Random Acts of Mind by Dones

Michael Jackson died today. With him, a significant aspect of my childhood has died, too. There are going to some people, like my infant son, who won’t quite get that, just as I don’t fully understand how Elvis’ death might have impacted my parents’ generation. Others are going to look at the controversy and scandal surrounding his personal life, and say, unforgivingly, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” That’s their choice. I choose to remember the good things about Michael Jackson’s legacy, and consider the bad things as equivalent to his death. Let me explain:

As a child of the late 70’s/early 80’s, I first really noticed Michael Jackson when Thriller came out. Oh, sure, I think I probably heard “Rock With You” (still my favorite) and Jackson Five songs before then, but Thriller was a big enough pop-culture earthquake to reach me in small-town Kansas. And my, what an earthquake!

The Thriller album, video, etc. was all encompassed by this hoopla that changed our culture. We had the behind the scenes on HBO of the Making of Thriller, the music video that was more like a film, that gave us insight into the way all subsequent music videos would be created. Thriller is the Citizen Kane of music videos, and despite what Nirvana has to say about it, it will always be the #1 music video of all time. The album itself was really good, including more hits than I can count–and the rest are pretty much ingrained into my psyche, as well, as a function of how good they are. If Michael’d swapped out “The Girl Is Mine” for his other duet with Paul McCartney, “Say, Say, Say”, the album would have been freakin’ perfect. Then there was the jacket, the glove, Billy Jean, Beat It, the Moonwalk, the Pepsi commercial…all resonating in pop culture through movies like Beverly Hills Cop, to Corey Feldman dressing up like Michael, and so on.

I was in 2nd grade and had never heard of the Moonwalk until one morning I walk into my classroom early and some kid asks me if I know how to moonwalk. Caught off guard, I say, “Yeah,” and start doing my best Neal Armstrong impression. This was the first time that I can remember that Michael Jackson was known as ‘cool’ (this event also confirmed that I am a dork). It was all downhill from there, and my younger brother was even more into Michael than I was. This was one of two Michael Jackson posters he had on the wall of his room:

When Captain Eo came out, I was as pumped as I could be. Michael Jackson in a musical scifi fantasy, in 3d? We had the “making-of” for this movie, taped off the Disney Channel, and watched it repeatedly for years, such that when we finally went to Disneyland in ‘89 we already knew 80% of the film and all of the music, but it was the fulfillment of the promise that the behind-the-scenes special had made years before.

Don’t forget ”We Are The World”. How many people who lived through the 80’s can’t sing that song all the way through, even imitating each artist’s unique singing style, and naming off each person in order (more or less). We liked it so much, we bought both versions of the album. Hey, it was for starving kids in Africa, and we did our part.  

I don’t know if it would have been obvious from the outside how much I respected this guy. Here he did charity work, and would hang out with kids, and he always had a big smile on his face, and his music and dance moves were SO COOL! He was wholesome, heroic and virtuous. People called him the King of Pop, and we all hailed him as royalty, devoting our time and treasure and heart to the king.

But this King’s hero journey had not yet ended. Things went Bad from here… Bad was kind of the beginning of the end of the honeymoon for me. The music was great, but some of it was darker and weirder: gone was this innocent 1950’s movie-house faux-horror of the song Thriller, and in was the nearly unintelligible but somehow threatening Smooth Criminal; out was the completely unbelievable fight song Beat It (unbelievable because Michael Jackson wasn’t a physical threat, just a coolness threat. He wasn’t going to kick your butt, but he could win hands-down in a dance-off), and in was the more deadly threat of Bad. No more We Are The World; now it was Man In The Mirror, which was less sympathy for others and more of a guilt trip.

At the same time, we started to hear about Michael hanging out with Bubbles the chimp, and buying the elephant man’s bones, and just doing wiggy-ass stuff. Not to mention the plastic surgery: he wasn’t the cute little black boy from the Jackson Five (probably wouldn’t even qualify to be in The Wiz without makeup, sorry to say), and he wasn’t even this cool black guy with the million-dollar smile from the Thriller album. He was bad, and white, and unrecognizable, and he grabbed his crotch for no reason. The music was great, but the King was a shadow of his former self, at least in my eyes.

