Actually, Gravity is exactly NOT the kind of film that wins Best Picture.  It doesn't say the movie business is awesome, it doesn't say being mean to other people is bad ummkayy, it's not a musical or historical epic, and none of the characters has a physical handicap to overcome.

The last genre movie (by which I mean fantasy/sci-fi/thriller) to win Best Picture was Return of the King ten years ago, the last before that was Silence of the Lambs, the one before that was... nothing.

Those other movies won because they were that goddam good.   Gravity has a good shot at doing the same, but if so it'll be despite the kind of movie it is, not because of it.

EDIT:  So yes, Doc Sub called it.  12 Years a Slave is a more likely winner because it is Important And Meaningful.

EDIT again: Rough early prediction, Gravity will take VFX and other technical awards, Cuaron might get Best Director and Sandy might even win Actress.  But Best Picture... I wouldn't say it's a lock.  On the other hand, the new 10-nominee Best Picture category allows votes to get split farther and upsets to happen more easily.

Update - saw Captain Phillips last night.  Solid movie and Hanks nails it like always, but it didn't change my Top Five.   

Tonight - Inside Llewyn Davis.  The Coens have always been hit-or-miss with me but when they hit, it's usually a home run.  Fingers crossed...

For me, Mud, Prisoners, The Way Way Back, Nebraska, and This Is The End were all enjoyable and watchable - which (unfortunately) is an achievement in itself these days.  None of them made me think "I'm gonna watch this again someday" but none of them made me hate the movie business either.

Could only stand about five minutes of Kill Your Darlings, but I'll probably give it another chance.   Still need to see American Hustle, Catching Fire, Hobbit, Wolf of Wall Street and a few others.

Special case: just saw Lone Survivor, which is actually a 2014 film I guess.  Liked it well enough, and those who are into military porn are likely to love it.  And if it's a choice between Peter Berg using his talents to make movies like this and The Kingdom vs movies like Battleship, then I definitely choose Lone Survivor.

Actually, I don't know if that's true.  I just liked having the opportunity to use the picture.

Yeah, SeaWorld does about as much "research" as Ringling Brothers does.   

In Blackfish the point is made repeatedly (by actual marine biologists who study orcas in the wild) that the conditions under which orcas live at Seaworld is completely different from their natural habitat. 

So there's not a lot to learn from orcas at Seaworld, except how to make them completely insane.

We talked a bit about ZD30 in the Best/Worst of 2012 episode.  I was kinda lukewarm on it and I think one or two others were as well.  But Eddie might have a more interesting perspective on it.

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly a topic of interest - but it's not because copyright has no more purpose.  Its purpose is the same as it's always been, but due to technology it's become much harder to enforce. 

And there's also the societal trends that have led many people to believe copyright is somehow a bad thing.  For any of us who work in the arts, it's pretty much the only thing that enables us to make a living at all.

As for doing a show on it, didn't we pretty much cover it in the Fair Use episode?  I admit I haven't listened to that one in a while, tho.

I want to put this Dorkman and the Dorkman from the religion thread in a pit and make them fight.

Anyway, I personally think there was planning and some retconning in the writing of the Potter series.  Doesn't make the outcome any less impressive if some of it was just serendipity ("Boy, I'm so glad I mentioned X in that first book!")

When I wrote the series bible for the continuation of Ark, an entire plot thread evolved from my wanting to justify something the costume department did that I didn't like.   Now if we ever DO more Ark, that plotline will make me LOOK like a damn genius who had it all figured out from the beginning.   I'm okay with that, and I'm sure Jo is too.

Were you summarizing the story of Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker just there?   Doesn't matter really, it's the same story.    As with all stories, it's all in the telling.   

Well, and the genre.  There are people who just can't get into the whole robots-and-monsters sensibility of Star Wars either.  It either grabs you or it doesn't.

For me the Potter movies are fairly acceptable interpretations of the books - though the middle movies are better than the first or last ones.  The last book was a bit of a letdown for me as well, but not a disastrous one. 

The attraction of the books (again, speaking for myself) was the incredibly dense and rich world-building, and the fact that for books that were supposedly YA, the themes and emotions dealt with were surprisingly adult and relatable... and also often dark and scary.

But you don't have to read the Potter books or see the movies.  There's not gonna be a quiz or anything.

It's also the star of one of the biggest movies of 2013!