Barack Obama has a Flickr photostream with a Creative Commons license?

Thumbs up!



Thanks, Barack Obama!

I learned this reading Jac's new post "3 thoughts on Election Day 2008 (with photos of the Obama family watching the results)." Jac's post is worth reading too. I liked this:

Considering that I've been supporting Obama since he announced his campaign in early 2007, I was surprised that my own reaction on the night of Election Day was muted. I had to tell myself, "You should be really excited."

Maybe this is because I assumed he'd win, so I'd already gradually absorbed the news.

Maybe it felt wrong to be gleeful about how America is transcending its history of prejudice on a night when California, of all states, deprived people of their right to marry who they want regardless of gender.

Maybe it's that Obama has such a facility at making you feel like you really know him personally that seeing him win was like seeing your friend become president. Sure you'd be happy for them, but you'd also be nervous about all the things that might go wrong.

Ha ha. I like this as an idea for a screenplay: The main character is a lifelong friend of a guy who becomes President.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage suggests a pop culture reference in a video clip (and I demonstrate my ability to make the clip start in exactly the right spot):



AND: Hey, it's the bus!

Who are the best actors to have won the best actor Oscar?

Answers here. And the worst to have won? Here. (Via Throwing Things.)

I agree that Al Pacino was a terrible ham in "Scent of a Woman." (And I love Al Pacino. "Dog Day Afternoon" Al Pacino.) Was Dustin Hoffman really terrible in "Rain Man"? He was certainly annoying, but wasn't that the point? You know who was even more annoying in "Rain Man" than Dustin Hoffman? (I ran across it on TV the other day, so this is fresh in my mind.) Valeria Golino. I was going to watch that movie again, but she drove me up the wall. Sorry, that's off the topic of actors, but I just wanted to nail down that one little point of personal opinion, and I get to do things like that because I'm blllllogggggggingggg.

"He did not want to resemble a refrigerator or Jabba the Hutt, he said, but Sophia Loren with a couple of hundred extra pounds."

John Travolta reenvisions Edna Turnblad:

His Edna, unlike the greasy Gorgon created by Divine in the 1988 John Waters original or the Kabuki hausfrau rendered so memorably by Harvey Fierstein in the 2002 Broadway musical adaptation, has cleavage and a waist and a kind of geologic sex appeal....

“Playing a woman attracted me,” Mr. Travolta said. “Playing a drag queen did not. The vaudeville idea of a man in a dress is a joke that works better onstage than it does on film, and I didn’t want any winking or camping...."...

There was no film precedent for this approach to Edna. Though Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” and Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire” did well donning drag, they were playing explicitly male characters who for plot reasons needed to dress as women....

"[H]ow do I convince you I’m a woman doing that and make you want to watch her for an hour and a half?”

Having grown up the youngest of six children in a bohemian working-class family in Englewood, N.J., he modeled his idea of a watchable woman on his “very sexy mother” (Helen Travolta was a high school drama teacher and sometime actress) and on the bombshells in the European movies they enjoyed: Ms. Loren, Anna Magnani, Anita Ekberg. “I’m not as beautiful as any of those people,” he said, “but I’m not unpleasant to look at, and I thought: ‘This is my library. Not grandmas or Aunt Bee from Mayberry, but the kind of person a blue-collar woman would aspire to be if she had money. What if that kind of woman had gone to flesh?’ ”

Impressive. But what of the argument that the those who care about gay rights should boycott "Hairspray"?

In a blog entry posted in May on the Web site of The Washington Blade (washblade.com), a gay newspaper, Kevin Naff, its editor, called for a boycott of “Hairspray” because of Mr. Travolta’s membership in the Church of Scientology, which he described as a cult that “rejects gays and lesbians as members and even operates reparative therapy clinics to ‘cure’ homosexuality.” In a subsequent editorial Mr. Naff added that Mr. Travolta’s appearance in the “iconic gay role” is “even more galling given all the gay rumors that have followed him for years.”

There would be an awful lot of boycotting if we avoided movies starring any actor who belonged to a religion that held a belief we found abhorrent. But maybe a special case should be made if the role is somehow "iconic" for you. Travolta makes the point that Edna is not a gay role. Edna is a heterosexual female, traditionally played by a male. As the article points out, this is like the stage play "Peter Pan," where there is nothing gay about the character, but an actor of the opposite sex is always cast in the role.

