Yes, I know I am stepping on Medium Cool, but this is just an open thread so I don’t want to hear about it from you Baud.
Medium Cool – Chemistry!
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- Another Scott
- ArchTeryx
- Booger
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Booger
Who’s Oscar?
oldgold
OT: 60 Minutes had a good segment on Friday’s ambush. It trashed Trump.
mrmoshpotato
I nominate part 3 and 4 of The Americas (narrated by Tom Hanks) to shake its ass and get down tonight, shake its ass and wang chung tonight!
Scout211
Errant apostrophe, thy name is Oscar.
/pedant
oldster
If this really is Oscar’s thread, then we can be as grouchy as we like.
I’m in.
mrmoshpotato
@oldster: Grouchy about Dump and Hillbilly Fraud deepthroating Putin?
Mr. Bemused Senior
Oscar’s only ostrich oiled an orange owl today.
CaseyL
My cat is Oscar, and he fully deserves an entire evening event dedicated to him.
I don’t have a TV, so I am free to imagine my Oscar winning all the awards.
oldster
@mrmoshpotato:
You have my permission, yes. Whether our hosts will condone it, I do not know.
oldster
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I love me some Dr. Suess.
Suzanne
I should be doing a work task right now, but I am exhausted and I want to watch fun fashion.
matt
Since it’s an open thread, this guy did a really good job in this video about last Friday’s Oval Office meeting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaCbUtTuLhA
CItizen Dave
Since we didn’t have a Razzies thread, they were awarded a couple days ago: (winners in bold)
Complete list of Razzie Award winners for the worst in cinema
Here is the full list of “winners” of the Razzie Awards for the worst of the year in film:Actor
Actress
Supporting Actor
Supporting Actress
Director
On-screen combination
Prequel, remake, plagiarism or sequel
Script
zhena gogolia
I haven’t seen any of the films except half of Anora, which I am enjoying greatly.
MagdaInBlack
I am not watching but a friend is, so we are chatting. She has some concerns about the long fashion nails and bathroom hygiene.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: ick. I clip my nails short now. Covid made me do it. So easy to keep clean.
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: Bidets?
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Once, and only once, did I get talked into getting my nails “done.” That finish lasted to my car, where i bonked it on..something. “They’re jewels, not tools” i was told. (bs ima farm kid, theyre tools)
I think they’re cool and fun and I always check out the nails of my customers. It just aint me.
TBone
@oldster: Open Sesame!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yQyTpPu0gvc
(Donald Grump Banquet for Grouch Apprentice.)
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: Ty, I made that suggestion too.
eta: she lives in the teeny farm town where we both grew up, so bidet is not something that comes to mind out there.
Westyny
I highly recommend the doc, Soundtrack for a Coup d’Etat.
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: We installed them during the early part of the pandemic and….. #sofreshsoclean.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: that’s the exact same amount of times I have ever had a manicure. Typist!
oldster
@TBone:
I got no further than reading the title of the video, and turned it off. Trump has defiled many things by his presence. I don’t have to watch them.
TBone
@oldster: that’s a shame, it’s pretty funny IMO. And, it’s “for the children!”
oldster
@TBone:
“that’s a shame, it’s pretty funny IMO”
with that kind of attitude, how are you going to retain your grouch credentials?
TBone
@oldster: 💋 I specialize in insubordination.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@oldster: if I recall correctly, Donald Grump bought Oscar’s trash can and then rented it back to him.
TBone
@Mr. Bemused Senior: you are correct, sir.
zhena gogolia
It doesn’t seem as if anyone here is actually watching the show. I’m a little curious about how well Conan O’Brien does. Or has it not started yet?
VeniceRiley
Nails are a no no. As I once told my hand surgeon, “Careful. That’s my lesbian penis.”
geg6
Conan has been uncharacteristically earnest tonight. I missed most of his opening though.
I’m liking the fashion so far tonight. I’ve only seen Conclave and A Complete Unknown and loved them both. So my rooting interests are narrow tonight.
geg6
Did love seeing the Latvians win for animated feature and the Iranians who won for animated short. I love seeing these unknowns from other countries beat out much bigger budget stuff.
geg6
@VeniceRiley:
LOL, I’m so straight I had to think about that one for a few seconds.
MagdaInBlack
@geg6: I had to give it a moments thought myself, but yeah, I see the issue now.
TBone
@VeniceRiley: ha!
TBone
Things to be a grouch about: after almost a full night of insomnia last night, I just walked into my bedroom really looking forward to snuggling in bed with kitties & a good movie. BUT somefurry had accidents out of BOTH ENDS and I had to throw the window open and clean up the carpet instead. Here I am again with the TBone Challenge, too pissed off at teh gawds to sleep!
ArchTeryx
Flow wins Best Animated Feature. For someone connected to the animation industry, that is absolutely seismic. A studio of around 50 people, with a core team of 20, working in a freeware program, Blender, made a film that just swept the Golden Globes and the Oscars. And beat out both Disney and Dreamworks, with multimillion dollar software packages, teams of over a thousand, and a critical darling in Wild Robot. That’s not David and Goliath, that’s a flea taking down a Blue Whale. No voice cast, except one person’s cat. One composer doing a Wendy Carlos style solo score.
