Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Oh, Oscah!

I am sure I don't speak alone when I say that I am wrapped up and lovestruck with the dear blue-eyed wonder that is Adrien Brody. Well, being a movie gal who is easily swept away, I like the Oscars, the glitz, the glam, and I really appreciate coming together to celebrate film. Maybe it's cheesy, political, rigged, or what have you, but I think it is hard to deny a touch of magic in the air at the Kodak theater when the best of the best come together to celebrate these beautifully illuminated dreams, visions, slices of humanity. There is something about film that speaks to all people - and it really speaks to Americans as a form of collective memory, folklore, fantasy... I still think that the Oscars capture that. As far as tonight goes, I don't think there were any big surprises (I think Queen Latifya was better than Catherine for the best supporting actress slot, if it had to be a windy city gal -- and I am still itchin' to see Adaptation, but such is life) tonight. I was surprised to see how apolitical the whole event turned out, Michael Moore and his characteristic leftishness aside, but Susan Sarandon et al kept the lip-zipped, stuck to the script, and no one seemed that over the top. And my heart tonight belongs to one Adrien Brody because he was really the only one to deliver the world audience a charming, Oscar-worthy, moment tonight. He really was fantastic in The Pianist, in an aptly described role of a lifetime of an extrodinary life. My hat is off and I am glad that he recognized the moment as such, used his two minutes plus of thanking time to say the right thing, and just really deliver an artful performance. Whereas I think his awarding counterpart, Nicole, flaked out. Forgive me, Jack, for blaspheming your down under princess, but she flaked out tonight. From several "inside" sources I believed her to be the favorite and even under the weight of nomination, one would think that the fire-haired raven could collect or prepare thoughts to say something more than "I can't believe I am crying" and give a laundry-list kind of routine thank-yous for The Hours crew. I don't know, an actor works her whole life to get the Oscar - and that moment can't come soon or often enough. Out of a career, you get two minutes to talk about your art, your craft, and your life while the whole world listens - it just seems like a regretable shame to lose that to being too flustered and so narrow-sighted you don't capitalize on the opportunity to speak. Now, I am willing to listen to the camp that argues something like the Oscar is an achievement beyond the acceptance speech - it is a cinematic performance, a milestone, a character, a story, a crowning hallmark, or a resume bullet point. Call me sappy, but I think Oscar is a moment - and while it is different things to different people, Adrien got it right.

The weekend surprised me. As it turns out, several of the antiscipated guests didn't attend Ginnie's wick-soiree... but for purely selfish reasons, I didn't mind. Rather unexpectedly, as the meager crowd cleared by 9pm, I drank wine with my gracious hostess and then went to her favorite Manch-Vegas hotspot, a loud but cool jazz bar called Strangebrew. Ah, I really have a love and knack for people-watching and I am glad that Ginnie and I share this pastime. We ended up having a great visit although the whole weekend went the opposite of "as planned." The drive home, another Sunday in the car, was smooth sailing through dingy brown New England - even though I've exhausted my cd collection and need to replenish it. Colplay is a new favorite.

War goes on, and perhaps for the first time, it sounds, feels, smells, and looks like a war - rather than a one-sided aggressor laying siege. Televise it, glamorize it, sound byte it - war is awful, brutish, harsh, bloody, nasty, hard, and borderline inhumane. One encounters many losses in the face in what might be called, eeriely, a political victory sometime in the distant future. Ever since Vietnam, understandably, Americans have a real reluctance to accept any casualities from war - therefore, for almost 25 years, when we fought, we fought sterile air wars, dropped bombs on Iraq in '92 and spared very few lives in Serbia, Afganistan, Somalia (especially compared to the civillians massacred elsewhere) - and when a few soldiers did succumb to combat deaths, it became a media spectacle while the American public remained shocked that our weapons weren't perfect or that our troops weren't invincible. That is obviously different now - and will continue to be different as we begin urban combat, reopening wounds in a messy territory once called trench warfare. Every day gets worse, exponentially -- but despite the magnitude of increasing violence that comes with each day, this war is really moving at the pace of the digital age - I don't question that rebuilding will be a long process, but, I don't see the fighting continuing for more than a week. Just the same, I am sure I am not the only one, regardless of political views, absolutely sickened by the sabotaging actions of obviously a very sick Asan Akbar. of all of the things that aren't easy to explain right now, this seems to make the least sense.
posted by lmjasinski at 1:15 AM