Best Picture
Who will win: Inglourious Basterds
I know everyone is saying Hurt Locker, but I’ve just got a hunch that Tarantino will score a dark horse victory here.
Who SHOULD win: Precious
I honestly can’t understand how anyone could have seen this film and come away convinced that any other picture this year was better.
Actor in a Leading Role
Who will win: Colin Firth
Who SHOULD win: Colin Firth, George Clooney or Jeff Bridges
Morgan Freeman was good, but you shouldn’t win an Oscar simply because you already looked like the guy you’re portraying.
Actor in a Supporting Role
Who will win: Christoph Waltz
Who SHOULD win: Cristoph Waltz
The other nominees should just stay home.
Actress in a Leading Role
Who will win: Sandra Bullock
Who SHOULD win: Gabourey Sidibe
I actually think there’s a good chance of things breaking the right way and giving Gabourey Sidibe the nod, but there seems to be a lot of energy in favor of rewarding Sandra Bullock for finally making a movie that wasn’t terrible. I’d put it at 60/40 in favor of the wrong actress winning.
Actress in a Supporting Role
Who will win: Mo’Nique
Who SHOULD win: Mo’Nique
Her performance towers above every other nominee.
Animated Feature Film
Who will win: Up
Who SHOULD win: The Secret of Kells
I LOVED Up, but The Secret of Kells is just a better film with a more unique creative vision. I can actually see it winning in an upset if enough Academy voters bothered to watch it.
Directing
Who will win: Quentin Tarantino
Who SHOULD win: Lee Daniels
I have to go with Tarantino since I’m going with Inglourious Basterds for Best Picture because you almost never see the award go to the director of something else. That being said, Lee Daniels work on Precious was amazing. To craft a believable version of the world in the midst of a story so horrific that is punctuated by honest moments of joy and humor AND that’s informed by an overarching sense of hope is borderline miraculous.
Documentary Feature
Who will win: The Cove
Who SHOULD win: The Cove
There’s a chance of Food, Inc. winning because there are lots of stupid people in the world.
Adapted Screenplay
Who will win: Precious
Who SHOULD win: Precious
Original Screenplay
Who will win: The Hurt Locker
Who SHOULD win: The Hurt Locker or A Serious Man
]]>Maybe.
Anywho, in the meantime, you can continue to stalk me via any or all of the following means:
Standard caveats apply: Opinions posted are my own/do not represent The Mothership, may include salty language and/or bizarre iconography, not liable for fits of Lovecraftian madness, etc.
]]>Lung cancer. It took him pretty quickly after the initial diagnosis.
He opted for hospice in his home, which was astonishingly humane and dignified and I can’t say enough great things about them.
For a few weeks, an army of well-wishers came to see him. We visited once a week, usually on Sundays to watch football with him.
Though he faded pretty substantially and was very weak, he never lost his wit, humor and mental acuity. By last weekend, he was at peace with his situation and was ready to pass, but for one thing. He hadn’t gotten a chance to see my brother, Zach, who lives in California.
Zach arrived late on Tuesday and immediately went to my grandparents’ house. He spent a few hours with my grandfather, just talking and getting a chance to connect one last time. By Zach’s account, the talk put him at ease and was one of the best conversations they’d ever had. My grandfather was that kind of guy, even at the end. Soon after, Zach went spend to the night at our Mom’s and everyone at my grandparents’ house went to bed. Or so we thought.
Some time in the early hours of the morning, my grandmother returned to my grandfather’s bedside. They spent the next hours together and just prior to dawn he passed away in his own living room with his wife at his side. It was the right way for him to go. Just him and his beloved Bride.
My grandfather had seen everyone he needed to see, he’d given us all the best kind of comfort and guidance in those last days. We all knew he was ready and that his passing would be cause for celebrating his life as much as it would be for mourning the loss of him. And man, what a life he’d lived.
I can say with pretty firm confidence that lives like his are a thing of the past - great and meaningful and special and blessed, full lives. He helped save the world. He served in the Navy during WWII and - when the War ended - moved into private life and profession leveraging the experiences and relationships he’d built during his time in the service. He got married, had a family and thrived.