I bought the Dangerous album on CD when I was in high school, and it was okay. About 50% good-to-great songs, but the rest were just so-so. MTV just kept on selling him as if nothing had changed, but just about everything about Michael had changed by then. Didn’t he marry Lisa Marie around that time? He had officially gone off the deep end by then, even though it wasn’t fully evident. In hindsight, maybe it was seeing him with Macaulay Culkin that started getting us wondering, but enough of the music was still outstanding, and the music videos continued to be innovative, so we didn’t worry about it.

Until he got in trouble. Officially. Some believe Michael that it was some celebrity witchhunt, but I think most of us could tell there was truth to the accusations. It was around this time that Michael started wearing masks, and I think he lost part of his nose for a while to plastic surgery. It was at this point that I really started mourning the loss of my hero, of my king. This is what I meant in the first paragraph above: the Michael Jackson I knew, loved, and respected in the 80’s had already died in the 90’s, so today I did not shed a tear.

Lately, I have been itching to finally get my collection caught up and buy his music on CD for ripping to my iPod, but I didn’t want any of my money going to that Thing that my boyhood idol had transformed into. Now I don’t have to shop the used CD racks for his music (unless I just want a deal), because now I know my money won’t go to feeding his shell of a corpse that still went by the name Michael Jackson.

That sounds very bitter, but I think it portrays quite accurately how my childhood hero has fallen in my estimation. I do not weep for the overly wealthy yet still hopelessly in debt, insanely weird and self-disfiguring pedophile who died this afternoon. Today, on the day of his passing, I remember and earnestly mourn the man who created iconic music, dance, and imagery that had such a major influence in the shaping of my own artistic and aesthetic tastes, as well as those of my generation. That is the one I remember, the one I mourned for when he fell from grace, and the one I mourn for today, in his own words:

He’s out of my life
He’s out of my life
And I don’t know whether to laugh or cry
I don’t know whether to live or die
And it cuts like a knife
He’s out of my life

It all began when I over-scheduled my day off. Those kinds of days never turn out well. I had a delivery from the furniture store (new range and grill=awesome) and later I had an appointment at the gym. There were full hours away from each other, which would be fine for most people. Not me. I prefer to have one big ‘thing’ I have to do each day. That’s the only way to avoid what happened.

(Warning to those with an aversion to reading about bodily functions: you’re way too sensitive. Regardless, this post may shock your delicate sensibilities. For those who have a sense of humor, keep reading.)

What I didn’t realize until this morning is that I had to do some work to install the stove due to the fact that the old one was hard-wired in. On my trip to take Baby Josh to the hardware store to get the necessary parts, on the way back I decided to get some Taco Bell for the two of us. (I ordered a chicken soft taco for the little one and they gave me a beef hard taco, but we made do.) After lunch, Josh was messy enough from the taco that I stripped him to his diaper, did a once-over with some wipes and stood him in his playpen within sight of my pending electrician’s duties in the kitchen.

In retrospect, I can see that this is the point where all was lost.

At previous opportunities Josh has demonstrated the ability to undo a velcro strap on his diaper when that’s all he’s wearing. But his mommy or I have always been there to catch him before he gets the second strap undone. On this particular afternoon, Josh had a good ten minutes of listening to his father mess with the wiring (and get it fully completed and tested, mind you) in order to complete a project of his own. I had no reason to suspect anything since Josh was making the usual play noises in the playpen. Every parent knows that it’s only when they’re quiet that you have to worry, right?

Wrong.

I was all done with my project and walked up to the playpen to grab Josh so that I could get him dressed and ready for the kids area at the gym, as I had an appointment with a trainer for my complimentary new member session–and there was to be no more appointments today. For the next hour and a half I would be tasked with unwreaking what my infant son had wrought.