Essentially, an art house film made by a tiny team of amateurs, on a freeware program, just dethroned one of the biggest multinationals on the planet and the best major animation studio out there right now.
And for a 3D animator and artist like me, it gets even more incredible: they used the rendering engine EEVEE instead of Cycles. The second best, quick and dirty renderer, instead of the professional-quality one. Probably because rendering in Cycles with their limited resources would have taken far too long.
I’m just gawping at that news. That’s insane.
TBone
@ArchTeryx: have you seen it yet? I have not but it’s now on my list, thank you!
Suzanne
I have only seen half of one of the nominated movies, The Brutalist. So far, there is no Brutalism, only modernism.
Brutalism, the architectural style, is named for béton brut. That’s raw concrete, with visible characteristics like exposed aggregate, visible formwork, and seaming. It doesn’t mean that it’s brutal!
geg6
@ArchTeryx:
I’ve read raves for it and a couple of movie podcasts I listen to also raved about it. I think it’s a wonderful turn of events.
MagdaInBlack
@ArchTeryx: I like news this very much.
TBone
@Suzanne: I had a nightmare involving raw concrete last night, hence the insomnia afterward. It was in liquid form.
ArchTeryx
@TBone: I have not and I really want to. As an amateur Blender animator and 3D artist, this is a giant boost to one of the biggest freeware communities in the world, and a quite direct refutation of the thousands-a-month packages like Maya. This is for animation what the original John Carpenter Halloween movie was for horror: A 9.0 earthquake in the whole industry. That alone would make it worth watching, but it also is supposed to have a knockout story. I can hardly wait.
It’s also a giant blow against AI, since this was made without a single piece of AI assistance. A lot of it is hand drawn using a Blender tool called Grease Pencil. The more I learn about just how subversive it is that this film won a Golden Globe and an Oscar, the happier I get. It will not hurt DreamWorks or Disney, but it sure as hell will hurt the greedy corporate bastards at Maxon (Cinema 4D, Redshift render engine, ZBrush sculpting) and Autodesk (Maya).
thruppence
DVRing The Oscars; at a concert with the band Lettuce and the Colorado Symphony. Probably twice the average age of the rest of the crowd
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Haha, this sounds so annoying.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: I’m enjoying the movie so far, but I am definitely hoping that they up the Brutalism content! As of right now, they should have called it The Modernist. I realize that doesn’t sound as cool.
Suzanne
Okay, some winners are singing as they accept their award and I swear to God medieval weaponry was made for moments like this.
MagdaInBlack
@ArchTeryx: NBC tells me the filmmakers just got their visas approved yesterday, and arrived 3 hours before the win.
ArchTeryx
@MagdaInBlack: Thank goodness they were allowed in to get their award! That would have been yet another international embarrassment if the Best Animated Feature Oscar winners weren’t even allowed past the border!
persistentillusion
@matt:
Matt, that guy is a fuckin’ jamoke. What a lot of nonsense.
CatFacts
@ArchTeryx Animation as a category was pretty stacked this year, too. Inside Out 2 isn’t Pixar’s very best, but that’s a high bar and Dreamworks and Aardman were on all cylinders. Have only seen the trailer for Flow, but even that looks glorious.
ArchTeryx
@Suzanne: The only people who should be singing at the Oscars are folks performing the Best Original Song nominees. Anyone else needs to get a bunch of maces, pikes, and other assorted medieval weaponry chucked at them.
stinger
@geg6:
Saw the animated shorts a few days ago, and thought the Iranian one was the best. No dialogue, but a ton of emotion.
zhena gogolia
Watching Conan’s monologue — it’s funny!
VFX Lurker
Last year’s VFX winner was the excellent Godzilla Minus One, which had a VFX team of 35 people instead of 1400 (Ant-Man) or 4000 (Avengers).
Looking forward to watching Flow soon.
different-church-lady
They still have movies, huh?
schrodingers_cat
@CaseyL: Only one evening?
TBone
@ArchTeryx: genuinely chuffed for all concerned and can’t wait till we see it either!
prostratedragon
@CItizen Dave: Listening right now to the premiere concert (last year) of a suite from Golijov’s score to Megalopolis. Seems Coppola and CSO’s emeritus conductor Muti are cousins, and Golijov had a residency with the orchestra in the past.
WTFGhost
I’m loving that Ukraine is seeking other partners to end the war, any one of whom might win the Nobel Peace Prize, but it should be shared with Zelenskyy, and Trump can be explicitly excluded by the Nobel committee.
I mean, I kinda hope the committee isn’t that petty, but, if they felt it important, it might be they’d say “we don’t award this to bullies who talk only to the invading side.” A fellow can dream, right?
dww44
@oldgold: Scott Pelley is the best of CBS journalists these days, Kinda makes up for that partisan take on CBS Sunday Morning earlier today. I encourage all to take time to go find the segment near the end in which Robert Costa interviews Matthew Continetti from the American Enterprise Institute about the Oval Office attack on President. Zelenskyy. It was very one sided…in the other direction.
prostratedragon
@TBone: “It was in liquid form.”
