Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Academy vs the Public

Seeing as its oscar season I thought about investigating a certian topic. How often does the academy vote with the general public? Generally the Imdb is a pretty good representation of the general public's movie opinion (well its about the best one we're going to get, at least for this little project)

Below I have included all the times in the past 20 years that the academy picked a best picture that had a lower user rating than another nominee.

2003

Winner:

Other Nominees:

· Gangs of New York - 7.2

· Hours, The - 7.6

· Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The - 8.7

· Pianist, The - 8.4


2002

Winner:

Other Nominees:

· Gosford Park - 7.2

· In the Bedroom - 7.4

· Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The - 8.7

· Moulin Rouge! - 7.7

The results may be a tad skewed for 2002 and 2003 because we have to assume that there are a fairly large number of LOTR fanboys voting in drones. Personally I never understood why everyone had such a hard on for those movies. They just didn't do it for me. One thing is for damn sure though. The Pianist should have beaten that piece of shit Chicago.


1999

Winner:

Other Nominees:

· Elizabeth - 7.6

· Saving Private Ryan - 8.4

· Thin Red Line, The - 7.3

· Vita รจ bella, La - 8.4

I remember this year vividly and how bizarre it was that Shakespeare in Love won especially over Saving Private Ryan and Life is Beautiful. I guess I'm not alone.


1998

Winner:

Other Nominees:

· As Good as It Gets - 7.7

· Full Monty, The - 7.2

· Good Will Hunting - 7.9

· L.A. Confidential - 8.4

Now here is a really anomalous year. The winner has the lowest rating of all the nominees and it really deserves the lowest. Lets face it Titanic wasn't a great movie it was a fucking fad. Over hyped nonsense. Although I do have to say it was a pretty good story, I mean I totally didn't expect the ship to sink.


1997

Winner:

Other Nominees:

· Fargo - 8.2

· Jerry Maguire - 7.2

· Secrets & Lies - 7.8

· Shine - 7.5

The funny thing about this year is that I have absolutely no memory of the movies Secrets & Lies or Shine.


1995

Winner:

Other Nominees:

· Four Weddings and a Funeral - 7.1

· Pulp Fiction - 8.8

· Quiz Show - 7.4

· Shawshank Redemption, The - 9.2

Ok this may go down as the biggest academy fuck up ever. FORREST GUMP BEAT SHAWSHANK??? Shawshank is the imdb's second highest rated movie of all time (right behind the Godfather). Forrest Gump is a movie in which Tom Hanks acted like an idiot. hmmm oh and Gary Sinise was in it too..... WHAT???? can we revoke oscars???? (We'll pick that one up on the way to Halle Berry's house) .


1992

Winner:

Other Nominees:

· Beauty and the Beast - 7.8

· Bugsy - 6.6

· JFK - 7.9

· Prince of Tides, The - 6.2

Interesting facts this year. Prince of tides is the lowest rated best picture nominee of the past 20 years, while Terminator 2: Judgment day (8.3) is nowhere to be found.


1991

Winner:

Other Nominees:

· Awakenings - 7.4

· Ghost - 6.8

· Godfather: Part III, The - 7.4

· Goodfellas - 8.7

Its funny that Godfather 3 is regarded as a joke and that Ghost is regarded as one of Patrick Swayze's best movies. But look at the ratings. I actually saw Swayze the other day at some really low budget dive bar. I asked him if he was filming a sequel to "Roadhouse" he said no and then took my drink order.


1990

Other Nominees:

· Born on the Fourth of July - 7.0

· Dead Poets Society - 7.7

· Field of Dreams - 7.6

· My Left Foot - 7.6


So there you have it. Of the last 20 Academy Awards 9 didnt go with the public's popular opinion.




Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Hypothetical Scenarios

You have to spend 1 hour locked in a room with either:
CUJO






















OR

COJO



















WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE?

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Picture this:
a fairly rich man eats a large sized serving of eggs benedict even though he isn't really hungry.

also

a man unjustly fired from his job spends a night throwing eggs at his bosses car.


Do you think the hen who layed all the above mentioned eggs would be more
offended by one of the situations?

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You meet a Genie who offers you as much money as you would like.
THE CATCH: For every $250 the genie will randomly remove 1 word from your vocabulary. You will never be able to learn or understand the lost words again and when you hear them they will just sound like jibberish. You will have to learn to communicate with whatever you have left.

Facts:
1 million dollars: you lose 4,000 words
avg persons vocab: 5 or 6 thousand words


How much money would you take?

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You learn that James Blunt is a psychotic axe murderer













Are you even surprised?

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You meet another genie he gives you two options?

For the rest of your life you can only listen to either:
the genre of music that you most despise
or
your all time favorite album


CATCH:

for the genre you hate you can listen to any bands or artists (within that genre) whenever and however frequently you like but that is it.

for your favorite album you must listen to if on repeat for the rest of your life with no break.

Which do you choose?

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This idea partially inspired by Chuck Klosterman's 23 questions

Sunday, February 04, 2007

superbowl

So I didn't really watch the superbowl because I don't really care about sports but I did flip to it during the half time show and catch the performance by prince. Holy Fucking shit it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen on many levels. Let me start by saying that I am not a fan of prince. I don't have anything against him or anything I've just never been into his songs or really understood why he's regarded as being so great. But one thing that is certain is that he is an amazing guitar player (as evidenced by the handful of live clips I've seen of him)

Now I may come off sounding really ignorant here but when I picture the average football fan the last thing I also imagine is a prince fan. The worlds seem diametrically opposed. So when I switched to the half time show and saw prince flamboyantly performing his set I imagined hundreds of thousands of football fans staring in disbelief with their jaws dropped. It was amazingly ridiculous, he kept busting into wank-tastic guitar solos that were about 3 times louder than all the backing music (anyone that knows me knows I'm a fan of searing guitar solos) also it was raining when when he went into purple rain. I'll see if a youtube vid gets posted of the whole thing because it has to be seen to truly understand but until then I'll leave a few pics.

FOOTBALL FANS


PRINCE