GringoPotpourri

Oscar 2023-24 – Predicting the Winners

Those of you who’ve been following this blog for several years know that I consider myself something of a movie buff. Furthermore – and at the risk of sounding like a braggart – I historically have a knack for predicting Oscar winners each February or March. It has been a few years since I posted anything on the subject, but since I found myself with a bit of extra time this year while another writing project languished, I thought I’d wax prophetic on this year’s Oscar nominees.

My Year in Review

Once again, it’s that time of year when I find myself busy with any variety of tasks. For 2023, these tasks include holiday shopping, job searching, calendar making, book publishing, novel writing, and the usual year-end self-reflecting.

2023 was an interesting year, neither my best nor my worst. In some ways, I treaded water, but in others, I achieved important goals. Here is a summary:

A Rare Gringo Sighting

When last we spoke, I was going on six weeks of having lost my job and was ~500 pages deep into writing my first novel. I wrote about visiting family in Memphis, TN, about road trips to Savannah, GA and Hilton Head Island, SC, and about hikes taken along the Blue Ridge National Parkway, NC. Though less than a year has passed since that post, it seems like yesterday and ages ago at the same time.

Where the Heck Has the Gringo Been?!?!

¡Felices fiestas! Happy Holidays! It has nine months since my last blog post, and while I don’t exactly get a surplus of messages asking for more content, I figured those of you who consider yourself Loyal Readers may wonder what the heck I’ve been up to. The answer – that I’ve been up to quite a lot but also not much at all – may seem contradictory, so bear with me as I explain.

Oscar 2021-22 – predicting the winners

Apologies, Loyal Reader – it’s been a while. Seven months, in fact, have passed since my last blog post. I had decided not to write my annual Oscars post this year, in favor of a where-have-I-been post that I still owe you. Alas, though, I was posting my thoughts about this year’s Oscar nominees in another forum, and as I jotted them down, there was enough content to simply paste into the WordPress format.

The 2020-21 Oscars ceremony was a lackluster affair. The host-less, COVID-distanced ceremony took place in LA’s Union Station. “Nomadland” was the expected winner, but the show’s producers decided to save Best Actress and Actor for the end, thinking that “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” co-stars Viola Davis and (the late) Chadwick Boseman would win top honors. As presenters Rami Malek and Olivia Colman read off the names of Frances McDormand (for “Nomadland”) and Anthony Hopkins (for “The Father”), jaws dropped. Hopkins wasn’t even present to accept his statuette, and the show ended on an anticlimactic note.

This year, mask mandates have been withdrawn and the show returns to the Kodak Theater. The Academy has also reinstated the fixed number of Best Picture nominees at ten; the slate of nominated films this year is diverse, ranging from a Guillermo del Toro-directed period noir (“Nightmare Alley”); to a don’t-let-anyone-deny-your-dreams sports drama (“King Richard”); to a story about the hearing-enabled Child of Deaf Adults, or “CODA;” to a cerebral, subtitled play-within-a-movie drama filmed in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, English, and Korean Sign Language (“Drive My Car”); to a chaste, 1970’s romantic comedy (“Licorice Pizza”); to an epic about otherworldly spice warfare and indentured servitude (“Dune”); to a child’s-eye-view of life in 1970’s “Belfast;” to a deconstruction of the toxic western (“The Power of the Dog”); to a colorful musical as interpreted by Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story’); to, finally, a satire of global warming (“Don’t Look Up” – a film that I absolutely hated).

The nomination tally is as follows: “Power of the Dog” with 12 nominations, followed by “Dune” with ten and “West Side Story” with seven. Who shall win? Find out below!

One Week in Savannah

It is early September as I write this, more than 19 months into a pandemic that, in its earliest days, I had written off as something overhyped, much like SARs and Bird Flu were two decades prior. Of course, there is no such thing as overhyping a global catastrophe that has taken over 4.5 million lives so far (source as of 9/3/21: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/).

Now, I am, if anything, more concerned than the average American that the numbers aren’t stabilizing quickly enough; the Delta variant is spreading at an alarming rate, and we have only just reached 70% of Americans with at least one dose of the vaccine. I predict that we’ll keep theme parks and campgrounds open until Fall Break and that afterwards, restaurants, museums, and other attractions will slowly re-shutter and mask mandates will slowly re-appear. I hope I’m wrong once again, but this time I think I will be right.

