In lieu of actually creating new, original content, I’m just going to keep bringing you all the absurd and disparate search terms because jesus there are some hilarious ones. Without further ado, here are the best search terms of the last quarter:
– channing tatum masturbate
– charizard sticky note
– احدث صور زفاف chang tatum
– bad writing on the internet (no idea how this directed to us)
– nudist colony male
– father son relationship
– joseph kony 2012 obama “when saddam”
– plausible horror movies
– channing tatum nose profile
– the vows movie
– kony 2012 oh hell yeah
– channing tatum fart
– kony is going on where
– coma internet telephone
– under shaving seen
If any of the people who found us using one of these search terms are still reading for whatever reason, thanks for everything!
It’s that time again, folks. In an effort to remain transparent here at STFUI, we’re once again bringing you the delightful and often weird stats and search terms that have been bringing an average of two or three people per day(!) to our humble corner of the Internet in the last eight months or so.
– stfu about Kony
– kony is going on where
– empire records shaves hair
– how to donate directly to kony
– what was “change your profile pic to stop child abuse”
– channing tatum saying the momment of impact the vow
– “female soldier” headshave
– robin tunney nipple
– punishment headshave
– www.ladies headshaving stories
As you can probably figure out, Mr. Covell’s article about the emotional headshave cliche in movies kept us afloat in the ‘creepy Internet weirdos’ demographic (thanks, guys!) for the months of inactivity here at STFUI. We’re also piggybacking off the Kony2012 movement, like the clasy individuals we are, and also Channing Tatum gets some play in the search terms. Sorry we couldn’t tell you how to donate money to Kony, single person who was asking that, maybe don’t Google that one again. ANYWAY, EXCITING STUFF, HUH? Keep tuning in to STFUI, and join us for the next STATS article, when we’ll be able to talk about our 2000th visitor. Maybe! Just think – if you Google something crazy or offputting and find your way here, it could be YOU!
Guys, I know we usually address lighter fare here at STFUI, like what if Channing Tatum was played by Zach Galifianakis (And if you’re clicking over from that article, thanks. We love you.). I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page about this whole KONY 2012 thing that seems to have exploded during the last few days. Now, when you tell me that Jospeh Kony is an absolutely atrocious human being, I agree with you. Really, he’s just about as disgusting as they come, but if we can get serious here for a moment, talking on the Internet about getting him arrested isn’t really going to do anything. It’s great that we’ve discovered another little cause célèbre,but if all we’re doing is talking about it, it’s going nowhere pretty goddamned fast. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we’re all informing ourselves on world events and talking about some of the awful, awful shit we’d otherwise ignore, but that’s really all that’s happening. We’re acknowledging the problem, but no one’s really addressing it.
Celebrities I think are great are tweeting about it, so it must be a big deal!
HEY, THIS JOSEPH KONY GUY IS PRETTY BAD. LET’S STOP HIM. KONY 2012!
Yeah, he is pretty bad. And he’s been pretty bad for over 25 years, too. You know what we’re going to change by talking about him on the Internet? There’s gonna be a spike in Google searches for “KONY 2012” and “Kony” for about, oh, maybe two weeks. That’s about the level of change Internet discourse affects.
HEY MAN, I ‘LIKED’ THAT FACEBOOK VIDEO THOSE GUYS AT INVISIBLE CHILDREN MADE!
Good for you. I ‘liked’ NBC’s Community and look what that got us. Lots of people liking a Facebook post doesn’t really do a whole lot.
AT LEAST PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT IT!
Yeah, that’s a good first step. Now what did we decide we were going to do about it?
WE’RE GONNA KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT!
And then what?
WE’RE GONNA KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT!
Okay. So the plan is what? We talk about it, and talk about it and maybe donate a few dollars to Invisible Children? Great. And then what?
WHAT DO YOU MEAN “AND THEN WHAT?”? I DID MY PART! I TALKED ABOUT IT!
Oh, fantastic. So, you devoted a few minutes of your life on Facebook or Twitter to saying “Gee whiz, this Kony guy is pretty bad. We should do something about him! Pass it on!” And so did a billion other people. You know what nobody’s going to do? Get out there and take real steps toward fucking changing anything. Yeah, we’re a little more aware of the problem for now, but we live in the developed world, where the motto is “Out of sight, out of mind!”99% of us, myself included, never knew this guy existed until today, and he’s been active for over 25 years. Sitting around and mulling it over on Facebook isn’t doing anything to actually stop the atrocities. KONY 2012, so far, is almost exactly like 2010’s “Change your profile pic to stop child abuse” campaign. Which, if you’ll stop and recall, did somewhere in the neighbourhood of fuck and all to stop child abuse. Changing your display picture to Charizard didn’t do a damn thing to stop kids from getting hurt, just like “liking” a video on Facebook isn’t going to bring down the Lord’s Resistance Army and Joseph Kony. Yeah, we’re more aware, but awareness only goes so far without action.
BUT HEY, I DON’T SEE YOU GOING OUT AND CHANGING THE WORLD.
Well, no, but I’m not dressing up my inaction as action and pretending I did something significant. Even this blog is just more noise in the ether.
WELL, WHAT’S YOUR SOLUTION?!
Short of hacking the universe and running a “Remove all dickbags” program, I don’t really have one. I’m a blogger (at best), not someone in a position to do anything but tilt at windmills and characterize the Internet as an obnoxious jerk who yells at everyone. Donating directly to organizations in a position to affect change is probably a good place to start. An even better starting point would be contacting your political representatives and telling them why this is an important issue. We’re talking about it, sure, but unless we’re willing to act towards making the change we want, nothing’s going to happen
WHATEVER MAN, THIS IS A MAJOR THING, AND WE’LL NEVER LET IT GO.
