Jeff Ellis: It's Impossible To Start A Fire If You Have No Desire To Burn

Obamacare

Democrats and liberals everywhere seem to be celebrating right now as Barack Obama's health care plan becomes the law of the land.

Democrats used to celebrate slavery too.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this is what Obamacare essentially is.

Democrats used to claim that Africans needed to be kept in bondage because they were not capable of thinking for themselves or making their own decisions.

Now, they tell us that Americans need Obamacare for exactly the same reason.

What American truly needs is a homegrown Guy Fawkes.

Barack Obama: The God That Failed

It would appear that Barack Obama's health care plan might finally be passed by the U.S. House tomorrow.

No worries though.

As destructive as Obamacare has the potential to be, the ultimate victims will be Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.

Obama, as is his style, has been running around the country giving angry speeches and making a lot of histrionic comments about thousands of citizens dying slow and painful deaths.  Listening to Obama is a bit like listening to the speeches at a middle school speech tournament.  As opposed to actually saying anything, he simply states that its bad when people die and who is going to disagree with that?

How do we prevent people from dying?

We just do whatever Barack Obama says.

One can only look forward to the future when countless Obama partisans will either find themselves disillusioned with their God or spending all of their time trying to explain away the actual results of the Obama presidency.

After only a year in the White House, Barack Obama has perfectly positioned himself to replace Marxism as the God that failed.

Oscars, Part Six

10:45 -- Okay, we're at the 3 hour, 15 minute mark.  The Best Actress presentation will never end.

10:47 -- Finally, here comes Sean Penn to give the award and -- okay, what's up with him tonight?  He seems rather shaky.

10:49 -- No matter.  Sandra Bullock wins best actress.

10:50 -- Barbra S. has now wandered outside to give Best Director.  This is going to take a while.

10:55 -- Kathryn Bigelow is the first female best director winner.  This moment would be even more special if she was actually a good director.

11:00 -- And best picture is The Hurt Locker.  At least it wasn't Avatar.

And it's over!  It's finally over!

Goodnight.

Oscars, Part Five

10:05 -- The Cove wins best documentary.  Fisher Stevens -- the incredibly geeky and annoying actor -- was apparently behind the film.  And now he has an Oscar.  And he's giving a really spastic speech.

10:08 -- Tyler Perry gives the Editing award to The Hurt Locker.  In your face, Avatar!

10:15 -- Best Foreign Language Film goes to...Argentina.

10:20 -- Kathy Bates introduced the Avatar montage.  Sorry, I stilll hate it.

10:25 -- Finally, we've made it to Best Actor.  Sam Rockwell deserves it for Moon.  Too bad he's not nominated.

10:30 -- They're redoing the whole testimonial thing from last year's ceremonies.  It's working about as well as it did last time.

10:35 -- Jeff Bridges just won Best Actor.  Less for Crazy Heart and more for being Jeff Bridges.

10:37 -- Jeff Bridges just gave one of the classic pothead acceptance speeches, God bless him.

Oscars, Part Four

9:35 -- Sandra Bullock gives the award for Best Cinematography, which goes to Avatar. 

9:40 -- James Taylor is out on stage to play his brand of music as we have the montage of the dead.  Whenever I see Taylor, I always wonder if he remembers beating up Carly Simon.

9:45 -- Strangely, the audience seemed rather restrained during the death montage.  Not even Michael Jackson got much applause.

9:48 -- I'm going to take a quick nap.  Wake me up whenever another award is given out.

9:54 -- Oh, Up just won best score.  It had a cute score.  Goodnight.

9:56 -- Avatar wins Best Visual Effects.  Yawn.

10:00 -- I am on the verge of giving up.  This has been the most boring Oscars in recent memory.

Oscars, Part 3

9:05 -- Sigourney Weaver gives the award for Best Art Direction to Avatar.  Yawn!

9:07 -- And now, we listen to the winners kiss up to James Cameron.

9:10 -- So far, this year's Oscar telecast has been incredibly dull.  Seriously, everyone seems to be moving in slow motion.

9:15 -- Were they just handing out sedatives at the Kodak Theater tonight?

9:17 -- Next up, a tribute to horror movies.

9:22 -- The tribute to horror movies was apparently put together by someone who has never seen a horror movie.

9:24 -- Morgan Freeman is explaining how sound editing works.  Which is good because I was actually wondering that earlier.

9:25 -- Really, I was.

9:26 -- The award for Best Sound Editing goes to The Hurt Locker which beats out Avatar.

9:27 -- The award for Best Sound Mixing goes to The Hurt Locker, which again beats out Avatar.  In your face, James Cameron!

9:30 -- John Travolta introduces an Inglorious Basterds montage.  Good movie.

The Oscars -- Part Two

8:30 -- We're presenting the Best Short Film Awards.  Well, that's what they're doing.  I'm just waiting for my head to stop pounding.

8:35 -- One of the nominees for Best Documentary Short is about former Washington Governor Booth Gardner.  Gardner's a pretty obscure figure but I always thought he had a good name.  When your name is Booth Gardner, you either have to go into politics or become a Western lawman.

8:40 -- Ben Stiller, who looks really scary in an Avatar costume, has now come out to present Best Makeup.  The award goes to Star Trek.

