The Oscars

Ah, Oscar Night: The night when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences brings us together to appreciate quality films. Who could forget such classics as Goodfellas, Dr. Strangelove or Citizen Kane? The Academy. That’s who. None of them won. This year, I celebrated the 81 year old tradition of snubbing quality cinema at the Oscar party hosted by the Vassar Film League.

I didn’t know what to expect from Hugh Jackman, but I really liked his opening number. His bit on musicals was a little weird. It seemed out of place, but Beyonce was in it, so it was definitely appropriate for the Oscars. Strangely, she did not perform any of the nominated songs this year. That was clearly a gross oversight, and I can only hope that the right people have been fired for it.

Mickey Rourke seemed oddly sober, which can only mean that those wonderful folks from Film Independent weren’t around to fill him with Jameson and Stella. Clearly, they know how to put on an award show.

This year, I didn’t know any of the nominees. Not having anyone to console or congratulate, I sent a text message to my friend Wally when he won best animated feature.
During commercial breaks, Film League asked trivia questions. I don’t know anything about Oscar trivia, so I didn’t do so well. I don’t know who has which records for how many nominations of what sort. What I do know is that two acting nominees from a couple years ago had previously acted together in a pornographic film. Unfortunately, nobody ever asks questions about important things like that.

I entered a contest, guessing the winners. A few results took me by surprise: Heath Ledger and Jerry Lewis, to name some of the bigger upsets. As it turned out, guessing 19 correctly was enough to win. I hadn’t prepared a speech, so I just used the one from the end of Rocky IV. I won a gift card to Regal Cinemas, so now I can watch even more movies, as if I haven’t seen too many already.

I’d like to thank the docent

For looking around the room and then pushing aside the plastic curtain to hand me the statue.

I'd like to thank the girl in my film class who told me that the Fellini museum would be worth the 90-minute train ride to Rimini.

I'd like to thank everyone who supported me when I said I was going to Rimini (a beach town) despite the fact that it was pouring rain and 5 degrees Celsius.

I'd like to thank my brother for suggesting that I see if I could hold the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for Otto e Mezzo.

I'd like to thank the founders of the Federico Fellini museum for making it consist of a single room with a single exhibit of little interest to most people, thus making my brother and me the only guests on the day we visited.

I'd like to thank the late Federico Fellini for making some incredible films. I've seen six and a half of them so far, and I plan to see many more.

It was the help of these and many other people that made this possible.

Mystery Film

Back when "Dirty Ears Gae" was my only flat mate, I had some friends over, and we were talking with him. He told us he had to leave to see a movie. I asked him which one. He said it was the one with Brad Pitt. I didn't know what movie Brad Pitt was in at the time. Gaetano was shocked that I had not heard of this famous film. He repeated several times "il film con Brad Pitt," as if this would help.
The next day, I asked him what the film was called. He informed me that it was Burn After Reading. I said "oh." He repeated "Oooooh!" in a mocking tone and laughed at me. I wanted to say "You condescending pezzo di merda, you're the one who was going to the movie without knowing the title. Where do you get off making fun of me?" but my Italian wasn't very good, so I decided to let it go.

Film

As long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a film major. Anybody who's known me for more than five minutes knows that I'm obsessed with film. I've nearly memorized a few movies. A few years ago, I got tired of people saying "Oh my god! How have you not seen [whichever movie happens to be the topic of conversation]?" so instead of explaining that I was way too young to have seen every movie ever made, I decided to make a list of every worthwhile movie I haven't seen, and then see them all. There are currently 119 movies on the list, but I seem to be adding them faster than I'm crossing them off.

Freshman year of college, I decided to major in economics. I was a little bit apprehensive, because I knew that it takes brass balls to major in economics, but I came to the conclusion that being an econ major would not keep me out of the film industry if I choose to take that route, whereas being a film major might be an obstacle if I want to go into the finance industry (which still existed when I was a freshman).

Recently, I restated my assumptions, and decided to start telling people that I'm a film major. People seem to have a much easier time understanding me, when I tell them that. More importantly, I believe that anyone who asks me what my major is wants to start a conversation, and I think film is a much more interesting topic of conversation than the economy (crisis or not) and one about which I am much more qualified to converse. As far as I can tell, this particular lie happens to be more honest than the truth itself.

One of my friends doesn't understand the concept of me lying about my major. Every time he hears me tell somebody that I'm a film major, he says "No you're not. You're an economics major." I've explained to him exactly why I decided to lie about this, but he's still baffled by it. This is why I can't lie; some idiot who knows the truth is always going to be there to call me out on it.

Pan and Scan

I was recently at a bookstore looking at DVDs (Why do we go to bookstores to buy DVDs? I don’t care.) I overheard a woman ask a salesman about the difference between widescreen and standard. When he explained, she said “so, this one [standard] will give me a bigger image, right?” The salesman said “yes” and she bought the DVD. I wanted to scream “No! That one will cut off the left and right sides of the screen! Buy widescreen. Yes, you’ll see a slightly smaller image, but you’ll be able to watch the whole movie as the director intended. With standard, also known as ‘pan and scan,’ you’ll only see the 75% that some high school dropout thinks you deserve to see.” There should be warning labels on pan and scan movies, bigger than the ones on cigarettes, explaining that the DVD does not contain the actual film advertised on the case.

With the increasing popularity of widescreen TVs, maybe pan and scan DVDs will eventually cease to exist. Unfortunately, it’s a huge pain to get the aspect ratio right on those TVs. With 4:3 TVs, it was easy to put a movie in and immediately watch it in the proper aspect ratio. On my parents HDTV, every time I want to watch a movie, I have to go through every setting on the TV at least twice to make sure everything looks right. Too often, I’ll lose half of somebody’s face, Mary Kate Olsen will look fat, or John Goodman will look anorexic. We’re going through a period of transition right now, and I can’t wait until this all gets figured out and the TV will know how to show movies correctly again.