The Rural Jurist

Again, unable to embed due to (I suppose) bandwidth limitations, but you can check it out here. For now you can see it on the front page of www.mpp.org.

My girlfriend and her family, particularly my girlfriend’s brother, really love Ben Folds. I liked Brick, but was never really a huge Ben Folds fan back before we met. Still, I liked him enough to tag along to a couple shows since we met. I still think his tunes are good, not great – you won’t see me buying CD’s anytime soon – but I will admit that he’s an awesome live performer. In addition to being really good at mixing up his shows and sounds, he frequently just makes shit up as he goes. It sounds crazy, but it’s really good improv. You should check it out if he’s in your town.

Anyway, I saw this today and it’s a really good example of what I’m talking about, and also the first candidate for coolest Youtube video of the year. For those of you who haven’t used Chat Roulette yet, you should be grateful he edited out the penises – I imagine that was a lot of editing.

Sorry again that I can’t embed on this site. I’ll move the blog some day when I have time.

If you know me you probably know that I split my collegiate allegiances between Ohio State, my alma mater,  and Tennessee, the closest big school to my home town. I’m excited to see that they’re in the same bracket again this year. Frankly, that’s a big of a shaft to OSU who I thought deserved a 2, but an easier seeding – they shouldn’t have to get by Kansas.

But of course, if you really know me, you know that I grew up in Johnson City, Tennessee, home of the East Tennessee State Buccaneers. And this is the one time of the year OSU and Tennessee take a back seat to ETSU.

A couple years ago my friends who started a non-profit devoted to cancer prevention and kid-fitness (make a donation) asked me to help them work concession stands at Columbus Bluejacket’s hockey games. It was actually a lot of fun, and one of the perks is that we were asked to work the arena during the regionals for the NCAA tournament when Columbus got to host. It just so happened that ETSU was playing there and drew a 14-3 matchup against Cincinnati. They damn near beat them. The Bucs were a 16 last year and came about as close as any 16 ever has to pulling the upset, nearly knocking off Pittsburgh.

This year’s team isn’t as good as last years, and Kentucky is an even tougher match-up than Pittsburgh. So for now, Go Bucs! But come next weekend I think it’ll be Go Bucks!

The other movie I’ve been waiting a while to see and finally did was Precious. This was one of those rare treats where you have high expectations going into a movie but instead of that being a sandbag, the movie obliterates even your most optimistic of hopes. It was incredible. It’s a gripping story, and not for everyone. The acting made it even better. There were even some cinematographic tricks and other director fingerprints that made this, probably, the best movie of the year.

As good as the screenplay was – and it was Oscar worthy – Mo’Nique was absolutely amazing – yea, I said it. The acting was made this my favorite movie of the year. I get the feeling that this is Gaborey Sinebe’s 15 minutes, but I hope I’m wrong. She’s a treat.

I’m not going to give you a synopsis, by now you’ve heard it. If you’re a psychiatrist you could have a field day with this one. It was interesting for me though because I’m really familiar with rural poverty and attendant issues having grown up in it and through my time in Vinton County, but I don’t pretend to know anything about poor, black, inner-city poverty. Even Jess got into this one.

I won’t say any more, just go see it if you haven’t.

I saw this incredible cat food commercial the other night. There’s no doubt that it has changed the world, though I’m not sure if it’s for better or worse. At the very least, it easily surpasses the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish ad for most appealing to cats who happen to be really, really high.

ps. It’s worth noting that the current Filet-O-Fish ad is not only not the best commercial on T.V. as many claim, it’s not even the best ad for a Filet-O-Fish. This is.

So I’ve been meaning to get around to seeing Crazy Heart for quite a while now and the Mrs. and I finally did Friday (after using a Groupon to get drinks at Lounge 201; Groupons good, Lounge 201 waaaay overpriced). I liked it, but I was not blown away.

As always, there’s an element of high expectations playing a part in this. I’m a fan of Jeff Bridges (Other than The Dude, I think his character in The Vanishing is probably my favorite, and the answer to this year’s trivia question – name a movie starring each lead acting Academy Award winner), and Robert Duvall, and Maggie Gyllenhaal was suprisingly good. The premise seemed appealing enough, but I just wasn’t prepared for how formulaic it felt. I felt the same way watching it as I did when I saw Walk the Line about a month after seeing Ray. As plagiarized as those meovies felt, this one was even more similar to The Wrestler. I’m not going to embed a Venn Diagram, but let me make it easy for you: if you liked the Wrestler, you’ll like Crazy Heart. If you didn’t like the Wrestler, go ahead and jump into the Hot Tub Time Machine. You know you want to.

