MSN has a poll running about seat-reclining on commercial flights. Here’s my most recent posting about same.

Within the next half-hour or so Hollywood Elsewhere will begin to re-direct traffic away from Softlayer, the ISP that I’ve been with since ’06 or thereabouts, and move everything over to Liquid Web, which I’m going with at the urging of Sasha Stone. And then four or five days hence I’ll shift over to WordPress as my staging software, and finally abandon Movable Type 4.0 now and forever more. Exciting!

This will presumably make things faster and easier for me to work and fewer problems for commenters trying to post, and it will make an HE re-design (which I’ll be doing within a month or two) easier. I may be the last name-brand columnist to have adopted WordPress. It took me long enough, but better late than never.

There may be a problem or two in adapting to the new ISP (there always are) but they’ll be smoothed out before long.

Check out the website for Gjelina, a hot Venice restaurant (1429 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, CA 90291). You’ll notice that the links (including the main restaurant logo) are movable. They can be pushed or flipped around or made to do somersaults with the cursor; they can be nudged around the screen with your finger if you’re using an iPad. The site was designed by Babak Badaei of Hemaka. He says he used a gaming engine to achieve this effect. This kind of movement will eventually find other expressions.

Congratulations to Word Theatre maestro and longtime Hollywood Elsewhere ally-pally Cedering Fox for landing the coveted live announcer gig for this Sunday’s Oscar telecast. Currently the voice of Reelz TV’s Double O Movie Movie campaign, Fox was also the announcer for the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver.

Cedering Fox

Fox is the founder and honcho of Word Theatre, “a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring a love of language and literature by presenting live performances in America and England of contemporary short stories featuring renowned authors and actors.” I’ve written about Word Theatre several times.

Yes, Virginia — during the first few years of the 21st Century there really was a thing called 1.85 fascism. For a while there it seemed as if non-Scope movies of the ’50s and early ’60s were going to be compressed and trapped inside severe 1.85 to 1 rectangles. But that scenario is finished now, and the fascists, while not fully discredited, will never have the same authority again. Sincere thanks to the Criterion Co. for cutting them off at the knees and particularly to this five-minute essay, produced and edited by Issa Clubb.

On 2.4.13 I ran an audio clip of this essay as part of a piece “Despair Time for 1.85 Fascists“:

“There’s a five-minute visual essay on Criterion’s new On The Waterfront Bluray called ‘On The Aspect Ratio.’ It explains why Criterion went with three aspect ratios — 1.66 (the preferred default version), 1.33 and 1.85. Here‘s the narration. I’m warning the 1.85 fascists right now that they won’t like it. This is the end of the influence of this rogue cabal. Henceforth the 1.66-ers and the ‘boxy is beautiful’ gang will have the upper hand.

“Update: Some of the commenters are shrugging and saying, ‘Uhh, so these Columbia films were framed for 1.85 but protected for 1.33…so what?’ The “so what” is that the Criterion guys, the ultimate, high-end purist dweebs of the digital home-video realm, explain in this essay why they chose 1.66 as their default a.r., and how severely and pointlessly cropped 1.85 is and how open and accepting and all-encompassing 1.33 is. The essay basically says ‘if you have any taste at all or have any regard for aesthetic elegance and balance, it’s obvious that 1.66 or 1.33 is the way to go. You’d have to be a troglodyte to prefer 1.85.'”

The unpleasant LAX experience of Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras director Emad Burnat vaguely overlaps with Mira Nair‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (IFC Films, 4.26). But you have to admit that you chuckled when George Clooney said “five words — randomly selected for additional screening” in Up In The Air….right? The kind of rueful laughter that says “yup, shitty as it is for Middle Eastern guys, that’s what airports are like.”

This morning Film Jerk‘s Edward A. Havens alerted me to his tenth annual Oscar Handicap assessments, category by category. I went right to the Best Picture section and was stunned by this opening statement: “There are basically two camps for Best Picture this year: those who think Lincoln has the best chance to win Best Picture, and those who think Argo has the momentum.”

Wells to Havens: Thanks, Edward, but you’re kidding with this, right? Did General Santa Ana have the “momentum” as his troops surrounded the Alamo? I don’t know of a single soul (or at least one who’s not on meds) who believes in Lincoln at this stage, and you’re telling me there’s an actual encampment of “Lincoln has the best chance to win” believers? You sound like Karl Rove talking about the Ohio vote tallies on Fox News. Even the die-hard, true-believing Sasha Stone doesn’t think Lincoln has any kind of shot at winning Best Picture, much less the “best chance.” It’s over, man.

Zero Dark Thirty, Zero Dark Thirty, Zero Dark Thirty and I don’t care…going down with the ship. David O. Russell despite the odds, David O. Russell despite the odds, David O. Russell despite the odds. Daniel Day Lewis…duhhh. JLaw, JLaw, JLaw. Robert DeNiro, Robert DeNiro, Robert DeNiro. Anne Hathaway, Anne Hathaway, Anne Hathaway.