Sure. Just like we were never going to let go of Occupy, or Arab Spring, or SOPA or literally any of the other causes that swept the Internet and were promptly forgotten about after we all went “Well, shit. #thisisbad”. Income inequality and fiscal accountability, among Occupy’s other goals, still remain unaddressed; people in the Middle East are still protesting their oppressive governments; and SOPA is almost certainly being resubmitted for approval with a few words changed. All of which are cases where we looked at something happening, thought “This is significant” and then erased it from our minds to go get drunk or watch TV or whatever it is the kids do these days. This is what the Internet does. We take up a cause, champion the shit out of it for about ten minutes, and then forget it ever happened.
And that’s really shitty. I’d love for nothing more than Joseph Kony and all of his lieutenants to be captured and tried for their crimes, but the world’s been pretty apathetic about that whole idea for about 25 years. Two weeks of talking about it on the Internet isn’t going to change anything. Joseph Kony has been wanted internationally since 2005, and the fact that he’s not being actively hunted down by a USA-led coalition of the world’s governments isn’t going to change because Facebook was in an uproar for a few days. The truth is, Joseph Kony doesn’t have anything we want, so he’s not exactly a high priority for a government already involved in something like three wars. If that seems like a shitty thing to say, it kind of is. But that’s the state of Western Civilization. If someone’s actions don’t affect us directly, or they don’t have anything we want, governments feel required to give approximately zero shits about that person’s actions. Even if those actions involve sending thousands of children to fight wars. Out of sight, out of mind, right? The world is full of shitty people and situations, and Facebooking and tweeting about it isn’t going to get corporate-minded governments off their cash bloated asses to do a damn about it. If they even could.
You remember when Saddam was captured, how Iraq became just a haven of free speech, peace and democracy? What’s that, there was a power vacuum and an ongoing conflict that outlasted his execution by five years? Oh, yeah. If there’s one thing we’ve got to remember, it takes a hell of a lot more than arresting one man to make a difference. Even if Joseph Kony were arrested, and tried, and executed, that wouldn’t exactly end the conflict in Uganda, never mind all of Africa. Or the rest of the world. But that’s putting the cart before the horse. That’s assuming by some miracle we don’t stop talking about Joseph Kony next week, and tweeting actually accomplishes something for once. Which it probably won’t. Like I said, it has to go beyond that. Now that we’re all aware of the problem, what are we actually going to do to address it? We can affect change, but it takes more than a tweet or a comment. But hey, by all means, keep tweeting that KONY 2012 hashtag and spreading the video around, if you want. For once, I wouldn’t actually mind being wrong. And hey, at least people are educating themselves, right? It’s a good start, for sure, but direct aid is infinitely more important than advocacy, so if you really believe in the cause, let’s stop talking about it, and start doing something.
The Vow is a story about “moments of impact,” specifically, the moment of impact when a careening snow plow barrels into the back of a parked car, sending it head-on into an unfortunately placed telephone pole. The driver of the crumpled vehicle, played by Channing Tatum, is injured, and his passenger and wife, played by Rachel McAdams, is sent flying through the windshield. The husband learns that his wife has suffered major head trauma and the doctors have medically induced a coma to allow her brain to reduce the swelling. It’s all very technical, you see, but when McAdams’ character wakes up, she thinks that the man sitting lovingly at the end of her bed is her doctor, assuming that, in her brain-damaged world, doctors look like Channing Tatum. She forgets the last five years of her life; she is a woman with only half of a past and the last things she remembers are being engaged to another man and attending law school. But the charming and ever-committed Adonis is unwavering and he spends the rest of the film trying to fill in the holes in her memory, to convince this broken flower that they are hopelessly in love and, failing that, he vows to make his wife fall in love with him all over again.
As I watched this timeless love story unfold, though, I realized something: By simply recasting Channing Tatum’s role, the movie suddenly takes on a different tone entirely.
Let’s consider The Vow if the husband were played by, say, Zach Galifianakis. Instead of mistaking him for her doctor, she thinks that Galifianakis is the sketchy ex-convict whom the hospital hired to clean the bedpans. She wouldn’t give him a second look, except maybe to make sure that she was close enough to the nurse’s call button in case he started to masturbate in front of her. In shock, he inches his way to the side of the bed, tries to take her by the hand (though she pulls it away in disgust), and, in that part of every kooky comedy trailer where the music stops for the plot’s ultimate punchline, he says, “I’m your husband!”
She cannot possibly wrap her mind around the pairing—the stunning beauty and the oafish loser. She recalls romantic comedies and network sitcoms with similar duos but it always seemed so unlikely. To help jog her memory, the husband shows her their photo albums filled with pictures of their adorably unconventional wedding, of trips to national landmarks, and of joyful times in the park or on the beach where they couldn’t help but capture their undying love with a sweetly askew snapshot.
“Photoshop!” she screams. “Conspiracy!” This couldn’t be. What must have happened in those five years for her to settle for such a repulsive slob? Is he rich? Is he seriously packing? Nothing short of hypnotism or coercion could explain their marriage. Still at the hospital, she rejects offers to speak with the resident psychologist, and she hasn’t had much of an appetite since waking from her coma. Now, it wasn’t just her muscles that began to atrophy—even her sense of self was fading.
Meanwhile, the husband is drowning in debt. He wishes he could turn to friends or family, but he has none. He has no choice but to sell his impressive Star Wars memorabilia collection to stay afloat. But that doesn’t keep the debtors at bay for very long.