I’m not saying Bridges didn’t deserve his Oscar – I haven’t seen Invictus or A Single Man, but he was better than Renner or Clooney. And the rest of the acting was great too. Faulty though the script may have been, it could have been much worse. I will say that I wish they’d spent more time on sober, recovering Bad Blake and less time on washed up, alcoholic Blake. That’s twenty minutes I could have used at the end of the movie where I felt left out a bit.

Good, not great.

Zach Galifinakis hosted last night and turned in the most memorable performance since Ben Affleck’s Keith Olberman. He even shaved his beard before the last skit sketch, which was one of the best of the show. Even Keenan Thompson had a funny bit last nigh. Seriously, if I hear one more of my friends tell me that SNL hasn’t been funny since Sandler/Farley left, I’m going to have to find new friends. Admitedly, there was a long drop off, but the show became relevant again with Lazy Sunday. There was another mini drop-off when they lost Tina Fey and Amy Poeler, but Kristen Wigg is probably the best female that show has ever had. Bill Hader is hilarious in everything he does – even his impressions are underrated (tried, failed to link to Peter O’Toole). Maybe not as accurate as a Darryl Hammond, but probably funnier.

Awesome.

One of my all time favorite movies scored big last night as The Dude Jeff Bridges brought in the best actor award. I was a little pissed that Martin and Baldwin (who I thought stunk last night) couldn’t come up with anything better than a pot joke for Woody Harrelson, but it would have been fitting after Bridges proceeded to take the audience on a 3 minute marijuana-fueled stream of consciousness in his acceptance speech. And, as any true Lebowski fan knows, interpretive dance is an inspired art form, and the Oscars brought it back in big way. That number was probably the highlight of the ceremony for me.

On the low side, I obviously wasn’t happy about the best picture award (though I’m fine with Bigelow winning the director award), and I’m not ready to live in a world where Sandra Bullock is an academy award winning actress – especially for that film. I’m not sure which says more about the state of the profession – her winning a best actress award, or someone with one apostrophe-laced name who used to host of a VH-1 reality show featuring Flavor of Love also-rans winning best supporting actress.

The categories I watched closest were animated and live-action shorts. As disappointed as  I was  with the animated award, I was equally pleased to see the live-action award go to The New Tenants, which you should definitely check out.

As always, the acceptance speeches were way too long and, once again, forced the telecast to run comically long. Who directs these things and how do they manage to flub this  year after year? Overall, a pretty disappointing show, but I’ll blame that on a disappointing year for movies. Here’s hoping they get Neal Patrick Harris to come back next year and that he can do a decent Hugh Jackman impression.

I mentioned (in fairness, everyone else did too) a while ago that Funny People would have been a lot better if it were about 30-45 minutes shorter. That seems to be the case for a lot of movies lately (Public Enemies was another good example). If you agree and would like to see shorter movies, I suggest you head over to the opposite end of the spectrum and check out this year’s Oscar-nominated short films. If you’re lucky enough to have a Landmark Cinema’s theater in your city, they usually string them all together – both the animated and live action – into a series that’s feature-length. When my girlfriend and I went to E Street (easily DC’s best movie spot) to see the animateds last week they even threw in 4 “highly regarded,” but not nominated films, most of which were excellent.

If you’re in DC, another option would be to see them for free at the National Archives which is hosting free screenings of all the nominated short films and documentaries – feature and short length.

I can’t recommend this enough; the rate at which these flicks are good far exceeds full-length movies. I’ve been to the Landmark running 3 or 4 times, and I’d say I’ve enjoyed 85% of the films I’ve caught. Plus it makes that 10 minutes of watching the Oscars enjoyable since you’ll probably be the only one in the room who’s actually seen the nominees. It sort of makes me wish they’d mix in a short film before feature lengths instead of 5-6 trailers. I think I remember Disney doing this with Wall-E.

Oh, and in case you’re interested, Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty was my favorite, but I’ll pick French Roast for the statue. Follow the links to watch the full films on Youtube – another awesome feature of shorts.

It’s been a long time since the last post, so what’s changed? I moved from Columbus, Ohio to Washington DC. I switched jobs – I’m no longer prosecuting in rural southeast Ohio. Now I’m lobbying to legalize marijuana (1:40:49). Probably the coolest job in the world; at least a close second to middle relief in the bigs. Sorry to all 2 or 3 of you readers for being away so long. I promise to pick the blogging back up now that I’m settled in DC. Other than that:

1. Don’t believe the hype, you should see Youth in Revolt. Yes, it’s the same old from Cera, but the same old is funny.

2. Thanks to Jim Bunning for an honest, principled stance. And for helping the Democrats poll numbers.

3. Don’t smoke pot.

I’ll be back…