proserpina65

Great holy cow! We beat City! At the Etihad!

I don't entirely disagree with you, but I seem to remember that her last DD was in a category which would've been a real stinker for me; had I been betting on that one, I probably wouldn't have wagered much either, in the vague hope that FJ would be great for me and bad for the champion. Which in the case of last night's game, would've been the way to go for me.

I started with trying to think of what company might sell such different things, which made me say "auction house", and since Christie's and Sotheby's are the biggest auction houses in the world, they seemed obvious to me. But it probably helps that I went to a couple of art auctions when I was studying in London. At a different auction house, but still, kept the idea in my little gray cells.

I only knew that Keats had spent time in Rome because an episode of the Amazing Race referenced him having lived near the Spanish Steps; I wasn't sure whether or not he died there. Still, while I knew that Shelley had died in Italy, I was pretty sure that he was nowhere near Rome when he died. So Keats was my lucky guess.

Billie Piper was not attractive/sexy/talented enough to pull off the role of Belle in Secret Diary of a Call Girl. She looked and acted like a little girl playing dress-up. That said, I've watched the second episode at least a dozen times because I think the actor playing the author she met at the swingers' party is totally sex on legs, and if I'd been her, I so would've blown off the sister in labor to go home with him and his wife.

I tried with Gotham because I adore Sean Pertwee. I ended up fast-forwarding through any scene w/o him in the first episode, and then I taped over the second without ever watching it. I find my life perfectly complete sans Gotham.

See, that one I wouldn't agree with. I loved Shakespeare in Love, and while I can admire the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, I don't think the rest of it comes even close to Oscar-level quality. As for the other two, I liked The English Patient and was fine with its win; I haven't seen Unforgiven. That's the beauty of arguing about it, though, because it's all subjective. Hell, I know people who think Adam Sandler films are the height of comedic quality.

Oops! Thanks, I'll fix it. Which is why I rarely get all that worked up about Oscar 'snubs' - if I haven't seen a film, I can't really say that X deserved a nomination and Y didn't. I save my outrage (and even that's vasting overstating it) for things like Titanic winning Best Picture instead of L.A. Confidential, because I've seen both of them and can judge the relative quality of each.

There are a lot of episodes I really enjoy, but my absolute favorite is The Barbarian Sublimination. For me, nothing beats Penny with Cheetos in her hair and Sheldon's lunchroom phone number confusion.

I grew up in a house with one bathroom for 5 people. (And each child didn't have their own bedroom - the horror!) If that's what you can afford, you get used to it and you work out a schedule. That said, when I bought my house, a second bathroom/half-bath was an absolute must on my list, and I live alone. Personally I just find this show so fake. It's fairly obvious that most of the homeowners aren't going to really list their house right away because there's no way they'd get a good return that quickly on the money they've spent on the renovations. Knowing that generally makes me change the channel, although I will sometimes watch to see Hilary's finished product. I don't always like the open plan idea, but the finishes are usually quite attractive.

Okay, so I don't usually watch Beachfront Bargain Hunt, but did over the holidays because a couple of episodes were in the Grand Strand area where I used to vacation. In the one centered around North Myrtle Beach, I recognized every single condo building they visited. The condo they bought was actually in Cherry Grove Beach (my vacation spot for 5 years); the resort they moved into was built partly on the site of what was a very good local restaurant, the closure of which deeply saddened me at the time.

It's got to do with how the nominating process is done. For Best Picture, all Academy members are permitted to submit a ballot, but for other categories, only members of that particular branch get to submit ballots. And for some categories (Best Documentary for example), the requirements are even more strict. So a film could be very popular with Academy members overall, but not enough with individual branches, and vice versa.

For me, the only real disappointments were no Best Actor nomination for Timothy Spall and no Best Foreign Film nomination for Force Majeure. The rest were not entirely unexpected. I think it bears remembering that all eligible members of the Academy get to submit ballots for Best Picture, but all the other ballots require that voters be members of that particular branch (only directors get to submit ballots for Best Director, only writers get to submit for the screenplay categories), and some of the categories have even more stringent requirements (the documentary categories for example). So while overall, more Academy members might think a film worthy of a Best Picture nomination, only the directors are picking those nominees, hence some directors getting nominated when their films don't; this is why the various Guild awards are often more indicative of who will be nominated than something like the Golden Globes. Now, I won't deny that the overall age/gender/racial makeup of Academy membership probably does have an influence on the process, but it can get pretty complicated, and there are other factors involved.