My son was looking up and smiling at me, because he was offering me a present. It was his diaper, completely off and dangling from his little hand. I took it for the least terrible thing that could have happened: Josh obviously had to much time to himself and had undone his diaper, and I was very fortunate that he hadn’t whizzed all over everything. All was right with the world. I took the diaper from him and felt it was heavy, so I checked it as a force of habit, and notice there was a slight brown streak visible.

Just a streak. There’s never just a streak. A diaper is either poop-free or it isn’t.

I look up from the soaked and streaked diaper into my son’s delighted, smiling face. Then I glance behind him to another, more substantial brown streak that is suspended in the webbing at the side of the playpen. Then down to the two-foot-long brown streak across the padded floor of the playpen, and back up to my son’s beaming, angelic smile with a grin two miles wide.

Now I can look back and tell you: Man, I love this kid! Although, truth be told, at the moment I wasn’t so sure how I felt about anything.

Uncertain as to the next course of action, I studied Josh for a moment and noticed a fleck of poop on his hand. In a flash, I knew what had to be done. I ran to the bathroom and started a bubble bath, and went and grabbed Josh. His backside was completely covered. After his impromptu bath (with a little shower-head work to get the more stubborn bits) I dressed him (fully, this time!) and put him in his crib to fuss (couldn’t be helped at this point) whilst I returned to the scene of the crime to formulate the next step of my plan. I called the gym to reschedule my appointment and turned to the best, purest source of de-pooping I could think of: baby wipes. I grabbed the end of the old package and a full new one and started going to town. After using about ten of these to get the bigger chunks up, I remembered that we had antimicrobial wipes under the kitchen sink. I set about sanitizing the webbing and padding and making sure that the whole playpen was good enough to eat off of.

So the moral of the story is: don’t overschedule your day off.

If you haven’t already heard, Stephen Wolfram (the creator of the uber-graphing calculator software Mathematica) has recently launched a knowledge engine (as opposed to a search engine like the Google) called Wolfram|Alpha. Instead of being sent out to the internet wasteland as we’re used to, once you type in a query in WolframAlpha the site brings the data to you. In this respect I would categorize it closer to Wikipedia than Ask.com. But Wikipedia it isn’t. The folks at Twit.tv described W|A as “the CIA Factbook on steroids plus a kickass graphing calculator”. Given that the basis of the algorithm is Mathematica’s symbolic language, I think this is probably the best description we’ll get, until we figure out what to do with the darn thing.

That’s really the problem. Mashable does have a list of WolframAlpha easter eggs (also try entering ’hello world’) which are truly awesome from a pop-culture standpoint, but not really the computation knowledge that W|A is promising. It won’t answer ‘How many boroughs in new york city?’ or ‘teenage mothers in 2000′. A query of ‘population of West Germany in 1957′ returns nothing but a suggestion to retry ‘Germany in 1957′, to which it then ignores the year and provides current data for the nation. So maybe I went back in time to far: ‘population of Germany 1990′ provides a data point (79.4 million people) and plots it on a graph with data since 1970. What if I give it two data points, then, and ask the big calculator in the cloud to find the net change? Alas, querying ‘(population of Germany 2000) minus (population of Germany 1990)’ returns ‘(82.31 million people) Subtract[79.43 million people]’, which is all too small of a step away from being what I would call ‘powerful computational knowledge’. Perhaps I didn’t use the correct syntax, but honestly, for this to work, I shouldn’t really need to bend my query to the esoteric whims of the Mathematica code. The correct syntax, by the way, is apparently ‘population germany 2000 - population germany 1990′, returning a useful answer of ‘2.876 million people’.

So then I ask myself the question, “What would I want WolframAlpha to know?” The simple answer is ‘everything’, but that’s not fair. So below are a few questions I’d like to be able to ask a giant computer programmed by a genius. I welcome commenters to add the questions they’d really like to ask WolframAlpha, if it were everything we want it to be.

