This Year's Academy Awards (Yawn)

Aside from Ben Stiller's take on Joaquin Phoenix, this year's Academy Awards continued its self-congratulatory decline.

(And how good would a presenting team of apathetic Joaquin Phoenix and swearing Christian Bale have been?)


At best, things were anti-climatic. Didn't they already have a celebration of Hollywood liberals this year? I think we called it "The Inaugural".

Aside from being the year of the homosexual, again, where did all these Indian people come from? How come none of them are driving cabs?

More importantly, where the hell were they when I needed someone to cheat off in Algebra class?

Looking over this year's list of pompous nominees, I could either scrape together $10-12 (or ONLY $9 for a matinee) to sit behind a couple chattering old ladies going on and on and on and on about how predeterminedly wonderful the movie they're about to see is, based solely on what they heard during the show last night, or rent the newly released "Against the Dark" during dollar day from the local video store and watch Steven Seagal battle vampires.


Here's a hint: one of the choices saves me about ten dollars and two hours of my life.

By the way, a personal thanks from my front room TV to the Fox network, for its bold decision to not run any new episodes of "Family Guy" or "Simpsons" during the debacle, and leave us with only three hours of NASCAR instead. It really enjoyed having the night off.

Joaquin Phoenix is Not That Good an Actor

Alright. So everyone is pooping themselves over the latest celebrity "is he or isn't he" scenario. (No, Tom Cruise. We're not talking about you.)

This time it involves Joaquin Phoenix and his alleged rapper career move. He claims that he has quit acting, although his buddy Casey Affleck is following him around with a camera filming the whole charade for an upcoming "documentary".

He was on Letterman a couple nights ago, seeming incoherent and unresponsive, allowing Dave a chance to sling in a dozen or so one liners.

Letterman was actually pretty good. He definitely wasn't in his prime, but on this particular night he only seemed about ten years past his prime, instead of the usual twenty.

That's not too bad, considering how much of a whiny East Coast left Dave has become in his old age.

Joaquin, considering his family and personal history, could be another Hollywood drug burnout case.

However, when you look past the dark glasses hiding his eyes, the "look down and chew gum" maneuver when Dave would make a funny to keep from smiling or chuckling, and the unresponsive character play, it pretty becomes pretty obvious he's just playing a part. Look for excerpts from this faux interview to be part of his mockumentary.

You can see for yourself at the link, unless CBS decides to bully it off youtube.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090213/ap_on_en_tv/tv_letterman_phoenix;_ylt=AsCvL6O8MwAMUdiPa7ZSP5FxFb8C