Eventually, he realizes that he needs to do something drastic to save their livelihood. He hatches a scheme to rob a bank—not a major one, but the local branch run by an elderly couple with an equally elderly guard who naps at his post. The next day, minutes before closing, the husband kicks open the door to the bank, wailing wildly, startling the guard to the point of cardiac arrest. Unable to get a gun in time, the man brought the last remaining bit of Star Wars swag—a DH-17 blaster pistol—and sticks it in the face of the nearest teller. “Gimme all the fuckin’ money in this bank!” he screams, and the tellers abide. He exits the bank with a garbage bag filled with stacks of bills, but as soon as he passes through the doors, he hears sirens. He runs, money falling through tears in the delicate plastic. He stops to pick up some of the spilled bills when he hears, “Freeze!” But he doesn’t. Desperate to save his wife, his marriage, and his dignity, he cinches the remaining stacks and runs.
A block away, the sound of a gun firing wakes a sleeping baby. The man drops to the ground, dead of a broken heart—and a bullet in the brain.
The husband gasps and jumps from his bed. It was only a nightmare. The scene provides him with a moment of clarity: His wife doesn’t need financial support—she needs a grand romantic gesture, the kind that made her fall in love with him in the first place.
He rushes to the hospital with a jar under his arm. His arrival scares her, but he makes his way to her anyway. “This. This is our love,” he says, presenting her with the jar.
“This…is dirt,” she says, confused yet curious to know where this is going.
“That’s from our trip to the Grand Canyon. You said that you would never forget the smell there. You said it smelled like earth, like nature, like everything that is pure and good in the world.”
She tenderly opens the jar. The doctor and nurses in the room fall silent. The woman holds the container to her nose and breathes steadily.
“It just smells like dirt to me,” she admits, with a hint of sadness in her voice.
Defeated, the husband shuffles out the door, down the stairs, through the doors of the hospital, and the six miles home to their apartment. Days later, when his wife is discharged and returns home to gather her belongings, she finds her husband dead in their marital bed, his face destroyed by a self-inflicted gunshot, his blood soaked into the grain of the wood.
It takes her less than a week to forget about the portly stranger’s suicide. One time, though, almost exactly a year later, she stops chopping onions to think, a faint memory teasing her.
“Something on your mind, babe?” her new husband (played by Ryan Gosling) asks.
She squints slightly and cocks her head but then shakes it off. “Ah, must not have been important.”
Drive
Super 8
Submarine
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Tree of Life
The Muppets
The Rum Diary
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Josh’s picks
Michael Fassbender, Shame
Ryan Gosling, Drive
Craig Roberts, Submarine
Michael Shannon, Take Shelter
Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Matt’s picks
Ryan Gosling, Drive
Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life
Craig Roberts, Submarine
Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary
Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Josh’s picks
Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Charlize Theron, Young Adult
Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn
Melanie Laurent, Beginners
Matt’s picks
Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life
Carey Mulligan, Drive
Miss Piggy, The Muppets (I have seen, like, zero films with strong lead women this year)
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Josh’s picks
Christopher Plummer, Beginners John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene Michael Sheen, Midnight in Paris Patton Oswalt, Young Adult Jared Harris, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Matt’s picks
Jared Harris, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
David Tennant, Fright Night
Albert Brooks, Drive
Giovanni Ribisi, The Rum Diary
Matt Damon, Contagion
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Josh’s picks
Ellen Page, Super Shailene Woodley, The Descendants Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life Marion Cotillard, Midnight in Paris
Carey Mulligan, Shame
Matt’s picks
Kate Winslet, Contagion
Elle Fanning, Super 8
Judy Greer, The Descendants
DIRECTING
Josh’s picks
Steve McQueen, Shame
Richard Ayoade, Submarine Mike Mills, Beginners Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive Steven Soderbergh, Contagion
Matt’s picks
Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive
Richard Ayoade, Submarine
David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
James Bobin, The Muppets
J.J. Abrams, Super 8
SCREENPLAY (COMBINED)
Josh’s picks
Richard Ayoade, Submarine Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris Mike Mills, Beginners Diablo Cody, Young Adult Miranda July, The Future
Matt’s picks
Richard Ayoade, Submarine
Bruce Robinson, The Rum Diary
Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Hossein Amini, Drive
Steve Zaillian, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Josh: Looking over these Academy Award nominations, I’ve decided that this is a particularly strange year in film. Sure, the Academy usually makes moviegoers say, “wait, what?” when the nominations are revealed, but I can at least see their rationale in years past. But this year, I’m not so much upset about individual nominations—I’m mostly upset about the fact that for the first time ever, for me at least, the majority of the Best Picture noms are movies that I either didn’t care for in the least or have absolutely no interest in. And I think it’s telling that of the nine pictures, I haven’t seen four of them. And it’s not as if I’m some casual film watcher; by my rough estimate, I watched 87 2011 films. I mean, shit, I even have The Iron Lady and War Horse on my computer, this very computer I’m writing on, and I can’t even bring myself to play them as background noise. So either I am very suddenly out of touch or the Academy is no longer able to effectively gauge the best films of the year. I’m assuming it’s the latter. Am I alone here, though? Do you find this year’s choices to be the same kind of uninteresting, unchallenging awards fodder, cast from the same dull mold?
