Oscar Nominations 2014

I know I’m a week late with my coverage of this year’s Oscar nominations, but, trust me, it’s been one hell of a week. Took a road trip to Northern California over the weekend and then came home to all kinds of insanity, so, please forgive me.

That said, this year’s crop of movies is fantastic! Although we have yet to see several of the Best Picture nominees, we did manage to watch screeners of most of the heavy hitters this season over the holidays — and I saw and loved both American Hustle and Gravity last week on the big screen — so, we’re catching up.

And while I’m pleased with almost all the nominees (except for the two acting nods for the overcooked melodrama of August: Osage County, which just might go on record as my least favorite Meryl Streep movie ever) the most exciting thing for me is that two of my all-time-favorite writer/directors of all time, Spike Jonze and Alfonso Cuarón, are finally getting some richly-deserved Oscar love from the Academy.

True, they’ve both been nominated before, but, never have they dominated the race as much as they do this year with their groundbreaking work on Gravity and Her. My dream outcome this year would be for Cuarón to take the directing Oscar for Gravity and for Jonze to take the screenplay award for Her. But, either way, I’m just happy they’re both in the running.

Speaking of writer/directors I love, I was very pleased to see David O. Russell returning to his goofy, idiosyncratic roots with the very cool American Hustle. The movie is big, messy and funny as hell and is probably Jonze’s stiffest competition in the Best Original Screenplay category, but, I loved it.

Also very glad to see Cate Blanchett snare a Best Actress nod and Woody Allen score his record 16th screenplay nomination for Blue Jasmine. But, my favorite nominee of all is probably Sally Hawkins who scored her first Oscar nomination for playing Blanchett’s sister in Jasmine. Blanchett deserves every award she’s won for the movie, but, without Hawkins beautifully-nuanced work to balance her performance out, Jasmine wouldn’t be nearly as good. Seriously, Hawkins is fantastic!

I also loved the fact that Nebraska scored so many major nods (go, June Squibb!) and that Frozen scored a Best Animated Film and song nomination for the epic “Let it Go.” We listen to that song daily in the car (I think I actually like it more than Greta does!) so, I’m dying to see which of the two versions will be performed at the Oscars: the rocking radio cut by Demi Lovato or the soaring Idina Menzel version from the movie. They’re both awesome, so, as long as they don’t roll out some other cheeseball to sing all the nominated songs, I’m cool.

Oh, and finally, in a year that has seen female employment rates in the industry drop to a 27 year low, I think it’s really cool that a female producer scored not one, but two Best Picture nominations this year. So, kudos to producer Megan Ellison for her fine work on Her and American Hustle.

To see a full list of all of this year’s contenders, click here.

Happy 79th Birthday, Elvis!

Although we didn’t celebrate Elvis Presley’s birthday with our usual flair this year — the truth is we’re still recovering from the holidays — Greta and I still managed to pay tribute to The King via the artful use of our leftover Halloween and Christmas candy!

And though we weren’t lucky enough to be visited by the man of the hour on his actual birthdate (Presley would have been 79 years old on January 8th) we had a blast creating these mixed media works of art and ate plenty of candy in his honor, so, I’m sure he would have totally approved.

Happy birthday, Elvis!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Disney Princess LEGOS

Just when you thought LEGO had reached the pinnacle of coolness with the recent release of their fanboy-tastic “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” LEGO playsets, they take things even further by adding the Disney Princesses to the mix as well.

That’s right, brick lovers, the Disney Princess LEGO sets are here. And though several of the bigger name Disney Princesses like Snow White, Cinderella and Ariel have appeared in hugely-popular DUPLO playsets over the years, this is the first time Disney royalty has appeared in a “big kid” LEGO set and the results are freaking awesome.

Seriously, even if I didn’t have a Disney Princess-loving daughter, I would want some of these sets. Beautifully detailed with rich, subtle colors you don’t often find in the LEGO universe, the sets are far cooler than you’d expect, especially considering how totally lame and borderline sexist the company’s previous girl-themed efforts have been.

I mean, no offense to the toothy lasses in the LEGO Friends collection, but, girls can do much more than run an ice cream shoppe, beauty parlor and/or brush their horse’s plastic hair all day long. Say what you will about Barbie, but at least she has career ambitions, while even the best of the LEGO Friends sets feel a marketing scheme that never really took off.

Whereas the new Disney Princess LEGOS are so cool and character-specific that they actually breathe new life into a franchise that most parents I know feel has lost a little steam in recent years. And, by focusing on the strengths and unique skills/talents of each of the Princesses featured in the LEGO sets, the powers that be present girl characters that, you know, actually do things.

The Merida set highlights her archery skills, Rapunzel’s set focuses on her skills as an artist and even Ariel — who many consider to be the most offensive and weak-willed of the bunch — gets a chance to focus on her skills as a “collector of human artifacts” in one of her two LEGO sets. OK, maybe that’s a stretch, but, it’s better than nothing.

