The Departed – Best Picture, Director, Editing, Screenplay

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Congratulations to Marty, Thelma, Bill Monahan, and Graham King.

When the 3 Musketeers (Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola) came out to present the Directing award I knew not only that Marty had it, but also that the winners were no secret, at least to the folks running the show.

All things considered, not a bad year. Forrest Whitaker and Helen Mirren certainly deserved their top awards, and I thought Ellen Degeneres was very good. I hope they have her back.

Bravo Zulu to Al Gore, Laurie David, and Davis Guggenheim, and also to Melissa Etheridge for her song from “An Inconvenient Truth”. The film is out on DVD now, and perhaps this award will cause more people to see this very important film.

What’s With This, “If You Will…”

Ya know, I can’t stand hearing this phrase, “if you will”.

I first remember it coming to my consciousnness as part of Darth Cheney’s famous quote about the insurgency {if you will} being in it’s last throes.

Does this mean anything? Now everyone seems to be saying it, liberals, consevatives, wingnut morons, everyone. But this phrase means nothing. I always find myself thinking, “No, I don’t think I really want to, thank you”.

I wish they would just stop.

Families Behind Bars

I can’t believe that this is happening in my country. I just can’t believe it. I mean, I know that this is real. It is happening. This is just a steam-coming-out-of-my-ears, I can’t believe it.

Named after the co-founder of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the T. Don Hutto Correctional Center in Taylor, Texas, opened as a medium-security prison in 1997. Today, the federal government pays CCA, the nation’s largest private prison company, $95 per person per day to house the detainees, who wear jail-type uniforms and live in cells.

But they have not been charged with any crimes. In fact, nearly half of its 400 or so residents are children, including infants and toddlers.

The inmates are immigrants or children of immigrants who are in deportation proceedings. Many of them are in the process of applying for political asylum, refugees from violence-plagued and impoverished countries like Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Somalia and Palestine. (Since there are different procedures for Mexican immigrants, the facility houses no Mexicans.)

In the past, most of them would have been free to work and attend school as their cases moved through immigration courts. “Prior to Hutto, they were releasing people into the community,” says Nicole Porter, director of the Prison and Jail Accountability Project for the ACLU of Texas. “These are non-criminals and nonviolent individuals who have not committed any crime against the U.S. There are viable alternatives to requiring them to live in a prison setting and wear uniforms.”

But as a result of increasingly stringent immigration enforcement policies, today more than 22,000 undocumented immigrants are being detained, up from 6,785 in 1995, according to the Congressional Research Service.

I don’t know about you all, but I’m doing the only thing I can do. I’m telling everyone who will listen about this, including my congressional representatives. When I was a child my parents did their best to teach me how to tell the difference between right and wrong. This is just wrong.

Happy Valentine’s Day

To my Valentine.

2/18 UPDATE: The original video that I found for you was a really beautiful rendition of this song by Shania with Alison Kraus and Union Station. Unfortuntely, YouTube took it down, so I had to replace it with this somewhat wierdly inappropriate performance. But despite the strangeness of the last chorus in this performance, this song always makes me think of you and gives me that nice warm feeling.

Montauk Flight

A couple of friends and I took a flight to Montauk today. I had to sit in the back seat of our flying club’s 1967 Arrow and there was nowhere to plug in my headset so I listened to Thom Hartmann on my iPod and shot videos.

Oscar Ballots Are In

I sent in my Oscar ballot this morning. Here are my picks:

Picture: The Departed
Actor: Forrest Whittaker – The Last King Of Scotland
Actress: Helen Mirren – The Queen
Director: Martin Scorcese – The Departed
Supporting Actor: Mark Wahlberg – The Departed
Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson – Dreamgirls
Animated Feature: Happy Feet
Art Direction: Pan’s Labyrinth
Cinematography: Pan’s Labyrinth
Costume Design: Marie Antoinette
Film Editing: The Departed
Makeup: Apocalypto
Original Score: Notes On A Scandal
Sound Editing: Pirates Of The Caribbean
Sound Mixing: Blood Diamond
Visual Effects: Pirates Of The Caribbean
Adapted Screenplay: The Departed
Original Screenplay: Pan’s Labyrinth
Song: Love You I do – Dreamgirls

Well, there you have it. I wasn’t able to vote for Documentary because Academy Rules require that all fims be seen in order to vote, and I wasn’t able to get to all of the screenings. If I had been able to vote I would have voted for An Inconvenient Truth.

New Blog Site

Well I’ve just moved my old Progressive Reaction blog over here to WordPress and it was easy as pie. Hopefully this will be easier to deal with than Blogger was.

I don’t expect that I will go back and categorize any of the old posts, so they will all show up under Uncatagorized, but this host will make categorizing posts much easier.

Also the old blog was almost exclusively political, but I hope to be diversifying the topics that I write about to include some of the other things that are important to me such as motion pictures and aviation.

Enjoy…

ST

Peace Train

This seems to be the week for emotionally charged videos. I should mention that I also learned of the death of an old friend, so that adds to the sadness.

Seeing this video also led me to find Yusuf Islam on the web. I’m glad to see that he is still active.

Scott McKenzie – San Francisco

I’ve always loved this song, and I have never gotten tired of listening to it. Being in Washington this weekend for the peace rally really brought it all back to me.