Let's look at how Naff put it -- in writing and in this fair-and-balanced fight with Bill O'Reilly:



My thought on watching that was that people should go to the movie if they want to see it, but Naff did a great job of picking an issue that would get him some publicity and he handles his argument well even if he persuades no one.

What are you going to do with the subject of whether religions offer people fraudulent treatments? It's one thing if a psychologist purports to be able to cure homosexuality, but religions purport to solve all sorts of problems, including mortality. I can see why gay rights activists think it makes sense to single out one issue to make a big deal about, but boycotting the work of one religion's adherents seems wrong. Many religions are negative toward gay people. The only thing that makes Scientology stand out is that its approach resembles what therapists do. But it's a religion!

"That's what happens when you interrupt the white man!"

Kramer -- Michael Richards -- freaks out in the least funny comedian melt-down I've ever seen.

Coincidentally, just last night I happened to catch the scene from the movie "Lenny" where Lenny Bruce (played by Dustin Hoffman) spouts racist epithets directly at people in his audience before mellowing into an explanation about how if we'd only use these words all the time they'd lose their force. Richards, however, never mellows... and Bruce's theory was a new theory when he tested it out, not a long-argued, tried, and failed one.

IN THE COMMENTS: Someone posts the text of the Lenny Bruce routine. I and others continue to distinguish what Richards did from what Bruce did. Some people get sidetracked into a discussion of how some people seem to be permitted to use racial epithets while others don't. To them I say, watch the video. This isn't a question of using the word. It is the entire sad, angry, sorry context for which there is no decent excuse.

UPDATE: Richards is on Letterman tonight, explaining himself. Here's a report on what he said:

"I'm a performer. I push the envelope. I work in a very uncontrolled manner on stage. I do a lot of free association — it's spontaneous, I go into character. I don't know. In view of the situation and the act going the way it was going, I don't know. The rage did go all over the place it went to everybody in the room.

"I'm not a racist, that's what's so insane about this."

ANOTHER UPDATE: I've watched the show now, so let me make a few observations.

1. Poor Jerry! Seinfeld was the scheduled guest, there to promote a new DVD collection of the old sitcom, trying to make the best of the situation, with Richards having degraded the value of the product.

2. Richards seemed calm -- and his deadpan delivery caused some clueless audience members to laugh -- but he also seemed deeply broken up and in need of help. At one point, he questioned whether to be talking on the show was the right place for him to be, and he seemed really stunned. Maybe he was on tranquilizers.

3. The stupidest part of Richards' performance was when he shifted from admitting to his own rage to talking about needing to get to the bottom of rage generally, including the rage that takes nations to war. He also tried to connect the offense that the black people in his audience took toward him to the effect Katrina had on black people.

Simulblogging the Oscars.

7 (Central Time). A slow-moving intro for Jon Stewart, showing Oscar hosts of the past declining to re-host. We see Billy Crystal and Chris Rock shacking up together in a tent, for the first gay joke of the night. The second one comes a minute later when we see Jon Stewart waking up in bed with George Clooney. It's funny, see? Because men having sex with each other is funny... or not... Stewart begins with a reference to "Death to Smoochy," which is what he always does on "The Daily Show" when he interviews a high-quality actor. "The Oscars is the one night of the year when you can see all your favorite stars without having to donate any money to the Democratic Party" -- that gets a very mild laugh and I think I see suppressed panic on Stewart's face.

7:10. Gay cowboy montage. Pretty funny. A lot like all those parodies of the "Brokeback Mountain" trailer, but they came up with some nice clips.

7:16. Best Supporting Actor... I've seen two of the performances: by William Hurt and Matt Dillon. They give it to George Clooney. "We are a little bit out of touch here in Hollywood. And it's probably a good thing." Blah, blah, we're great, ahead of the rest of this benighted country.