Matt: I think the Academy’s definitely out of touch. I mean, you only have to look at how they’re just now modernizing their voting system. In 20-goddamn-12. But as far as the best picture nominees go (and I’ve only seen two of them, which should show you how much I care), you’ve got: Spielberg War Drama, Throwback Genre Picture, Underdog Sports Movie, Heavy Drama with Comedic Elements, Confusing Vaguely Spiritual Clip Show, Woody Allen Movie, Drama About a Trying Time in African American History as Seen Through the Eyes of a Plucky White Protagonist, Scorsese Movie, and 9/11: The 9/11ing. Each movie just seems calculated in some ways, and it makes me wonder if the Academy even watched them or just read the copy on the back of the box. Now, in all fairness, I can’t really speak to the quality of most of the movies, but when a film such as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is released to what could generously be described as “middling reviews” is nominated for Best Picture, I have to wonder what the fucking deal is. I get that critics aren’t the final line in determining what’s good and what isn’t, sure, but this just seems like the Academy making sure they hit all the sociopolitical tropes people have come to expect from them. And, I mean, I’d be hard pressed to say this makes me angry, but it’s fucking weird.
Josh: It’s very weird, but not entirely unexpected when you consider that almost every single movie that I loved this year was very un-Academy-friendly, and many were small, angry, off-kilter pictures that most general audiences just don’t respond to. But I thought some of this out of touch nominating was supposed to be curbed with the expansion to (up to) ten Best Picture selections. You might as well call it the Christopher Nolan amendment where critically acclaimed movies that are also commercial smash hits can be recognized for their contribution to that year in movies. And I would say that Fincher suffers when it comes to Oscar noms the same way that Nolan has. And yet The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, an excellently crafted thriller based on an international mega-phenomenon, can’t even get enough votes to be the tenth selection. Sure, it’s admittedly edgier than the stuffy-shirted voters usually go for but there wasn’t a single nomination in that category that would make me go, “well, at least the Academy isn’t totally up its own ass.” Not one. And that’s the part that upsets me the most. But while I find a kerchief to wipe these tears away, why don’t you tell me what you would have been happy to see nominated.
Matt: Well, for one, I think Drive should be on there, just for the sheer number of great performances. Plus, I really love how much the story was conveyed with so little dialogue overall. I’m happy with The Tree of Life. I know you hated it, but I really loved it, so it can stay. I’d probably put Submarine on the list as well. I love Richard Ayoade as an actor, and his debut as a director was surprisingly strong. Super 8, definitely. It’s an homage to ‘80s Spielberg, but it’s also just a great movie on its own. And then maybe The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. Admittedly, I’ve only seen about 35 movies from 2011, so my opinion’s a little bit limited. I’d honestly be fine if the Academy went back to five options like they used to do. The flexible number of nominations is a great idea in theory, but if the execution means we’re just going to keep seeing them make safe choices like War Horse and Incredibly 9/11 Make You Sad Cry Now, I’d honestly prefer fewer slots.
Honestly, as we move into February, I’m expecting some of the Oscar noms I missed to go into (or back into, as the case may be) wider circulation. My crappy town doesn’t have much in the way of theatres, and what we do have is usually given over completely to stuff like Twilight and Transformers.
Josh: But from my perspective this year, I’d rather watch Transformers and Twilight (both of which I’ve seen) than watch War Horse even once. It could just be that I’m getting stubbornly ignorant in my old age, but I have absolutely zero interest in watching The Artist or Hugo or ELAIC—which I find really fascinating because it’s not like those movies are ones that I’d normally dismiss outright. I mean, City Lights is one of my favorite movies ever, so a silent feel-good movie is right up my alley, and I’m a big fan of Scorsese (duh) and Safron Foer‘s short-form fiction and nonfiction (which I guess is like saying I’m a big fan of Spike Jonze, the director of IKEA commercials, but still). I enjoyed much darker works this year, ones that challenged me quite a bit and showed me some seriously flawed, unsavory central characters. Films like Drive, Young Adult, and Shame blew me away with their edge. The criminally under-watched Submarine and Carnage were awesomely malicious and confused. Martha Marcy May MarleneandContagion were both terrifying in very different ways. Does the Academy hate raw stories? They occasionally love that kind of nastiness in lead acting roles, but I guess not in their films.
Matt: See, but even in the acting nominations, I can’t honestly say I’m impressed. A lot of them seem really obvious, and others just don’t seem deserving. Like, of course Meryl Streep and George Clooney are fantastic actors, but it almost seems like the Academy gave Streep a reserved parking spot twenty years ago and they’re determined to never change the sign. And then you get to the left field nominations (That’s a little baseball pun, since we’re going to be talking about Jonah Hill in Moneyball, folks. Stay tuned.) like Jonah Hill and Melissa McCarthy.
Josh: And from now until the end of time, we have to refer to Jonah Hill as “Academy Award nominee Jonah Hill”.
Matt: I just end up assuming that Hill was nominated for no reason other than because Moneyball itself got a nod. And in McCarthy’s case, apparently 90 minutes spent farting is made up for in a two-minute speech about how girls gotta stick together, or whatever it was. I mean, I loved Bridesmaids and McCarthy was pretty funny, but I don’t think a single moment of self-awareness amidst a sea of crudity really translates to an Oscar-worthy performance. I was thinking about this the other day, and I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t change the criteria for the acting categories altogether. I mean, Brad Pitt was nominated for Moneyball and not The Tree of Life, which cheesed me off enough to actually say it cheesed me off. But it’s also not like either one of those performances is notably awful, or anything. So I wonder if maybe the Best Actor/Actress category shouldn’t change to reflect actors who do great work in multiple roles per year. Or, at least take it into consideration. I mean, maybe Meryl Streep only makes one movie a year, but again, does she really need another Oscar?