8:45 -- Jeff Bridges just showed a clip from the best film of 2010, A Serious Man.

8:50 -- Best Original Screenplay -- in a perfect world, the Oscar will go to either An Education, District 9, or Up in the Air.

8:55 -- So, of course, the award goes to Precious, a predictable movie that left audiences patting themselves on the back.

8:56 -- Admitedly, the Precious people all give touching speeches and everyone can pat themselves on the back for liking the movie.  But, honestly, it's not that good of a movie.

8:58 -- Robin Williams comes out to give Best Supporting Actress.  So far, he has managed to control himself.

9:00 -- Mo'Nique wins Best Supporting Actress.  Sam Jackson rolls his eyes during her acceptance speech. 

9:05 -- It's an odd night.

The Oscars -- Part One

7:30 pm -- And we're off!  For some reason, Neil Patrick Harris is opening the show with a musical number.

7:35 pm -- Oh, okay.  Here's the real hosts -- Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.  The cool thing about the Oscars this year is that you know, at any moment, Baldwin might go nuts and attack Martin.  My money, however, is on Steve Martin.

7:45 pm -- Baldwin and Martin's opening monologue was actually pretty good as far as things go.

7:47 pm -- Penelope Cruz comes out to present Best Supporting Actor.  The smart money seems to be on Christoph Waltz.  And that's why the money is smart because Waltz wins.

7:50 -- Ryan Reynolds -- hard to believe he was once the star of a show called Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place -- shows up to talk about The Blind Side.

7:55 -- I actually thought Waltz gave a pretty good acceptance speech.  Humility is always appreciated.

8:00 -- Steve Carrell and Cameron Diaz are now here to give Best Animated Feature to Up.  Up was enjoyable but forgettable.  The Fantastic Mr. Fox is the nominee that people will remember.

8:05 -- The Weary Kind from Crazy Heart just won Best Original Song.  It now joins It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp in the history books.

8:10  -- Robert Downey, Jr. and Tina Fey (odd couple, to be honest) are now coming out to present Best Original Screenplay.  Hopefully, the award will go to Inglorious Basterds or A Serious Man.

8:15 -- The Hurt Locker, however, is the winner.  Which might indicate that Avatar won't be taking best picture after all.

8:20 -- This is followed by a tribute to John Hughes which is makes me feel very, very old.

The Oscars Are Coming

Traditionally, I usually liveblog the Oscar Ceremony and I was planning on doing the same tonight.  Unfortunately, I also happen to have a nearly overwhelming migraine right now.  So, the liveblogging may be a bit light this year as compared to previous years.  However, I will be watching the ceremony with my laptop in front of me and, to the best of my ability, I will attempt to comment on everything that needs to be commented upon.

And hopefully, I'll also find time to comment on a bunch of stuff that should probably be ignored as well!

My own prediction for best picture tonight?  Probably Avatar because, since rewarding Titanic way back in '98, the Academy has shown a near obsession with honoring mediocre movies like American Beauty, Gladiator, Chicago, and Crash.  The best film of 2009 remains A Serious Man which, if nothing else, at least scored a nomination.

The Crazies

Earlier today, I went and I saw a movie called The Crazies.  The Crazies is a remake of a 1973 film of the same name.  The original was directed by George Romero and, like almost every Romero film that doesn't have the word "Dead" in the title, it's been rather unfairly dismissed.  Often criticized for it's low budget and it's poor acting (ironically enough, the exact same qualities that are routinely praised in Romero's Dead films), the original Crazies actually benefits from it's raw feel.  It brings an immediacy to that action that is so often lacking from other post-apocalyptic movies.  Add to that, the original Crazies also featured a wickedly satiric script in which the one scientist who manages to find a cure for the disease is promptly killed in a stupid accident and the one man who is immune to the disease becomes so disgusted with life in general that he ends up pretending to be crazy just so he won't have to shoulder the responsibility of saving the world.  Though I'm in a definite minority, I think The Crazies is one of Romero's best films (though the absolute best remains the unjustly obscure Martin).

As for the remake, it lacks the edge of the original.  Whereas the original viewed the government's extreme response to the Crazies with a genuine sense of outrage, the remake is almost nonchalant in its portrayal of American soldiers casually murdering American citizens.  Then again, we've reached a point where, any time someone in a military uniform even shows up on a movie screen, we know they're going to be up to no good.  At this point, I'd be more shocked to see a movie where the U.S. military wasn't portrayed as engaging in nonstop atrocities.

That said, this new Craziesis an undeniably effective horror film that features some strong "scare" moments and which captures the paranoia of not knowing if the man beside you is simply angry about the soldiers trying to kill him or if he truly has gone crazy.  If the remake lacks the original movie's overwhelming sense of outrage, it also never dismisses that outrage either.  Instead, it simply reflects the fact that we, as moviegoers and as a society at large, have become largely numb to the things that, in 1973, were considered to be shocking.

The film is well-cast with all the Crazies coming across as believable threats rather than as just cardboard bogeymen.  In the lead role, the underrated Tim Olyphant shows that he's currently the closest thing to Gary Cooper that the 21st Century is likely to get.

The Crazies is hardly a perfect film but for a horror remake released early in the year, it's certainly far better than anyone would have had any reason to expect.