A little more on Lem

Here's a piece from the Times on Lem that treats his work in much better context than most of the things I've seen. It also serves to remind me of The Mind's I, the anthology where I first read Lem (although it's co-editor's name is Daniel C. Dennett, not Bennett.)

Stanislaw Lem - Dead at 84

Stanislaw Lem has reportedly died at the age of 84. What few details are available are reported here.

I started reading Lem in high school, ultimately reading somewhere between 15 and 20 of his books. He's one of my favorite science fiction writers, but he's also responsible for introducing me (re-introducing is more like it) to Philip K. Dick, who is possibly my favorite sci-fi writer. I'd read some PKD book when I was younger and didn't think much of it, so I was inclined to write off his great reputation as a bunch of wrong-headed nonsense (this characterized a lot of my opinions at 14 or 15.) However, after reading five or six Lem books, I learned that he thought very highly of PKD, so I gave him another chance and was converted. I think it's apt that Dick once wrote to the FBI outing Lem as a Marxist conspiracy (he believed that Lem was actually a committee, not an individual, since he wrote in several different styles) to control science fiction.

Ultimately, Lem led me to read other novelists I probably should have read first, like Vonnegut, Borges, Ballard, Pynchon, and Dürrenmatt. Still, I'll remember him first for his own work, which was playful, unique, and eclectic.

Dead blonde girls on TV

Early this year, I picked up Season 1 of Twin Peaks on DVD and watched the whole thing (it's only 7 episodes not counting the pilot, which isn't on the First Season set) for the first time in years not long after. Everybody who's worth talking to knows, of course, that Twin Peaks is primarily about the investigation of the murder of troubled golden girl Laura Palmer, although her killer isn't revealed until the (underrated) feature film Fire Walk With Me. Coincidentally, my wife and I have been renting the first seasons of Murder One and Veronica Mars from Netflix. The first season of Murder One depicts the investigation and trial of Hollywood star Neil Avedon for the killing of blonde teenage hooker Jessica Costello (the newsmedia on the show even refer to the case as the "Goldilocks murder") while the central plot of Veronica Mars season one concerns the murder of Veronica's (improbable) blonde bimbo-ish best friend, Lily Kane. All three are good shows. Twin Peaks' first season is truly classic television, Murder One has become one of my favorite television shows, and Veronica Mars mostly lives up to its hype. So, while I don't mean to disparage any of these shows, I would like to point out something I've noticed about murdered promiscuous blonde girls on TV shows.

Spoilers after the jump.

Whenever a blonde teenage girl is killed on TV, somebody's dad did it, and probably the top cast dad. In Twin Peaks, it's ultimately disclosed that her own father, Leland Palmer, played with eye-popping intensity by Ray Wise, killed Laura. On Murder One, we eventually learn (after Neil has been convicted) that the drug-dealer father of prime suspect and serial rapist Eduardo Portalegre is Jessica Costello's murderer. Finally, the last episode of Veronica Mars' first season reveals that Aaron Echolls, father to Logan Echolls, who was Veronica's very recent boyfriend and her primary suspect in Lily's death, actually killed Lily. Killer dad Roberto Portalegre was played by the great character actor (and frequent player in Alex Cox movies) Miguel Sandoval. Hollywood movie star Aaron Echolls was played by Hollywood TV star Harry Hamlin (who, also coincidentally, rose to fame on Murder One creator Steve Bochco's most famous law show, L.A. Law).

There you go. From now on I expect no one to be surprised again when a dead teenage girl who slept around on a TV show is discovered to have been done in by a character primarily identified as somebody's dad.

Samuel L. Jackson has become a Chappelle sketch

from the IMDb news page:

Samuel L. Jackson's new mile-high thriller Snakes On A Plane has created such a buzz among internet film fans, movie bosses have called for re-shoots - to give the film a tougher rating. The film, which stars Jackson as an FBI agent trying to keep a federal witness alive onboard a plane full of snakes, wrapped last September - but went back before the cameras earlier this month for five days of additional shooting. Film bosses at distributor New Line Cinema opted to add new scenes to the film to take the movie from PG-13 into R-rated territory, according to industry magazine The Hollywood Reporter. They claim the second round of filming became necessary after intense and growing fan interest in the film, which is scheduled to be released this summer. Among the reported additions to the film is a foul-mouthed rant from Jackson in which his agent character bellows, "I want these motherf**king snakes off the motherf**king plane!" The line is expected to take on cult status. The film-makers have reportedly added more gore, more deaths, more nudity and more snakes to the finished product.