Josh: I was reading an interesting statistic about Streep the other day, though. She’s been nominated a record number of times and has only won twice, which actually makes her the biggest loser in Oscar history. That factoid made me laugh quite a bit because, and this will likely put me in the minority, I think that Meryl Streep is overrated. “She’s good in everything!” Yeah, she’s good in everything, but so is bacon, or cheddar cheese, but after so many different dishes, when chefs are throwing bacon into melted chocolate and cheddar cheese into god-knows-what, that’s all I notice. Streep is an excellent actress and a terrific mimic, but frankly I’m kind of sick of her. That’s why I was so pleased to see that Michelle Williams got a nomination for playing Marilyn. Her performance actually made me feel sexually uneasy, antsy almost, in the way that I assume audiences a generation ago felt when they saw the lush sexuality of Ms. Monroe. It was a really fine performance in an absolutely mediocre film. And I see that kind of trend with the Best Actress noms. While the men’s performances are typically pulled from movies that were also nominated for Best Picture, the actresses star in mostly shitty, forgettable, un-nominated films. That’s weird, right? Does that speak more to the still-unequal roles that women are given in films? Do we even want to open that can of worms?
Matt: I’d say if it speaks to anything, it’s to the relative dearth of great material this year. I can’t really say I’m the greatest judge of quality or anything, but even during awards season, there wasn’t much that struck me as interesting. Or that played near me; again, fuck my life. But I mean, last year as far as nominated movies went, I wanted and got to see The Social Network, The King’s Speech, Inception, The Fighter, True Grit, Toy Story 3, and Black Swan. This year, I’ve seen The Descendants and The Tree of Life. I might go see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but I’d be hard pressed to say there were really any other nominees that appealed to me. And to then draw the Lead Actress nominees from movies that didn’t even make the nominations just makes me wonder. I guess The Help has three female acting nominations to lead the pack, but there was really nothing from that movie’s premise or advertising that actually made me want to see it (ie; black history from a plucky white protagonist’s perspective). I think, though, if we have to address the gender issue you brought up, I’d probably agree that there’s a definite imbalance. But it seems to me like there’s more of a lack of good stories built around or for women than there are a lack of strong female characters. But then, Glenn Close is technically nominated for playing a dude, so maybe what the fuck do I know? Although, I think maybe that’s where Young Adult or even Bridesmaids being ignored for best picture gives us something to go on, since both movies managed to tell compelling stories with strong female leads in Charlize Theron and Kristen Wiig. Again, it’s not so much that I think Bridesmaids should get a nomination, but rather that the Academy and Hollywood in general aren’t as willing to recognize stories about women.
Josh: Agreed on the lack of material for women. But, maybe even more than with the actor categories, the best lead actress category seems to be more likely to just throw some nominations the way of awards mainstays. Close and Streep? They’re the safe bets. But there were a ton of great performances by new-ish actresses (in addition to the Rooney Mara nomination) that blew those two roles out of the water (I’m assuming—I didn’t watch either, ugh). Miranda July was weirdly brilliant in The Future, which she also wrote and directed. But probably my favorite female performance of the year came from Elizabeth Olsen, who somehow held her own against the haunting John Hawkes in Martha Marcy May Marlene. She carried that movie but somehow was overlooked in favor of Close in what looks like the most boring retelling of Just One of the Guys ever conceived. The male categories were a little better. At least Gary-fucking-Oldman finally got a nod.
Matt: Yeah, but, and this is where I get to be all Canadian and Righteously Angry (TM), still nothing for Ryan Gosling. It’s completely fucked up how he manages to put forth amazing performances in almost everything he’s in, and yet I don’t think he’s even been nominated since Half Nelson. By all accounts, Blue Valentine was excellent, and he was every bit as important as Michelle Williams, and got nothing. And this year, with Drive, he did amazing things with what? Maybe fifteen lines of dialogue? And everything I’ve heard about The Ides of March, bland political intrigue notwithstanding, suggests he was great in that, too. I mean, yeah, I’m glad to see Gary Oldman get nominated finally because he’s fucking great, but come on. If you’re going to give Max von Sydow or Christopher Plummer the token “You’re old and are going to die soon, so please accept this award you probably should have gotten years ago” nominations, why the fuck can’t we get one for one of the most consistently great young actors of the last five years? And for that matter, where’s any of the rest of the principle cast of Drive? Albert Brooks for best supporting actor, maybe? Dude was fucking awesome. And I’m not just saying that because I love Hank Scorpio. Seriously, where the fuck is Drive at all? Now I’m just angry.
Josh: I’m absolutely on your side about Gosling, especially the Blue Valentine snub. That simply didn’t make sense. The movie was a duo performance that never would have worked if either actor didn’t hold up their end of the bargain, and both just rocked their roles. And in Drive, Gosling essentially plays the “man with no name” character that Eastwood popularized (and in fact he has no name in the credits) and yet you see such an impressive evolution (or devolution) of emotions. He shifts deftly from shy and withdrawn to curious and confident to, in the gripping last act, teetering on unhinged but still driven and principled. I have to take issue with your knock against Plummer, though. It may be because I loved Beginners more than almost every other movie last year, but Plummer was the emotional core of a very well told emotional film. He was the heartbreaking conduit through which Ewan McGregor was able to finally learn something about himself. Without the light inside Plummer’s character, Beginners is little more than a mopey what-does-it-all-mean semi-biopic. Now, let me take a breath. I may fly off the rails because the Academy completely ignored Shame, one of the most daring and courageous movies I’ve seen in years. Fassbender had as big a year—if not a bigger year—than Gosling and he was just devastating in Shame. As with Blue Valentine, the movie relied entirely on world-class central performances that delivered on every level. Maybe Shame would have gotten more recognition if it were about baseball.
