Best Movie of 2010!!!

Heyy ladies and kids,

As you probably know, I am a huge dork. So, in light of that, and the fact that it is awards season, I would like to hold voting to award the very first Jim's Facebook friend's Best Movie of the Year Award. Or JFFBMYA for short.

I am interested to see what a "normal" people's Academy Awards would look like...plus I'm a huge dork and think this will be fun.

So the way I want to do this is that every person who votes will get 10 points. The voter (you) will have to pick 5 movies to assign points to. On the night of the Oscars, I will put out a list of movies according to how many points each got.

The only restrictions to this are:
You must choose five movies.
Each movie you choose must receive at least 1 point.
You must allocate all of your points.

So all you would need to send to me would look something like this:
True Grit - 4
The Social Network - 2
The Kids Are All Right - 2
Toy Story 3 - 1
Inception - 1

Sound good? This shouldn't take too long, plus its cold out, and the only thing on TV is the dumbass Pro Bowl (and the SAG awards! Watch on TBS/TNT for inspiration!!!)

To vote, either comment here, or send me a message!

Let me know if you have any questions, or if you just want to make fun of me. Otherwise, have fun!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2010
(this is just a list of American movies released in 2010, and these are not the only movies you can vote for)

aaaamazing.

haha this was seriously only 17 years ago??

BOOOO NBC HAS NO SENSE OF HUMOR!!! apparently, they not only scoured the internet to try to take down all the instances of this video, but they also FIRED the guy who uploaded it! what a bunch of wet blankets!!!

will ferrell?? really?

I read yesterday that Will Ferrell is going to be guest starring on The Office before the end of the season. I hate this idea.

Will can be funny at times. But there is already a king of happy cluelessness on The Office, and I love Michael soo much more than whatever Will Ferrell-ized character Will Ferrell will surely play on the show. More than that, I have grown to love The Office again. Sure, the show is not as strong as it was in its first 3 seasons, and it probably never will be again. But despite the characters' crazy personalities, they are written so well, and I've spent so much time with them that I want to be able to enjoy Michael's last few moments with the show without Will Ferrell's annoying faux screaming 'comedy' overshadowing* Steve Carrel's farewell.

*I am however, very excited about Ricky Gervais' upcoming appearance on an episode. What will Michael think of David Brent?

What do you guys think? Hit me up in comments and let me know!

why video games matter

I recently read Tom Bissell's Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. It was very entertaining for someone like me, though Bissell should have added "To Me" to the end of his subtitle.

Through a series of sometimes uncomfortably personal essays, Bissell relates to the reader why videogames are such a big part of his life - and, I suppose, anyone's life. He divides each chapter by examining a different game which he feels exemplifies one aspect of games at their best. There is a sprinkling of pretty candid interviews with big names within the industry, like Cliff Bleszinki and Jonathon Blow. The book is undeniably interesting, and an easy recommendation for any videogame fan. However, while Bissell's writing is not at fault, I feel the thesis question he began with is.

The biggest problem with the book, and with many aging video gamers today, is that many gamers are looking for justification for their hobby. "Are videogames art?" "Why do videogames matter?" These are questions that may be interesting to some, and they may even be answerable - but do they matter? Does it matter if videogames matter? Does it matter if they are "art?"

Bissell struggles with this problem. He clearly loves videogames, but not without reservations and guilt borne out of a sort of misguided need to compare games to 'higher' narrative experiences such as books and films. He finally concludes that though video games do matter, issues like encountering “appalling” dialogue, despite hearing actors give line readings of “autistic miscalculation,” despite despairing over the sense that gamers and game designers have embraced “an unnecessary hostility between the greatness of a game and the sophistication of things such as narrative, dialogue, dramatic motivation and characterization," are why "[video games] do not matter more."

I feel that Bissell is missing the point. Videogames matter because video games move, enthrall, enrage, and impress millions of people every year. Video games are in their infancy. Despite being new (especially when compared to books and movies, even though I don't think that is a fair or wise thing to do), videogames have progressed in leaps and bounds since the days of Tennis for Two.

As the sometimes crass Gus Mastrapa eloquently writes, "Art can never be Videogames." Mastrapa argues that it doesn't matter if the general public accepts videogames as 'art.' Gamers are not looking for their approval, we just want them to see what we see in them. Says Mastrapa, "Those of use who love this silly stuff just want others to fell the thrill of discovery, the satisfaction of a win, the senses of fear and wonder and boredom and delicious tedium that videogames can instill. We want non-gamers to get that games aren't just games -- they're an amalgam of a half-dozen different modern forms of communication leveraged to create magic, to transport and tell stories and to stimulate the mind, heart and guts."

I couldn't agree more.

While Bissell's work is a fantastic book that any videogame fan should treat themselves to, anyone who chooses to do so should do it with an open mind, and remember that we need no justification for engaging ourselves in something we love.

edward sharpe and the adoooorable magnetic zeros

like fallout? you'll love this. brilliant.

in my grocer's freezer?

I absolutely want this for dinner for all the dinners.

the kids are all right

Last night, Rach and I watched The Kids Are All Right. It was really quite good. The beauty of this movie lies in the perfectly honest moments that happen between people going through a pretty unique situation. The parents in the film, Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore), are two lesbians who were both artificially inseminated in order to conceive. Their children, Laser and Jules (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson), are independent in their own ways, and very much like each of their birth mothers. The movies begins as Laser, the younger sibling, asks Jules to get in contact with the sperm donor "Moms" used (yeah, they both used the same guy). Despite this very "sitcommy" setup, the movies strengths are not the plot devices or its unorthodox family. The movies succeeds because of solid, down to earth writing, and genuine, home run performances from all five of the leads. The genius of the film lies in its ability to be in turns humorous and moving, sometimes simultaneously. The laughs are subtle, yet piercing, and serve to counterbalance the aching sadness of life, of growing up, of struggling to stay in love. I absolutely recommend this movie to anyone grown up enough to not recoil at the thought of gay parents. The truth is, these kids are alright.

here we go...

So I've finally decided to start writing here...not sure what this is going to be yet, but probably just a place for me to dump stuff that I'd like to share with no one in particular. Some "banal blatherings" if you will.

I'll try to keep this from being a "this is why the world sucks" whine-fest, but with all the Sarah Palins, Glenn Becks, and people like this - http://bit.ly/eJNrtl running around, there are bound to be a few entries like that.

So. What's going on in my life? Not much. Right now the dorkiest thing I'm doing to registering a team for the Grifball League. "What the hell is Grifball?" you ask? Well, my friend, it is a "sport" "played" on the XBOX 360, in the online multiplayer portion of a game called Halo: Reach. It is 4 on 4, and, using only two melee weapons each, the teams try to carry a "Grifball" (which is also a bomb) to the other team's goal, whereupon it explodes, and the offending team scores a point. The grifball carrier can run faster and has more shields than the other players, but only has access to a melee weapon with much shorter range whilst s/he is carrying the ball. Players killed during the game suffer a time penalty, but then respawn back near their own goal. A matches are played best out of 5. Got it?

OK I'm gonna go. I've been cleaning the apartment all afternoon so that I could have a couple hours of guilt-free gaming. Time to begin. Later on!