CNN just showed Bush lead off his speech with a dedication to MLK Jr's wife. Then they panned the crowd and showed shots of black people clapping. And I laughed.

Gearing Up For Oscars

I want to preface my 2005 comments by discussing at length 2004. Maybe this will help us predict which of the crappy movies nominated will win. * denotes victory

2004 was the year of the shabby sex farce in the sense that never before has the shabby sex farce been so broadly represented, even though the shabby sex farce really can't compete with social issues and Hollywood royalty. Anyway, congradulations for Closer Sideways Kinsey for participating. Ahem:

Best Film/Director:
- Scorcese's Flick
- Eastwood's Women's Lib/Social Issues Movie*
- E! Hollywood Story/Token Black (Ray)
- Shabby Sex Farce for Snobs (The Wine Movie)
- A Good Movie (Finding Neverland)

Notice here that 3 key issues outdid 2 - Hollywood royalty+women's lib+assisted suicide was too much for E Hollywood True Story+Minorities and Hollywood royalty+historical biopic.

Best Actor:
- Token Black+Set in 3rd world (Cheadle)
- Good performance in good movie (Depp)
- Actor in Scorcese biopic (DiCaprio)
- Eastwood directing self in how to growl (Eastwood)
- E! Hollywood True Story+Token Black Guy (Foxx)*

Important note here - yes Foxx was better than Cheadle. But note also that local beats international when another key element is present (token black guy).

Best Actress:
- Anette Bening
- Whodat in Saywhat?
- Saywho in Whatdat?
- Eastwood's women's lib character*
- True Love Triumphs; intellectual style (Winslet)

Whodat's are far more common for the ladies. Maybe it's the smaller window of being attractive or maybe it's because most Hollywood writers are men. Anyway, this was over before it began - Eastwood PLUS women's lib - no competition.

Supporting Actor:
- Scorsese Film
- Shabby Sex Farce for Snobs
- Token Black Guy
- Hollywood Royalty+Eastwood+Token Black Guy (Extra Points for Growling)*
- Shabby Sex Farce for Snobs

Another slam dunk. Black Hollywood Royalty Growling.

Supporting Actress:
- Scorsese PLAYING Hollywood royalty*
- Sex Farce for Snobs
- Sex Farce for Snobs
- Sex Farce for Snobs
- Token Black Woman+Set in 3rd world

Again, sex farces, don't get too uppity. It doesn't matter that Cate Blanchette STANK! She was playing Catherine Hepburn in a Scorsese movie. Again, take note minority whodats - domestic issues trump foreign ones.

So, let's recap.
- Hollywood royalty matters. And there are definitely different levels of royalty: Eastwood tops Scorsese in a knife fight.
- E! Hollywood story is important, but being black is more important
- Sex farces shouldn't get out of their britches. If you want to get an award for a movie about sex, it can't be funny. (Think Monster...hell, just look at the women's movies.)
- It's nice to be married to Warren Beatty.

Anyway, here's the real top 10-list from 2004. I'll be going to a few more 2005 movies, and then weighing in on this year's Oscars with bold predictions based solely on the conclusions reached above.

BEST OF 2004:
1. Finding Neverland
2. Anchorman
3. Spider Man 2
4. Shaun of the Dead
5. Ocean's Twelve
6. Napoleon Dynamite
7. The Passion of the Christ (What of it?)
8. National Treasure (What of it?)
9. Harry Potter 3
10. Troy (Narrowly beats out Team America)

Celebrities to Cock Punch List:

1) Bono
2) Freddy Prinze Jr.
3) Phil Jackson
4) John Mayer
5) Larry King

Ted Tyler: Excentric Billionaire

Amongst the things I would accomplish as an excentric billionaire:
1) Building of new Yankees' stadium in former WTC-site
2) Reconstruction of 7 wonders of the world
3) Making of The Company into HBO mini-series
4) Alicia Keyes/Lauryn Hill Nina Simone Tribute Album
5) Lavish screen version of Turandot with ending fitting the composer, directed by Baz Luhrman
6) Offensive Line for Miami Dolphins
7) Requisite Tributes to My Own Soaring Genius

Further additions to come at random

Wiggles Get Down

I just saw the following on i-Tunes:
NEW ALBUM! The Wiggles: Bring the...