Matt: I should probably say that, in my tumultuous northern rage, I didn’t really mean what I said about Plummer, specifically. He is another Canadian, after all. I’m sure he gave an excellent performance (frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t just miss the ball and nominate him for Dragon Tattoo). It just seems really common for the Academy to give compensation awards to people they snubbed in the past, particularly when they’re very old (Am I the first to notice this?!). Like, in my opinion, Max von Sydow should probably have won for his performance in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, however many years ago that was, or really any number of other things. And it looks like his role in ELAIC gave the Academy enough of a reason that they could realistically nominate him without too much egg on their faces. But I lumped Plummer in because they’re both old, and I don’t pull any punches, man. Those old people, let me tell you. But anyway, we should probably move on. I don’t really care about the screenplays or technical awards except to say I want Jim Rash to win so he can either become some sort of high profile Oscar winner to boost Community’s appeal, or go on to actually write Time Desk: The Adventures of Dean Dangerous. But beyond that, I say we move on to direction.
Josh: Just one quick note before we talk direction. I usually consider the screenplay categories to be where the Academy can right some wrongs and give some nods to edgier films they didn’t have the balls to nominate for the other major categories, like how they nominated In Bruges a few years ago. But again, this year, easy choices. Five of the nine best picture nominees were nominated for screenplay. That’s not totally unheard of but aside from The Descendants and Midnight in Paris, none of the others chosen seem all that “writerly”. I was hoping that something like Beginners or Submarine, which both feel like great novels come to life, would be recognized, but nothing. And nothing for Martha, et al., which was structured and written in such a fascinating way. But, ugh, alright. Direction. Go.
Matt: Well, again there are a lot of safe choices, really. Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, even Terrence Malick is a pretty safe nomination, although I think The Tree of Life was a pretty ballsy movie in general. Though I have to wonder how much credit should go to him, and how much should go to the cinematographer, since about 50-percent of that movie was just beautiful shots of stuff happening. I’m tempted to say that Hazanavicius is at least an interesting choice, given that he’s nominated for making a film in a mostly dead genre, but I haven’t seen enough of The Artist to really say for sure. And again, I don’t really know if The Descendants is quite good enough to be worth all the nominations it’s getting, so I’m not sure if Payne works very well here, either.
I’d honestly like to see Richard Ayoade on the list, if only because, holy shit, look at what he made with his first fucking movie, for fuck’s sake, rather than yet another Scorsese nomination. Or maybe even Nicolas Winding Refn, just after reading about all the character work he did with the actors while making Drive. But then I read about Gosling and Mulligan omitting large portions of their lines to preserve the emotions of a scene, and I wonder how much of the movie is really there because of him. I don’t know. I think maybe I’m fine with Scorsese, because from what I’ve heard about Hugo he was doing a lot of the same sort of world-building that would have made me okay with a James Cameron win for Avatar two years ago. And also, it is fucking Scorsese. I don’t know. For whatever reason the direction category never really hits me too hard. What do you think?
Josh: I always look for nominations that are given to bold, commanding filmmaking, and I’m honestly not seeing a lot of that here. I saw The Descendants and I couldn’t imagine that movie being recognized for more than the screenplay and maybe an acting nod (though not for Clooney, interestingly). But Payne is an Academy darling, so I get it. Same with Scorsese. I’m fine with Malick here, really, because he somehow turned the most beautiful screensaver in the world into a sorta-coherent, mostly-metaphysical story about, well, all life. And as much as I loved Midnight in Paris (come on, I’m a writer and this was a gorgeous love letter to Paris and artistry), Allen doesn’t really belong here. This is one of my favorite films of his, but it’s just not much of a directorial effort.
I would have loved to see Ayoade nominated for the same reason I would have liked to see Mike Mills in this category, but in that specific case that’s more because with a movie that is written and directed by the same person, I have a hard time divorcing the two. I just have this romantic image of a wholly original and organic process that results in a beautiful movie. I also would have liked seeing Soderbergh nominated for Contagion because goddamn was that a tense, methodical look at epidemiology. After my first viewing, I wanted to carry Purell with me everywhere I went. After my second viewing, I didn’t want to leave my apartment. That’s an effective thriller if you ask me.
More than those, though, I wished some truly bold filmmaking was recognized, namely Refn for Drive and McQueen for Shame. I mean, you talk about Ayoade’s first film? McQueen already has a well-established voice and perspective and Shame was only his second film. (For those who haven’t seen it, watch Hunger, his first film—a motherfucker of a gut-punch, also starring a pantsless Fassbender.) McQueen and Refn are sure to have missteps throughout their careers, but the risks they took this year have to be applauded. Or maybe not. Whatever.
Matt: That seems as good a place as any to end the discussion for now. Especially since it’s becoming increasingly apparent that I’ve been talking out of my ass since about the time you said “So, Best Picture?”
In the first of a not at all ongoing series of interviews here at the rarely updated STFUI, Matt Bickerton and special guest writer Brent Jones talk with celebrated author George R.R. Martin. No really. They did. And it was totally awesome.
Brent Jones: First things first: When will Eddard Stark be coming back to life in your novels?
George R.R. Martin: [Laughs] When Hell freezes over.
BJ: Fair enough. Your fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has become one of, if not the definitive modern fantasy series. When you first started writing it, did you ever anticipate that it would have the immense cultural impact that it has?
GRRM:Oh, no. Of course not. But, then again, you don’t anticipate. You write the books, and you hope that people will enjoy them, and that they will be popular, but it’s foolish to try and guess how well any book will do. I learned that very early in my career with books my publisher told me would be a big bestseller, and then you know, it doesn’t sell well at all. It’s a crapshoot out there in the world of publishing, and I had high hopes, I thought it was a good book, a good series, and I was hopeful it would find an audience. But really, all you can try to do is write the best book that you can write.
Matt Bickerton: How does it feel to have such a large and dedicated fanbase for the series?
