Friday Night Lights

[said in coach taylor voice] It scares me how much I love this show. [/coachvoice]

A few times tonight I thought I was reaching a new, I dunno, level of being rocked by FNL. Something about Gaius Charles's acting, and the editing on the musical montage in the middle. But then, there could have been less hugging and learning at the end, and that thing with Riggins and his neighbor was pretty predictable. It'd better get more complicated.

Still the best show on TV. So what's up with the ratings? And why does this meticulously crafted fansite have such an empty forum? I mean, I know how it feels. My Mayday forum a few years ago turned into a ghost town shortly after the US leg of their tour. But that was a Taiwanese rock band, not a primetime network TV show. Maybe there's a more lively forum somewhere else.

More on the Oscars

It was nice to see Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon win for The Blood of Yingzhou District. I met Ruby through my SFIAAFF friends back in my Hong Kong days. She's worked on several notable movies on both sides of the ocean, including A.K.A. Don Bonus and Citizen Hong Kong.

And although I was surprised to see the song from An Inconvenient Truth (I barely remembered there even was one) beat all those Dreamgirls nominees, it was great to hear Melissa Etheridge thank her *wife* in her acceptance speech. This on the first Oscars hosted by an out gay person. Who did a fine job, I thought.

Overall, I thought the awards were pretty well distributed, which helped keep things at least a little bit interesting on a night of mostly boring speeches.

The announcing, on the other hand, was laughable. Calling it a "Cinderella moment" for a "sweet little girl" when Abigail Breslin arrived was just the kind of thing Little Miss Sunshine so effectively spoofed.

What a relief

Finally a worthy movie wins Best Picture. I think it all came down to rewarding Scorsese after way too long. Not that The Departed was the really the best picture of the year, or even the best within the sights of the Academy -- that would be Children of Men, which got shut out. But after last year, this is a huge step up.

Infernal Affairs, the source material for The Departed, at least got some respect. Both Scorsese and screenwriter William Monahan mentioned it, though it got shut out in the Best Picture speech. And of course the announcer called it a Japanese film. Doesn't she have a Buick commercial to do or something?

Trying out Blogger

Recently I noticed that my blog was not a real blog. That is, it didn't have any place for people to make comments about my posts. Actually, I knew that back when I started Globality.org back in 2003. At the time, I thought having an e-mail address would suffice and would prevent a flood of spam.

But the tools for making blogs have improved (it's way beyond my current skills to build one myself), so I'm giving it a try. Everything else on the "long tail" of Globality.org is still online, and I'm now I'm going to try setting up links to those pages.