Nobody Knows Anything

No, I haven’t completely lost my marbles—that’s one of the hilarious lines from Life on Mars, which Darin and I just finished watching. For those of you who haven’t heard the hype, it’s the story of Sam Tyler, a DCI in 2006, who gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. Did he really go back to 1973, or is he in a coma? And if he is in a coma, how on earth did he imagine 1973 in such vivid detail?

The show is absolutely wonderful, and John Simm (who’s in practically every frame, because the entire series has to do with his POV) is fabulous as Sam Tyler. The big breakout star from this is evidently Philip Glenister, who plays DCI Gene Hunt (or, Gene ‘unt, as everyone calls him), and he’s completely hysterical as the foul-mouthed, old-school policeman who does not understand any of Tyler’s wacky innovations to police work, such as “surveillance” or “profiling.”*

The first episode of Series 1 and the last episode of Series 2 are completely brilliant. (That ending! It’s the feel-good ending of the year!**) The episodes in between range from the good to the really, really good, with some utterly hilarious lines, and not just the anachronistic one from the title of this entry. The depiction of 1973 does make it seem like they’re on a completely different planet. (Although, as Darin put it, if you could actually get someone from 1973, they’d probably watch this show and point out tons of anachronisms. Doesn’t matter. Close enough.)

If you want to see it, either demand Region 1 DVDs of it or, er, find other ways of getting it. I didn’t watch it on BBC America, but since each episode was 55-60 minutes long and filled with swearing, they must have chopped the hell out of it.

David E Kelley is remaking this series for the US. So…one guess: it’ll be set in Boston, 1973. I’m also going to wager one of the first story notes from the network is, “Change the ending,” because there is no way an American network would approve that. (Cable: maybe.) I haven’t the slightest clue how they would drag this show out for 22 or 24 episodes a season. It is primarily a police procedural in time travel garb, and police procedurals have become extremely tired and stale of late. (Cf. Life, a show I love and miss—Damian Lewis: fabulous; police procedural part: oy.)

* When we started watching the show, Darin said, “You know who the guy playing Gene Hunt reminds me of? Colm Meaney.” And when I went to the IMDb page for the American version, lo and behold: Gene Hunt will be played by…Colm Meaney.

** If you don’t know what the ending is, don’t seek it out. I unfortunately got spoiled by Alan Sepinwall, so I knew what was coming, but Darin was like, WHOA.

So, the Oscar nominations were made this morning, and unlike in previous years, I’ve seen lots of the movies and so can make intelligent commentary on them. Rather than “pick the winners,” though, I’m just going to tell you what I think.

Best Picture
Nominees: “Atonement,”"Juno,”"Michael Clayton,”"No Country for Old Men,”"There Will Be Blood”

I’ve seen all of these except for “Atonement,” which I’ve heard was very good but knocked no one’s socks off. “Michael Clayton” is a good movie but it’s nowhere near as amazing as some of its competitors. “Juno” was very good but it’s small— it gets this year’s “Nomination for Amazing Success.”

I had very strong negative reactions to both “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood,” but for very different reasons. As I’ve told everyone I’ve talked to, “No Country for Old Men” is a movie firing on all cylinders: the direction, the acting, the cinematography, everything is just great. However, the overall theme seems to be: “Life’s a bitch, then you die, and there’s nothing you can fucking do about it.” Oh, yay.

“There Will Be Blood” is a very (very) long movie about a complicated, evil man exploiting California’s oil riches (and everything else he can get his hands on), and in the end you’re like, “Yup, he’s a bad guy all right.” The title is a nice pun (that none of the reviews I’ve seen have commented on), and the production design is unbelievable.

Of the two, “No Country for Old Men” is definitely the more accessible, and I would give it the award.

Actor
Nominees: George Clooney, “Michael Clayton”; Daniel Day-Lewis, “There Will Be Blood”; Johnny Depp, “Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”; Tommy Lee Jones, “In the Valley of Elah”; Viggo Mortensen, “Eastern Promises.”

I’ve seen four of the five. George was good, but not great. Didn’t see “In the Valley of Elah.”

In “Eastern Promises,” Viggo (an American), Vincent Cassel (a Frenchman), and Armin Mueller-Stahl (a German) play three Russians, and never once during the entire movie did I think, “Wow, those are damn good accents.” No, I thought: Hey, who knew Viggo Mortensen was so Russian?

Johnny Depp is very good in “Sweeney Todd” (and he sings!), but it’s kind of silly to compare that performance to something like Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood.” I don’t know if I’ve ever seen another movie with Day-Lewis in it, because I’ve never seen that man before. I’ve heard Day-Lewis is the scary kind of Method actor, and apparently it pays off. I guess it’s pretty easy to tell who I think will get it in this category.

Actress
Nominees: Cate Blanchett, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”; Julie Christie, “Away From Her”; Marion Cotillard, “La Vie en Rose”; Laura Linney, “The Savages”; Ellen Page, “Juno.”