Since one of my favorite Jackson lines now is "A motherfucking shark ate me!" which he didn't even say, it makes all the sense in the world for Sam himself to hop on the bandwagon.

I have to admit, this movie sounds good to me.

Even my doll is bulletproof

Ladies and gentlemen, the Ghostface doll.

Go ahead, bash the judges, just don't kill them

I read this article in the NYT this weekend and made a mental note to consider posting about it. Just today, I was looking through old post drafts that never made it onto the blog (I counted about thirty) and spotted one that I could profitably recycle in connection with it (the original post was called "Go ahead, bash the courts"--altered slightly as you can see). So, here goes.

There are a couple of things in Liptak's piece here worth a note or two, starting with its overblown, alarmist premise. The first paragraph suggests that speeches given recently by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are indicative of change in the tenor of public comments by Supreme Court justices. I've remarked recently about the absurdity of inferring a trend from only a couple of data points, but what's wrong here is the notion that these two speeches represent any kind of departure into political position-taking. Kermit Hall's comments are especially ridiculous and marred by innuendo. What Hall calls "real, real close to taking a political position," in O'Connor's case is saying that in a liberal democracy an independent judiciary can and should serve as a protection against tyranny. So controversial, so politicized is this perspective that it appears in every American government textbook. Even referring to the onset of dictatorship shouldn't be controversial. Hamilton, in Federalist 78, argues that an independent judiciary capable of declaring legislation unconstitutional is essential to the notion of limited government and doesn't imply a superiority of the courts to the Congress, because all it does is declare the superiority of the people's choices to those of their (minority, possibly unrepresentative, even self-interested) representatives.

Ginsburg's "political" violation of judicial decorum is to discuss legal theory and methods of interpretation, something justices do all the time in speeches and writings. "(A)nd she is using an out-of-country venue to make her point," as Hall says, insinuating that these comments are somehow treasonous. I guess Puerto Rico, where Scalia's comments were made, is sufficiently within the United States to establish his loyalty to the country.

Scalia's comments attacking the notion of a "living constitution," by the way, engage in a bit of sleight of hand as well. Of course, one would have to be an "idiot" to think that the Constitution is a living organism and not a legal document, taken literally. But misstating a position through excessive literalism, although something a textualist like Scalia is probably prone to, isn't the same as engaging it. Scalia even trips on his own strategy. As a legal document, Scalia remarks, the Constitution "says some things and doesn't say others." But, of course, the Constitution doesn't say anything, you have to read it. Scalia may imagine some kind of Harry Potter talking Constitution that says things, but the rest of us in the "non-idiot" community know that documents don't talk.

Am I being argumentative and obtuse? Sure, but no more than Scalia. Every "living Constitution" proponent agrees that the Constitution "means" certain things and doesn't "mean" others (what Scalia meant to say, I'm sure), the question is what it means. In this occasion, Scalia doesn't feel like addressing that real, difficult question, though.

I don't know what to make of Hall's statement, regarding O'Connor and Ginsburg's wayward comments, that it should be "striking that both are women."

As to the question of threats to judicial independence, I'm reminded of Edward Lazarus' commentary on Findlaw last year taking issue with some of the criticisms leveled at Justice Sunday II, the conservative religious media spectacle criticizing the judiciary. Like Lazarus, I disagree with pretty much everything the Family Research Council pushes a position on, but Lazarus is right that many of the responses to their events were off-base. The judiciary has almost nothing but fair-weather friends, but that doesn't mean its OK to dismiss criticims against it as improper assaults on "judicial independence."

Lazarus makes several good points. The "countermajoritarian difficulty" should get more scrutiny outside of the law professoriate (where, oddly enough, it should probably get less). Also, many of the problems people have with judges are due to "judicial overhang" or the tendency of the political branches to take advantage of the presence of judicial review. Because the courts can prevent the bad consequences of poorly crafted law and use judicial discretion to make up for legislative and executive inattention, Congress and the president are freer to be irresponsible.

Nevertheless, a comfortable space should be maintained between criticizing judges for their policymaking activities and threatening them, either physically or in some other way.