And then you had to click to find out what it was. In case you didn't know, the Wiggles are 4 slightly effiminate Australians who sing kids songs on cheesy videos. They are hugely popular. They're sort of what would happen if you had the Teletubbies take off their costumes and sing "No More Monkies Jumping on the Bed". For the weird factor, the Wiggles replace the slightly hermaphrodite-like Teletubby with a character named Captain Feathersword.

So here's a contest - what would be the best title for a Wiggles album with that beginning? I say:
Wiggles: Bring the Funk

On a related note, I can't decide which is more disappointing - becoming numb to a song you used to love or becoming numb to a song you can't stand. You'd think it'd be the first, but I once found myself humming a Maroon 5 song I'd heard on the radio at least once every day for a month from the top40 station at work...and it came on again while I was humming it from the last time I heard it. It was a sobering moment.

The 5 Cardinal Sins of Pretension in MUNICH:

To kick off our "Why Good Movies Are Lame" feature, let's deal with Munich. Munich provides an archetype for how good movies get swaddled by pretension masquerading as art. It contains the 5 Cardinal Sins of Pretension:

1) Preachy: This is the great lodestone of every supposedly 'important' film of our time. Let's clear something up: having a weighty policy rant or ankle-deep philosophical musing from an otherwise interesting if one-dimensional character a) dilutes the character b) dilutes the plot and c) usually tells us something we could figure out just by watching the movie sans preaching. No one likes a lecture - simply attend one, or better yet, give one, and observe the audience around you. Hollywood writers are seldom as wise as they think they are, and the actors delivering the speeches are far from likely to do anything other than deadpan the speech. They're too dim or humorless to ape the tripe they're forced to deliver.

2) Political: Politics is not art. The lowest form of art is the political cartoon.

3) Psychosexual: The figures aren't in front of me, but the 60's happened nearly a half-century ago or so. The intellectual academy, always thinking it's ten years ahead when it's really 20 years behind, has now caught up and, thanks to an over-abundance of lackluster PhD students and a dirth of decent PhD topics, has thrown its force behind sex research as a viable intellectual avenue. Come off it. To quote my grandmother, "Why does every generation think they reinvented sex?" Art does not need to be avante garde to be good. And bizarre sex is no longer avante garde. So all we're left with is bizarre sex and a series of critics who pretend to be 'with it' by nodding approvingly that bizarre sex is a master stroke. And Munich is the worst of them all. I thought A History of Violence had the most bizarre and impromptu sex scene in reputable film history, but at least one could construe an artistic point from the scene, and it didn't rely on being too shocking, more just on being impromptu.

But Munich took the cake...twice!! It stole the cake from itself!

(Spoiler alert) I thought the pregnant sex scene at the beginning was the new champ. I mean, she's really got a bun half-baked in the oven. Well then, at the end, her husband has sex with her while thinking about Israeli hostages getting killed. His climax is supposedly the film's climax, and he lets out a giggle-inducing roar of triumph to tell us all that he's done, and so are the hostages. Is there an artistic reason for this? Perhaps it is 'exploring the psychosexual connection between male dominance and violence?' So let's explore. Was the purpose to show that sex with his wife would have released the revenge that spurred him rather than killing? (Make love not war) Or perhaps he killed so that he could have sex, which is really what life is all about. (Make war to make love). I certainly don't know the answer. None of these answers are insightful or moving because a) none of us thinks about hostage killings while otherwise engaged and b) none of those above listed insights are all that deep. So who knows? Certainly not Spielberg, because it doesn't have a meaning - the sex is inherently artistic. And toady critics will say, "well, it's a meditation on sex and violence" or some such claptrap, codewords for, "I don't know what it means, but I get that he's trying to be artistic, and it's bizarre sex, and Spielberg, so I approve."

