Gutenberg Lampoon » Shawn Rogers

My Best Picture of the Year Choices! Now!

Well here it is! The Oscar race for best pic­ture is going to be decided in a mat­ter of hours. So, for your read­ing plea­sure, my picks for the best pic­ture from 1 to 10 are below. It should be noted that this is also the same way the Acad­emy tab­u­lated the votes. Each voter ranked the pic­tures this way, and tab­u­la­tors counted how many films received the top score and elim­i­nated the one with the least, then back to the film that scored the sec­ond high­est, and so on until a win­ner is deter­mined. Isn’t that fun! Any­how, my win­ners are:

1. Inglo­rius Bas­terds — this is Tarintino’s best work since Pulp Fic­tion and com­bines drama, humor, action and superb act­ing in one cohe­sive and engross­ing film. The other films on this list excel in one way or another, but Bas­terds hits all the right but­tons.
2. Up — every year I expect Pixar to let me down. Surely after 10 years of mak­ing the best ani­mated films ever, they have to release a flop. Yet every year they make a movie that trounces the last in qual­ity and emo­tion. Up is a beau­ti­ful fable about appre­ci­at­ing the adven­ture of your own life.
3. Up in the Air — George Clooney’s appeal works per­fectly as a cor­po­rate hatchet man who flies around the coun­try end­ing jobs. A great story about the lone­li­ness of a life filled with strangers, this film hits the right com­bi­na­tion of funny and depress­ing.
4. The Hurt Locker — pow­er­ful movie about dar­ing men in mod­ern war­fare, that deftly explains why the sol­diers are the way they are. What hurts it is its episodic nature. Unlike the effec­tive fan­tasy found in Bas­terds, Hurt Locker is true and real. A more real­is­tic war film, but not a bet­ter one.
5. Avatar — the fact that each plot point can be pre­dicted an hour before it hap­pens is irrel­e­vant here. Avatar is the rare movie that makes you feel like a kid again, sit­ting in won­der at the tech­nol­ogy used to make movies. If you can’t enjoy Avatar for what it is then you can’t be helped. How­ever, fancy visu­als do not make a best pic­ture of the year by itself.
6. A Seri­ous Man — how do the Cohen broth­ers do it? This tale of a Jew­ish man’s woe is funny and ten­der and has just the right pac­ing and wit to make this com­edy work. Don’t let the dis­tract­ing end­ing sour you.
7. Dis­trict 9 — the other sci-fi mech movie. The metaphor of the aliens as aliens was a bit obvi­ous for my tastes, but is a cool alien shoot up.
8. An Edu­ca­tion — well-acted and paced, but lack­ing in sub­stance. As pre­dictable as Avatar, but still man­ages to enter­tain and charm with the charis­matic Carey Mul­li­gan lead­ing the strong cast. How­ever, the film just doesn’t stack up against this com­pe­ti­tion.
9. The Blind Side — doesn’t belong in the race. I will admit I am not a foot­ball per­son, but Blind Side is a cliché rid­den, by the num­bers film about how know­ing some­one who is rich and white can solve your prob­lems. Has some funny moments but some cringe induc­ing ones also. A best pic­ture nom­i­nee should not. If you like feel good foot­ball films this is your movie. It is most cer­tainly not mine.

Don’t for­get, these are my opin­ions and mine alone. I expect The Hurt Locker to walk away with best pic­ture. Also, I left Pre­cious off this list so if that takes it all, con­sider it an upset. All told, all the movies are worth see­ing (except Blind Side) so I am very pleased with the Academy’s choices. Lets see if they can get it right for once.

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March 6, 2010 at 9:58 pm | Uncategorized | Comments

Shawn Picks the Oscar Winner for Best Picture This Sunday!

Three is a lot of knee jerk reac­tions to the awards. It’s bunch of spoiled celebri­ties overly con­grat­u­lat­ing them­selves and only hon­or­ing movies no one has ever seen.  No one does overblown pompous­ness like Hol­ly­wood, and the Acad­emy Awards is the epi­cen­ter, but this year they have made an attempt to include the peo­ple who actu­ally watch movies by nom­i­nat­ing 10 movies for best pic­ture. By the Sun­day of the Oscars I will have seen all the movies but one. And for my six or so read­ers, I will post my choice in order from 1 to 10 and why.

As a pre­view I can tell you which one will be num­ber 10. Pre­cious. I am not see­ing that movie. It may be great, but I work hard and do not deserve that.

See you next Sunday!