GRRM: Well, it certainly beats having no fanbase. [Laughs] It’s very pleasant. It is a little strange at times, especially this last year, because I’ve been a writer since 1971, and I achieved a certain measure of success fairly early in my life. I won a Hugo award in 1975, I’d been nominated for Hugos and Nebulas before that, I worked in Hollywood before that, to make a living. So, I had an audience, I had a fair amount of success, but now, the success and the size of the fanbase has reached levels I never could have dreamed of. You know, I’ll go to a signing in, say, Slovenia, like I did a few months ago and have 2000 people show up. And that’s great in one sense, but it’s a little scary in another sense. I’m getting recognized which I never did before. Writers, even very famous and successful writers are generally anonymous. I mean, we know what actors look like, we know what politicians look like, but we don’t necessarily know what writers look like, so a writer can usually live his life and go to a book signing or something and meet his readers there. But I think mainly because of the HBO show and my face being on some of the promos, people are recognizing me in the grocery store, and in the airport and approaching me in my daily life for autographs. And that takes a little getting used to, but I’m certainly not complaining. It’s great to have so many readers.
MB: Do you ever feel like, when you’re writing the novels, that you have to please the audience?
GRRM: You can’t think about the audience when you’re writing. Well, you can, but I don’t. Otherwise, it’s almost like you’ve got a censor sitting over your shoulder saying “Oh no, they won’t like that. That won’t be very popular.” You know, you tell your story and you try to be true to the demands from the story itself, and you hope that people will enjoy it, you hope that the audience will respond. But ultimately, as I’ve said before, art is not a democracy. The audience doesn’t get to vote on it, and I think that’s the best way to produce good art, because if you are too conscious of how the audience will respond to anything, it forces you to make the safe choices. You’ll say “Oh, this will be popular. I’ll do that.” and that leads to, I think, mediocre work.
MB: Right. It’s kind of like our joke question about Eddard. I’m sure if everybody in the fanbase had their way, he’d be right there in the story again.
GRRM: Well, I’m sure if I’d put it up for a vote, he wouldn’t have died in the first place. If there had been a poll at the end of one of the HBO episodes, “Should we kill Ned?” I’ll bet the vote would have been overwhelmingly against it.
BJ: Branching off a bit towards the origins of the series, were there any major inspirations for the story in A Song of Ice and Fire? Or, to put it another way, what or who had an influence on your work?
GRRM: Well, certainly. One of the things I wanted to do when I set out writing this thing, was to try to combine a lot of great storytelling traditions, like the wonder and magic that good fantasy has, with the grittiness and realism of historical fiction. So in that sense, I was influenced on one hand by fantasy writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance (a particular favourite of mine), and on the other hand by writers of historical fiction, like Thomas B. Costain or Maurice Druand, the French writer, Nigel Tranter, the Scottish writer, Sharon Kay Penman. All of these writers, in some sense were influences on my work.
MB: Several of the more recent novels in the series have taken longer to write than earlier volumes, as I’m sure many fans have taken great pains to point out to you. Were there any major issues you encountered while writing the books?
GRRM: Of course, there were a lot of difficulties – it’s why the book took so long! You know, I’m dealing with a lot of balls in the air that I’m juggling, and sometimes it’s very difficult to juggle all of them. There was, particularly something I called the “Meereenese Knot” – a series of characters meeting in the city of Meereen – which was very difficult to figure out the correct chronology for, both in terms of story time, and in terms of dramatic pacing. So I wrestled with that, and wrote it and rewrote it several times. Generally speaking, I’m a slow writer anyway, and so the size and scale of this project has slowed me down even more.
MB: The series was originally planned to be a trilogy, wasn’t it?
GRRM: Yeah, way back when, in the early nineties, that was what I had envisioned, a trilogy, but as Tolkien once said about the Lord of the Rings, “The tale grew in the telling.” I can definitely attest to the truth of that.
MB: So, continuing on that tangent, how do you manage the writing process for each novel? How much time would you say is set aside for planning versus writing, for example?
GRRM: Well, I don’t outline. I know the general shape of the book, I know the major events of each book, and certainly I know the ultimate end of the story and the fate of all of the major characters. But I don’t outline on a chapter by chapter basis. In a more cursory way, I sit down and sort of sketch out how many chapters in this book each character will have, and the main event of each chapter. Then I start writing, and of course, before I’m very long into writing, that little rough outline thing that I’ve done at the beginning has got to be thrown into the trash basket. Because the characters take over, and they move the story in unexpected directions. Or maybe something that I thought would happen in one chapter actually requires three to do it the way I want to do it. Chapters get combined, chapters get separated, so it’s almost a simultaneous procedure. It’s not like I outline and then I write. Both of them occur simultaneously.
BJ: How does it feel to see these novels that you’ve worked on for so long be adapted for telvision?
GRRM: Well, it feels good. [Laughs] Especially since it’s a high quality television show that’s very true to the books, and that’s very gratifying. I mean, it’s always nice to sell an option or your work to television or film. For one thing, they pay you a lot of money. For another thing, if they actually produce the TV show or movie, you get a lot of new readers who come to it because of that. And that’s great, because you want people reading your work. The downside of it is, in some cases, what’s going to come out the other end may bear only a passing resemblance to your story, and it may not be very good. I’ve had these experiences before with other works in the past – both good and bad experiences. So, with A Song of Ice and Fire, I was very careful about who I was in business with, and I think I found some great partners with HBO, on the one hand. Their reputation for quality is unsurpassed, and with the writers and showrunners David Benioff and D.B, Weiss who are both amazing guys and amazing writers and producers, who have done a really incredible job of bringing my story to the screen.
