WOAH-HO-HOO!

I spent the afternoon today with Mata Druim, taking promotional photos for his upcoming solo album. We had a great time, and the sun was out, meaning lighting was excellent for some awesome photo opportunities. Perhaps later on I'll post some of the photos. For now, there's a few "previews" on his facebook page.

This evening was the night of the Oscars Highlights (we don't have sky movies, so I can't watch it live unfortunately); somehow I'd managed to live a normal life today whilst avoiding any news of the winners. Firstly, I'll say that Steve Martin is fantastic. As for the winners, the highlight for me was Christolph Waltz getting supporting actor for Inglourious Basterds; even though I have not yet seen the film in it's entirety, the half I did see showed that he played the part brilliantly. The majority of the show was overshadowed by the Hurt Locker, though, which is a film I am not very keen on watching, as it is based around the war that is currently happening. To me a film is entertainment; people have written the Hurt Locker with the intention of entertaining people and to make money. To do this based on a current event in which people are dying most days (I heard another soldier was killed today) is in very bad taste in my opinion. However, I digress; this alone is not cause for it not to recieve awards; it is the revelation that the producer has spent a while emailing the members of the Academy urging them to vote for his movie. The exact contents of the emails have not been released as far as I know, but reports say that they were reminding the members that the Hurt Locker is "not a $500 million blockbuster", so cannot be expected to compare to Avatar et al, and that this should be remembered in voting. I would not be surprised if it also featured emotional blackmail based around the "cause" of the movie as well. The producer in question was banned from attending the ceremony, but I feel this was far too lenient; Academy rules are very strict and clear in forbidding such activity by filmmakers, so I feel that the entire movie should have been removed from the shortlist. It's winning Best Movie earns it no respect from me because of this. That doesn't mean to say that Avatar should have won and I'm in a mood about it not winning; there was a number of great movies nominated, and I feel that after the rules were so severely broken, another movie should have been given a clean victory.