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March 3, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

Curling to a Close

The win­ter Olympics are com­ing to a close. Again, they man­aged to keep the atten­tion of Amer­i­cans for a good four­teen days. How­ever all the pomp and glory was marred, as it always is. The Olympics man­aged to com­pletely sub­vert its own pres­tige and stature by includ­ing one of the stu­pid­est sports ever created;

Curl­ing

Why is this still an Olympic sport? One man slides a puck across the ice while two oth­ers sweep it into a tar­get? What? That is shuf­fle­board, and the last time I checked we didn’t count the old peo­ple on the deck of the Majes­tic Princess Cruise ship Olympic athletes.

What makes this even worse is that there are Olympic sports that are exe­cuted by ath­letes with such skill and grace it seems almost god­like. The indi­vid­ual large hill ski jump for exam­ple. These men soar through the air and land safely on the snow hun­dreds of feet from where they started. I can trip over one step on the stairs.

Shut down the curl­ing, Olympic com­mit­tee. If not there should be one giant aster­isk on their gold medals.

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February 27, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

Thoughts on Cali

TO: Michael Tobias, Eric Carol, Stephanie Stu­art and any­one else mov­ing to Los Ange­les, California

FROM: Shawn Rogers

First off, con­grat­u­la­tions and kudos on your deci­sion to move to Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia. It is a great place to live, take it from me. I spent 25 years of my life there. But there are a lot of things you need to know about the place before you head out there.  Here are just some quick notes to pre­pare you:

–There are many peo­ple that will refuse to speak Eng­lish. Do not mis­take this for con­fu­sion. They refuse to learn and they are not going to start speak­ing it. Ever. Los Ange­les facil­i­tates those who do not want to learn our lan­guage. You can actu­ally get by with­out speak­ing a word of Eng­lish. If you say, “Hello” or “Please help me” to some­one in a Mex­i­can mar­ket they actu­ally won’t know what the hell you are saying.

–If things get bad enough, they may fire the gov­er­nor and replace him with a T-101 model terminator.

–Every­thing is more expen­sive and you will get used to pay­ing more for every­thing. Except util­i­ties, for some reason.

–A mas­sive quake can hap­pen at any moment and kill every­one. Every time a lit­tle quake hap­pens, your mind spends the first few sec­onds con­vinc­ing your­self you stayed in LA too long and this is going to be the one that takes you out.

–If it rains more than three hours con­sec­u­tively there you need to be pre­pared for sev­eral things. Hours of cov­er­age on the news. Mud­slides. Instant flood­ing. Peo­ple will act like it is a storm that they will never for­get, only to never think about it again as soon as it’s gone.

–The Mex­i­can food is spec­tac­u­lar. Its not just ground beef with chili on Doritos.

–The police will pull you over just to give you a ticket. The gov­ern­ment will cre­ate laws that exist just to give cops the oppor­tu­nity to pull you over.

–There will be end­less things to do. The beach. Dis­ney­land. Hol­ly­wood. Piers. Fairs. Car­ni­vals. Restau­rants. Bars. Shows. You will be too tired and broke to do any of them

Despite all this, Cal­i­for­nia is a fan­tas­tic place to live. You will not regret spend­ing time there. It is my home and I miss it. Good luck and don’t give up on those Cal­i­for­nia dreams…

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February 20, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

Restaurant Rating Scale

Four years ago, my buddy, Devin and I came up with a restau­rant rank­ing list to help us fig­ure out where we wanted to eat. It was about more than just our par­tic­u­lar taste at the moment. We also had to fig­ure out how much we wanted to spend ad what kind of din­ing expe­ri­ence. Did we want to be waited on?  The list below helped us at least begin to start fig­ur­ing it out.  I am here to help, so for your reference:

0– Dump­ster trash
1– Hole in the wall, Vend­ing machine
2– No name fast food, hot dog cart
3– Brand named fast foods like McDon­alds, Burger King, KFC
4– Sand­wich places, Quiznos
5– Baja Fresh, Pei Wei
6– Den­nys
7– Sit down Chi­nese or Mex­i­can restau­rants
8– Chilis, Fri­days, Apple­bees
9– PF Changs, Cheese­cake fac­tory
10– Upscale, Spago etc.

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February 17, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

Don’t know what to do this February 14th?

That day is here again. Feb­ru­ary 14^th. We all know what that means…

Chi­nese New Year!

That’s right Chi­nese new year is this Sun­day. No one throws a parade like the Chi­nese. They invented fire­works for crap’s sake. Our new years day parade, the Rose parade, is down­right bland in com­par­i­son. Sure we glued a bunch rose ped­als to paper mache to make it look like a cot­tage. And sure its fol­lowed up by a thou­sand acne cov­ered band geeks, but it has no fire­works.  Also, the Chi­nese have that danc­ing red dragon that looks like a drunk reveler’s dream. I have per­son­ally always wanted to be a part of that. It would be a per­sonal honor to be the dragon head.