1 - Aggregates, like ‘How many cities are named Springfield?’ or ‘How many Main Streets in the USA?’
2 - Blue-sky sorts of questions, like ‘How much money would I need to start a new auto insurance company?’ or ‘How much fuel would a traditional rocket need to take a Voyager-sized satellite to the nearest neighboring star system?’
3 - Future events, like ‘What will be the next 10 years when Christmas Day falls on a Sunday?’ or ‘What is the current payoff date for the US National Debt?’

Okay, maybe that last one isn’t fair, either. but now I put it to you: What other questions would you like to ask WolframAlpha? Please add your comment.

Disaster Area
Originally uploaded by metamorphilia.

…and this isn’t even the worst it’s been! Cleanup starts manana.

When Joshua woke up at 5:45am on the morning of his first birthday, Mommy & Daddy decided to give him a special ‘good-morning’ song! Baby Josh seemed unimpressed…

Bottom Line: Well done, though not for everyone.

**Note: If you want to remain totally spoiler-free before you watch the film (or read the book), please note this review does contain what I would call significant spoilers. It’s also safe to assume any comments may contain spoilers**

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed the graphic novel of Watchmen, I was very excited to see the film. I was lucky enough to see it, finally, on Saturday night with my brother (who appreciated the book but didn’t like it) and my father (who knew nothing about the book going into the film). As such, I think I can provide a 360-degree review (at least from a male perspective).

It was a really good film. Well-filmed, well-cast, well-directed. Naturally I liked the story, which was handled as well as possible, considering how convoluted it is. (Many have required to read the book a few times to get it all straight; a tribute to the density of the story, in my opinion). My father said he was able to follow along well enough, though the next day he admitted that it was indeed convoluted. My brother and I had no trouble following along, and I found myself “watching the Watchmen” with the same fervor that I had when seeing the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. The director kept out anything from the book that would obviously drag down the story, beefed up the action (sometimes to a fault–more on that later), and even managed to get the ending changed in a way that stayed true to the original while actually making more sense, in my opinion.

I’ve heard some talk of mis-casting. I think that may have been preliminary concerns, because I thought all of the principal roles were cast perfectly. Most of these were even good actors. The only poor acting job I noticed was Malin Akerman, who played Silk Spectre II with moments of wooden line delivery and zero emotion. She actually did better, I think, emoting to Dr. Manhattan than to Nite Owl II. Ironic, but maybe they stuck too close to the book for those scenes, as I don’t think the character was particularly stellar in the Nite Owl II scenes, either. Another nit to pick: Rorschach had a bit too gravelly of a voice for my taste (must have taken a cue from The Dark Knight), and I wish for once they had dubbed his lines over when he was behind the mask, because they came through too muffled at times. Nite Owl II & The Comedian both stepped straight off of the page and onto the screen, which was cool because they’re my most & least favorite characters, respectively.

The CG was surprisingly off in a place or two (given this film’s budget and the state of the art today): most of the effects were superb, don’t get me wrong–but Dr. Manhattan’s conglomeration of live-action performance and CG body just didn’t quite mesh as well as I’d expect from Hollywood nowadays…something around the face, and maybe it was just the showing I went to, but his lip-synching wasn’t quite right (everyone else’s was fine). Maybe this was an artistic choice by the movie-makers (possible given the character in question), but it felt like a mistake. Billy Crudup’s acting was as good as can be expected within this framework. Here’s a question, though: why did the director think that repeaded full-frontal super-dudity was a good idea?