Temporarily [shudder].
sab
@Suzanne: You need to see EJ Thomas Hall on the campus of Akron U in Ohio. It is everything you say. Poured concrete building. Concert hall. Soundproof although next to railroad tracks. Interesting architecture. The audience section has a main floor plus two balconies, and a roof that can be (possibly past tense) raised or lowered depending on the audience size. Big on some nights. Smaller and more intimate on others. And the counterweights to the roof mechanism are big shiny sculptural tubes hanging in the lobby.
The building is poured concrete inside and out but starkly beautiful.
WTFGhost
@Suzanne: I was greatly relieved to learn that “architecture styles” were something a lot of people did, and someone decided “we’ll call that a *style*.”
Not needing to understand the name meant that my brain stopped asking “but why *that* name?” and I stopped trying to learn architectural styles.
Not sure if this helps *you*, but….
@TBone: Let me have a word with some of those dream spirits about mucking with my friends.
@ArchTeryx: I know a much younger Ghost would have been far more interested in this, so, it’s good news, and yes, I like the idea of people being able to *do* without spending thousands and millions.
@Suzanne: they invented torture devices too.
@different-church-lady: Yeah, movies, I learned about them. They’re like single episode streams from Netflix, Prime, Disney+, etc.. I guess that’s what they do when the pilot really sucks.
Matt McIrvin
@VFX Lurker: Godzilla Minus One should have been a contender for 2023’s Best Picture.
sab
Deleted duplicate.
prostratedragon
@ArchTeryx:
Trebu-chet!
Duhduhduhduhduhduddadah
Duhduhduhduh
Trebu-chet!
Actually, I’ve always thought there must be something intoxicating about such moments, and you know how drunk people are.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of Brutalism. (Haven’t seen the movie.)
I went to the top of Crosley Tower once. It didn’t make me appreciate the style.
Normally, I’m a big fan of efficiency and smart design, but Brutalism seems to me to take it too far. Especially when it is done in a way which makes maintenance difficult or impossible.
YMMV!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Another Scott: I like all the styles, pretty much. I like variety and trying new things. Brutalism, for all its successes and failures, tried new things. It had high aspirations. I get that it isn’t everyone’s cuppa tea, though.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Don’t forget the pile of poopoo those two dumped on our greatest generation.
sab
@Another Scott: Google EJ Thomas Performing Arts in Akron Ohio. It is starkly beautiful and also a wonderful performance venue. And very brutalist.
prostratedragon
Is that two nominees for Best Actress in non-English movies?
VFX Lurker
Agreed. I love that film so much.
RevRick
@Booger: It’s gonna be Wilde!
RevRick
A license plate made me snort today: K4L EL.
prostratedragon
OT — Good bots:
NotMax
@Suzanne
Pretty good piece on hostile architecture.
divF
@Suzanne: I arrived at UC Berkeley about the same time two brutalist icons opened their doors: Evans Hall (math, statistics, computer science), and Wurster Hall (architecture / environmental design).
An architecture student I met at the time explained it to me by saying that fads come and go in architecture (just look at the Berkeley campus). But ugly is timeless, and therefore will never go out of style.
Sure Lurkalot
@ArchTeryx: Flow is insanely wonderful! Thanks for sharing the skinny on its making and “dark horse” nomination. Wild Robot wasn’t even close in my estimation. It was streaming on Max last couple of weeks. Beautiful, poignant and just the message this troubled world needs.
mapanghimagsik
Just saw Flow tonight. I enjoyed it more than The Wild Robot which was beautiful, but all over the place. As someone who doesn’t crave animal personification, Flow was great.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
Just had a bit of shaking here just after getting off from work, 3.9 and close.
prostratedragon
Report on Kristi Noem’s SDakota government credit cards:
KELOLAND News filed an open-records request for the information on February 26. State Auditor Sattgast granted the request. Sattgast said that The Associated Press had also filed a request.
Chief Oshkosh
@Suzanne: I never knew that. Thanks.
It still sucks, though.
Spellboda
“I’m Not a Robot,” winner of the Best Live-Action Short award, is on the New Yorker Youtube channel and is definitely worth watching.
TBone
@WTFGhost: thank you! They did not mess with me last night at all.
TBone
@prostratedragon: you get me!
brantl
@Scout211: Who is Oscar shortens to Who’s Oscar. Pedant, hell.
WaterGirl
@RevRick: Not getting it. I was going to ask you to spell it out for me, but then realized you had literally spelled it out for me and I still don’t get it. :-)
Kosh III
Didn’t even know Oscar was a thing until about 5pm Sunday.
The last movie we watched was last week on Britbox: Margery and Gladys and only because it starred Dame Penelope Keith. The last time we went to a movie was to see Dune 2; the spice must flow.