If you were feel­ing lonely for some rea­son this Sun­day. I rec­om­mend you find your near­est col­lec­tion of danc­ing Asians and jump into that dragon!

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February 10, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

Embarrassing Cops

Let me just say that I respect cops. If one should ask me to pull over or let them into my house, I would com­ply. If an offi­cer decided to harass me on the street, I would allow it because I can under­stand that they deal with a lot of human garbage. They take a job and deal with peo­ple and things that I would not want to, and they deserve respect for that. But If I see a cop on a Seg­way, I have the bor­der­line unstop­pable urge to pull the offi­cers own gun on him.

Look at this guy! He is one small wheel away from being a clown on a uni­cy­cle. Any­thing is bet­ter than this. A cop on a horse is awe­some; mas­ter­ing an eques­trian beast is impres­sive. A cop car is ideal, and I would respect even a bicy­cle over a Segway.

Offi­cers, it’s impor­tant you know what we think. Leave the Seg­ways to the worth­less TSA agents at the air­port and get your dig­nity back.

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February 6, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

American Dad Vs Family Guy

I would like to take a quick break from my hilar­i­ous posts about the lit­tle inane things found around the world to make a TV obser­va­tion. The show Amer­i­can Dad is reg­u­larly more funny and enter­tain­ing than it’s flag­ship, Fam­ily Guy.

Sur­pris­ing, I know.  The showed pre­miered in Feb­ru­ary 2006 and seemed to be noth­ing more than Fam­ily Guy with­out the cut­aways and like­able char­ac­ters. It was mean and nasty. But I felt the same way about Seth Mcfarlane’s first show when it pre­miered, so I gave it another chance. Sure enough, it has mor­phed into a damn funny show.

Need proof?  Check out the sea­son 4 episode “Jack’s Back” or the recent sea­son 5 episode “Don’t Look A Smith Horse in the Mouth.”

February 2, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

A New Rating System

Every­one. Teen. Mature.

We have all seen the rat­ings on video games. Tiny white lit­tle boxes that use large let­ter­ing to indi­cate how appro­pri­ate a game is.  The idea is a par­ent should be able to look at one lit­tle box and decide whether or not they want their child rap­ing hook­ers in Grand theft Auto, or club­bing zom­bies in Left 4 Dead. My gripe is par­ents need to do a lit­tle research on the games them­selves. I, how­ever, want to use the rat­ing sys­tem to let gamers like me know how frus­trat­ing a game is before you play it.

For instance, I recently received New Super Mario Broth­ers for the Nin­tendo Wii. That is one old school game. It hear­kens back to the old orig­i­nal NES not just with its game play and graph­ics, but it dif­fi­culty. It’s really damn hard. It’s a Wii game that doesn’t use many motion con­trols, but still tells you to strap on the con­troller because you may just chuck the con­troller in frus­tra­tion. So, here are my sug­ges­tions for a new, frus­tra­tion based rat­ing system.

E – easy, Pick up this game and play when you get a chance. IE, you have a job and don’t have all day to play.

T – tough, You may need to call out sick a day or two, and once and a while your boyfriend/girlfriend may be pissed at you.

D – dif­fi­cult, Don’t even bother. You will loose a week­end or two and neglect friends and family,

I – Impos­si­ble, the con­troller throw­ing, scream-inducing dif­fi­culty level that makes you won­der why you shelled out $60.00 to piss your­self off.

Now, doesn’t that make more sense than vio­lence and lan­guage warnings?

January 29, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

Simon’s Last Slam

Well, Amer­i­can Idol has started again and the mildly enter­tain­ing audi­tion rounds have begun. It’s also sig­nif­i­cant to note that it is Simon Cowell’s last sea­son. I always found the sole rea­son for enjoy­ing Amer­i­can Idol was Simon’s barely under­stand­able insults. There is a part of all of us that enjoys see­ing those idiots get slammed for think­ing they can sing. How­ever, Simon did more than just put them down, he used bizarre sim­i­les and mixed metaphors to really drive his point home. And of course the British accent doesn’t hurt either.

To kick off the last sea­son, I pro­pose my own insults — all of which Simon can use for free:

- You’re like a musi­cal salad, tossed with wails of drown­ing puppies.

- My ears are the civil rights activists and your voice is the fire hose wash­ing them down the street.

- Your tone is like a Charles Man­son fol­lower and my head is a preg­nant Californian.

–You’re a karaoke singer, on the deck of the titanic, which is sail­ing right towards an ice­berg. And guess what, the ice­berg is filled with your frozen dreams.

If you have one of your own, please com­ment. Let’s be sure Simon gets every last insult, while he still has that last chair.

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January 22, 2010 at 10:00 am | Uncategorized | Comments

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