MORF and the Movies

-I won't join one party or the other because I have this crazy ideal about voting for the best candidate, regardless of party affiliation. So, I'm a registered Independent while most of my family and friends are pretty liberal Democrats. However, I do have My One Republican Friend (from here on out referred to as MORF). MORF likes to call and tell me all the ways that President Obama will make the world a terrible place, and now he has 48 hours of evidence to back up his claims. Afterall, he's been President since Tuesday (allegedly) and nothing has been fixed yet. Today he called to inform me that Obama will be terrible for national security since he wants to clear out Guantanamo Bay and that he must be a communist, since Fidel Castro had said he likes Obama. Oh, and he is responsible for the Israel/Gaza conflict. I look forward to four more years of this.

Fortunately, MORF has it all planned out to save us (this is especially ironic because MORF doesn't plan out what he's doing tomorrow). He has Obama getting a second term, which is odd considering the bad job he's apparently about to do... I guess we're just going to be dumb and re-elect him in four years anyway. But he wants us to know that Jeb Bush will be running in 2016 and he has every intention of voting for him. Nevermind that the Bush name is mud in the Republican party right now; he's allegedly running for Senate next year and after that, it's straight to the White House. MORF thinks he'll straighten everything out... we just have to wait for 8 years for it to happen.

The good news is that I was able to talk MORF into promising that no matter what happens between now and 2012, there is no way he'll vote for Sarah Palin. You're welcome, America.

-Normally, I'm pretty good about seeing at least one of the movies that end up being nominated for a Best Picture award. I don't always find the time to see them before they leave theatres, but I'll at least see them once they hit BlockBuster. But, this year I'm 0-5 and I'm not that interested in seeing any of them. Of the five, only Frost/Nixon seems all that interesting (I do enjoy the fact that the star who played David Frost then had to film the third Underworld movie. You know he signed a three picture deal not knowing he was eventually going to start getting Oscar-worthy work). Should it win Best Picture I would also be interested in seeing Slumdog Millionaire, just to see what all the hype is about.

I've been particularly bad this year because I've only see one movie that was nominated for any of the big Oscars, and that was Dark Knight with Heath Ledger's nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Not that this particularly matters anymore. I haven't thought highly of the Oscars since Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan. As time passes, that selection looks worse and worse. To me the sign of a good movie is one that you can watch repeatedly. I've seen Saving Private Ryan about 30 times. Barely made it through Shakespeare in Love. Of course, by that logic, The Rock would be the most decorated film in history