Mailing from Bill

I got my second dispatch from Bill Shatner's DVD club, a movie called Immortel. It's a European coproduction, but a mostly French film in concept and execution. I watched it, but was multitasking at the time and can't say for certain I knew what was going on. It had something to do with an Egyptian god (Horus) resurrected and doomed to die again who contrives to possess the body of some kind of freedom fighter (oh, did I mention that the setting is New York in some genetically-altered dystopian future?) so he can have several possibly non-consensual sexual encounters with a blue-haired mutant woman. I'll have to watch it again at some point to get more of it.

The movie had two important features that caught my attention. One, Charlotte Rampling. Two, all the backgrounds were CGI, as in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Several of the characters, as well, are computer generated. It doesn't really work.

The "Blink" theory of dating?

ALDaily linked this morning to a Washington Post article about the seemingly random reasons people have for dumping people. I was about to stop reading when, near the end of the Taquito story, the guy mentioned mayonnaise. Specifically, how much he hates mayonnaise, which he describes (accurately) as "the most repulsive thing in the world."

I still think the guy may have some kind of issue, what with all his fluidy-food hangups, but the mayo thing is right on. While reading further, I couldn't help thinking about the weirdest, most random reasons I've ever broken up with somebody (or just stopped calling.) The only thing that leaps immediately to mind is one girl who expressed an uncomfortable enthusiasm for Sting on a first (and only) date. Of course, I once told a girl that I liked Billy Joel, and that was before our first date. I'm not sure which I'm more embarrassed by now.

If I think of any other interesting, random reasons I've had for breaking things off with a woman, I might list them (and welcome contributions in the comment,) but what surprised me about this article was that it didn't link these obvious cognitive short cuts in relationships to the trendy Malcolm Gladwell Blink thesis, that "snap" decisions can often be as good or better than more deliberate decisions. Gladwell even has a section on speed dating.

Arguably, more deliberation on relationship issues doesn't just produce diminishing returns, it actually makes decisions worse. I've thought myself into some really dumb choices. Still, it's a thin line between snap evidence of incompatibility and snap evidence of stimulating difference. It's a cliche, but who hasn't been turned on by mutual intransigence? If you haven't, you're missing something.

Anyway, Gladwell points out some of the problems with blink thinking and the Taquito Moment has problems too. They do, however, probably leave us with the comfort of certainty we might not get with more circumspect decisions.

Comments on comments on comments on FAIR v Rumsfeld

More links to comments from the blawgs can be found on SCOTUSblog, if you haven't already experienced the diminishing returns of the law professoriate competing to find novel (and in most cases, more tenuous) issues in the 21 page opinion. One thing caught my eye, though.

A post on Prawfsblog offers a comment on a post from LawCulture commenting on the opinion. Both posts were made yesterday, actually, but the interesting thing about them is that both are remarking upon the lack of citations in this most recent of CJ John Roberts' opinions to anything other than Supreme Court opinions, statutes, and regulations. That means no law review articles or casebooks. David Barron, who made the observation, writes that this "methodology" suggests a "cramped and technical" vision of constitutional decision making. The later post analyzes the analysis of the first.

We can observe a few things from this stuff: 1) Law professors can get into some awfully trivial details while looking for "insights" in legal opinions; 2) they can be very sensitive to perceived "slights" like not being cited by a Supreme Court justice; 3) they are amazingly quick to make inferences from practically no data.

As Chief Justice of the United States, Roberts hasn't cited the work of law professors (as pointed out in the comments, he did cite one law review article in one of the earlier opinions, although that was written by a judge for whom he clerked who had never been a professor) so far. Law profs (and lawyers) tend to attribute much more importance to citations than is warranted. They are inclined to believe that when a judge cites a text, it means that that text had some influence on their thinking, or led them to their conclusion. So, if CJ Roberts doesn't cite law profs' work, he is resisting or denying their influence on constitutional law. Some tragedy is presumed to follow from this.

At present, Roberts has written all of three opinions as a Supreme Court justice, so it's a bit early to call it a "pattern" let alone a methodology. Even if you grant that Roberts cites materials from legal scholarship less than some other justices, it doesn't necessarily follow that his jurisprudence is less influenced by it, since it remains to be seen that Supreme Court jurisprudence is significantly influenced by legal scholarship at all (the "best" case for it is probably Ronald Kahn's The Supreme Court and Constitutional Theory, and best doesn't mean good in this case.) Moreover, even if you accept that Roberts cites legal scholarship less than others have and that he is therefore less influenced by or responsive to it, it doesn't follow that anybody should be concerned about it.

