FAT JACK Oscar Still Up For Grabs

Sophie shows off this year's FAT JACK Oscar.

We have a three way tie for the FAT JACK Oscar. Kathy, Stacy and Linda all have predicted 12 winners. So we go to an Oscar history question to find the winner of this year's Oscar. This year's winner was Kathy with 12 correct predictions! Larry Litle won the second prize for the worse predictions this year with only six correct predictions. Even the 6-year-old beat Larry; she predicted nine winners.

UPDATE: Upon further review, the FAT JACK Oscar Committee has decided that FAT JACK, his wife, daughter or affiliates thereof, are not eligible to receive the FAT JACK Oscar. Therefore, there is a two-way tie between friends Stacy and Linda. The FJ Oscar Committee will compile a quiz of Oscar history material that each candidate will fill out. She who answer the largest number of quiz questions correct will be the official winner of:

• The FJ Oscar
• Spaceballs on DVD (gently used)

The FJ Oscar Committee regrets any confusion or heartache this might have caused.

Sincerely,
Jack

79th Oscar Night Festivities

11:13 p.m.
BEST PICTURE
The Departed
Could have blown me over. I really didn't expect The Departed to win both Director and Best Picture.

11:07 p.m.
DIRECTOR
Martin Scorcese, The Departed
No big surprise here. Scorcese has never won an Academy Award and it is about time he won one. I don't really know that he actually won for The Departed. As the Academy often does, they give awards out to people for works that they should have won for. I am happy for Scorcese. He deserves an Oscar.

11:02 p.m.
ACTOR -- LEADING
Forest Whitaker

ACTRESS -- LEADING
Helen Mirren, The Queen
I'm really glad that Streep didn't get the award. The Devil Wears Prada was a fine enough movie for a Saturday afternoon rental, but it was not, in any way, Oscar Worthy. It was much ado about veyr little.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman has never seen a comb. I swear that guy couldn't brush his hair if his life depended on it.

FILM EDITING
The Departed

ORIGINAL SONG
"I need to wake up", by Melissa Ethridge
An Inconvenient Truth

They didn't use enough titty tape on poor Jennifer Hudson; a bit of her bra was showing, bless her heart. Someone is getting fired.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Little Miss Sunshine

ORIGINAL SCORE
Babel

We've decided that as a group, with one dissenting vote, that we do not like Celion Dion, most of us for different reasons. I don't like her French bitchiness. Paul doesn't like her fakeness. Stacy decided that her chin is too pointy for her short forehead. And her breast, we all decided that her breasts were trully pittiful.

You may be wondering why I don't mention the special Oscars that are given out. I don't know, really. I just don't care about those too much so I don't mess with them.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
An Inconvenient Truth
Seinfeld's little diatribe on movie theatres was too funny and his crack about the depressingness of the films in this category was also humerous. Friend Larry, a self-proclaimed conservative, proclaimed that he was an evangelical Christian. That is a label that he usually decries, but tonight he lumped himself in that group. We both thought Jesus Camp would win. So the next time he complains about being lumped into the crazy evangelical Christian group, then you can remind him of his proclamation at 9:50 p.m.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Blood of Yingzhou District

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Jennifer Hudson
The American Idol contestant has made a career for herself. I really didn't think she would win an Oscar, but she proved me wrong. Good for her.

Holy Crap! That whole dance routine with Ellen and Snakes on a Plane was bad ass.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Lives of Others
Another huge upset. We all picked Pan's Labyrinth as a sure win in this category.

VISUAL EFFECTS
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Naomi Watts and Robert Downey Jr. introduced Best Visual Effects. I didn't know Downey would be sober enough to do it.

Palabus (sp?) just did a dance routine where they acted out the Little Miss Sunshine bus and the girl running behind.

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Pan's Labyrinth

Now Ellen has changed into a white tuxedo, which also looks very nice. Her bit where she made Steven Spielberg take a snap shot of her with Clint Eastwood for her My Space page was hysterical. She is doing a great job.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Marie Antoinette
Another dress with a bow, this one on her chest. For the love of God. Bows do not make a dress better, unless the wearer is 8 years old.

8:51 p.m.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Departed

ANIMATED FEATURE
Happy Feet
That was a real upset. We all voted for Cars. What is Hollywood's hard on with penguins? I just don't get it.