It's a federal holiday, which means all federal government offices are closed, and state and local offices generally follow suit; for awhile Arizona resisted doing so but even it does now, I think. Private businesses have that option, since, yes, it is a national holiday (just like Labor Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, etc.) but no private company is legally required to close for any national holiday. Plus, anything retail is going to stay open to try and make money. Corporations like the fictional one where Dre works would make that decision for themselves. Hey, Thanksgiving is a national holiday, but non-government businesses don't have to give it as a holiday either.

I couldn't figure out what possessed him to do that. I wouldn't have bet a dime on the category myself. Although I did get the answer right, but only because I know it has a song about Gary, Indiana, and I thought Iowa was next to Indiana. Which it isn't, I see upon checking an actual map. (Yeah, Midwest geography isn't my best category, either.)

I was extremely glad that I taped it rather than watching it live because I saw one of the singing promos and fast-forwarded through the rest. That said, although I could do with less singing (yeah, I know, what did I expect?), I loved this. As someone said earlier, it was like When Things Were Rotten with songs. Timothy Ormundson is hysterical and so, to my great surprise, is Vinnie Jones.

Best acquisition Arsene's made in ages. He is a beast.

In this case, yes, it does seem to be distracting from the movie, if so much of the talk about it concerns historical inaccuracies. I won't argue that this isn't something of a double-standard, and that certainly some of the reason has to do with the state of racial relations in our society. However, when it has become this big of a distraction from the message of the film, it strikes me as a mis-step on the part of the filmmaker. I'm not going to belabor my point, and I will state that my view on the subject comes from the perspective of someone who often struggles with the potential conflict between good storytelling and faithfulness to historical accuracy, so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Quetzalcoatal just made me go to Aztecs and that meant Mexico, which made me answer 'turquoise' even though I know turquoise isn't a beryl. Maybe I read the clue wrong, because nothing made me think of Brazil at all. But yes, it is famous for emeralds. The FJ was easy for me because I only know of one famous Brit who died in a motorcycle crash and I've seen Lawrence of Arabia, so I got that one right away. Interesting that it was his death which prompted the development of the motorcycle helmet - who said Jeopardy wasn't educational. I loved The Who as a category, and got every answer before Alex had finished reading the clue; my best friend (who is a huge Who fan) would be so proud. But really, no one got the Fillmore West?

Chris Hemsworth is the only one of the currently hot Chrises who even registers for me, although I wouldn't have said that before I saw him in Rush, as superhero movies do not appeal to me at all. The rest? Meh.

From an article in the Hollywood Reporter: "The film even suggests, even if it doesn’t explicitly state it, that Johnson was so frustrated by King that he gave FBI director J. Edgar Hoover a signal to use his secret recordings to attempt to undermine King’s marriage." Given that there's no historical evidence of this, and the fact that it's a significant part of the discussion which is accused of distracting from the film's message (at least among those whose comments I've heard/read elsewhere), why bother to include the suggestion? What was the point? I'm not saying that a large number of those complaining about the film's depiction of Johnson and his actions wouldn't be complaining anyway, but this element seems to be an unnecessary distraction and doesn't seem to serve a useful purpose within the film's narrative.

Upon further investigation, I stand corrected, although it does look like most films nominated for BAFTAs in recent years were released in the UK before the end of the year. Still, information is power. Thanks. :-)

Eh, not really buying it myself. He easily could've waited long enough to make sure the anaphylactic shock killed the guy before cleaning up any evidence of him being there and driving away. Even the fire was too convoluted. For me, the ending was ridiculous.

Maybe it was one packet of condoms. (Or would they still have been called French letters in the 20s?)

I actually liked that Mary wasn't taking the chance of leaving birth control up to the man. But why she made Anna buy it for her was beyond me. Mary could've gone into a shop in Liverpool, or some town closer to Liverpool where no one knew her, wearing her own wedding ring, given the same reason that Anna had to use, and there wouldn't have been a problem. I'm sure someone will find out about Anna buying birth control and it will get back to Bates, blowing up in Anna's face in the most catastrophic way possible. Because that's how things roll with the Bateses. (Both of whom I do still like, btw.) I'm going with one (or both) of them is infertile until proven otherwise.