OK, maybe law professors should worry about it, because it eliminates one of their primary claims to relevance, dubious as that claim is.

Oscars Post-mortem

In recognition of George Clooney's Oscar win the other day, I watched Return to Horror High today. I bought it on DVD a few weeks ago at a going out of business sale for a used disc store. The quality of the film itself is indicated by the fact that the DVD menu offers the option to "Strat Movie."

Clooney's character, an actor named Oliver, is the lead in a low budget horror movie based on a series of unsolved murders that occurred at the high school where the movie is being shot. Oliver, playing a cop, informs the director in the first ten minutes that he's just gotten the lead in a TV series ("a ripoff of Miami Vice and Moonlighting" he says) and is leaving the production. Naturally, a few minutes later he becomes the first victim. Alex Rocco dominates every scene he's in as an over-the-top exploitation-minded producer who, when told that Oliver is quitting, replies that he "couldn't act for shit anyway."

It's a weird little film, hopping back and forth in time and between "real" events and the movie within the movie, sometimes leading you to mistake one type of jump for the other. Worth a viewing, though.

I wouldn't imagine the guy who played Oliver here ever meriting an Academy award. Another guy in the movie looked familiar, but it took awhile before I could place him as the kid who played Alice's son on the sitcom Alice. At least he doesn't have an Oscar. Apart from Rocco, the best performance in the movie is given by Maureen "Marsha" McCormick as a high-strung police officer.

I'd intended to link to a couple of articles analyzing the awards, but I couldn't find any that were the least bit interesting.

More on Rumsfeld v FAIR

Lots of reactions from the blawgosphere (what an ugly word.) SCOTUSblog collects some, (Marty Lederman's posted response has a healthy debate going on in the comments) and ACSBlog has some others. TaxProf Blog has a nice collection of responses. In her comments, Ann Althouse writes "I dread seeing all the opinion pieces that connect this case to 'Brokeback Mountain' not winning the Best Picture Oscar." Hey, I was just joking. And I wasn't even the only one.

Reading the analyses of others pointed out to me that I'd neglected a major part of the decision, the "unconstitutional conditions" doctrine, in my brief summary yesterday. Even with its spending power, Congress can't impose conditions on recipients of federal money if those conditions would be unconstitutional to impose directly. This is why the First Amendment treatments matter. If the Solomon Amendment's requirement violated a valid First Amendment claim of the respondent schools, then the use of federal money to coerce compliance with the policy would also be violative. Roberts' opinion disposes of the First Amendment claims of the schools, finding none of them valid. Arguably, the opinion narrows coerced expressive conduct/association law in the process.

That said, it would have been possible for the Court to recognize that one or more of FAIR's First Amendment claims wasn't completely bogus and still conclude that Congress' power to "raise and support Armies" overrides it. Of course, a holding like that would have caused indigestion throughout conservative circles, where they hate balancing approaches. Volokh Conspiracy would be teeming with complaints that they just got rid of one O'Connor (who was fond of balancing tests) only to find they have another.

Balancing approaches to constitutional law are vulnerable to criticism because (arguably) they leave the justices with too much discretion to decide cases through the subjective application of comparative "weights" or they allow the Court to diminish important constitutional rights or powers by "balancing them away." However, the alternative represented here is to continually restate and recharacterize constitutional rights and interests to exclude or include whatever specific application is at issue in the instant case. You could call it "distinguishing" them away.

Many readers of the opinion seem pleased with CJ Roberts' fulfillment of his promise as a careful legal craftsman, treating the jurisprudential issues in clear language and with meticulous attention to the issues and caselaw. While that might strike many (including myself, possibly) as preferable to the ungainly opinions that often result from balancing competing constitutional interests, the beauty of Roberts' kind of craftsmanship can be dulled by cavalier treatment of those issues and precedents. In particular, I think a couple of the compelled speech cases and especially the expressive conduct cases are done a bit of damage by the CJ's readings of them. It may serve judicial elegance to deal with issues by offering revised readings of previous cases to eliminate issues, but it doesn't serve a lot of other important jurisprudential values.

First the Oscars, now the Supreme Court...