7:25. They waste our time with a clip of Tom Hanks demonstrating how award winners shouldn't waste our time. Ben Stiller comes out in a green suit -- and powerfully sucking in his abs -- to talk about special effects. "King Kong" wins. Jon Stewart thanks Stiller for wearing a unitard. Reese Witherspoon is next, and she's very well trussed into a sparkly beige dress. Hey, I'm just noticing how cool the stage set is. The award she's announcing is animation, and I love seeing the clips, especially for "Howl's Moving Castle." "Wallace and Grommit" wins. The guys that win are wearing giant bow ties. Next out is Naomi Watts, and she too is wearing beige. Her dress has a tattery "destroyed" look. She introduces Dolly Parton who is shockingly, scarily anorexic! She's wearing a white pantsuit, and her breasts are still huge, but beneath them, there is nearly the complete absence of a body.

7:42. Jon Stewart is mocking Scientology. Surely, there is at least one religion we feel utterly free to mock. Now, it's the Wilson brothers. They announce two awards no one cares about. Really, who even gets a chance to see the shorts? At least with the animated ones we get to get a look at some animation. They bring out some "Chicken Little" characters to take over. "Seriously, Mr. Eisner, what's up with ducks and no pants?" Good question!

7:48. Jennifer Aniston comes out in a beautiful black dress and mega-diamonds. She's doing best costumes. She belabors her lines, as if she's a schoolteacher pissed at us for not doing our homework. "Memoirs of a Geisha" wins. Russell Crowe robotically introduces a montage about biopics. "Pierre, we've discovered a new element." "If we win, well, then we'll have what none of us have ever had before: a country of our own." Yeah, there have been some pretty cool biopics over the year. But, generally, the genre is a big drag.

7:57. Will Ferrell and Steve Carell come out in terrible makeup to announce the makeup award. Carell is wearing false eyelashes. "Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy." Ridiculous! "Star Wars" doesn't win. "Narnia" wins, and it looked pretty cool in the clip. Stewart makes his best joke of the night, expressing surprise that "Cinderella Man" didn't win: "Imagine the difficulty in making Russell Crowe look like he got into a fight." He points to a giant Oscar prop and says "Do you think if we all got together and pulled this down, democracy would flourish in Hollywood?" A political joke. The quickie technical awards recap follows. TiVo time! Ah, don't go too fast, here's Best Supporting Actress, announced by Morgan Freeman, who's wearing an ascot instead of a tie. Rachel Weisz wins. She's wearing a black dress, which nicely supports big, swelling breasts, and she's got tastefully dangly diamond earrings. She says nothing notable.

8:11. Lauren Bacall walks out stiffly. She's wearing a black pantsuit, and she seems short of breath. She's blabbing about film noir. Montage. "I feel all dead inside. I'm backed up in a dark corner."

8:15. A nice "Daily Show" style piece with fake ads for actresses is followed by a flatfooted intro for the documentary awards. An unfortunate juxtaposition. Another Woman in Black: Charlize Theron. (All the women are in beige or black. Did some neutrality order go out?) What will win for feature documentary? Surely, it must be the penguins. Yes, it is. The accepters bring stuffed penguins up and one guy whistles "thank you in Penguin." Another guy makes some comment about tuxedos, "penguin suits." At least, they thought of ideas. Jennifer Lopez is pushing the beige envelope toward a kind of greeny brown. She's even more robotic that Russell Crowe, but she says something about making "human contact." It's an intro to another song. TiVo, save me!

8:32. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Again with the black dress. And the ponderous delivery. Did some memo go out? Be elegant. And this is how it came out. "Geisha" gets set decoration. Samuel Jackson tells us Hollywood is unafraid! Issue films change the world, don't you know? Montage time. "Call me Mr. Tibbs!" "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" A roomful of Hollywood prissily applauds itself. Stewart: "And none of those issues were ever a problem again."

8:44. Salma Hayek busts out the non-neutrality by wearing a brilliant blue dress. She introduces the conductor, and the coolest part of this is not that we get to see where they tucked away the orchestra, but that the conductor has two packets of M&Ms. I'm using red wine to get me through this ordeal, but the maestro is going with the M&Ms, which, presumably, work too. So what wins for o-REE-gi-nal score? "Brokeback Mountain." Yeah, I know this score... from all those trailer parodies. It's supposed to feel serious, but, too me, it feels comic.

