No Boundaries

The Big Fella

Today’s the big day. I just love the Oscars. This, because I love the movies and am drawn to thought-provoking film; over-represented in the Oscars. Let me preface by saying that I haven’t seen either of the two films which are going to sweep the whole shabang. These being: Precious and The Hurt Locker. The first deals with the subject of incest which is a topic that I just don’t want to visit. I’m sure it is a splendid film that I would benefit from seeing. But it’s just not my cup of tea. Not a place where I’d enjoy spending any time. The second deals with men who deal with explosives, and I’ve spent a fair amount of my life as a professional dealing with explosives, and this is a place that, for personal emotional reasons, I don’t want to revisit.

So, having said all that, here’s my take on this evening’s proceedings:

• Best Picture: District 9,
• Best Actor: Colin Firth,
• Best Supporting Actor: Matt Damon,
• Best Actress: Meryl Streep,
• Best Supporting Actress: Maggie Gyllenhaal,
• Best Animated Feature: Up,
• Best Art Direction: Avatar,
• Cinematography: Avatar,
• Best Directing: Avatar,
• Best Documentary Feature: The Cove,
• Best Writing: District 9,
• Best Original Screenplay: A Serious Man.

All of that goes out the window, of course, because some combination of Precious and The Hurt Locker is likely to steal the show.

There are a few gross oversights, I think, in the omission of the films Sunshine Cleaning (entirely) and Julia & Juliet (from most categories).  I would have tossed nominations to Sunshine Cleaning for best picture, writing, supporting actress and supporting actor, and Julia & Juliet should have gotten nods for best picture, writing, directing and supporting actor.   I would have gone with Sunshine for taking best writing and Stanley Tucci for best supporting actor (in J&J). He is brilliant in this picture and out-shows even Meryl streep, who is a tad overdone (pun intended). There are also a whole passel of documentaries that I think should have received greater consideration, as a lover of that particular genre.

I give District 9 more credit than it is due because I think it a courageous film, in unusual ways and on many levels. I’m curious with the inclusion of Blind Side and Inglorious Basterds in some of the categories.

When viewed through the prism of the Oscars, this past year in film was perhaps a bit of let-down. There are many good films but nothing outstanding. Avatar complicates this because it is absolutely brilliant when considered technically and fairly mediocre when considered otherwise. This is another year and, with tomorrow, we can all look forward again.

I’ve been toying with social media more and more, after a seminar associated with Sundance last month. Facebook is certainly very complicated, not from a usability standpoint but from one of social coordination (for lack of a better term). I have several Facebook accounts. One is old by Facebook standards and involves  high school friends because I use a nickname as my Facebook name. This one is fun. As teenagers we hung out in a city park and got into various levels of trouble together. There was an aspect of family present in our group of those years, which I’m not sure if contemporary kids enjoy. Then we dissipated out into the wide world and only recently have rejoined on Facebook. One-by-one new stragglers arrive and it has become a quite-vital ongoing reunion.

Another account is brand-spanking new and involves a mix of new and old friends, professional acquaintances and others whom I don’t know well. I find myself stumbling about a bit on this one and am seeing mild premonitions of the decline of the form.  The fact that the platform looks forward to marketing as the thing that will provide the main source of revenue is problematic. I’m thinking that Facebook can work only passively for marketing and will resist, as a matter of the form, any overt manipulation in that regard. But I’m a poor candidate for doing a lot with Facebook as I’m the solitary sort who would rather spend time with a good book, or a good program. I also learned that another fellow with my same name and academic background had previously friended one of my old college chums.

My other accounts are all strange ones where I’ve begun and stopped and lost a password or never really started at all. It is impossible to actually close a Facebook account. So they live on as me without my participation. My favorite one of these is an account I started a while ago and inactivated. I do have the password for this one and occasionally log on by accident and re-activate the account. I close it immediately, but those friends involved in it, an odd sorting I must say, are surely all reintroduced to one another for a short period every time. What is one to do?

I’m beginning to become a fan of Twitter. A while back a friend told me that Twitter is cool and I, of course, failed to heed his advice. It is cool for several reasons. It provides an excellent way to measure collective cultural opinions and thoughts. It is good for following sources of work-related information. I’m currently learning jQuery and have a running search available via Twitter. Every hour or so I’m passively provided a new good idea or two. It is also a great way to actively get answers to simple work-related questions that would take hours of mad googling in the dark to resolve otherwise. And it is a great way to channel thoughts into other social media. A post in Twitter can be directed to LinkedIn and Facebook as well. Whoopee. I still see it as being potentially dangerous as a marketing tool. Perhaps enough so as to be avoided for that purpose. Things can get very unexpectedly out of hand.

I remain convinced that, among the social gang-of-four (MySpace is already no longer of much relevance), LinkedIn will prove to be the ever-shining star. Over the last couple of weeks, related to my recent social media pursuits, I’ve found myself explaining social media, as best as I can, to four people who I would categorize as disinclined. People over thirty who aren’t in marketing, “creative”, or youth-oriented professions tend toward aversion to social media.  They remember and attempt to hold onto a lost value, privacy.

Fortunately, there are some 90 million (I’m quoting an article which I recently accessed via Facebook here) professionals marketing themselves as available to assist with one’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace needs. An alternative is to find a neighborhood tenth-grader willing to assist. This could get sketchy though.  And, if there are any more examples of social media run amok: along the recent lines of Toyota, Kevin Smith or Apple, the concept of social media as the next-best-thing in marketing platforms may quickly dissolve.  So the disinclined may not need to give further attention to the matter. I’m monitoring carefully and planning on adding to the collective babble with a “Social Media for the Disinclined” post should my less-and-less dubious outlook prove wrong.