Following up what must be a bitter, albeit symbolic and empty, defeat at the Academy Awards last night, gays were dealt another setback (a real one this time) by a unanimous Supreme Court today with the announcement of Rumsfeld v FAIR. The Court rejected a challenge to the Solomon Amendment, congressional legislation imposing a requirement that colleges and universities extend access to military recruiters equal to that extended to other employers. Congress had conditioned receipt of federal funds on the right of access, but the Court rejected the objections of law schools on the basis of Congress' Article I power to raise and support an army.

Law schools represented in the suit by the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights argued that their antidiscrimination policies--opposing facilitation of discrimination by denying access to their students to employers who discriminate--should be applied equally to the DoD. They sought to limit or deny access to military recruiters due to the military's "don't ask don't tell" policy, which discriminates against homosexuals. The schools marshaled mostly First Amendment claims: free association, freedom from compelled speech, and from compelled expressive conduct. Although from my preliminary reading it seems like the CJ's opinion strains in a couple of instances to distinguish this case from some previous caselaw on these issues, especially compelled speech and association, I don't see why he bothered, since the Article I ground likely overwhelms even a valid First Amendment claim. If Congress can force me to join the army and fight overseas even though I object to their policies regarding homosexuals, and they can, it seems like they can force colleges and universities, especially law schools, who enjoy considerable state protection, to contribute to the recruitment of military personnel despite their objections.

A complete change of subject (on judicial elections) below the jump...

In another action today, the Court declined to review a case from the Illinois state supreme court in which a justice on the state high court who appeared to have accepted a substantial amount of money from State Farm insurance in an expensive election for the position cast the deciding vote throwing out a civil judgment against State Farm. Petitioners argued that the 14th Amendment creates a Due Process right to a hearing before a court untainted by such associations.

I know something about federal recusal law and the model judicial code of conduct, but not much about Illinois' in particular. It seems to me, however, that if "Due Process" applied to the states means anything, it means among other things the right to an impartial jurist hearing one's case. Certainly, if someone were to directly bribe a state judge to throw out a case against them, that would create a federal claim to a denial of Due Process, regardless of how one reads the Due Process clause. This is despite the fact that federal courts don't have a direct supervisory role over independent state court systems and that state courts aren't subject to federal recusal law.

I do think, though, that the justices on the SCOTUS are reluctant to help out state court systems with problems like this. As Republican Party of MN v White made clear, a majority of the justices on the SCOTUS believe that if states want to elect their judges, they have to deal with the consequences of that decision. Now, US high court justices regularly fume at any suggestion that they be subjected to anything like the public scrutiny that candidates for public office have to endure as a matter of course. Scalia, for instance (the author of White) may hate the idea of electing judges (certainly, elected judges wouldn't be able to go around forbidding people from tape recording their public speeches), but if states want to be that stupid, they can't expect the SCOTUS to help them avoid the inevitable compromises of judicial independence and impartiality.

That said, many of the people looking to the Court for help also hate judicial elections, but I think if they really wanted to get rid of them, they should take the justices' lead and merely expose all the problems that result from electing judges, rather than try to patch them up with ethics codes, canons of conduct, and federal Due Process rights.

No action (again) on Jose Padilla's petition.

PS. I read over the Oscars ceremony posts, which are deadly dull. I blame the Academy, though.

Blogging the Oscars 4

11:06, Dustin Hoffman's here to ramble through adapted screenplay

Brokeback could win due to a sweep, or due to Larry McMurtry's prestige.

and it did. If Brokeback does sweep, does this mean we have to put up with another wave of "gay cowboy" jokes and takeoffs? McMurtry takes a moment to recognize booksellers; good for him.

Uma Thurman's presenting original screenplay. She looks weird. Appropriate, I guess, since this is often the category where academy voters feel comfortable choosing something off-kilter. In the 90s, it seemed like the original screenplay award was often reserved for the weird "indie" movies, or what counts as indie movies in the eyes of the AMPAS.

Crash won. Is this the Academy being daring, or being safe? I'm not sure. I guess the really "daring" choice might have been "Squid and the Whale" because there isn't any widespread praise forthcoming for picking it. Pick Crash, and you can read the win as a bracing, brave willingess to confront race-relations in America.

