7
March
2010

Yawn. The Oscars are finally over.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were really lame hosts. Quite disappointing. Overall the Oscars, amid all the hoopla of having 10 Best Picture nominees for the first time in 66 years, and other production shakeups, was ho-hum.

Best Acceptance Speech: Sandra Bullock. She was honest, funny, humble. Down to earth, just like she's known to be.

Most inspirational bit: Michael Giacchino, composer of the score for Up, who reiterated to the "young people" a message he constantly heard while growing up and getting started in the industry: "It's not a waste of time" to be creative.

It was also cool to see Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker win big.

But what happened to the whole movement to have winners give inspirational speeches rather than thank-you laundry lists? Only two speeches out of dozens worth mentioning? Mark Boal's was okay. But the night got off to a same-old note when Christoph Waltz accepted his Best Supporting Actor award by shrouding a load of thank yous in a flowery little story themed around navigation.

Come on peeps. Being creative isn't a waste of time. And that also applies to writing acceptance speeches.

And one more thing: THE DUDE ABIDES!

7
March
2010

A new fatwa against terrorists, something I've espoused for years, seems to have been largely overlooked in the media. Issued this past week, I first heard about it on Fareed Zakaria GPS.

I haven't read the whole thing and I can't say how effective this particular fatwa will be, but it certainly can't hurt. It has to give potential new recruits something to think about. If they know it exists.

Here's a story about the fatwa on CNN. And here's a commentary by the Guardian's Brian Whitaker suggesting there's danger in issuing "good fatwas" against "bad fatwas."

21
February
2010

Dear National Geographic,

It was with great anticipation that I watched your show this evening about the Nasca lines.

One of the awesome Nasca geoglyphs
Photo: National Geographic

It sucked.

For weeks, commercials touted Nasca Lines: The Buried Secrets as some sort of analysis of the lines, their creation and purpose, holding out the promise of revealing an amazing secret buried beneath the lines. In reality, people should read between the lines of the marketing: This is just another Nat Geo investigation that promises high octane drama and offers nothing more than oodles of speculation.

A better title would've been simply Nasca, since much of the program was spent talking about human sacrifice, skulls, draught, water wells... and, oh yeah, the lines. Don't get me wrong. That material is worth investigating, but the overall effect was scattershot.

Based on the discovery of a few pottery shards on one of the lines, it's "revealed" the lines were places for outdoor rituals. Granted, one of the scientists said up front something to the effect that we'll probably never have all the answers. Not exactly a sound bite for the commercials, eh?

Sure, there's gotta be a connection between the lines and the water wells, and maybe soem rituals occurred on some of the lines. But there seems to be much more to tell.

Or maybe the point of the show was buried so deep, I zoned out and missed it.

More should've been done with the 3-D modeling. More could've been said about the process used to map out - and build - the lines that have endured for centuries. There's so much that could've been said about the lines themselves, it's a shame Nat Geo simply took them as an exploitation opportunity rather than an earnest, focused examination.

C'mon, Nat Geo. This was a lame analysis of the title subject. Admit it. Specific to the lines themselves, nothing groundbreaking was revealed here. Get with the program and stop dumping dead-end shows on the channel.

Sincerely,
Mattopia Jones

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