I've heard that it will either be The Artist or Hugo. I loved every minute of The Artist, and I'd be very happy to see it win Best Picture.

Hugo is not good, on the other hand, but it might win because of the "Film History" aspect coupled with Scorsese.

How to embed:

[ video ] [ url ] YouTube URL [ /url ] [ /video ]

Obviously, without any of the spaces.

I don't believe they release the shortlists for every category, so maybe it should just be the nominees.

Star Trek III: The Search for Sock

In this long-lost Star Trek adventure, the crew of the Enterprise goes hunting for Kirk's missing sock, in which he hid the codes to a device that could destroy an entire galaxy. Billy Crystal voices the sock, which has gained a mind of its own after long-term exposure to the power of the device.

I'm very interested to hear how this is a snub.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

When taking all the evidence into account, I find it more likely that George is an incompetent writer than that he is secretly a genius. If he was that good, the prequels would have been well written.

"Bombs lead to anger! Anger leads to hate! Hate leads to...more bombs!"

Fifth, IIRC, is direct communication (probably telepathic) with an extraterrestrial being.

Sixth is death caused by a UFO or an alien (EDIT: Upon further research, I found that this is generally considered to be irrelevant, because Close Encounters of the Second Kind include any sort of physical evidence, corpses included.)

And seventh is, get this, mating with an alien and producing a hybrid child. (Which I guess would make Close Encounters of the Seventh Kind the porn parody of this movie)

See, here's what I never understand about arguments like that. What is the definable difference between "stealing" and "piracy"? Merriam-Webster defines "stealing" as "to take the property of another wrongfully" or "to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully". Isn't that exactly what piracy is?

Also, isn't blaming lackluster studio security for piracy a little like blaming someone for getting shot because they weren't wearing a bulletproof vest? Not a perfect metaphor, but still. The studios are getting robbed here. I'm blaming the robber.

Sure, that'd be fun!

Well, what comes to mind immediately is Revenge of the Sith, during the big lightsaber battle at the end. Rather than the director's choices giving the audience emotions, the music swells and booms and tells you, "You should be on the edge of your seat right now! This is really, really dramatic!" Obviously, this is okay when the music augments the director's choices. Take Back to the Future, for example. I would have cared about the outcome of the climax with or without the music. The music in that scene works so well because it compliments how I already feel.

Here's an example from a film I watched recently: Branagh's Hamlet.

With the music, this soliloquy looks like Hamlet is saying, "Fuck yeah! I'm going to fight and I am sure as hell going to win!" But the music is feeding us the wrong emotions about the scene. If you read what Hamlet is saying, it is not what the music implies. He's actually saying, "Man, I'm kinda pathetic compared to Fortinbras and his army. I should probably get to work on my revenge." That's the other half of the problem with music "feeding" the audience their emotions. It may not just be a cheat. It can also be totally wrong.

By the way, I do like the music in Hamlet on its own. But it is totally inappropriate in the film's context. My point about the Dragon Tattoo score was that it wasn't that. It was good music that augmented the director's choices and didn't force the audience to feel emotions. I think I was maybe a little too hard on John Williams, because I was thinking of War Horse when I wrote that review, and looking back, Spielberg was probably more to blame for the audience manipulation in that film than him.