It's All About Entertainment

Well last night was the Oscar's so what kind of gay man would I be if I didn't blog about the goings on in Hollywood. Well I shall not be like that walking sterotype that ET and the Today Show rely upon to give them fashion advice. In fact I shall not talk about fashion at all except to say that Reese Witherspoon looked great as always. Instead let's talk about Best Picture. Of the nominees I had seen two - Crash and of course Brokeback Mountain. Munich is on my list while Capote is not. Personally I thought the Constant Gardner should have been nominated over Capote, but Im not a member of the academy. Now I liked Crash, it was thought provoking and insightful, but I do not think it deserved Best Picture. The critics here in Britain agree with me and believe that Brokeback Mountain lost because many of the members of the Academy are old conservative folks. Also Crash apparently spent $2 million on advertising for Best Picture - quite fishy. Anyways, I think the wrong movie won. I would have been happy with Brokeback Mountain or even Munich which I am looking forward to, but not Crash.

Well since I decided to go for an entertainment theme, I have decided to highlight one of the things the British do way better than we Americans. That is of course thought provoking television. Now the British have plenty of mindless shows, my favorite being "Shameless" and they import a ton of American television shows (I am not behind on either Prison Break or Desperate Housewives). But Channel 4, one of the basic channels done by BBC has a ton of really good documentary-like shows. Tonight for instance they did a brief thing on torture in Eqypt. Then they had a regular show about the rise of evangelicalism within the Anglican Church and the threat it poses to fundamental freedoms. In a couple weeks they are doing a series on the State of Russia which has one of the coolest, yet disturbing promos ever. Imagine a snowy ground in a forest. There is a close up of a tree and you see blood on it. Then you see an open bear trap with blood on it and it looks like something got dragged through the snow. Then the camera follow the trail and you see the bear dragging itself through the snow leaving a trail of blood. This, by the way, is no cartoon bear, but the real thing so I have no clue how they shot it. All the time the promo is going these voices are saying these facts like "more abortions than live births" and such. The first time I saw this and didnt know what it was about I was disturbed at seeing a bear suffering (I do love the furry animals). Anyways, not only is that a cool promo, the show looks really good as well. They also did one about gay Muslims that was very interesting and good to watch since it was related tangentally to my note. Which by the way is now a first final draft so if for some reason you want to read it you are welcome to. I would not, however, classify it as entertainment. I am no BBC.