The Oscars are imminent! And my vote is in. My hypothetical vote, that is. Do you know how the voting for best picture works this time? The Academy is using instant run-off voting, which means that every voter writes down a list of the nominated films in their order of preference, all the number one slots are compared, and the worst loser gets eliminated from the running. All the ballots with the worst loser at number one then have to run with their second favourite choice, and the first movie to get a clear majority wins. So here’s my vote:

1. Inglorious Basterds – A true work of art. Every scene is a child of the cinematographic titans.

2. Up in the Air – Depressing and sprinkled with dark humour, it’s one I’ll remember.

3. District 9 – I love good satire and a fun story, if it hadn’t been quite so computer-gamey at the finish it would’ve grabbed my second place.

4. The Hurt Locker – Haven’t seen yet but as Centrebet’s favourite to win over Avatar with 1.75 to 2 odds, it gets my support right after the movies I have an emotional attachment to.

5. The Blind Side – Just know Sandra Bullock’s in it.

6. Up – A friend assures me that Finding Nemo was better.

7. A Serious Man – Meh.

8. An Education – Didn’t enjoy the write-up so I watched Crazy Heart instead last Saturday.

9. Precious – I didn’t like the poster.

10. Avatar – My strategic vote. I enjoyed watching it in 3D for the effects, but after someone told me it was the best movie they’d seen all year I reacted violently and haven’t cooled since.

I’d also vote Jeff Bridges in for Best Actor (with Clooney as my second-favourite) but since the Dude is tipped to win, and there’s no more run-off voting, I can leave it at that.

When I heard that Nicolas Chartier had been banned from attending the 82^nd annual Academy Awards for negative campaigning in order to promote the film “The Hurt Locker” (which he co-produced), I was outraged. I cannot stand unfairness and corruption. You may then ask why I would choose to live in South Africa, but that is neither here nor there. The point is, when I discovered the nature of Chartier’s unfair promotion, I found myself saluting him on the inside and I now hope that The Hurt Locker takes home the coveted Best Picture Oscar, despite the fact that I haven’t seen it. Why the sudden change of heart? Turns out he was emailing people on the decision committee and dogging another movie. He made a completely unambiguous reference to a “500 million dollar film”… Avatar.

Now, there is a 90% chance that you, the reader, thought that Avatar was the most wonderful film that you have ever seen. If you form part of the 10% that actually have a brain, then you may agree with me. Don’t get me wrong, Avatar was enjoyable. A fun watch. Great effects. But that’s where it ends. The acting was atrocious. The storyline was abysmal. And please don’t get me started on the script. “I see you”. Gag. Surely the “Best Picture” of 2009 should be a combination of superb storyline, acting and script? Surely the special effects should be secondary to the true substance of the film? I feel as though Avatar puts audiences into a sort-of trance. It’s as though most human beings (with the exception of the few who are immune) become so spellbound by the beautiful images on-screen, that they forget to be even remotely critical of the aspects that make a movie truly spectacular.

So I am left feeling remarkably pro-Chartier, despite the fact that he has probably ruined his movie’s chances of taking home the Oscar. People will probably vote against him purely on principal. But it would be a nice slap in the face if James Cameron’s ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, who directed The Hurt Locker, could squeeze in front of him and take home Best Director. As for Best Picture, I will be behind… well, I don’t care. As Scottish football fans support “Anyone But England”, I think I’m going to start an “Anything But Avatar” campaign for tomorrow night.

Egoli – Place of Gold has been around for as long as I can remember which, excepting a few pre-washing-the-blood-off-my-hands gaps, is about 1992. It’s gone now. (I’ve already seen a tearfully produced YouTube video, complete with nostalgic music and whatisname’s hilarious suicide scene.) It ended with execs whimpering about future ratings and Franz Marx saying he needs a holiday, despite the best efforts of a poorly-attended (and misplaced) petition to save it. My view: all good things – and, in Egoli’s case, mediocre things on an ever-steeper decline – must come to an end.

