Reality check time

Let's recap, shall we?

2003: Best Picture: Chicago, Best Director, Roman Polanski for The Pianist
2001: BP: Gladiator; BD: Steven Soderbergh, Traffic
1999: BP: Shakespeare in Love; BD: Speilberg, Saving Private Ryan
1990: BP: Driving Miss Daisy; BD: Oliver Stone, Born on the Fourth of July. Note: Bruce Beresford, who directed Driving Miss Daisy, wasn't even nominated for Best Director, the only time that's happened (BP's director not even nominated)

Okay, so over the past twenty years, there were BP/BD splits one fifth of the time. In the past ten, it's been 3/10; in the previous five it's been 2/5.

It's not a big deal, people.

And as far as Larry McMurty's comment that the win for Crash indicates that "Americans don't want cowboys to be gay" -- since when has the Academy been representative of the American public at large?

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Lest you think anything in this world is cut and dried, check out Alan Doyle's March 2 blog post about the seal hunts.

I don't know much about the seal hunts beyond what I read from organizations like the Human Society and PETA, so this gave me a different perspective.

(no subject)

As jmhm says, sometimes you can't improve on things.

One of the nicknames for Elizabeth Cheney, Dick's daughter, deputy Assistant Sec. of State for Near Eastern Affairs is apparently "democracy tsar".

Because, of course, the tsars were such models of democracy.

Celebrity Marriages I heartily approve of.

Since 1984, Jamie Lee Curtis has been married to Christopher Guest.

That just makes me smile.

Christopher Guest is actually Christopher, 5th Baron Haden-Guest of Saling, Essex. Which would make Jamie Lee a Baroness.