Imagine being Eric Bana. Steve comes up to you one day and says, "In this scene, you have sex with your wife and grunt audibly while shaking your hair back when you finish." So being a pretentious actor you say, "Great, so what's my motivation?" And Steve says, "Well, you're trying to get these feelings of vengeance off your chest, and you're thinking about Israeli hostages getting shot." Does he try out different grunts and hair shakes before he gets the right one to fit the moment? What would Olivier do?

Worse, where else is there to go? Big screen bestiality while the human partner is thinking about a downhill skiing accident?

4) Too Long. This sin especially comes in the ending. The movie could have ended with a brusque no. Instead, we get, "I'm disillusioned, young man...I'm disillusioned, boss...I'm disillusioned, wife...I'm disillusioned, vague father figure...I'm disillusioned, audience...I'm having sex with you, wife, while thinking about hostage killings...I'm disillusioned, random consulate official...I'm still disillusioned, boss. Let's have dinner." On and on it goes. Did someone watch the 3rd Lord of the Rings and say, "Yes, 15 minutes of knowing looks and slow motion hugs is a brilliant way to end a movie!"

Some doctors did some study. It showed that in some particularly unpleasant medical procedure which required continual follow-up, patients frequently didn't come back because of the pain involved. They found that the patient averaged the worst pain during the procedure with the level of pain when it ended and that produced their opinion on how uncomfortable the procedure was. So the doctors figured out that if they just fiddled around for a while after doing the procedure, pretending to do something, the lack of pain at the end would balance out the discomfort of the procedure itself and patients would come back.

The lesson I'd take is that perhaps pleasure works the same way? Shouldn't we end movies well and quickly then?

Instead, it seems directors are figuring, "Well, our movie is really painful, but if we fiddle around for a while at the end, it won't hurt as much."

I imagine Spielberg was moved by the catastrophically wretched, yet abrupt, ending to War of the Worlds, and decided to respond to his critics with a tedious, let's-end-the-movie-3-times, style ending.

5) Whiny Hero. The first rule of screenwriting, or at least one of the first couple, is "SHOW ME DON'T TELL ME." That's why you have actors - to convey feelings. If a character feels something, like, "I'm having second thoughts about killing people and it's because I'm Jewish, not because I've become disillusioned with the Jewish project," then events and the actor's reaction should show us that happening. Perhaps the actor did do that, but editing is such these days that we never get to see anyone's face on screen for more than a few seconds. So instead, at various points, the characters tell us exactly that: that they're really Jewish, that they're conflicted because they're supposed to be defending Judaism, and that it's their being Jewish that makes them conflicted.

Movies are not psychologists' offices and neither is real life. Our hero doesn't need to pour his heart out at every opportunity. We, in the audience, have feelings and a successful work of art relies on either using those feelings as a natural guide or playing off them by showing characters who react differently than we do. Assassins may have feelings, but they don't go blubbering about them all the time on mission. It makes the hero seem effete, unconvincing, and whiny. It makes him less sympathetic. We think to ourselves, "If I was in that person's position, I wouldn't be carrying on like this. I'd do my job and feel bad about it on my own time." But Spielberg is so unsure of his craft, and he's not the only one, that he has to tell us how his characters are feeling. Maybe this is how Hollywood types think everyone behaves? Do they sit around at parties and have an identity-crisis circle jerk?

What would be infinitely superior would be a quiet, Michael Corleone type reaction. Michael is so convincing because we know exactly what he's feeling without him saying it, and though we cannot imagine being in the many situations he ends up in, we can understand very well why he does what he does. His plight is moving because he doesn't complain. We see his pain rather than being told it. Apparently stoicism went out of fashion sometime in the late 70's? Or maybe that was masculinity.

To sum up, intriguing action, a solid set up, and superb technical skills betrayed by trite ideas acknowledged as art by a herd of want-to-be intellectuals.

Hence the 5 Cardinal Sins of Pretension as applied to film:
1) Preachy
2) Political
3) Psychosexual
4) Too long
5) Whiny Hero

There is a cure.

