Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Also, since this is the Giuliani thread, I just wanted to say I have to concur with Sonic (and everyone else) about his slim chances of being the Republican nominee (and slimmer chances of being president). He'd be such a u-turn for the Republican base that was supposed to have been this new not-so...

(EDIT) ... a total digression here, btw, but can anyone recommend a good, simple, mainstream publication (magazine, preferably) that offers decent coverage of current events & politics? I seem to be traveling once every month or two these days and sometimes something glossy is better than a nov...

I have been outside New York. A better assumption would be that I have never been outside of America. I did once, as a boy, spend a few days at Lake Ontario, which is as close to Canada as I have gotten. Still, I have visited California, Colorado, and the closer state of Massachusetts. I have only ...

Criddic, of course you do drugs. Your hero abused them for years, with impunity, and turned out to be President of the United States! By the way, has anyone else seen this clip from Family Guy ? It's maybe NSFW depending on your workplace, but apparently safe for broadcast. I don't know if it's a n...

Italiano, I think Del Toro has a feeling for his subject matter, but it's not the same thing as one finds in Resnais or Pontecorvo or even "prestige" Spielberg. The only other Del Toro film I've seen is Mimic (well, also Blade 2 , which is awful), a decent mainstream Hollywood genre film-...

Italiano, re: "importance" and complexity in Pan's Labyrinth ... let me see if I can conceptualize the problem a certain way and you can tell me if you agree with it. When a generic effort engages with political and historical questions, it usually has to "reach out" to these an...

I don't know how "totalitarian" the United States is, wire-tapping and all, partly because I have little faith in this idea of (philosophically) liberal capitalist democracy under which we live anyway--Bush is the worst, surely, but he is the worst as a matter of degree, not kind. America...

Criddic and OG, how much history have you guys read? "Every" society goes through a period of totalitarianism!? Wanna bet? As for who finds Pan's Labyrinth most resonant (re: OG saying WWII babies and those brought up on Grimm will be moved most by the film), what one should probably do t...

[quote="Eric"][/quote] Oh, that's too bad Eric. Hope you had fun anyway. Girish was in from last Friday to this past Tuesday morning, I believe. We painted the town last Saturday, as you may have seen him mention on his site. I'm not much of a DVD collector, actually, but there was somethi...

Re: Precious Doll's Chinese films update--that's great news! Sun Yu's Daybreak is a pretty good film, though I don't recall talking to anyone who considered it a masterpiece when it played in NYC a year and a half ago. I hear The Big Road is better. Yuan Muzhi's Street Angels is a fantastic film, l...