8:56. Jake Gyllenhall woodenly reads lines about how important it is to see movies on the big screen. Translation: please help us with our box office problem. We see a montage about spectacle. Which, ironically, we're seeing on our small screens. They end with the shot from "Gone With the Wind" that comes right before the intermission, which reminds me of one of the main reasons to prefer the home screen. You can break up the physical ordeal of sitting through it however you choose. Stewart: "Wow, I can't wait 'til later when we see Oscar's salute to montages." Good one! "Holy crap! We're out of clips. We're literally out of film clips. If you have film clips, send them, please. We have another three hours." Next comes Jessica Alba to botch her lines along with some guy. The lines are about... damn, I don't know. I fast-forwarded. But "King Kong" got it. Oh, it's sound mixing. Dull!

Bring out Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep to give the special award to Robert Altman. Tomlin's face is much larger than Streep's. But Streep's earrings are way longer and her neckline is way plungier. They do a comic routine that's supposed to demonstrate the Altman style by having a lot of talking over each other. Then, the montage. Well, damn, they just wore us out with montages up to the point where Stewart made a too-many-montages joke. Way to treat an honoree. TiVo.

Intro to another song. TiVo. Queen Latifah announces the song award, and the pimp song wins. "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." The room is jubilant; America, perhaps not so. Stewart tries to come up with a joke. Sound editing is the next award. A big bore, but they do another "Daily Show" fake ads thing. Jennifer Garner! Beige... but she almost trips! "King Kong" wins.

Now, we need to endure Clooney again. "Academy Award winner, George Clooney." But it's the best part: "In Memoriam" -- the dead ones! Biggest applause: Shelley Winters, Anne Bancroft. Getting surprisingly little: Robert Wise, Richard Pryor.

9:37. Will Smith hands out Best Foreign Language Film. He does some impressive fast-talking in some foreign languages. The winner is "Tsotsi," the South African film. Next, Film Editing. The winner is "Crash," which is a good choice. A lot was done with editing in that movie. Next, Best Actor! Hillary Swank presents (in black). As expected, the winner is Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's overwhelmed. He's got lots of folks to thank. He loves them. He loves his mom. "She took me to my first play.... Her passions became my passions."

9:54. It's John Travolta, introducing the Cinematography nominees. I only saw one of these: "Batman Begins," which I seriously doubt can win. Again, "Geisha" wins. It's doing well with the lesser awards. Jamie Foxx gets to do Best Actress. Here's our best hope for an emotive acceptance speech. Wow, Charlize Theron has a black dress with a pouf the size of her head on her shoulder. As expected, the winner is Reese Witherspoon. I love her in "Election." She's really cool, a distinctive actress today. That means something. She seems like a good person. "I'm just trying to matter and live a good life."

10:07. Dustin Hoffman is doing the adapted screenplay award. Weird that this one is coming so late. Did writers get upgraded? Unsurprisingly, "Brokeback Mountain" wins. Uma Thurman -- in beige! -- announces original screenplay. "Crash" wins. Tom Hanks announces Director. Unsurprisingly, Ang Lee wins for "Brokeback Mountain" (and I wrote that before the award is announced). Jack and Ennis taught us about "not just the gay mans" but "the greatness of love itself." And, finally, it's good old Jack Nicholson to tells about the best "moption" picture of the year. And the shock of the night...

"Crash"!

Nicholson points his fingers up and mouths "Wow!"

Wow, indeed! After all that predictability! I actually saw that one. It was pretty good. What the hell did I say about it. Let's see:

I thought it was quite good, constructed like "Magnolia," with a lot of characters and a script that connects their stories up with coincidences and a common theme. The theme in this case is race. You can tell from the first scene that you are seeing a heightened reality. I haven't read much of the criticism of this film, but if people are complaining that there actually isn't this much racism in real life, they are missing the point. This is a surreal depiction in which racism is concentrated everywhere. Everyone manifests racism, but then also a vulnerable human side. The characters' stories were nicely, complexly interwoven. I liked it -- even when it skewed melodramatic. I liked that you were kept on your toes about which characters to love or hate, to respect or revile.

UPDATE: For my morning after observations, go here.

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" -- the season finale.

Well, what did you think? Cool appearances by Dustin Hoffman and Sasha Baron Cohen!