The True Rapper Review

Worst to first, suprises in store. Incomplete, I know, but guys like Dre and Wyclef float between mediocre and the top 5.

A word on criteria: A rapper must have: a hard name, flow, good lyrics, a backbeat the kids can dance to, storied street cred (a sum of criminality+bling+tats), and finally must be jacked. Bonuses for getting killed young. Like Biggie said, "You're nobody till somebody kills you."

WORST EVER:
1. Black Eyed Peas. Milky Cocoa Puffs.
2. Vanilla Ice. The first words out of this man's mouth were, "Stop." If only he'd collaborated and listened. He almost won out - didn't he lose to Screech on Celebrity Boxing?
3. P-Diddy. Listen, yes he gets credit for good backbeats and he did a decent job as a much better rapper's flunky. But the man is ubiquitous on MTV. He's on every show. His mom even showed up on MTV. He went on Oprah. I think Kobe snatched his street cred.

MEDIOCRITIES:
1. Coolio. The perfection of rap mediocrity: lame 90's era name, one hit wonder, truly unremarkable in every fashion.
2. Ja Rule. It's MURDAAAAAAAAAAH.
3. Jay-Z. Dubbed Lil' Orphan Annie. And that's one of his better songs.
4. DMX. Not as mediocre as those named above, but definitely approaching it. The Street Cred Golden Rule: As Soon As You Make A Movie, Your Best Days Are Behind You.
5. 50 Cent. Though an unremarkable rapper, two things should be noted: 1) The man is a hardcore criminal. 2) Seriously jacked. I mean Mark McGwire jacked.

A NOTE ON FOUNDING FATHERS: Yes RunDMC, Public Enemy, 2Live Crew, and even MC Hammer deserve their due as the trailblazers. But standards have changed - go back and listen to their albums, it's like watching those sci-fi movies with claymation dinosaurs. To demonstrate the point:

STAYED AROUND WAAAAAAAAYYYYYY TOO LONG:
1. Will Smith. It was a tough competition but ultimately I gave the nod to Will Smith for a few reasons: 1) Big Willy Style. 2) Everything after Big Willy Style. 3) Special Mention for Wild Wild West. What was that Golden Rule again? Can we get a Jazzy Jeff re-union album to salvage something from this debacle?
2. LL Cool J. There's another reason why I couldn't put Ladies Love Cool James at the top of this list despite the ridiculous 80's era name: the man hit the andro. Will Smith may work out, but LL must live in at Golds. He's challenging 50 Cent. Maybe he's got alzheimers and he walks out of the gym and forgets he just worked out.

CRITICALLY FLAWED BUT OTHERWISE WORTHWHILE RAPPERS:
1. Bone Thugs and Harmony. First and foremost, best name in the biz. They definitely carved a niche with a peculiar style even if they never got the backbeats to hit it big. The problem - no matter how difficult it may be to mimick their style, who would want to? I can't even evaluate their lyrics because I cannot make out a syllable. Destined to provide deadtime in the songs of better rappers.
2. Shaggy. As the most popular Jamaican rapper out there, even if he copied the style from much poorer men, Shaggy benefits from great production bells and whistles. But he cannot shake the street cred problem - he seems to have less punch than Glass Joe. Rappers don't even bother dogging him anymore because it's kind of like picking on Richard Nixon. This despite the fact that the man served in Desert Storm. Is that bizarre or what?
3. Kanye West. OVERRATED!!!!!! The Wayne Brady of Rap. First, let's give him his due - he's more creative than most rappers, he's a good producer and he puts that into his albums, and his lyrics are generally solid with a few rough patches. But he is the ultimate suburban white kid's rapper. The sweaters, the whining about working at the Gap, the jumping on the Brokeback Bandwagon: it's all designed to appeal to marginally intellectual white humanities students who aren't sure they ought to be in college. He even sounds like a white kid trying to be black - listen to his albums, he literally struggles for flow. Discomfort is not a rapping style. And that second album was a HUGE drop off.
4. BustaRhymes. There's a lot to like here, it's true. A lot skill, solid street cred. But...can we respect him when he looks exactly like the WWE's Booker T?