But the biggest surprise of all comes in the largest, showiest set in the series, Cinderella’s Romantic Castle. If you ask me, Cinderella was always the first truly modern-skewing of the Disney Princesses, but, rather than showcasing her skills at sewing and cleaning (both of which she obviously excelled at) Cinderella’s LEGO set goes out of its way to highlight her cheeky sense of humor by sneaking all sorts of hidden treasures into the castle. Her bed features a “secret drawer” containing a mysterious envelope (a souvenir invite from the Royal ball that started it all perhaps?) and another “secret room” upstairs hides a treasure chest behind a door that is only opened by a key hidden behind a trick bookcase downstairs. Forget romance, this castle is downright magical!

And in case you were wondering how long it takes to construct a 646 piece LEGO castle, I can tell you from experience — Greta got the castle from her Grandma Linda for Christmas — it takes forever. Just kidding. I didn’t actually log the hours, but, it took us a good two or three days to do it right. But, Greta and I had a blast building it and luckily, all of the big new LEGO sets come with very detailed instructions, so, we had lots of help.

And with my new “Lord of the Rings” Battle at the Black Gate LEGO set (yep, Santa heard my pleas as well!) due to start construction sometime this weekend, I forsee much cross-movie franchise bloodshed and turmoil in the land of LEGOS. Poor Cinderella will never know what hit her!

A Mooncake in Shanghai

I realized the other day that I don’t blog about food nearly as often as I used to on our poor neglected sister blog, so, starting today I’m going to change that. From now on, if I eat or drink something cool or unusual in my travels, you’re going to read about it. Or at the very least, have to skip over it and wait for my next post on how not to fall asleep while playing Barbies with your daughter.

Either way, expect to read a lot more about food from now on. And to get things started I’ll tell you about the best food I had on my recent trip to Shanghai, China. Yes, believe it or not, I was invited to China to moderate a panel on the Rise of Asian Cinema inflight offerings at the first ever APEX/Asia Educational Event. That’s right, they asked me to moderate too. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, the event was awesome, the people on the panel — who included an old film school buddy of mine from AFI! — we’re amazing and, even with the a smog, Shanghai was gorgeous and everything I had expected it to be. Big, fun, exciting, seedy (I’ll save my back alley fake purse shopping adventures for another post) the city had a vibe that was just kind of electrifying. Everything was just happening, like, all the time. It was awesome.

The food, however, was a totally different experience. I read somewhere recently that calling the food in China “Chinese food” was like lumping all the countries in Europe together and calling it “European food”. China is just too big for there to be any sort of cohesiveness to the culinary offerings. I mean, sure, dumplings and rice and all that are pretty standard, but as far as the main dishes go, the skies the limit, with almost every region of the country having their own specialties.

And though I sort of knew that going in, and did go so far as to put a Shanghai delicacy called “hairy crab” on my plate at the buffet line at the hotel. The hair on the crab was just too damn much for me — seriously, it looked like a mustache peeking out from under the shell! — and I didn’t eat it.

And unfortunately everything else I tried was terrible, or, I should say, not what I expected. The biggest problem I had was texture. The dumplings and wontons were either too gooey and soft or strangely tough to bite through. I know it sounds gross, but there was a stringy, bandage-like texture to the worst wontons I tried and even the ones that were mildly palatable were filled with very odd tasting meats and chicken.

In fact, almost all of the meat and chicken I had in Shanghai was questionable, at best. Someone advised me to stick with the pork offerings and it was the best advice I got all trip. It’s pretty hard to ruin pork and you can always tell what part of the pig you’re, eating especially with bacon! So, pork was the order of the day.

That said, the one food item I ate that truly rocked my world was a tasty little Chinese Mooncake I bought for like, a quarter, at a farmers market-y kind of place near my hotel.

Located at the northern end of Shanghai’s bustling Nanjing Road shopping district, the place sold all kinds of fancy teas and candy and stuff and up near the front sat a bored looking girl lording over a steaming little oven of freshly made Mooncakes. I don’t know what was in them (I’m pretty sure it was pork) but, they smelled like a dream and tasted even better. In fact, if I hadn’t just dumped $40 USD on tea inside the shop, I might have bought more than one. But, what can I say, I’m cheap.

And though the combination of flaky pastry and super yummy pork filling was delicious, I never went back and got more. I guess I just kept thinking I’d find something better. But, the sad truth is, apart from the excellent Indian curry dishes at the hotel, I never did. So, that honey of a Mooncake remains the best thing I ate in Shanghai, bar none. And, wow…what a treat it was!

Google Zeitgeist: “Here’s to 2013!”

As we did with Christmas, Mrs. Yeti, Greta and I spent pretty much the entire weekend holed up in the living room watching movies, eating and drinking, playing video games and assembling very intricately designed LEGO playsets. And while sitting there complaining that none of the end of year wrap-up shows on TV were any good, we caught this new Google ad that captured 2013 better than any cheesy TV show ever could.

Kudos to Google for doing it again! This new ad was so beautiful it had us in tears all night. Here’s to a fun, prosperous and magical year ahead for all of us. Happy New Year!