While watching the Super Bowl tonight I saw the ad for the movie and one shot in particular caught my eye. It was overhead shot of boats full of Navy SEALs firing on something. What caught my eye was the look of the gunfire, which looked very cool but also unlike other movies. Now I know why. Check out this little featurette where they talk about shooting scenes with live ammo. Let me say that again. Those aren't blanks or digitally inserted tracer rounds. Those are real bullets being fired.
These people are crazy. And I totally support such craziness in the service of making a movie.
Happy New Year
That's it. I just wanted to say it. I completely missed the changing of the year when it happened.
But I'm still writing the novel. 67,275 words and still going.
My Shorts
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- @miss_gmc Nah. It was a quick exercise to work on lighting techniques. Had to resort to cookie bribery to get some cooperation.
(about 2 days ago) - @miss_gmc Sent 'em to bed. Probably the only actors I'll ever be able to do that to.
(about 2 days ago) - @miss_gmc Children. Worse yet, they're mine.
(about 2 days ago) - C'mon @thenyrangers let's make it 2-0. #letsgorangers
(about 2 days ago) - You know that saying about never working with children or animals? Totally true. #pullinghairout
(about 2 days ago) - RT @aholdenj: Line from Mindy Kalin pilot: "I want to be like in Eat Pray Love. No wait. I'd have to pray. Forget it." Brilliant.
(about 2 days ago) - Woke up from a nap in a panic because I was late for an event that is actually a week away. Now I need another nap to recover. And a drink.
(about 2 days ago) - There was once a baseball player by the name of Chicken Wolf. This makes me unreasonably happy. http://t.co/kk6cBVj0
(about 3 days ago) - RT @therealjoebob: Drive-In Theater and MonsterVision will be digitized and cleaned up and rereleased, thanks to crack L.A. editor by way of Phoenix @abbytoir
(about 4 days ago) - Just landed my first paid job as a photographer. I get to call myself a professional. Probably need to start acting like one too. Dammit.
(about 4 days ago)
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84th Oscars Recap
The Artist and Hugo tied for the most wins but most people will give the edge to The Artist because it won Best Picture. The biggest losers were War Horse and Moneyball which had six nominations each but brought home zero wins. The Moneyball losses bother me the most. It was one of my absolute favorites for the year.
There were a few surprises for the night, which is always nice. Meryl Streep's win was startling, if for no other reason than we've come to expect that she'll be nominated almost every year and then lose. I saw a fair number of people coming down on her for false modesty in her speech. Have we become so cynical that's impossible to believe that someone can be genuinely moved to win? Just because she's famous and nominated repeatedly doesn't mean she can't appreciate the moment. There are a lot of huge egos in Hollywood but most of the time you'll find that the most talented and hardest working people are the most modest. Don't shit on her moment. She's earned it.
The other big surprises were in technical categories, so the average person probably didn't even notice. The editing win for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo left me gobsmacked. I had just bored my wife to tears with my dissertation on why Moneyball deserved it but wouldn't win, and why Thelma Schoonmaker was a legend but wouldn't win and why The Artist would win, and then the one I neither mentioned or even seriously considered got the win. She laughed long and hard as I sat there with my jaw hanging open. And then there was the win by Hugo for visual effects, which I picked but still have trouble believing won. Make no mistake, the VFX work in Hugo is magnificent, but it is mostly the sort that is so seamless, you might not have realized you were looking at effects. Compared to the flashy effects of the competition, Hugo might have seemed a serious underdog. But the Academy often gives the award to the movie that best integrates its effects into the story. Considering that, it's not such a huge shock.
As for the show itself, it was fine. The Cirque de Soleil thing was cool and weird, so that was appreciated. Billy Crystal was just fine, but thoroughly safe. Chris Rock's brief moment on stage had me hoping he'd come back to host, Sean Penn be damned. Will Ferrell and Zach Galifinakis had a nice little bit with the cymbals. Angelina Jolie made me giggle when she struck a pose and then the writers of The Descendants made me laugh more when they struck a pose. Emma Stone looked stoned but was funnier than just about anyone. The focus group film with Christopher Guest and his band of comedians was great. The show was a big improvement over last year's debacle but very safe. I'd really love to see them take more risks and try to be more about film and less of a stage show.
I picked the winner correctly 17 out of 24 categories. Not bad, but far from my best effort. Below are all the categories with my predictions and the winners.
Best Picture
Who Will/Did Win: The Artist
Lead Actor
Who Will/Did Win: Jean Dujardin
Lead Actress
Who Will Win: Viola Davis - The Help Who Did Win: Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady
Supporting Actor
Who Will/Did Win: Christopher Plummer -Beginners
Supporting Actress
Who Will/Did Win: Octavia Spencer - The Help
Animated Feature Film
Who Will/Did Win: Rango
Art Direction
Who Will/Did Win: Hugo
Cinematography
Who Will/Did Win: Hugo
Costume Design
Who Will Win: Hugo Who Did Win: The Artist
Director
Who Will/Did Win: Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
Documentary Feature
Who Will Win: Pina Who Did Win: Undefeated
Documentary Short
Who Will/Did Win: Saving Face
Editing
Who Will Win: The Artist Who Did Win: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Foreign Language Film
Who Will/Did Win: A Separation
Makeup
Who Will Win: Harry Potter 8 Who Did Win: The Iron Lady
Original Score
Who Will/Did Win: The Artist
Original Song
Who Will/Did Win: Man or Muppet from The Muppets
Short Film - Animated
Who Will/Did Win: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Short Film - Live Action
Who Will Win: Raju Who Did Win: The Shore
Sound Editing
Who Will/Did Win: Hugo
Sound Mixing
Who Will/Did Win: Hugo
Visual Effects
Who Will/Did Win: Hugo
Adapted Screenplay
Who Will/Did Win: The Descendants
Original Screenplay
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