Myclofig Mea Culpa

It's been one month since I listed the 2007 Oscar nominees. Each year I try to do my own awards, and the Myclofigs generally allow my readers to vote on movies we all actually saw the year before. I'd be the first to admit that The Bourne Ultimatum, Transformers or The Simpsons Movie are not award winning features, yet they are among my favorites from 2007. Every year, the Oscar list seems to focus on films that just barely came out in time to be eligible, and ignore movies from the beginning of the previous year. Additionally, I'll often learn of the existence of certain films upon their nomination.

I try to catch up before the awards show, but somehow I never do. It was about a week ago that I finally watched Babel, for example, a 2006 winner in one category and nominee in six others. Having my mom in the hospital for over four days certainly distracted me, but missing a specific blog post is a small and trivial toll. My dad seems more exhausted every day, and on Monday when I went to work and he had to visit her on his own, he forgot where he parked his car. When I returned with him to the hospital after I got home from work, he told me how he missed a turn while walking and didn't realize it until he was at the end of the street, I'd say about a quarter of a mile. Now that she's out of the ICU and being weaned off IV drips in lieu of pills, she should be home in a day or two and all our lives can get back to normal.

Some people are capable of multitasking, capable of taking whatever life throws at them and trucking onward. I've always been easily distracted and can only focus on a few things at a time, albeit with great attention and dedication. In searching the web for old Myclofig posts for instance, I found a Carnage Blender Wall of Remembrance, listing notable players who'd stopped playing an online game. When the developer released a second version of the game and subsequently deleted all records of the original, a game I'd played for five years under the username “Myclofig”, I decided it was a good time to quit. My achievements were lost forever, and I wasn't about to start over from scratch on a new version of the game. It's nice that someone kept a record of my character TMII BoGo® though, “a single tank, 2 million plus pr character that accumulated over 3 million hit points and fought without ranged weapons.” Three Million Hit Points. That's insane, but it does show how focused I was when I was younger, even if the game itself was probably a distraction from other things I should have been doing.

As for the thing I should have been doing last week, I dropped the ball and can only promise to pick it up again next year. At the time I listed the 2007 nominees, Sweeney Todd was the only one I'd seen. I managed to add a whopping three to the list since then with Juno, Eastern Promises, and No Country For Old Men. Here's how they did:

BEST PICTURE
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

BEST ACTOR
Daniel Day Lewis - THERE WILL BE BLOOD

BEST ACTRESS
Marion Cotillard - LA VIE EN ROSE

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Javier Bardem - NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Tilda Swinton - MICHAEL CLAYTON

BEST ANIMATED FILM
RATATOUILLE

BEST DIRECTOR
Joel and Ethan Coen - NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Joel and Ethan Coen - NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Diablo Cody - JUNO

Of the two best picture nominees I managed to see, I'd agree with No Country For Old Men, and I'm glad Javier Bardem got the Best Supporting Actor award. The villain he portrayed in that film was a terrifying, unstoppable force of nature with a unique weapon. I was afraid for anyone that crossed his path, and though it's cliché to say, I genuinely was on the edge of my seat with every close call and hopeless situation.

I enjoyed Juno tremendously and I'm glad it won for screenplay, though I think Ellen Page deserved an award as well. I didn't see any of the films her fellow best actress nominees were up for, but her quirky wit reminded me of a young Janeane Garofalo, and as with Hard Candy she continues to show her talent and range as an up and coming actress. Between her and Ben Foster, I'm beginning to realize that X3 had some amazing talent in underutilized roles. They've both amazed me in subsequent projects.

There's not much else I can comment on, though I should make Ratatouille and There Will Be Blood priority rentals as soon as possible. Also, I noticed Transformers was nominated in sound and visual effects categories, and didn't win. Really? Millions of independently animated moving parts lost to a polar bear with a compass? That had to be some bear, and so my movie list continues to grow.

Sorry again for not holding Myclofigs this year! Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.