Moving Motion Pictures: The 82nd Annual Academy Awards

2009 was a great year for cinema. We saw one of the most accurate representations of the Iraq war and one of the least accurate representations of World War II. We were taken to an alien world and we saw aliens come to our world. We were told the story of a man who spent too much of his time in the air and the story of a man who spent too much of his time at home and the story of a man whose home was IN the air. That’s right, it’s Academy Awards season once more. So get strapped into your Oscar-chairs and prepare for my hilarious take on The 82nd Annual Academy Awards!

I’m just kidding, I have no hilarious take. But, you know who probably does? Steve Martin. I was thrilled to hear that he was hosting this year. I love seeing Steve in hosting gigs because it’s the closest we’ll ever get seeing him doing stand-up, his true calling, again (quick book recommendation: Born Standing Up. Check it out!). I was also happy to hear that a Mr. Alec Baldwin was coming along for the ride. I’m interested to see how that co-host dynamic plays out. Plus, Alec and Steve are the two most frequent hosts on Saturday Night Live and anyone who managed to read my most recent, incredibly long post (god bless you) knows how much I love that program.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, the powers that be have decided that there will be ten Best Picture nominees this year instead of the usual five. No doubt they did this to try to run my blog, but I have still managed to see all ten of the nominees. I normally can’t manage watching five! My prediction is that The Hurt Locker will win Best Picture and I won’t mind that. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t really mind if any of these films won Best Picture, but here’s a list the ones I like the best starting with my favorite:

1. Up in the Air
2. Inglourious Basterds
3. Up
4. A Serious Man
5. The Hurt Locker
6. An Education
7. District 9
8. Avatar
9. The Blind Side
10. Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

This year, there were two screenplays that were truly, masterfully written, two screenplays that stood above the rest, two screenplays that deserve the title “Best”. Luckily both these screenplays are nominated in separate categories. The scripts that I’m referring to are Inglourious Basterds nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Up in the Air nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. So, the Academy has no right to snub either of Quentin Tarantino or Jason Reitman for these awards (Original and Adapted respectively). Both these scripts were so well written, displaying such sharp and such real dialogue. I’ve always said that Tarantino is great director, but a better writer. In fact, both Tarantino and Reitman are writer-directors. I suppose that being a director can be a huge advantage to your writing and vise versa. If you’re a director writing a screenplay you’ll have a better idea of how it will play on the screen.

The Best Director category is an interesting one because if the Academy had gone with the usual five nominees for Best Picture, these five would be the ones nominated (Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air). I would be very surprised if something other than these five films won Best Picture. As for who’s winning Best Director, it’s tough to say. Obviously I would be happy if Reitman or Tarantino won. However, I would actually like to see Kathryn Bigelow win for The Hurt Locker. She is one of only a handful of women to be nominated in this category. Count ‘em, four! And we really need one of these women to win, but it’s not just that, she actually deserves this award. She’s managed to capture the messiness and relentlessness of war. She’s made some bold and extraordinary choices with her direction and she is obviously what made that film so good.

And now for the category that I’ve all been waiting for. That’s right, it’s the most important award of the night: Best Supporting Actor. I’m not entirely sure way this is always my favorite category, but it always seems to be the one I care the most about. I’ve always been fascinated in the art of acting and I feel that supporting roles are the most interesting and the most challenging. Look back at the last two years’ winners: Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men and Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight. They gave us arguably the greatest performances of their respective years. Supporting actors are not given as much screen time as the leads, but they are expected to be able to hold there own against the star and be as compelling as them. Often times, supporting roles are harder because are not the centre of the film; they don’t have to ground the film and therefore they can be far more complicated and unique.

No actor has proven my point more, this year, than Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds. Waltz oozes this kind of evil charm that steels every scene he’s in. And it takes a lot to out-charisma Brad Pitt! A while ago, I mentioned Tarantino’s incredible still for writing dialogue and one of Christoph’s major triumphs in this film was his spot-on delivery of that dialogue. The earliest and most compelling scene in Inglourious Basterds is a scene in which Colonel Landa is interrogating a man whom he believes to be hiding Jews. This scene is basically a Waltz monologue and is one of the most suspenseful and engaging scenes in the film. Hans Landa is arguably the most complex character in the movie and he has lines in over three languages. Tarantino almost abandoned the project because he couldn’t find anyone to play this character, possibly the greatest character he has ever written. So, if Waltz doesn’t win the Oscar I might cry.

Well, there you have it! My hilarious take on the Oscars, funny right? Anyway, I hope you all tune in tonight and enjoy the ceremonies. And I hope that my next blog entry is a little shorter. But, I’m not making any promises.

The Sketch of a Troupe: The Lonely Island

If you own a computer, and judging from the fact that you are reading a blog you do, then you have been on a little site called YouTube. And if you’ve been on YouTube you have probably watched some video shot on a hand held camera of someobody acting silly. But let’s think back, before Chocolate Rain, before Shoes, before Numa Numa, even before YouTube there was a little group called The Lonely Island.

Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone first met in junior high school and where the first realized that the three of them had an incredible knack for being incredibly silly. It was then that they formed the sketch comedy troupe that would be known as The Lonely Island. Their very first shorts where filmed and posted online in 2001, that’s four years before YouTube! At first their sketches where only viewed by friends and family, but with advent of YouTube in 2005 they exploded to internet stardom. People loved their quirky style and their ridiculous concepts. They had gone viral! The good kind.



The Dudes (as they are sometimes called) went on to a great deal of moderate success after that. Their OC parody, The ‘BU, became the longest running series in the Los Angeles Channel 101 short film festival, Andy appeared on Premium Blend performing stand-up and they were hired by Fox to film a pilot for a sketch comedy show. Awesometown is a fan-favorite, but the pilot was ultimately rejected by Fox, MTV and Comedy Central. The Dudes did land some righting gigs, but their real big break came when the three of them where hired to write for the 2005 MTV Movie Awards. The host, Jimmy Fallen, was impressed with their wit and charm. He got the three of them an audition with his old boss Lorne Michaels. It was then that they reached a lifelong goal. They had done what all young comedians dream of doing. They did what I am dreaming of doing right now. All three were hired on Saturday Night Live, Andy as a cast-member; Jorma and Akiva as writers.

The SNL gig was incredible for The Lonely Island. They were proud to work in the same halls were so many great funnymen of the past had started, but a lot of their sketches weren’t airing and Andy was not being cast in many. The Dudes realized that they weren’t used to live sketches in front of an audience. They came from the little shorts that they filmed and edited themselves. So, for SNL’s Christmas episode (always one of the most heavily viewed episodes each year) the three of them and filmed something on the streets of New York with fellow cast-member Chris Parnell. That little short made it to air, prefaced with the words “An SNL Digital Short, it was called Lazy Sunday. Twas a gansta rap about sleeping in, eating cupcakes and watching The Chronicles of Narnia. That sketch spread like wildfire across the internet. And just like that Andy Samberg was the new breakout star of Saturday Night Live.

Now I’m really tired of people saying that Saturday Night Live is no longer funny. People have been saying that since Season 2! People have this idea in their heads of what SNL should be. This is an opinion based on what SNL was when they where watching. The beauty of Saturday Night Live is that it’s always changing. New generations of comedians come and go. Different styles emerge. That is why the show has been able to last for 35 years and counting. In fact, last year, the 34th season, was one of the highest rated seasons in the show’s history. The high ratings were, in part, due to the fact that it was an election year, but the whole show couldn’t be Seth Meyers’ clever commentary and Tina Fey’s spot on Sarah Palin impression. Sometimes you just need People Getting Punched Just Before Eating.



The Digital Short was a terrific invention. The Dudes had created the latest thing to look forward to every Saturday night. Some generations stayed up in hopes of seeing the Czech Brothers being wild and crazy, others stayed up to see Wayne and Garth party on, my generation stays up waiting for the screen to go black and “An SNL Digital Short” to appear. The brilliant thing about a Digital Short is that you never know what you’re going to see. It could be the space-epic “Laser Cats”, Natalie Portman performing an unbelievably vulgar rap or simply Andy popping into frame repeatedly. The creation of these shorts insured that The Lonely Island would not become stale. Unlike most recurring sketches, the Digital Shorts were completely different from each other, apart from the fact that Jorma, Akiva or Andy were involved somehow. Digital Shorts are now a staple of the show. The Dudes where even nominated for Emmys for their Justin Timberlake collaborations: Dick in a Box and Motherlover. The first of which won the Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.



Winning the Emmy was a great achievement because it meant that The Dudes where not only being recognized as comedians, but as musicians. They were officially musical comedians. Those who know me well know that musical comedy is the way to my heart. View this chart:


In 2009 the Lonely Island released an album entitled Incredibad (a reference to their You Tube days) containing never before heard songs along with many of the popular songs from SNL Digital Shorts. The album was a huge success reaching #1 on the iTunes album charts and remaining at #1 on the comedy charts for months. Incredibad was a brilliant mix of songs for the SNL fans (Lazy Sunday and Dick in a Box), songs for the YouTube fans (We Like Sportz and Incredibad) and brand new material that anyone could enjoy (Boombox and Like A Boss). The original song, I’m On A Boat, scored The Lonely Island a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration along with T-Pain who was featured on that song. The Dudes were, however, completely snubbed for a Best Comedy Album nomination, a complete insult considering that George Lopez was nominated. But, none the less the album was a success.

Now I hate to be an indie fan, but it really bugs me when I see a couple of guys standing around in football uniforms singing I’m On A Boat. You can tell that these guys didn’t drive out of town to see Hot Rod (The Lonely Island’s film starring Andy and Jorma and directed by Akiva). They had probably never been to www.thelonelyisland.com before the album came out. And I bet you that they don’t even know Jorma and Akiva’s names! I don’t mean that I’m one of those fair-weathered fans who wants The Dudes to remain obscure for the rest of their careers, but whenever you get in on the ground level of something that becomes popular you feel like you’ve been robbed. This was something that used to be yours, you know? And now that it’s gone public it no longer belongs to you, it belongs to everyone and you feel like you have to inform them that you liked that thing first. But, that just makes you look like a jerk. However, you can write in you blog that you liked that thing first to prove that you’re a bigger fan without looking like a jerk … not that that’s what I’m doing.