THE OSCARS

*

Yes, it was too long. Categories like Doc Short Subject, Live Action Short Film and Animated Short Film can be given out the night before like they do with some other awards. The silhouette guys were okay once but c'mon. Anyway, below is my score. (Oh, yeah, there were a lot of women in the group I was watching with and fashions were a major topic. So, above are the ones I liked.)

*

BEST PICTURE: WRONG (it was The Departed)

BEST ACTRESS: Helen Mirren, The Queen RIGHT

BEST ACTOR: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland RIGHT
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls RIGHT
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine RIGHT
BEST DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese, The Departed RIGHT
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: WRONG (it was some German film...I think)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Little Miss Sunshine RIGHT
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Departed RIGHT
ANIMATED FEATURE: WRONG (it was Happy Feet)

Not too shabby. I won the prize last night for most correct picks.

*

Yea, Mr. Scorsese. About time. Will somebody trim his eyebrows for him?

MY OSCAR PIX

*

Like I said I haven't seen most of the nominated films but I'm going to guess anyway. Why, you ask. Cause I'm in two Oscar pools and I like winning.

My picks:

*

BEST PICTURE: Babel (big global drama with a message -- kind of movie the Academy likes. See Crash from last year)

BEST ACTRESS: Helen Mirren, The Queen (anyone else will be a major upset)

BEST ACTOR: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland (he's won every other acting award)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls (again this is pretty much a sure thing)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine (this will be for his whole body of work but Gumby from SNL could snatch it away)

BEST DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese, The Departed (if he doesn't win then that will be tomorrow's headline about the Awards)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: Pan's Labyrith (this one should've been in the Best Pic category)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Little Miss Sunshine

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Departed

ANIMATED FEATURE: Cars (my guilty pleasure)

*

Tomorrow we'll know how good I did.

OSCARS ARE COMING

*

Okay, I’m an Oscar junkie. Although it’s like eating popcorn, totally enjoyable at the time but forgotten the next day. Trivia: In 1944, the list of nominated films for Best Picture went from ten to five.

*

The following films from AFI’s Top 100 American Films of All-Time did not win Best Picture. In fact they were not even nominated.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Rear Window (1954)
North by Northwest (1959)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Psycho (1960)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

*

The worst Best Picture Winners in my little opinion are:

Crash (2005) Still can’t get myself to watch this film
American Beauty (1999) Navel fluff
The English Patient (1996) Can’t fall asleep and don’t want to take a pill then watch this
Driving Miss Daisy (1989) B-O-R-I-N-G. Period.
Chariots of Fire (1981) I think I saw this. Forgettable if I did.
The Deer Hunter (1978) Over-rated b.s.

*

How many films nominated for any award this Sunday have I seen? Not many. Although I will see The Prestige, Blood Diamond, Children of Men, Pan’s Labyrinth, Notes on a Scandal, Dreamgirls, An Inconvenient Truth, and Letters from Iwo Jima at some point. Maybe Babel. Maybe. I did see:

Cars
The Departed
The Devil Wears Prada
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Poseidon
United 93

My favorite movie last year was Casino Royale. (And don’t tell anyone … I really liked Cars, too.)

WORDS FOR WRITERS

*

Check out Cliche Finder (http://www.westegg.com/cliche/). Type in a word and see how many "cliches" pop up. Fun stuff.

*

Thanks to my buddy, Mark, for this link. I need to start writing again so I'm starting with this simple blog.

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

from

The Lord of the Rings:

The Fellowship of the Ring

LILLIAN STIRES-NEWMAN
1934 – 2007
*

My mother passed away in her sleep last Thursday. She was seventy-two.

Mabel Lillian Davis was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Her parents were Ben C. Davis and Bertha Joan (Hall) Davis. She had two older sisters (Mildred Lee {Millie} and Martha Leone {Toni}), one brother (Herbert Ray), and one younger sister (Margaret Louise {Lou}).

She preferred being called Lillian. She hated the name Mabel and in later life stopped using it all together. Her family nickname was Dickie. I have no idea how she got the nickname. Once I heard that her sister Millie gave it to her but I never heard why.

Mom was married twice. First, to my father Norman Stires Jr. (Dad died at the age of 42 from a massive heart attack.) Then to Gary Robert Newman. (Gary passed away four years ago from congestive heart failure.) While family members have always told me that my Dad was the love of my mother’s life, I can say firsthand that Mom and Gary had a wonderful marriage and always took good care of each other.

An aside: Several months ago, Mom told me that she was worried about when she got to Heaven. She knew, without doubt, that my Dad would be the first person she saw. That would be absolutely wonderful but she was worried about it, too. I asked her why. She said she didn’t know how she was going to explain to Norm who Gary was.

My mother and father had two children -- my younger brother Hugh Timothy and me. (Tim was killed by a drunk driver in 1985.)

She had one grandson (Tim’s son) Brian Timothy.

*
Rest in Peace, Mom.

