Friday, December 22, 2006

All I want for Christmas...

The Ranten Raven says "Tag" and now I'm "It".
As part of this Christmas meme I'm supposed to announce three things that I want for Christmas and three things I do not want for Christmas.

Wow. This is hard. I have an Amazon.com wish list linked on this page, but that's not any fun.
Let's see...

First, I want to see my kids' faces light up on Christmas morning. That's the best gift any parent could ask for.

Second, I got an early Christmas present (and an unexpected one) on Dec. 12 when Ciro Rodriguez beat Henry Bonilla for the District 23 Congressional seat. So I'm going to count that.

And third, I want New Line Cinema to announce that Peter Jackson will direct the motion picture version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit." (New Line has been stupidly threatening recently to hand the project to someone else because of a financial dispute with Jackson over the LOTR pictures.)

As for things I don't want for Christmas:

I don't want a "surge" of troops going into Iraq early next year.

I don't want the Aggies to be outscored at the Holiday Bowl.

And I don't want a yellow 2007 Chevy Corvette. I mean, come on. Yellow? Yuck!

OK, that's it. And the next person to be hit with this meme will be..........

Robert Shearer at Beginner's Mind

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Golden (Yawn) Globes

Usually at this time of the year I’m excited about the upcoming Academy Awards nominations. But lately, with two young kids at home, I just haven’t been able to keep up. I haven’t even seen any of the Oscar-nominated films from last year yet.
In fact, of all the films nominated for any award last year, I’ve seen six of them:
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire;
King Kong;
Batman Begins;
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory;
Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith;
War of the Worlds

But I thought last year’s awards were kind of a bust anyway. The heavy favorite going into the ceremony was a film I cared nothing about (Brokeback Mountain) and it was upset at the last minute by a film which I cared even less about (Crash).

Now the Golden Globe nominations have come out and I barely have any reaction to them at all. I’ve seen exactly two of all the films nominated for anything:
Cars;
The Da Vinci Code

Of the films that were nominated I’m somewhat interested in seeing The Departed, Scorcese’s latest crime drama, and I’m intrigued by Bobby, the RFK flik by Emilio Estevez. But I had not even heard of Babel, which got the most nominations.
Borat got a nod in the comedy section and I am thinking I will see that movie eventually, although I’m wary because I’m not a fan of gross-out humor and that could spoil the picture for me. But nothing much else catches my fancy at this point.
Oh well. At least I still have tons of movies to watch from last year, if I ever find the time.