…Which brings me to the number one problem I had with the Watchmen film: the film adaptaption of the graphic novel was too graphic. Granted, we had different standards in 1986 than in 2009, so they probably couldn’t have put so much nudity, sex, and graphic violence in the ink & paint version (I suppose there was some straight gore, but not in the action); but it was precisely these additions by director Zack Snyder that had me physically turning away from the screen at times. Sure, I’m more puritan than some moviegoers I know, but I’m also no prude when it comes to sex or violence when it serves a purpose in a work of art. The sex scene was apparently pulled straight out of the textbook titled “Gratuitous”, although some of the nudity surrounding it (male & female) was tolerable and appropriate…if unnecessary. But I’ll take Dr. Manhattan to task for hardly ever covering up. It was clear from the book that he was nude, and I think we may have seen direct anterior evidence of this in a frame or two, but Snyder’s choice to storyboard (I can’t say ‘film’ because he wasn’t an on-film character, strictly speaking) the blue man-god below the waist time and again was … well, I guess it gave me practice at looking him in the eyes instead, but I wonder what they’ll do when it’s time to bring the film to basic cable. I could go on, but sufficed to say that if the character had been female, I think they would have chosen to cover her up more. And lastly, I expected a little gore and quite a bit of action, but why are bone-crunchingly close-up shots of bad guys’ knees and arms being snapped required to show just how powerful the superheroes are? I don’t say this very often, but this film truly would have been better if they’d taken Greek theatre’s meaning of ‘obscene’ (literally ‘off scene’). It would have given the film another half star in my overall rating.

So I will let this dead horse lie for a moment, and get on with the ratings:

Production value: 4/5 stars. I’m not going to subtract points for the CG issues noted above, because the splendor of the rest of the effects and overall production were just that good. Yes, I could also mention some noticeable makeup on some characters as they aged (and some famous characters that just didn’t quite look right), but won’t count off just for that. I could also point out that the CG Bubastis (purple tiger) was pretty weak, but that alone wouldn’t take away a full star. But all of these together combine to take away from what I would have considered a special effects masterpiece. They apparently spent so much time and money on Dr. Manhattan’s trip to Mars (and some other notably outstanding sequences) that they neglected to get Bubastis lit correctly and match Dr. Manhattan’s face & voice to the CG model. I will truly overlook the makeup because it was as good as I’ve ever seen it (Carla Gugino was totaly unrecognizable, in a good way, as Sally Jupiter). Perhaps intentionally, the real-life historical characters included in this film were comically unbelievable. That could be an artistic decision, which I would respect if Snyder meant for it to be that way. After all, it’s pretty funny sometimes to see real celebrities showing up in comics, despite the most serious intentions of the artists.

Story: 5/5 stars. Snyder nailed this part, and of all the things he needed to get right, this is the one. He left out the Black Freighter sequences, which added a ton to the value of the graphic novel (to me) but really is not germane to the overall arc. Good choice to not even touch on that. Also, he changed the ending, the center of the entire climax…but what he did in its place made even more sense than the original. The cahracter development was as good as could be managed within the larger story, and I think it was managed masterfully.

Enjoyability: 4/5 stars: I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone why only 4 stars on enjoyability. Let me just state that despite the graphic sex, violence, and nudity, this was a thoroughly well-made film that I still walked away from smiling. Therefore, I am happy to give this film the following over all rating…

Dones’ Rating: Watchmen is the film that fans of the graphic novel have been waiting for, if not the fulfillment of all their dreams. Non-readers’ experiences may vary. Zack Snyder needs to pull away from his Dawn of the Dead & 300 roots and bring the graphic sex, violence, and nudity under control.

14 out of 24 picks correct! Yes! A marked improvement!! I’d like to thank the academy…

Of course, cade got 16 right. But I suppose someone who has seen most of the films should be able to judge between them a little better. For the record (and despite my earnest intentions) I’ve still only seen Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Kung Fu Panda, Wanted, Iron Man, and Tropic Thunder. So basically the same as any non-film geek in my demographic, I suppose.

Some favorite Oscar moments this year:

- The opening number with janky ‘Be Kind Rewind’ sets
- Hugh Jackman’s hosting
- Heath Ledger’s family accepting his well-deserved award
- The one winner who said “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”
- The new way of having previous winning actors personally telling nominees how great they are. This makes being nominated a true honor, and I really hope they continue this practice.
- Reaching a personal all-time high in predictions, and getting over 50% right. Great feeling, despite cade’s valid point that most of the front-runners won. I will take the new personal best with the only regret being my failure to see any of the main nominees before the ceremony.