BJ: And as you mentioned, I was one of the fans who saw the show on HBO and decided to start reading the books, and about the only major difference I noticed was the amount of time devoted to the wolves was significantly lower in the TV series.
GRRM: Well, as a writer, I can make the wolves do whatever I want. I just write “And then Summer got up on his hind legs and did a little tapdance.” [Laughs] When they actually film it, it’s a little more tricky to get the dogs up on his hind legs to dance. So we ran into a few challenges there. Hopefully they’ll have worked some of that out for the second season.
BJ: And since we know that you’ve written a few episodes of the series, as well, do you think you could elaborate on the differences between writing a scene for television and writing a scene for a novel?
GRRM: The main difference is keeping practicality in mind, like I just referred to with the wolves. There are limitations to budget and shooting schedule. And you know, I’ve worked in Hollywood myself, so I know that, and as a producer on the show, I have a good idea about our budget myself, and the kind of things we can afford. And you have to keep that in mind. I can write a scene in the novel and have twelve characters sitting around a conference table having a heated debate. Then i can give all twelve of them names and all twelve of them will have a line or two as they kind of hash the issue that’s being discussed. Well, when you film that scene, do you really want to cast twelve actors? I mean, that’s what you need. If they have a line, you have to cast an actor and certain guild minimums come into effect, and that has an impact on the budget. Or maybe, do you want to do the scene so that only three people have anything to say, and the other nine people are sitting there, and they can be cast as extras and not paid as much. But then, wait a minute, do you really need the nine people who aren’t going to say anything? Maybe you should just write the scene with the three people who have something to say. So, you know, you have to approach these things with that in mind, with what you can film [on a budget].
MB: So it’s kind of like in the one episode, where Tyrion fought in the battle between the Mountain clans and the Northmen, and it’s kind of a huge battle and a defining moment for Tyrion in the books, but in the show, he just gets knocked unconscious, and wakes up after the battle. Probably one of those areas where a big expensive battle sequence might have been impractical to film.
GRRM: Yes, battles are particularly troublesome. And when I was originally working in television, they were really troublesome, because you had to cast them with actual people. These days we have a lot of CGI tricks, so we can make huge armies as Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings without casting 10,000 people. Which is good, but even CGI costs money. So, it’s not something to be used casually. Yes you could do it for every episode, if you had unlimited funds, but while the HBO budgets are very substantial compared to most television shows, they’re not comparable to the budgets of feature films. And even feature films don’t have unlimited budgets. You always have to be cognizant of what you can afford to put on the screen.
MB: Once you’ve completed work on A Song of Ice and Fire, do you think you’ll ever return to the world of Westeros?
GRRM: Well, I’m already writing the Dunk and Egg series. So I will continue to write those – I actually have to do another one this year, and then there will be more beyond that. I don’t know, but that’s years down the pipe, so I’m not going to make any promises. I’ll cross each bridge as I come to it.
BJ: So we might be holding off on seeing a novelization of Robert’s Rebellion or Aegon’s Conquest?
GRRM: Well, I’m dramatizing Robert’s Rebellion in hindsight right now, so I can’t really see myself writing a story about it. Other periods of Westerosi history are another question.
MB: What does the future hold for George R.R. Martin?
GRRM: It holds two more books in A Song of Ice and Fire, most immediately. I have to get those done, and hopefully it won’t take me as long as these last two did, but again, I make no promises. One page at a time.
MB: Well, I think I speak for most people when I say I’d rather have a really excellent quality final copy of a book that took you five years to write than something rushed out in six months to meet demand.
GRRM: Well, that’s my feeling about it, too.
George R.R. Martin is the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, and a producer on HBO’s Game of Thrones, its television adaptation.
Matt and Brent are acting students at Niagara College.
After the financial success of the 2008 action film Taken, starring an aging Liam Neeson as a badass retired military operative, the studio has announced its plans to move forward with a sequel. Neeson is reported to be reprising his role as Brian Mills, the former government agent whose search for his kidnapped daughter nearly destroyed Paris in the first film.
Liam Neeson being a badass reportedly "not a major focus" in the sequel to Taken.
The studio is reporting, however, that despite the original film’s main draw of Liam Neeson “going totally bat-shit-fuck crazy on a bunch of jerks and just straight throat punching them all to death”, critical response decried the supposed lack of a plot beyond the simple premise of a father doing everything in his power to rescue his daughter. In a response to this, the producers of the sequel (reportedly titled 2ken), have stated that although their original vision of a movie where “a totally rad dude like Liam Neeson just kicks the everloving fuck out of continental Europe for 90 awesome goddamned minutes” was well realized in the original film, the major critical concerns will be addressed in the long awaited sequel.
They went on to say “We realize that maybe awesome action and Liam Neeson aren’t enough for some people, and maybe those people are dumb stupid morons, but this is Hollywood, so we’re going to try and broaden the appeal of the sequel.” Essentially, instead of featuring 90 minutes of intense, non-stop action, the sequel will reportedly focus on the fallout from Mills’ actions in Paris. “We’re aiming for about three hours” a studio rep explained, going on to say “Yeah, I mean, there’s some complex political stuff we’re going to need to cover, like we’re going to need all that time for the international criminal trial and stuff. We really want to try and accurately convey the consequences of going on a totally badass rampage across France.”
The film is reported to focus entirely on Neeson’s character’s criminal trial, and takes place almost entirely in the courtroom, and A general plot outline released to the media describes the film as a “Total reimagining of the franchise” going on to describe the plot as “intricate, detailed, and boring as fuck”.
Asked to comment on these new developments, fans of the original film remarked “Whatever. It still sounds better than Unknown.”
STFU, Internet 