I don’t know if you were going for a joke about just how many people were on the stage or if you were going for that AND a joke about how Slumdog was a movie no one had seen. On the off chance that it’s the latter, I just wanted to point out that it grossed $101,890,024.00, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize that that’s $32,136,141,00 MORE than the combined grosses for The Reader, Milk and Frost/Nixon. Benjamin Button did beat it by an easy $23 million, though.

When the Buffalo Bills lost four straigth SUper Bowls, it was their own fault- they either came up short or failed to execute when the big game was on the line.

But when Meryl Streep doesn’t get an Oscar she was nominated for, well, it’s not as if SHE did something wrong to cost herself the award! The Buffalo Bills controlled their own destiny, and THEY determined whether they won or lost. Meryl Streep never has ANY control over whether she wins an OScar. All she can do is give the best performance she can, and then HOPE that hundreds of unknown, unseen voters choose to reward her for it.

Meryl Streep “losing” the Oscar for “Doubt” is like Tom Seaver “losing” the 1971 Cy Young award. Seaver and Streep did everything they possibly could to earn the awards, but the voters chose, partly for illogical reasons, to give their award to someone else.

What “illogical reasons”? Well, for one thing, voters OFTEN think, “So-and-so has already won this award, but Whatshisface has been passed over a bunch of times, so I figure it’s Whatshisface’s turn.”

To use another example, how many season could/should Shaquille O’Neal have won the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award? Answer: he could easily have won it seven or eight times. The only reason he didn’t is that sportswriters get tired of picking the same guy every year, and start looking for excuses to pick someone else!

Oscar voters are a lot like sportswriters. They get tired of voting for the same people, and often bypass worthy contenders who’ve already won Oscars, in order to reward people who’ve been overlooked before.

Thanks for the Limbaugh/Santelli comparison. In just a few words you convinced me that I would’ve despised everything Morton Downey Jr. stood for, and you illustrated why getting Morton mixed up with Robert is an even more egregious sin than I ever dreamed.

I mentioned (#34) that I’m not a fan of today’s movies either. So we have that in common. Most of the films I watch were released long before I was born in 1979. Even an idiot that mistakenly refers to Robert Downey Jr. as Morton can appreciate the superiority of the golden age of cinema, as they call it. Or maybe they don’t call it that, but I hope you know what I’m trying to say, anyhow.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43651608539#/note.php?note_id=66858028752

…and while you’re at it:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43651608539

I know the number of movies being made is a lot higher than it was a generation ago but that seems incredibly high. 200 movies a week are coming out? Sheesh.

That’s a figure I’d like to be able to cite, so I hope there’s a source out there somewhere.

As far as Meet the Parents goes, I didn’t care for it either, but I’m not sure why we’re blaming Ben Stiller for that. He didn’t write it or direct it or produce it. He was just hired to act in it, just like De Niro. And I agree, he wasn’t funny in it (but then, other than Owen Wilson, nobody was funny in it). The thing is, he isn’t really supposed to be funny in it. De Niro is supposed to be funny. The situations are supposed to be funny. Stiller is the straight man. Now, the situations aren’t funny and neither is De Niro, but I don’t see how that’s Ben Stiller’s fault any more than it’s Teri Polo’s fault or Blythe Danner’s or anybody else in that crappy movie.

Steve B, I was just explaining why Beyonce has been doing that same song everywhere lately. I don’t care for her either. I’m eagerly awaiting the day when her middling good looks fade enough that they no longer support her mediocre talent and she goes away. Of course, I’ve been waiting 25 years for that with Madonna. I’m sad now.

Also, to anyone that wants to rag on Stiller for only being able to play 3 different characters, I challenge you to make a list of 20 or so actors and come up with the basic character types they have played and see how many have more than 3. Many, if not most, actors in Hollywood are only good in a very limited number of roles.

As for the Oscars, I second most of the criticism above. Watching five actors stroke the ego of five other actors was really nauseating, until I finally just starting making fun of them. I usually avoid these award shows at all costs, but my wife insisted. Thankfully I was cooking and eating for most of it…

That would be because they DO suck. Curiously enough, the number of movies made in/by Hollywood each year has increased dramatically (roughly 400/yr through at least the 70s, around 10,000 each of the last two years) — and, if anything, the total QUALITY has declined. To make a very rough analogy, Hollywood used to give us Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, with the occasional Ron Santo and Bert Blyleven; now we get a whole bunch of straight-to-DVD David Ecksteins and Moonlight Grahams.

3rd Period Points #26 — I’d be more impressed with your thoughts if you were aware of the distinction between Robert Downey Jr. and Morton Downey Jr. (there’s a gap between them roughly the size of the Grand Canyon). Among other things, Morton Downey Jr. is the spiritual father of all of today’s loud-mouthed, know-nothing blowhards (e.g., Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli).

Creston #84 — “Tootsie” is funnier than Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Jim Carrey, and Paul Blart combined. Not only that, but also Dustin Hoffman is actually a real actor, i.e., he acts, he doesn’t indulge in the (as a previous poster put it) “Hey, look at me trying to be funny” schtick.