As my online presence expands to include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Amazon wish list, and my shop on CafePress, (along with the occasional Stickam live video), I am finding that this current blog format is not quite cutting it for me. I need a portal that includes all of the above in a reasonably appropriate design. I also need to develop an online portfolio for my soon-to-be-burgeoning freelance web/graphic design career.

I’ll probably stick with Wordpress (though I need to upgrade to the latest version), but the template is just not meeting my needs. This being my final semester in my web design program, my final project is probably going to include putting together a new Wordpress template. So I’ll probably use that experience (along with the Flash programming experience I’ll have by the end of the semester) to start from scratch.

If you have tried visiting this blog regularly and wonder why I don’t update more often, it’s because I’ve been posting links and notes over there. If you know me personally, become my friend on Facebook, and you’ll see a lot more activity there. If you don’t know me well enough to befriend me on Facebook (I try to keep it to actual acquaintances), here’s another option: I’m also becoming more active on Twitter, so follow me there if you like. While I haven’t touched FriendFeed, my sources tell me that you may be able to aggregate all the stuff that I post everywhere. While that’s a fairly scary thought, I don’t suppose I can stop you.

I went ahead and posted a Twitter widget here and a YouTube widget on my Video page (click the Video tab above). I don’t think anything else will be changing here before, say, May. But who knows. You may want to keep your eyes open.

CUTE
Originally uploaded by metamorphilia.

Eligible presidential candidate in 2044. Vote early, vote often!

This is my first attempt at a propaganda poster. I hope you like it.

Here’s the list of Oscar nominees, underlining my predictions for each. As always, note that I haven’t seen many of these films (I moved last year so it may take longer for my screener DVDs to reach me, ha ha); I will indicate the ones I have seen by putting them in italics. Once again, you know that you can always find the first Oscar predictions in the blogosphere right here. As I always say, you don’t really need to see all the films to know who’ll probably win. I will update this post to indicate new films I’ve seen as needed, like when I actually go see “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Reader”.

Impressions so far:
- No Clint Eastwood, no Cate Blanchett, no George Clooney. No doubt they will be presenters at the ceremony since otherwise they’ll be greatly missed.
- Robert Downey, Jr, is getting hosed for an Oscar he deserves, this time by the late great Heath Ledger (who deserves it more). Why so serious, Mr. Downey?
- Doubt is going to be skunked.

**Updated with full list of nominees, and italicized a couple titles I forgot to.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
81st Annual Academy Awards Nominations

Performance by an actor in a leading role
Frank Langella, “Frost/Nixon”
Sean Penn, “Milk”
Brad Pitt, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler”
Richard Jenkins, “The Visitor”

One viewing of the trailer for The Wrestler cemented this pick in my mind.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Josh Brolin, “Milk”
Robert Downey Jr., “Tropic Thunder”
Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Doubt”
Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight”
Michael Shannon, “Revolutionary Road”

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Anne Hathaway, “Rachel Getting Married”
Angelina Jolie, “Changeling”
Melissa Leo, “Frozen River”
Meryl Streep, “Doubt”
Kate Winslet, “The Reader”

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Amy Adams, “Doubt”
Penelope Cruz, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Viola Davis, “Doubt”
Taraji P. Henson, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Marisa Tomei, “The Wrestler”

Too much buzz for this film, not enough nominees, so I think she’ll get something for Mr. Allen.

Best animated feature film of the year
“Bolt”
“WALL-E”
“Kung Fu Panda”

WALL-E could have been a contender for Best Picture overall, just like many of the past Pixar releases. Since Beauty and the Beast scared the academy into creating the animated feature category, Pixar has won many deserved animated feature Oscars, while also getting the shaft for not being eligible for Best Picture.