11:18, Ang Lee's about to win best director

I haven't really liked an Ang Lee movie since Eat Drink Man Woman, which itself was only mildly entertaining. It's criminal that Ang Lee is famous in this country while Edward Yang couldn't get arrested. I guess I liked Sense and Sensibility as much as EDMW. Ang Lee proves, seems to me, that Taiwanese filmmakers are just as capable as others to make mediocre middlebrow American movies in a variety of genres.

Best picture: I guess I'm expecting Brokeback. If it fails to win, will that reflect a rejection of gayness by Hollywood? Will they be accused of flinching in the face of true recognition of cowboy love? Will the North American Man-Cowboy Love Association denounce the awards? Well, Ang Lee still got best director, so it didn't walk away empty-handed.

Well, Crash won. I'll see it eventually. Its Oscar win doesn't change that at all, nor, I hope, does it make me more or less inclined to like it.

They're done by 11:30. That's nice. Ooh, cool. Hellraiser 5 is on. That's a good one.

In the morning I'll reread all this and decide whether blogging events like this is a worthwhile enterprise for the CR. Right now I'm thinking no, but I'll reflect in the cold light of day.

Maybe it's just the Oscars. I just don't take this seriously enough. Or the art of cinema, for that matter.

Blogging the Oscars 3

9:55, Jake Gyllenhall (sp?) in the second or third open plea for people to go to theaters

Are people really going to be moved to rush to the theaters by watching a bunch of sweeping, large scale extravaganzas on their TVs at home?

There's another three hours to go? Holy christ.

Jessica Alba and Eric Bana doing "sound mixing." As if I haven't done enough damage to my credibility by casting doubt on Felicity Huffman's acting greatness, I'm going to offer a slight dissent from the universal lust for Alba. I know, that probably makes me gay in the eyes of some people. I'm not saying I wouldn't do her, I'm just saying that, while she is very pretty, I don't find her all that sexy, given the universe of hot chicks in Hollywood. Her looks are great, but there's something missing for me. I can't explain it.

You're still reading? OK.

Lily Tomlin and Merle Streep are doing a pretty good bit, an improv intro to Robert Altman's honorary Oscar. I love Altman, mainly because I don't love all his movies. Some are absolutely great (I think California Split is my favorite, but check me again next week possibly for McCabe, Secret Honor, Long Goodbye) some are just good (I liked Popeye, for instance, only a bit less than Nashville; I'd also put the Player, MASH, and some other highly praised movies in this category) and others I don't care so much for (Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Buffalo Bill, and Ready to Wear; see I do have some conventional opinions.)

Altman's had a heart transplant. I remember hearing that before. I'm actually not looking forward to Prairie Home Companion, since I've always disliked the source material.

10:18, Ludacris introducing "It's Hard out here for a Pimp."

I haven't seen Hustle and Flow, and I understand that the song is quite important to the film, but isn't it supposed to be, in the context of that film, a mediocre first-time song by an aspiring rapper?

Wow, the Three Six Mafia just won an Oscar? I feel the Academy has just taken yet another opportunity to embarrass themselves. I'm sure a lot of voters think they're being very open-minded and all, but come on, it's not a very good song. Of course, the other two songs aren't that great either, so maybe this is a sincere pick. Although if Sam Jackson's comments earlier this Oscar season is accurate, it could be a pick made largely by family members and household staff of Academy members.

Jennifer Garner's presenting sound editing. Is it just me, or does her forehead look red?

10:29, Clooney introducing the dead people montage

Names that jump out at me: Arnold from happy Days; Vincent Schiavelli, Moira Shearer, Sandra Dee (see Dunwich Horror), Moustapha Akkad, Debra Hill (wow, I didn't notice the Halloween curse this year), Brock Peters, Shelley Winters, Bob Wise, Pryor

I had knee surgery earlier this week and am thinking about taking some Percocet. That might make the rest of this blogging exercise more interesting. I'm actually not taking it very often, since I don't want to get addicted and lose the right to laugh at Rush Limbaugh's addiction to Oxycontin.

Stewart pointed out that the Three Six Mafia now have more Oscars than Martin Scorcese. That says a lot.

Wait, did Crash just win something? Looks like it.

10:43, Hillary Swank intro of Lead Actor

I haven't seen Capote and I'm not really interested in it. Nevertheless, I think Hoffman will win because they're giving these things to celebrity impersonators nowadays. Plus he's got a bunch of the lead-in awards as well. That might also mean Johnny Cash or Ed Murrow could get it. I'd like David Strathairn to get it, just because I've really liked him since Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.