Okay, so much for my boast about seeing the movies: I’ve seen exactly one performance here, and that was Ellen Page as “Juno.” She was hysterical. I don’t think she has a prayer.

Supporting Actor
Nominees: Casey Affleck, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”; Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men”; Hal Holbrook, “Into the Wild”; Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Charlie Wilson’s War”; Tom Wilkinson, “Michael Clayton.”

Bardem: excellent at the unstoppable killer in “No Country.” So good, in fact, that he made me question the sanity of my friend who thinks he’s the hottest thing since sliced bread. Philip Seymour Hoffman: once again on the FBI’s Most Wanted for theft of every scene he’s in. Tom Wilkinson: an actor completely without fear, and definitely the best thing about “Michael Clayton.” I can never guess the Supporting Actor/Actress categories ahead of time, but I think Wilkinson was the best of the three.

Supporting Actress
Nominees: Cate Blanchett, “I’m Not There”; Ruby Dee, “American Gangster”; Saoirse Ronan, “Atonement”; Amy Ryan, “Gone Baby Gone”; Tilda Swinton, “Michael Clayton.”

I didn’t seen “Atonement” or “Gone Baby Gone,” so I don’t know. Cate Blanchett was good (but not that good) in the severely over-praised “I’m Not There.” Ruby Dee was not much in “American Gangster,” a movie primarily about haircuts in the 70s. Tilda Swinton was very good in “Michael Clayton,” so of the three I’d have to give it to her.

Director
Julian Schnabel, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”; Jason Reitman, “Juno”; Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton”; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”; Paul Thomas Anderson, “There Will Be Blood.”

There will be a shoot-out in the parking lot between the Coen Brothers (who really reined in their worst behavior in “No Country”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (who definitely stamped his movie with MINE all over it). Unless somebody gets a sweep, I think it’s probably PTA.

Adapted Screenplay
Christopher Hampton, “Atonement”; Sarah Polley, “Away from Her”; Ronald Harwood, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”; Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”; Paul Thomas Anderson, “There Will Be Blood.”

The only proper way to judge Adapted Screenplay is to read the original material. I would bet few, if any, of the Oscar voters do that, and they simply vote for whichever one they liked the best. I would probably pick “No Country.”

Original Screenplay
Nominees: Diablo Cody, “Juno”; Nancy Oliver, “Lars and the Real Girl”; Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton”; Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, “Ratatouille”; Tamara Jenkins, “The Savages.”

Damnation. No idea. Like most people, I disparaged “Juno” sight unseen, and after I saw it I went, “Whoa! First script!” One of the best things about “Juno” is (past the dialogue, which was hilarious and crisp) that none of the characters behave in the way you expect them too. Teenaged girl gets pregnant? How do her parents react? Wrong. It was constantly surprising, which was refreshing. (Darin’s two cents: he thinks “Juno” will win this one.)

And while “Michael Clayton” has its problems — for one thing, they had to call it “Michael Clayton” because they couldn’t think of a more relevant title — there are several things about the script that were just fabulous. Like the scene at the hit-and-run driver’s house, which we see twice: the first time it hits us one way, the second time it hits us completely differently.

“Ratatouille”: a really good script, suffering from the usual Pixar problem of the tag-along female (an actual Hollywood term, folks!).

It was obvious when we saw the movies that “No Country For Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood” would be the big kahunas of this year’s Oscars. “There Will Be Blood” irritated me in so many ways that I’m partial to “No Country.” And I walked out of “No Country” swearing a blue streak about it.

The big question is, of course: Will there even BE an Oscar ceremony this year?

So, because I follow so many blogs via LiveJournal, I’ve decided to let people on LJ do the same if they so want: I’m going to start cross-posting NKA over there, so you can follow along in your f-list there or continue to read here. At the moment I’m allowing comments in both places: I don’t much expect that to be a problem!

Remember three years ago when I got a little hot under the collar about people refusing to move to reusable grocery bags?

China has banned plastic bags.

Surprising to me was the factoid that China spends 37 million barrels of crude oil just on plastic bag production per year. What must we be spending?

(Of course, as Al Gore pointed out in An Inconvenient Truth, here in the US it’s an epic (and losing) political battle to regulate car manufacturers to increase fuel efficiency standards to 35 miles per gallon…by 2020. China is already at 35 mpg, Japan is at 40 mpg, and the EU is at a staggering 48.9 mpg.)

We could do so much to get off the goddamn oil syringe, and apparently it’s just too damn taxing for us to even try.

Yesterday the Possummomma posted about a woman who said:

The school is supposed to give the kids a healthy lunch. So what that
there’s fact and sugar or chemicals. It’s food. We’re a working
class family that can’t afford to fix a good lunch for the two dollars I give
the kids for school lunch. The kids wouldn’t eat fruits and veggies anyway. When am I supposed to make these lunches? I work. Besides that it’s not my responsibility to go out of my way to make lunches that the school must give by law.