We just finished watching, during the commercials, the movie Grindhouse by Tarantino and Rodriguez. Now that is some kind of double feature.

The Academy Awards have gone green. You can go to oscar.com to find out more. Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio announced this.

The dance troupe Polabolous (sp?) rocks the house. That is a remarkable, sculptoural, artistic performance. Amazing. They came to Springfield once, according to friends, Monty and Stacy. I wish I hadn't missed that. If they come again, tne I am all over that.

Okay, at this point in the night, my wife and I have decided that we need to see some movies: Apocalypto, Little Children and the live action short, West Bank Story. I am heading to Netflix at the next commercial break.

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine

BEST SOUND MIXING
Dreamgirls

BEST SOUND EDITING
Letters from Iwo Jima

The Sound Effects Choir was really cool, making all those sound effects to those movies with just their voices. Impressive.

8: 05 p.m.
Whoa! Jack Nicholson went cue ball. Good for him. FAT JACK loves that shaved look.

LIVE ACTION SHORT
West Bank Story

That Abagail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine is one really cute kid.
ANIMATED SHORT
The Danish Poet

ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP
Pan's Labyrinth

I don't know what Nicole Kidman was thinking wearing that head pillow on the shoulder of her dress. Crazy. What is wrong with people wearing big old bows on their butts and bodies?

ART DIRECTION
Pan's Labyrinth

7:40 p.m.
So far Ellen is a funny host.

7:30 p.m. -- The Oscars Begins
The beginning montage was very cool. What will Ellen wear, a dress or a tuxedo? It's a tux! It's a tux. Maroon velvet tux with white shoes. Good for her.

Paul is an idiot. Tonight we talked about the movie, 300, and Paul asked what it was. We are planning a guys night out to go and watch that.

The majority of us (60%) voted for The Departed for Best Director. Thirty percent voted for Letters from Iwo Jima and 10% voted for United 93. For my part, I think that the time has come for Martin Scorcese to win Best Director. Besides, Eastwood has one two in a row and I don't see him winning another one.

7:16 p.m.
Cameron Diaz needs to go back to being a blonde.

6:30 p.m.
Friends in attendance at our party:
Paul and Linda
Monty and Stacy and child
Larry and Michelle and child
Shad and Woodchuck Draft Cider

I will offer updates throughout the night, so keep checking back.

FAT JACK's Thoughts on the Nominees

I am in school. Balancing a graduate program and a family leaves little time for anything else including movies. So I have not seen most of the Oscar nominees this year, much to my chagrin. I am not even going to bother trying to predict the winners on this blog. However, I will share my thoughts on the movies that I have seen and the ones that I really want to see.

PAN’S LABYRINTH
I was lucky enough to catch this little gem at The Moxie a couple of weeks ago. It is captivating and disturbing, beautiful and treacherous too.

JESUS CAMP
My wife and I both really regret the fact that we didn’t get to see this and I forgot to add it to my Netflix queue before the Oscars. We love documentaries and this is right up our alley. We are Christians, my little family, yet we are not a part of the evangelical movement that is ripping through our country. We would probably fall into the category of liberal Christian. That is we believe in love as the driving force behind Christianity, as opposed to the emotional rape and pillaging of many so-called Christian groups and movements of the day.

So this interesting and provocative film really peaked our interest. It is important to understand how many Christians are being led astray – brainwashed – by the corruption of the church. We are anxious to see this one. If my mind serves me correctly, the church camp featured in this film shut down not long after this film came out. I don’t remember where I heard that, so don’t take it for truth.

OUR TWO FAVORITES THIS YEAR
Little Miss Sunshine and An Inconvenient Truth are two of our favorites that we saw this year. Little Miss Sunshine was a breath of fresh air amidst a sea of same old same old films that Hollywood puts out. An Inconvenient Truth was very interesting and opened our eyes. Up until this point neither of us had really followed all the global warming pandering that had been going on: It’s real; it’s not real. This documentary clears that up pretty well.

APOCALYPTO
This is a film, despite it’s nefarious director, that I want to see. I enjoy films of different cultures and I think the Mayans are very interesting. Their technological advances and warmongering make for an interesting history lesson. I love the fact that it is in original language. We are not ones to shy away from subtitles.