THE RAPPER WHO BEST EPITOMIZES WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A RAPPER.
1. Old Dirty Bastard. Not one of the greats, but the man had a good time. He had flow, he had lyrics, although I would question, "God made dirt and dirt bust your a--". In addition to a great name, let's consider the aliases: Big Baby Jesus, Joe Bananas, Dirt McGirt (Dr. Seuss Hat Tip!) and Freeloading Rusty. When you get down to the barebones, a charter WuTang member, a repeated felon, including the first to violate a California law barring the wearing of bullet-proof vests in public...I mean, the man called a female prosecutor, "A Sperm Donator!" Oh, and he escaped from drug rehab. His original name was even tough: Russell Tyrone Jones. To top it all off, Mariah Carey picked him up from jail. No, actually to top it all off, he died prematurally when a double bag of cocaine mixed with some painkillers in his stomach while working on his comeback album. Operatic indeed. In the words of a friend, "Least suprising premature rapper death in history." This man's life is the Rap Opera movie we're all waiting for.

TOP 5 OF THE MODERN ERA
(We'll count down from worst to first)
5. 2Pac Shakur. 2Pac is the perfect rapper - too perfect. Numerous tats, perhaps second only to Deion in starting bandana craze. Back beat, flow, lyrics all noteworthy. Posthumous production record demonstrates the man's commitment to the music. But there's something missing - a spark of genius. Maybe it was too much LA, a black hole for the world's talent, but 2Pac was too perfect to inspire. I think it was the stage training - he wasn't raw enough or real enough. I get the sense that he's indirectly responsible for most of my mediocrities list.
4. SnoopDog. The smooth style, the influence on our speech patterns, yes, Snoop has to be considered for rapper Valhalla. An extra big-ups for coaching peewee football. Still, a few things hold him back. That same, Sam Perkins permanently high look and style that defines him lacks something of the toughness that the ultimate rapper has to have. He's the marijuana rapper in a crack business - the gateway for edgier stuff. And that movie career - someone shout out that Golden Rule of Rap.
3. Eminem. Eminem comes with a strong resume - peculiar enough to stand out, occasionally brilliant, excellent flow, impressive lyrics, and a strong stable of aliases. Did we mention he's white? The problem has been the back half of his career. I don't care what the charts say, The Eminem Show was the last good album. I feel that Golden Rule claiming another victim - he's feeding of image and marketing at this point. Musically, Encore was garbage, a career killer if it weren't for payola. Here's hoping he bounces back, but the rap gods are jealous, old testament gods. They don't stand for this movie business.
2. Notorious B.I.G. After a long debate...I went with my heart. The common wisdom is that Biggie was the greatest. It's tough to argue. Straight to the top and deservedly so, his two main albums are a formidable catalogue. Hard core, died young, fatness makes up for lack of buffness. He was even a great freestyler. It's all here. He's the true rapper don. He's got more game than the African savannah. What's holding me back? #1 He seems to have starred posthumously in Snatch plus a puff British accent. Which means maybe the back half of his lost career wouldn't have been as bright. But mostly, it's due to my #1's genius.
1. Method Man. Yes, I know: How High, Soul Plane, Method and Red. It's coming to an end. It's already ended. It ended when he worked with Limp Bizkit. That was like Sammie Smith having the gall to line up behind Dan Marino. It'd be like having Louie Armstrong play with Letterman's losery band. So he sold out long ago. I don't care. You know what else? I don't care that he never got the backbeats that the bigger names on this list got. Method Man has the rawest, smoothest flow out there with the lyrics to match. He doesn't have to go hard either. MakeUps2BreakUps deserves more than a passing Wyclef reference. And Method even talks that way when he's not rapping. He's like some kind of rap sage, spitting phrases at will. The man's a genius. Weep at the pettiness of what we do with genius - another bad sitcom. I assure you the Rap Gods already have.

Stay Tuned For:
The True Rapper Review
Why Your Favorite Movies Are Lame
Rating the Al-Jazeera Babes
The Origins of God