I suppose I should have filed a formal copyright claim on the term “mood pocket” when I invented it four years ago in Oxford, Mississippi. Yes, I realize that might be a presumptuous thing to say. The term may have been floating around and I just didn’t know it. But I’m saying for the record that I believe the term is mine until somebody proves otherwise. Either way it’s now part of the lexicon.

Any movie based on a Stephanie Meyer book is obviously a huge red flag. Another is any film directed or written/adapted by Andrew Niccol (with the exception of Lord of War, which I was half-okay with). A third no-no is any film in which any character jumps or falls from a high building with a double penalty if he/she smashes through a window in order to fall/jump. Doesn’t matter if they live or die — it’s the jumping/falling that offends.

Add them all up and you’ve got The Host, which I wouldn’t watch on Netflix with a knife at my back, much less attend a screening of. The trailer alone sent me into a mood pocket that I’m trying to recover from right now. Atonement, The Lovely Bones, The Way Back, Hanna….Saoirse Ronan was choosing her parts well, and now this?

I’m not of Irish descent but something about Ireland calmed me down when I visited there in the fall of ’88. A voice told me I was among friends or perhaps even my own through some obscure ancestral ink. Which is why I wangled an invite to tonight’s Irish shindig (an eighth annual Oscar Wilde celebration honoring the Irish in Film) happening at JJ Abrams‘ production company, Bad Robot. Last year Abrams (who co-hosts with wife Katie McGrath) was made an “honorary” Irishman. Colin Farrell, Liam Hemsworth, Jason O’Mara, Jason Schwartzman and Lily Collins are expected to attend.

What makes these wonderful flying bubbles cruise in perfect formation? Do the bubbles have some sort of navigational brain guiding them along that makes them turn or slow down or come in for a landing, and also some invisible telepathic propellant that speeds them up or slows them down? Are those emerald-green dagger-like sculptures borrowed from the North Pole ice sculptures in Richard Donner‘s Superman 2?

CG is one of the worst things to happen to movies as it almost always dumbs things down and because over 95% of the time these idiotic ooh-ahh moments stop the narrative in its tracks.

An unpretentious, blunt-spoken director has shared his Oscar picks with Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg, and I think it’s interesting how much this guy sounds like me to a certain extent. He cuts right to the chase, doesn’t mince words and just lays his cards face-up. He knows more about the technical stuff than I do (“there were a lot of mismatching” cuts in Silver Linings Playbook, he says), and in some ways he reveals himself as not especially hip or sophisticated (“No is a very good film, but it’s shot in a very weird way“). But Feinberg’s piece is a pretty good capturing of how a lot of people in this town think.

I’m guessing that the guy is in his early to mid 50s because (a) he says he voted online “because I want to feel young again” and (b) he describes a nominated short called Curfew as “the least depressing of five films guaranteed to prevent you from getting laid,” he says, “as I personally learned.” So he’s a bit of a hound and therefore probably unmarried.

He thinks for himself, that’s for sure. “Robert De Niro was just Robert De Niro” in Silver Linings, he says. “Yes, he had one crying scene, but crying is not enough. ” Not enough? There’s tons more to DeNiro’s performance than just that one bedside scene with Bradley Cooper but this guy….I’m starting to think this guy isn’t all that sharp. “Alan Arkin in Argo? I’m shocked he’s even nominated. Tommy Lee Jones has been such a bitter guy — all that scowling at the Golden Globes? I’m telling you, people don’t like the guy.” Then why did Jones with the SAG Best Supporting Actor award?

His Best Actor vote is going to Joaquin Phoenix in The Master, which he feels is “a performance for the ages. So much went into that performance. He created a character as distinct as Daniel Plainview…from always hunching and putting his right hand on his hip to crying as he’s being audited.” Not to mention Phoenix constantly sipping from a flask to his serpent-like manner and the way he sometimes behaves like Dwight Frye‘s Fritz in James Whale‘s Frankenstein.

To win the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, he says, “you usually have to make a film that makes people feel absolutely great or makes people feel like they want to slit their wrists. Something that’s jovial or something that’s important.” Getting the equation? If something is thoughtful or important it’s a downer. Jesus, this guy sounds like he’s 14 or something.

On the subject of Best Actress this guy conveys the essence of Lisa Taback‘s worst nightmare. “Jennifer Lawrence I was on the fence about, but she lost me with that Saturday Night Live bit,” he says. “I thought it was mean-spirited and shows a lack of maturity on her part. So, for me, it’s between Jessica Chastain and Emmanuelle Riva. I didn’t like Amour, but I think Riva was extraordinary in it. Chastain was just fantastic in Zero Dark Thirty — she is the major star of tomorrow and probably has another 10 Oscar nominations in her future. Meanwhile, Riva may not even live through Oscar night, so…”