Nope, Hoffman. Does that mean Huffman will win best actress? I heard somewhere he had a bet with some guys that whoever won an Oscar first had to bark their acceptance speech. I don't hear him barking.

Travolta is introducing cinematography; Memoirs of a Geisha won, because it helps you win one of these if your movie looks like a moving Vanity Fair cover; the guy accepting the award again nods to the "bravery" of somebody or other for making this movie. That's hilarious.

Jamie Fox presenting the best actress. I don't like Judy Dench that much, don't think Charlize Theron can act, don't think Keira Knightley's very pretty, already dissed Felicity Huffman. I like Reese. She's not always up to the roles she takes, but she can really do good work in a part she's ready for.

and she won. I guess that really suspicious death of the photographer with whom she had some altercation with didn't cast a shadow on her. Don't know if she merited the award for this movie, but I can't say I disapprove completely.

Blogging the Oscars 2

Second post. Lauren Bacall is stumbling badly through an introduction. I've never liked her, but this isn't her fault. She's doing her best with what must be a difficult to read teleprompter.

It's a salute to "noir." Seems to me the "noir" concept is getting out of hand. What was originally used as a concept intended to make a certain group of films more intelligible based on shared stylistic and thematic traits has turned into some kind of aspiration or empty meaningless praise.

These "best actress" ads are pretty good, but I remember host Salma Hayek did the same thing on SNL the night before the Oscars when she was nominated for Frida. I know I just admitted to watching SNL, but look more closely... "host Salma Hayek..." Make sense now?

As I recall, Salma accused Renee Zellweger of being a man, calling attention to her "cajones."

9:19, Charlize Theron on docs

Saw two of these. March of the Penguins is going to win. Has won. I wanna see a documentary called "March of the French Documentary Filmmakers", but only if they die in scores. I can hear Morgan Freeman saying "...others are not so lucky..." now as a bunch of French filmmakers fall on their backs, arms and legs sticking up. Also saw Enron and not surprised it didn't win. Is someone going to make a doc about the Lay/Skilling prosecutions? I'd like to see that

Haven't seen Crash. Think I will, if only to satisfy the friends who think I should. Its best song nominee is being sung now. Is the movie as precious as this song? God, I hope not.

I've gotta see "Street Fight." Actually, there are a bunch of docs on my Netflix list that I should move up.

9:30, Jon Stewart's not dying, actually. At least, not more than everybody else who hosts this show

Speed reunion (Keanu and Sandra) presenting the art direction award. Good Night and Good Luck is one of the BP nominees. I actually bought tickets to see this movie a few weekends ago, but the screening was cancelled due to break in the film. Of course, my wife and I sat in the theater for 20 minutes waiting for it to start before we figured out something was wrong.

Memoirs of a Geisha is set for a "purty movie" sweep.

Samuel L. Jackson is on, looking sharp. Introducing another self-congratulatory clip collection about how "confrontational" Hollywood is. A lot of these clips are absurd as examples of the bravery of American movies speaking truth to power. Thelma and Louise? 9 to 5? Even "All the President's Men." Is it really bravery to make a movie attacking a president who just resigned in disgrace facing impeachment articles in the House? Make a sequel right now and maybe I'll be impressed.

Stewart's line coming out of it is great: "...and none of those problems ever bothered us again."

Is somebody producing another remake of Inherit the Wind? That I'd like to see.

9:42, Salma Hayek, nice dress

Wow, if I write something about some other hot actress I'd like to see, whill she suddenly appear? Seemed to work that time. Man, she looks great. Am I spelling stuff correctly? I Can't tell.

There was a TV film of Inherit the Wind in 1999 with George C. Scott and Jack Lemmon, which I didn't see. It's not on video, damnit. Why the hell not?

Score from Brokeback Mountain won. Guy got hugged by Salma, bastard. Does this augur a Brokeback juggernaut? Could be. I can easily see Academy voters breaking their backs from patting themselves so hard after handing a bunch of awards to Brokeback Mountain.

In all fairness, making that movie was really brave. Now, if only millions of Americans would show as much bravery by acknowledging that they are gay and live openly gay lives in public.

In truth, Ang Lee showed a lot more bravery making the Hulk. Directing a movie about gay cowboys won't end anybody's career in Hollywood, but throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars of studio money will.