THE GREAT WAR
Both Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima appear to be films that shouldn’t be missed. I am a bit skeptical based on the ridiculously over-hyped praise of Clint Eastwood’s last winner, Million Dollar Baby. Anyone that knows much about disability could drive trucks through the holes in that films storyline, but Hollywood didn’t care about that.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST
This was not as good as its predecessor, but it was fun in its own right. It’s a movie based on a Disney ride for goodness sakes. How seriously can it be taken? It made for a great Saturday afternoon movie rental.


I seriously doubt I will be able to watch many of the films this year. Many of them can’t be watched with a 6-year-old running around and by the time she goes to sleep it is either time to clean the house, study or sleep.

The Academy Awards is This Sunday Night

Sunday night is the Academy Awards, an event that our family never misses. My wife and I have been watching the Oscars for years and we have hosted an Academy Awards Party for the past several years. Nothing fancy mind you. We don’t get fancied up and we don’t come in costume either, although we have entertained both ideas seriously. We just have a small group of movie-loving friends over to watch the show.

This year snuck up on us as my wife and daughter were sick all last week and I just lost track of time. So today I am rushing around a bit to get things ready. I didn’t even get to send out real invitations this year; I just sent out emails. Oh well.

I hope to post some interesting tidbits about the event as the night unfolds right here on INCONCEIVABLE. So check back that night to see what’s happening.



I don’t know how you could not have already known, but just in case you didn’t, the host for this year’s event is Ellen DeGeneres. I suspect she will be very funny and a great host. She promises to give all kinds of inside, backstage gossip on her show the next day.

Click here to download a printable Oscar ballot.
Click here to see Oscars featured movie quotes of all time.

Show-Me International Film Festival

Butter my butt and call me a biscuit.

I'm a bit late coming out with the news. School sometimes gets in the way of blogging. This week is the second annual Show-Me International Film Festival, held here in Springfield. We are very lucky to have such an endeavor and I should have reported on it earlier.

Springfield's GO Magazine had a great article on the all the goings-on with the festival, including a comprehensive schedule of events. There will be films, forums, workshops and the opportunity to meet filmmakers.

My friend, MC at Entertain Me, is one of this year's judges. He has a blog post on the event as well. He's a much better film blogger than I.

Mini-Review: "Pan's Labyrinth

Review by Fat Jack
My Rating 5 stars out of 5

Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Fresh
Netflix: 4.4 stars out of 5
IMDb: 8.5 stars out of 10
Roger Ebert: 4 stars out of 4






Dan, the co-owner of The Moxie (Springfield’s only independent movie theatre) introduced the film as having mind-searing violence. He was right. This may be a fairytale, but it is an grown-up fairytale, leaving the reality of a happy ending up to the filmgoer. It is a cold and cruel world – an idea, which is aptly applied through the character of the Captain. He is concerned about little except producing progeny and dying honorably on the battlefield, and all his actions push him toward those goals. His utter disregard for anyone or anything is expertly dramatized by actor Sergio Lopez.

Young Ofelia travels with her pregnant mother to live with new father and husband, Captain Vidal. Ofelia wants no part of it. Once in the encampment, she realizes the world around her is full of death and pain. She soon discovers Pan’s Labyrinth. Pan being the name of the faun she encounters. He tells her a fairytale about a long lost princess of the underground world and suggests that she is the princess found. In order to discover this world, she must first complete three tasks.

The movie is not about the fairytale world, but rather about the journey toward this new land -- a metaphor for Heaven. Her path makes her interact with the Captain’s cruel hunt for the resistance soldiers hiding in the forest, where there is constant war and hatred. Inside the Captains camp there are members of the resistance wreaking havok.

The beauty of Pan’s Labyrinth is in the deep expression of director Guillermo del Toro, who has a tendency to create horror-dramas. It is a stunning work, full of beauty and darkness with an interesting story devoid of any typical Hollywood ending. It is a fairytale for adults, but one that is worth seeing.

CAPTAIN VIDAL: You could have obeyed me!
THE DOCTOR: But captain, to obey - just like that - for obedience's sake... without questioning... That's something only people like you do. [Captain Vidal shoots him].


CAPTAIN VIDAL: Tell my son the time his father died. Tell him I...
MERCEDES: No. He won't even know your name.

MERCEDES: You won't be the first pig I've gutted.