Despite lingering coronavirus concerns, I did manage to take one vacation this year; it was one that had gotten postponed 12 months for obvious reasons, and that fell into near-perfect weather.

Last April, I visited Savannah, Georgia!

Oscar 2020-21 – predicting the winners

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is reinventing the wheel this year when it comes to their annual Academy Awards ceremony. For one thing, being 14 months into a global pandemic has changed the presenting space. I am told that the Dolby Theater will still be used, but that downtown L.A.’s Union Station will be another location as well, with nominees and a single guest apiece in attendance, but no seat-fillers or anyone else.

For another thing, the “Oscars so white” outcry that popped after the crop of nominees from 2019 produced just a single major-category nominee of color (Cynthia Erivo of “Harriet”), eligible best picture nominees (as few as five films and as many as ten) must meet at least two of the following criteria: have a major character be handicapped, LGBTQ, or a racial minority (or have over 30% of the cast be female), and have a storyline revolving around one or more of the aforementioned subjects; have at least two of the top production staff members involved in the film’s production fit the above ethnic/physical/gender criteria; offer internships and apprenticeships to the above-mentioned persons, as well as job opportunities for them in below-the-line roles; and have a marketing and distribution staff that includes representatives from the above group. (Specifics can be found here).

Finally – and for the third year in a row – the event will be sans host. I have little doubt that the show will still near the four-hour mark, even with the Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing categories being merged int one. Having multiple venues (including locations abroad for overseas nominees to appear as well) will surely carry with it some technical challenges…and there are always surprises, from the streaker of 1974 who appeared behind a game David Niven; to the occasional tie (in 1968, Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn shared Best Actress honors, for “Funny Girl” and “The Lion in Winter,” respectively); to Faye Dunaway announcing “La La Land” as the Best Picture winner in 2017, only for it to be retracted in favor of “Moonlight.” What a night that was!

This year, “Mank” leads the pack with 10 nominations, followed by “The Father,” “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Minari,” “Nomadland,” “Sound of Metal,” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” with six nods apiece? Which films will win? Read on!

Bidding Adieu to 2020

What a year it has been! (And I don’t mean that as a compliment.) Indeed, if I were to call 2020 a “crazy year,” that would be, by most accounts, an understatement. From COVID-19, cases of which continue to climb as news of rival vaccines suggest that hope is in the not-so-distant horizons; to seemingly-endless California wildfires; to dual hurricanes ravaging the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua; to meth gators, murder hornets, and giant Saharan dust clouds – and to one exhausting presidential election in which the candidate that officially lost still refuses to concede – it seems that planet Earth has been on its collective toes since the year began.

Election 2020: All Bets Are Off

Eight years ago, I began this blog as wide-eyed expat who had just arrived in Mexico City. While the occasional post might have been about movies, family members back in the U.S., or travel memories to other parts of the world, the general theme was about my new life abroad – settling in, taking in the sights, navigating my blossoming relationship with a CDMX local, etc. Content was added, on average, once or twice a week.

Fast forward to 2020, the year to end of all years, and I hardly write at all, and just once about Mexico City. I am finishing up six years of Tennessee residency, and wondering what my employer’s recent announcement, that our Knoxville office will be permanently closing next year and all employees in it remaining 100% virtual, means in terms of remote living possibilities should a fish-out-of-water such as myself want to move to a different city.

First things first, though: we have an election to contend with…and it is sure to be a doozy. With a general sense of anxiety in the air, with a pandemic that seems to be rising in new cases, with a passionate #BLM movement that has staked some equally-passionate flames on the other side of the aisle, I feel that the stakes have never been higher.
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Remembering Chadwick Boseman

Chadwick Boseman, the 43-year-old rising star of such films as “42,” “Get on Up,” and Marvel’s “Black Panther,” has died. The cause: colon cancer. The reaction: stunned silence.

The South Carolina-born Boseman, who leaves behind a wife but no children, was poised for superstardom. He headlined the highest-grossing film of 2018 (“Black Panther”) and played real life figures Jackie Robinson (“42”), James Brown “Get on Up,” and Thurgood Marshall (“Marshall”).

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