But don’t think I’m being unfair! Or, if I’m being unfair, don’t think I do so without adequate Egoli-exposure. I’ve seen many more episodes than the average tween and if you’ll step into the home life of young Kyle for a moment, you’ll find out why…

Supper is at 6pm and because Gran cooks it’s regular as clockwork. Food’s finished by 6.30 when the funnies come on, like The Simpsons, and this is enough to keep young, chubby Kyle firmly rooted in his beanbag all the way through SA’s favourite Open Time soapie. Everybody watches even though only one person falls into the “women of all nationalities between the ages of 25 and 45, with middle or upper incomes” core audience. As the boy grew in height and shrunk in girth, the family’s viewing patterns slowly evolved from watching every single bloody episode to every second one, to eventually replacing it with Binnelanders entirely when the slots swapped last year. So I – yes I – somehow enjoined with the most ardent fans, remember when Stephen was originally a druggy, when Rex became a baron, and when Jane was trampled by a horse and required plastic surgery to change her from Catriona Andrew to Corine du Toit.

“OH Thank the Gods for cancelling that fracking show!” – I agree with this post on MyBroadband because, for all the suppers Egoli and I have shared, Darryl Desmarais (Stephen Edwards) is still the worst actor I have ever seen, Egoli’s conflict scenes still always finish in mid air; and because they’ve never had hot actresses, and because I love The Simpsons and a comedy timeslot must be freed, and because Binnelanders has the genuinely evil At Koster, and…! Yes, thank the Gods for cancelling that fracking show.

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to act like a complete cliché and watch Valentine’s Day… on Valentine’s Day…with my boyfriend (poor thing). In hindsight, I should have realised that this was a mistake. The couples (ok, women) sitting around me were incessantly ooh-ing and ah-ing at the screen, and the movie just wasn’t very good.

I was a little disappointed because I’m a big fan of all-star ensemble-cast movies like Love Actually and He’s Just Not That Into You (which I happened to watch last Valentine’s Day. What is wrong with me?). And Valentine’s Day includes a lot of big names: Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Queen Latifa, Anne Hathaway, Topher Grace, Jamie Foxx, Julia Roberts, Patrick Dempsey (a true A-list celebrity), Bradley Cooper, Taylor Swift, that hideous guy from Twilight that Twilight fans seem to want to jizz all over for some reason, and many more that I can’t remember because their performances were just not that memorable.

So, what exactly was wrong with the movie? For starters, there wasn’t any character development, so I wasn’t really all that concerned about how things would turn out. I honestly couldn’t have cared less if someone had killed Ashton Kutcher with a chainsaw as he arrived at the airport to stop Jennifer Garner from leaving. It might have improved the storyline somewhat if they had. And the director, Garry Marshall of “The Other Sister” fame (I say this because it is literally the only other movie on his IMDb page that I recognise) tried, and failed, to create even the slightest bit of chemistry between Jessica Biel and Jamie Fox. It felt unbelievably contrived and awkward. When they finally kissed I felt my popcorn/Slush Puppy mix coming back up. And surprisingly, the only true chemistry that I felt throughout the entire movie was between Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper, whose character turned out to be gay… with Mc Steamy.

Now I’m not going to be completely negative. Taylor Swift’s ditsy airhead character was pretty darn funny.

So, now that I’ve given you a list of the pros and cons, you can decide for yourself whether the movie’s worth watching.

So here I sit, shoes shined, tie tied and sports jacket sported, in celebration of a favourite holiday: International Suit-Up Day. I’m not a huge fan of How I Met Your Mother – I’ve seen a few episodes and found them pretty chortle-worthy but it seems too much to me like Friends for a new generation, and I’ve been through that series’ highs and lows… Just don’t think my heart has the verve for another sitcom saga. Yet when Barney, played by my beloved Neil Patrick Harris, says “Suit up!” then I have a desperate need to comply.

My compulsion goes beyond simple obedience to NPH, I think, and has its roots deeper within my psyche. There’s a network of conservative neurons screaming to have the suit restored to its status as everyday business-wear. Ever since the teasing after hair started growing on my legs in primary school and the realisation I’d never have swimmer’s shoulders, my suit has been a stylish haven for my self-esteem. Blame the kids, blame me for never taking up swimming, blame my ancestors for coupling with wolves – but my self-image is sufficiently stuck to my clothing that I just wish I could don a suit no matter the occasion or the weather. And, when told in my last job interview that dressing in a suit and tie was overdoing it, I nearly cried. Damn you, food service industry.

I saw the new Harry Potter movie the other night, and while it was mostly okay, I was reminded of something that has always annoyed me about the Harry Potter books and movies. This is the game of Quidditch: the stupidest fictional sport ever devised.