Achievement in art direction
“Changeling”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Duchess”
“Revolutionary Road”

Achievement in cinematography
“Changeling”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Achievement in costume design
“Australia”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Duchess”
“Milk”
“Revolutionary Road”

Oscar is a big fan of period costumes; apparently it’s very difficult to design something to look like something else that’s already been made. Anyway, nothing’s more ‘period’ this year than The Duchess, but Australia might be a sleeper. I think Doubt is missing in this category.

Achievement in directing
Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”
Stephen Daldry, “The Reader”
David Fincher, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Ron Howard, “Frost/Nixon”
Gus Van Sant, “Milk”

I’m reversing my statement for Best Picture here. It’s 50-50, and Gus is due.

Best documentary feature
“The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)”
“Encounters at the End of the World”
“The Garden”
“Man on Wire”
“Trouble the Water”

Best documentary short subject
“The Conscience of Nhem En”
“The Final Inch”
“Smile Pinki”
“The Witness - From the Balcony of Room 306″

Achievement in film editing
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Best foreign language film of the year
“The Baader-Meinhof Complex” (Germany)
“The Class” (France)
“Departures” (Japan)
“Revanche” (Austria)
“Waltz with Bashir” (Israel)

Japan is due. Plus “Slumdog” may pull favoritism for Asia into the mix here. No really, I’m grasping at straws on this one.

Achievement in makeup
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Hellboy II: The Golden Army”

This will be BB’s one Oscar, enabling a so-so film to still be able to call itself  ‘Academy Award-winning.’ It’s deserved in this one (curious?) case.

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Defiance”
“Milk”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
“Down to Earth” from “WALL-E”
“Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire”
“O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire”

Slumdog will cancel itself out here, giving WALL-E the edge.

Best motion picture of the year
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

This could go one of two ways: Milk or Slumdog. I’m picking Slumdog due to Oscar’s propensity for sweeps (though not in recent years), but due to Prop 8 pressures in the Academy’s home state, Milk may reach the tipping point for politics over Slumdog’s sentimentality.

What about Benjamin Button, you ask? First, I’m prejudiced against it: I think it’s utterly predictable, it was made solely to try to get Brad his Oscar, and I loved the comparisons to Forrest Gump (YouTube video redacted). This may actually backfire against me, but I’ll stand by my predictions. Second, Brad Pitt hasn’t been good luck for films reaching for Oscar gold. Third, I think Slumdog is just too hot, and fourth, I really don’t hear any buzz about The CC of BB, even though it leads in overall nominations. Go read the short story instead.

Best animated short film
“La Maison en Petits Cubes”
“Lavatory - Lovestory”
“Oktapodi
“Presto”
“This Way Up”

So beloved is WALL-E that the short cartoon preceding it in theatres and included on its DVD is a shoo-in. Plus it’s really, really well done.

Best live action short film
“Auf der Strecke (On the Line)”
“Manon on the Asphalt”
“New Boy”
“The Pig”
“Spielzeugland (Toyland)”

Achievement in sound editing
“The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”

Here in the sound categories is the major showdown between my top two contenders. I don’t think you can beat Pixar for mixing and editing all of those tracks on the floating space colony. How many individual voices did they have to mix in? A lot.

Achievement in sound mixing
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”

Achievement in visual effects
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”

At last, a true toss-up. I’m going with my gut and my personal favorite here (I think Christopher Nolan got ripped off for The Dark Night not getting nominated for more non-technical Oscars. Best Picture and Director could have been possible here.)

Adapted screenplay
Simon Beaufoy, “Slumdog Millionaire”
David Hare, “The Reader”
Peter Morgan, “Frost/Nixon”
John Patrick Shanley, “Doubt”
Eric Roth, Robin Swicord, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Original screenplay
Dustin Lance Black, “Milk”
Courtney Hunt, “Frozen River”
Mike Leigh, “Happy-Go-Lucky”
Marttin McDonagh, “In Bruges”
Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, “WALL-E”