Awards Season Fun

Calling all film buffs! On March 6, we’ll be hosting our annual Oscars Trivia Night from 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm. Wear your finest as we quiz you on Oscar winners and losers throughout the ages. Prizes available! Register on Eventbrite.  

It’s Oscar season once again! While it’s always a fun time for film fans to discuss predictions, snubs, grudges, and hopes, the ceremony itself can be a little self-serious. The show’s messier little sister the Golden Globes, with its free-flowing booze, lack of food, and dubious prestige, tends to be a more entertaining night (except, of course, when things go awry). To wrap up this award season, I put together my own list of the year’s highlights in the vein of the once-iconic MTV Movie Awards (now called the MTV Movie & TV Awards—yes, it’s still a thing, apparently), known for unique awards like Best Kiss, Best Fight, Best Villain, and something called “Most Frightened Performance”. The show knows we already have a wealth of awards like Best Picture and Best Actor, so they ask: what about all of the other elements that make movies fun?  

Below are my own picks, based on the various things that made an impression on me in some way, whether from serious Oscar contenders or the countless fantastic horror movies of the previous year (since the Academy seems averse to acknowledging horror in any way). Because sometimes the least serious movies deserve the most love! Anyway, on to the list: 

Best Murder-Dance Sequence: M3GAN  

A worthy addition to the evil doll canon, M3GAN got 2023 off to a campy start. The whole movie is perfect, in my opinion, but no scene sums up the film’s competence as a horror-comedy better than the one where M3GAN (the titular doll) dances threateningly down a hallway and chases a man with a large paper cutter. Editors wisely used that scene in the trailers, which likely owes to the film’s massively successful theatre run. But the scene in the film itself is paired with “Walk the Night” by Skatt Bros, making an already memorable scene even better. I for one can’t wait for M4GAN.  

Best Accent Work: Daniel Craig (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery) and Austin Butler (Elvis) 

A tie! Because I’m indecisive and these aren’t real awards. The first goes to Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc for his cartoony, Foghorn Leghorn Southern drawl in the Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion. Blanc’s distinctive diction was already iconic from the first film (“It makes no damn sense! Compels me, though” is an all-timer) and it continues here, and Twitter had a field day applying it to any and all situations. The second goes to Austin Butler, who was seemingly possessed by the spirit of Elvis Presley after playing him in the film Elvis. Even well after the movie was released, Butler did all his press in his fake, husky “thank you very much” voice, baffling everyone. He claims to be phasing it out now, which is disappointing to me, as I find it hilarious.  

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What Happens When You Go Looking in the DVD Section of the Library

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I’m one of those people who finds it hard to pick a movie to watch on a Friday night. Growing up, the family’s weekly excursion to Blockbuster became a lengthy, leisurely affair. Despite my family’s frustration, I doubled down and took my time, knowing how important it was to select the right movie for the right evening. A movie was the perfect complement to a long day of being subjected to my peers. These days the choice is made harder by the fact that I’ve seen hundreds of them.

So, when I found myself in Woodbridge Library on a day off last week, I thought I would take a gander at their DVD and Blu-Ray collection. For my first post on Hot Off the Shelf, I wanted to extol the virtues of what I found there, as well as some other DVDs I’ve borrowed from the library recently.

Press

DVD cover for the television show Press.

Woodbridge is where I found Press, a PBS Masterpiece series with woefully few episodes. Masterpiece (Theater as it used to be known) on PBS is something I imagine the younger generations have absolutely no idea exists. It’s a series of shows on PBS on Sunday evenings, often featuring actors dressed in empire waists, rigidly riding horses, and declaring how “drole” everything is. I tease because I love – fan as I am of everything romance, including Austen.

Press is something different altogether, though. On the surface, a blatant warning about the future of journalism in Britain (and the world in general) told through a parable about two papers on opposite sides of the political spectrum in London. Duncan Allen is the editor of The Post, a right-leaning tabloid-leaning sensationalist paper that puts narrative above all else, even the truth. On the other side of the coin is Holly Evans, deputy editor of The Herald, an earnest daily that adheres closely to the journalistic code. Despite this — or perhaps because of it — it’s on the way out.

Episodes are divided between the two newsrooms, and there is a clear winner as to which is more interesting to watch. No surprise there. Infuriatingly, Ben Chaplin’s portrayal of Duncan Allen is gripping. Somehow, he makes Allen someone we want nothing and everything to do with. Morally, there is nothing ambiguous as to Allen’s shortcomings. Yet, he sees himself as working towards a better society, “A Better Britain,” as it says on The Post’s stark red wall. Luckily, the other characters are intriguing too and infuriating in their own ways. Case in point, Holly Evans makes a decision that is both incredulous and somehow feels inevitable toward the end of the six episodes. Although you may inhale them all and spend the rest of your life pining for more, like hunger pangs in your stomach, it will have been worth it. It’s better to have loved, they say.

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Relationshipping: How to Do Well with Everyone & Everything

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Ok, so that title is a bit of a clickbait, but well…it’s February (aka Valentines Day month) and the 15th (which is apparently Singles Awareness Day), so I thought I’d share different books that focus on as many kinds of healthy relationships as I can.

Coming from someone who kinda finds self-help books cringey as a concept, this was also a challenge I set for myself to find titles I would actually read publicly. This is not to say I’m judging anyone else for reading or liking such books! I just don’t like admitting to needing help, pretty much ever.

(…Feel free to recommend me a self-help book to get over this.)

With that introduction out of the way, let’s dive in!

Self

The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook by Tim Desmond

I will admit that I frequently and freely judge books by their covers, and this ’14-Day Plan to Transform Your Relationship With Yourself’ by Tim Desmond caught my eye because 1) it’s pretty and 2) it screams workbook first and self-help book second. Also, I think many people’s unhappiness with themselves stems much of the time from being far too hard on themselves about things that are normal and natural to the human condition. We are people, we are messy. But we don’t have to be miserable messes, and here’s an actionable guide to getting on the road to being kind to ourselves!

Desmond’s aim with this book is to improve your ability to motivate yourself; regulate your emotions; learn resilience; lessen self-criticism and destructive behavior; heal painful experiences; and be more present and compassionate with others. It also contains downloadable audio recordings!

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