He saw the world with my grandmother and filled his home with artifacts of his life and travels. He was a leader of men, unto his last (every time we visited him in the final months, someone from his church would come by, scrambling to figure out how he’d been keeping the parish running smoothly for decades with little help from others). He taught his son and then my brother and cousin and I what it meant to be a man - kindness, humility and the kind of deference to women that never suggests they NEED our help, but rather that they deserve our respect. He also taught us all how to craft a story, tell a joke and - when appropriate - employ subtle, sarcastic humor to make a point. He taught us all to love the Redskins above all other teams. At my wedding in May, he danced with more of the young girls than anyone else in attendance and was widely hailed by those same ladies for his talent on the dance floor. Even after he took ill earlier this summer, he still made sure to hit the links for a few holes of golf (weather permitting).
He also endured his share of tragedy, some unimaginably terrible, but always with faith, grace, decency and calm. This was important to the rest of us, as it served to lead by example and taught us how to face adversity with dignity and humility.
In short, he lived life on his own terms and they were the kind of terms that most of us can only ever hope to achieve. I will always miss him, but am glad that his suffering was relatively brief, his final weeks filled with love, friends, family and fond remembrance. A lot of people say this sort of thing, but in his case it was truly the case - he was One of A Kind in the best of ways.
Why, you may ask?
Because our episode of Ace of Cakes will be airing later this week! Details, details:
Episode DB0706L - “Big Red Squig” airing:
Aug 27, 2009 10:00 PM ET/PT
Aug 28, 2009 1:00 AM ET/PT
Sep 08, 2009 8:00 PM ET/PTDuff suits up to do battle as he and Ben whip up the craziest video game star ever… the Big Red Squig… and meet some uber gaming fans. Geof’s Pinto cake starts leaking fluid on its delivery run and Katie has trouble seeing straight as she does a cake for a video tribute at the Contemporary Museum. Geof clues us into the traits that make us his crack cake delivery staff and spatulas go flying as Video Duff goes to war, onscreen, against his nemesis, the flesh-eating Squig.
Make sure to tune in to see what Duff described as “the best cake he has made on the show.”
]]>1) No one else is leaving the studio. Apparently, someone was spreading nonsense rumors earlier about Paul or Adam or Carrie or myself being sent to Austin. Lies, lies and damn lies. I haven’t been able to find any such rumors myself, so who the hell knows - maybe the rumor ABOUT the rumor was a lie. Always remember - there are a limitless number of people online with comparably limitless free time and a weird love of just making things up.
2) We’re all really excited about working alongside BioWare as part of the MMO/RPG division. While we’ve got a lot of experience ourselves and have learned a lot of lessons (some harder than others), it’s exciting to know we’ll have the folks at BioWare right there with us as we move forward as a company. I’ve been lucky enough to meet Ray and Greg a few times in the past and they are clearly passionate about MMOs and games in general. Their affection for us was very clear today and I think they really made the team feel comfortable and supported. And, for the record, that attitude is nothing new. When we launched, BioWare was the only other studio that sent us something as personal and cool as this.
3) While we are working alongside BioWare and with Ray as our group GM, we are still Mythic. Our core operational leadership remains the same, our production and development staff remains the same. Our plans for WAR remain the same (and you’ll hear more about them shortly). Speaking of which…
4) Regarding the future of WAR, Jeff’s next Executive Producer’s letter will come out tomorrow and has a lot of new details explaining what we’re doing to tackle the “Top 5″ list he mentioned previously.
So that’s that for the moment. I know there’s a lot of “Chicken Little” silliness afoot at the moment, but take all of that with a grain of salt (and then throw away the salt). Mythic is fine. WAR is fine (as are UO and DAoC) . We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us and we look forward to tackling it as part of the new RPG/MMO wing of EA.
]]>- Prepping/pimping Tomb Kings. Lots of press, working with folks doing interviews I couldn’t make it out for (see two bullet points down).
- Games Day Baltimore/Getting a badass squig cake out of Duff and the Charm City Cakes crew. If we make it into an episode, it’ll probably be aired in late summer/early fall.
- Got married!
- Honeymoon!
- Back to work tomorrow, then sprinting to get ready for E3 next week.
I HAVE been good about posting nonsense on Twitter, though. So… yeah… follow me or something.
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Protip: You should come to Games Day Baltimore.
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| From WAR-Misc |
That’s a picture of our office “garage band” - The Hamtouchers - hanging out with members of Blue Öyster Cult (they of “More Cowbell” fame) in our local recording studio.
Why, you ask?
Because we were recording a track together. An EPIC track. A track dedicated to Warhammer’s Slayers (newly added to Warhammer Online).
You can download it here, but be warned - it may melt your face off with ALL THE AWESOME.
ROCK.
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