LIFE

*

I going to have to take a leave-of-absence from life for a while. My 72-year-old mother fell and broke her hip on January 5th. There have been several complications since she entered the hospital and I am the only family member left to take care of her. Between work and the hospital I hadn't had time for much else.

I some point I will describe my feelings currently about "just living" and "having quality in life." Too heavy for the moment.

ONE MORE

SOME COOL POSTERS

Check more out at: http://www.allowe.com/Humor/DemotivationalPosters.htm

Happy New Year to All! May 2007 be the best of times.

A Brief Summary of 2006

A quiet 12 months overall on the writing gig but not without its moments. I received my 86th fiction acceptance for a reprint of a flash fantasy by Bewildering Tales. Also received my 410th short fiction rejection. Personal obligations kept rising up and I had to devote a lot time to resolving them. Well, the ones that I could. Some continue on. Such is life. Anyway, my New Year’s resolution is to write more new stories, articles, screenplays, and start a novel. Yeah, just a “little” resolution.

Recap 2006:

My novella, To the Mountain of the Beast, was released by Carnifex Press.

Eight short stories were published. One was published in Finland, another in the Netherlands.

I began my movie review column for the quarterly ezine Dred and I had two more film reviews appear in Bewildering Tales.

My horror screenplay, Chill, made the quarterfinals (top 10 per cent) of the Scriptapalooza contest but didn’t go any further.

The production company did not renew the option on The Nest that I wrote with Mark Sevi. We completed two new screenplays and began a dozen more that never went beyond ten pages.

I did an interview on writing horror for the Voices in the Dark newsletter. VitD also reprinted my nonfiction article, “The Character Moment.”

Hmm ... I accomplished a little more than I thought.

still another picture from space
*
To All: Have a Happy & Safe New Year
*
Now I'm off to work :)

more from space ... cool

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

*

From Take the Lead:

*

"The people that get what they want in life

are the people who show up to get it."

*

(the picture above is from the Hubble space telescope)

Six Word Stories

*

I believe it was Dom who steered me to this article a couple months ago. Wired Magazine asked for six-word stories for a contest. This was based I understand on what Hemingway considered one of his best stories (all six words of it). “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

*

I decided to play. Didn't enter though. Below are a few six-word stories I came up with. Feel free to critique, ignore or add your own.

*

"It's alive! Then cat saw it."

"Yes, be very afraid. Or not."

"Alien envoy arriving. Wants Starbucks franchise."

"Defuse bomb. Cut blue wire ... oops!"

"Damsel training -- nightgown, high heels required."

MOVIES-AND-PRODUCT-ADVERTISING

*

The other night I watched The Devil Wears Prada. It was an amusing little movie with wonderful performances by Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci. Afterwards I started wondering about product advertising (I know my mind takes weird and sudden turns that have nothing to do with what I’m doing.) I know there have been movies before with products in their titles. I recall a godawful film called Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and a pretty good thriller called Southern Comfort. But we could definitely take this idea to the next level and re-imagine Hollywood films with Madison Avenue advertising.

Angels with Clearasil Faces
A Clockwork Orange Julius
Gone with the Winnebago
House of Bikini Wax
Night of the Living Bra
North by Northwest Airlines
Once Upon a Time in America-on-Line
Starbucks Wars
3 Days of the Viagra
Tootsie Pop

Merry Christmas to all
*
(it's getting crazy around here and I have to work all weekend
so I'm sending out well wishes today ...
be back after Christmas)

*

from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation:

*

Clark: Our holidays were always such a mess.

Clark Sr.: Oh, yeah.

Clark: How'd you get through it?

Clark Sr.: I had a lot of help from Jack Daniels.

Joseph Barbera

1911-2006

"Thank you, sir, you and your partner, William Hanna, were part of my childhood."

THE WORST MOVIES OF 2006

*

The Da Vinci Code

(cool idea that ended there ... didn't like the book either ... for a fun "puzzle" movie watch National Treasure -- PS -- I actually nodded off a couple times during the film)

The Break-Up

(just not funny ... for a good "break-up" movie watch The War of the Roses)

Snakes on a Plane

(could have been fun but wasn't ... watch Tremors to see how to do this type of film right)

Mission Impossible III

(don't know why I keep seeing Cruise films ... he hasn't made a good movie since Risky Business ... Top Gun, Jerry Maguire, and War of the Worlds are not good movies)

16 Blocks

(remake of Eastwood's The Gauntlet which wasn't any good either)

Annapolis

(remake of An Officer and a Gentleman with all the good stuff left out)

The Hills Have Eyes

(lame characters and holes in the plot I could drive my SUV through ... I did enjoy the part where the German Sherpherd turned Charlie Bronson and went after the mutants ... okay, the whole film is lame)

MOVIES 2006
*

The films listed below are ones I haven't seen yet (but really want to):

*

The Prestige

The Departed

Invincible

then

Night at the Museum

The Pursuit of Happyness

The Devil Wears Prada

and (maybe)

Blood Diamond

Holiday

Turistas

*

(coming soon will be the worst films of 2006 and the films I have absolutely no interest in seeing)