Blogging the Oscars

It's so tempting to "blog the Oscars," mostly because the whole idea is alien to this blog. Not because it's Hollywood-focused, while I often write about law and courts. Not because it's ostensibly about quality cinema, while I often write about "trash." It's because blogging a live event means writing a lot, providing a generous amount of content, which I don't do. Or at least not recently.

So here goes:

It's already started (8:14 by my probably wrong VCR clock)

Nicole Kidman's presenting the first Oscar, Best Supporting Actor I think. I haven't really seen any of these movies. I don't watch "quality" movies generally. I used to, but most "quality" movies disappoint me, and I'd rather have my low expectations unmet than raise them.

Wait, I did see History of Violence. I liked it very much, but William Hurt's nomination is a complete mystery to me. BTW, Clooney won. I find Clooney's recent aw-shucks act in face of high acclaim a bit irritating, and his speech here is giving fuel to those who find his activism and his praise in Hollywood self-congratulatory.

8:25ish, Ben Stiller's doing some shtick

Visual effects. I don't care. Yeah, it's hard work, etc. etc. I don't really care that much. For a guy who watches a lot of movies with special effects, I'm totally indifferent to good FX.

Stiller's greenscreen suit makes him look like a pistachio ninja, if there were such a thing. If there were, I'm sure it would have been in the classic 9 1/2 Ninjas.

8:29, Reese Witherspoon presenting the animation award.

Wallace and Gromit won, surprising no one. I missed it in the theater, but look forward to catching it on video.

8:33, Naomi Watts, vying with Nicole for the palest Australian Oscar.

Dolly Parton doing her song from Transamerican. Didn't see it. Don't like Felicity Huffman. I know, I think that gets me put on a list of terrorists, since everybody loves Felicity Huffman. I think in truth, everybody loves the characters she plays and that translates into a lot of goodwill. I've never found one of her performances anything better than competent. She's not without technique; in fact, you can see it all the time.

Parton will win this award, because she's Dolly Parton and she probably deserves it. Anything that keeps the Three-Six Mafia from getting one is OK.

I used to follow the Oscars. When I was a kid, it was because I cared who won, then for a long time it was because i cared about movies, then it was because I found it interesting to predict who would win and interpret what they meant. I always figured the Oscar choices reflected how Hollywood wanted itself to be perceived (to the extent that "Hollywood" could have a desire, blah, blah, blah.)

8:41, Owen and Luke Wilson presenting live action shorts

I'm gonna refill my coffee

Are the Oscars always this corny? Yeah, I guess so.

Are the guys from Warners who created that little genius chicken in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons getting paid by the people behind "Chicken Little"? They should be.

These shorts awards are sorta like Hollywood welfare programs.

8:47, Jennifer Anniston presenting costumes.

Memoirs of a Geisha won, which was a shoo-in, since it's basically a fashion show movie, which I did see. Wow, some people in Hollywood were "brave enough to make a movie about a woman."

I can't believe Jennifer Anniston tried to stand in the way of Brad and Angelina. She's such a homewrecker.

8:50, Russell Crowe, another actor from down under,

Acknowledging the long history of Hollywood's grand tradition of replacing real people in our collective memory with fakes.

That reminds me, I had bookmarked an interesting article about art fakes I wanted to blog about and Plagiary has updated with some interesting stuff. Guess I'll get back to it.

My wife's wondering how off-schedule we are as the first hour nears its end.

8:55, Will Ferrell and Steve Carell (are they both "two-Ls"?)

I saw 40-Year-Old Virgin recently, which was as hit-and-miss as is usual with the projects put together by that group. It had more coherence than Anchorman, but the cast musical interlude from the 70s seemed shoehorned in, whereas the rendition of "Afternoon Delight" from Anchorman was probably the best thing in it.

I think Stewart is bombing, but people like him enough that it might go unnoticed.

9:00, Rachel McAdams is talking, shhhh

Morgan Freeman is doing something. Best supporting Actress. Is Catherine Keener gonna win just for playing a celeb, or is Rachel Weiss going to win because she's so damn hot? I'm going with Weiss.

Yep. Damn, look at those. I've liked her since Chain Reaction. Yeah, I saw it.

I watch the Oscars now mostly because my wife likes to see what people are wearing. I don't care what Hollywood thinks of itself anymore, nor do I care to speculate on what choices AMPAS voters might make in pursuit of being perceived a certain way.