To which my only reaction can possibly be:

My brain reads “So what that there’s [fat] and sugar or chemicals” and it ’splodes a little. What on Earth do you mean, So what? Are you the one in charge or not? Are you the one modeling behavior for your kids, or are you not? On what planet is it not your responsibility?

(In case you didn’t look at the webpage in question, in response to this declaration, the Possummomma shows her how to fix a good, healthy lunch for under two dollars.)

And with fruits and veggies: I honestly can only guess she’s never given them to her kids. My kids won’t eat everything — they won’t even eat all the things they used to eat. (Sophia the girl who could eat an entire bunch of asparagus when she was two won’t even touch the stuff now.) But we still offer them a variety of foods and they have favorite fruits and veggies despite being picky.

One of the key things I decided on early was that I was not going to be a short-order cook. There are a few choices for breakfast on school mornings — not as many as I’d like, but we tend to be rushing around in the morning and I keep the menu simple. I offer them a few choices for their lunch: they can pick what kind of sandwich they want or a thermos of soup, plus a fruit and maybe a snack. For dinner, I serve one meal. They can eat some of what’s put on the table, or they can pass and wait for breakfast in the morning. Strangely enough, they usually end up eating some or all of what I’ve served. Not always, and probably not with as much variety as I’d like. (For instance, they’ll usually have some of whatever starch I serve.) But they know they’re not getting anything else instead.

One good book worth checking out on the subject is Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes. And a quick glance through Amazon shows a number of books on the subject: Brown Bag Success: Making Healthy Lunches Your Kids Won’t Trade, The Top 100 Recipes for a Healthy Lunchbox, and The Healthy Lunchbox. Several of which turn out to be available at my local library, so I’m going to pick a few up and check them out.

I know it can be a pain in the ass to find out everything about everything, but please: this is your body, and your kids’ bodies. You take charge of what goes into them, okay?

I found this quote in the morning paper:

Still, PG&E said Sunday that it was hoping nearly all of the lights would come back on by Tuesday or Wednesday.

“What!?” said Godfrey Muehler of Sunnyvale. “We’ve heard 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 7 p.m.

Anybody see what made me sad? Is it the fact that all of my brethren do not yet have their lights and power on? Is it that PG&E is swamped and there’s yet another storm headed our way?

No, it’s the San Jose Mercury News using “!?” as punctuation. T’ain’t standard, man. Don’t make me take out my Chicago Manual of Style. You get to pick an exclamation mark or a question mark. You don’t get both.

You may have heard about this storm that blew into California recently. All over California at the same time, which is as neat a trick as you are likely to see. Usually the storm has to blow into one part and then move across or down to another part the next day, because we’re a really big state. Apparently, this storm knows from big.

Yesterday our power went out at 9:30am, so I called the painting guy I had an appointment with and said, You know, it’s cold and dark here, let’s postpone. He said, Yeah, I’ve kinda been wondering if I even want to leave my office today. I didn’t need any extra pushing — a café! With lattés and music and people going by! Just what I need on a stormy day!

The lights kept going out at Coffee Society.

I drove back home, where I discovered the Borders was closed and the local café was dark (though packed with people, hilariously enough — no idea what they were all drinking). I bought some sushi at the local market and drove around. Branches down everywhere. I saw one car that had been crushed by a falling tree (wish I’d gotten a picture of that). I listened to a lot of my podcasts of “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me (the NPR news quiz)” and eventually went to Club Swanky, where the kids were having a holiday day camp. They both seemed okay with having to stay at the club even past the end time of the camp, but by 3pm both of them were like, Time to GO, Mom.

So, what to do? I took them to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, which was cute (not a good movie, per se, but cute, and the kids really liked it). Then we looked for a restaurant — many of them were closed by power outages. I called home, and the voicemail picked up immediately, which meant the power was still out.

We ended up back at the Pruneyard, where everyone had decided to go for dinner last night, so we waited a long time for a table. During dinner, Darin and I decided we should stay at a hotel that night, so he phoned around to a couple of hotels. Nothing doing: either full up, or closed for remodeling.

We drove home, I found one of our flashlights in the pitch black, and I packed us an overnight case. We drove to the hotel around the corner from our house, where they gave us a so-so room (what the hell, we had a place to sleep and it was warm). The kids were at Defcon 5 for a while, until they actually lay down, at which point they were asleep.Darin and I watched the news for a while. Nothing about the Storm of the Century. Lots about Britney Spears, though. Yay.

I also apparently missed some story about tigers at the zoo, but that’s okay: I don’t need to know. Affects my life not at all.

In the morning I called home and the phone rang, which meant the power was back on. So we did what anybody would have done: we went out to find breakfast somewhere. Then we came home, where the kids have permission to play video games all day and have taken us up on that proposition.I hear massive thunder overhead. If we lose power again, though, we’re staying here. A night’s sleep with absolutely no distractions from lights will do us all a world of good.