The reason Quidditch is so stupid is, of course, the presence of the Golden Snitch. Imagine how this concept would work in a real sport. Imagine a game of Premier League football, except that somewhere on the pitch, someone has hidden a “Golden Penny”. And on each team, there is one player who doesn’t kick the ball, and whose job is instead to walk around with a metal detector like a dirty hippy on a beach, trying to find the Golden Penny. When they do, two things happen:

1. The game ends. So basically, sometimes the game lasts five minutes, sometimes it lasts for two days. Random!

2. Whichever team finds the Penny gets awarded 15 goals, so 99% of the time they win the game instantly.

Who would watch such a sport? Who would play it? It would be an exercise in frustration. Your team could play the most brilliant game of football ever, be up 5-0 at the end of 90 minutes, and then still lose because five seconds later the other team’s designated hippy gets lucky and finds the stupid Penny. This is not the sort of thing that will attract mass audiences and TV sponsorships.

So why did JK Rowling invent such a nonsensical sport in the first place? As far as I can tell, because she was lazy. She wants us to think of think of Harry Potter as some sort of bad-ass “chosen one” (in the great literary tradition of characters like Luke Skywalker, Neo and Jesus), but she also makes it clear Harry is a mediocre wizard who isn’t half as powerful as Hermione, and most of the time only beats Voldemort by means of dumb luck. So she creates the game of Quidditch, in order to show that Harry is actually an autistic savant with amazing hidden talents. And then (in blatant violation of the whole concept of a team sport), she designs the entire game around a system of scoring that will allow Harry, and Harry alone, to get the glory of winning every single match. So basically, the whole game of Quidditch is just one big masturbation session for Harry Potter, because JK Rowling was too lazy to come up with another way of showing how awesome he is.

This weekend, I had the misfortune of watching The Haunting in Connecticut. Instead of trying to explain just how horrible this movie is, I shall provide a succinct summary of the plot in five easy steps, and let you decide for yourself:

1. The words “Based On A True Story” flash on the screen. Uh-oh. Meet the family: Mom, Alcoholic Dad, Teenage Kid With Cancer (aka. Beaver from Veronica Mars), Attractive Sister, and Random Kids Who Aren’t Important. The whole family is poor because they have to have to pay for Cancer Kid’s cancer treatments, so they move into a big scary house that used to be a funeral home. For some reason, Cancer Kid decides it would be a good idea to make the torture chamber/room where they used to chop up dead bodies into his bedroom.

2. Cancer Kid sees a ghost and has visions. Him and Attractive Sister find some photos of weird shit. They do research (on a microfiche reader!) and find out that the house used to be owned by a crazy man. Presumably, the existence of the torture chamber did not give this away already. Cancer Kid says creepy nursery rhymes, and there are lots of scenes where loud music alternates with silence, lights flicker, and images flash on the screen. This is all very scary. At least, it would be if you could put the movie in a time machine and send it back to 1985, before everyone had seen these cheap scare techniques in hundreds of other movies.

3. Cancer Kid and Attractive Sister meet a creepy man who knows about ghosts, and comes across like he should probably be on the National Sex Offender Registry. At this point, I am so bored that I start checking my email on cellphone. The kids invite Creepy Ghost Man over to exorcise the ghost. The house goes wild, with doors slamming and lights exploding, just like in Poltergeist and every other haunted house movie ever made. For some reason, the whole family sits there huddling in terror instead of just walking the fuck out the front door, which is wide open. Yay, Creepy Ghost Man completes the exorcism! Nobody dies. The End!!! OR IS IT???

4. No!!! Creepy Ghost Man has made a huge mistake. There are hundreds of other ghosts in the house. The ghost he got rid of was actually a good ghost, that had been protecting them from the other ghosts. Somehow he missed this. He is clearly not a very good GhostBuster.

5. Cancer Kid makes a big fire to burn down the house. Then, instead of leaving, he just sits down in the middle of the burning building and waits to die like a retard. Mom rushes in to save him. She finds him, and then, amazingly, she also sits down with him and waits for death. Is everyone in this family terminally stupid? However, a fireman saves both of them, because he is not stupid and understands that a burning building is something one should try to leave. In the end, nobody dies in this movie at all. Not even Creepy Ghost Man, who is more expendable than a red-shirted ensign in Star Trek. Post-script informs us that the ghosts are gone and Cancer Kid does not die of cancer. The End.

I went to see Transformers, the new one, last night and I am not happy. I would like to write a lengthier article on it, but I need some time to gather my thoughts.

Let me just briefly say one thing: Michael Bay. Why did I let my friend Mikhail convince me to watch another Michael Bay movie? Maybe because I crave so much to feel included? I don’t know.

In any event, the new Transformers was the same as the old Transformers, except longer, with more explosions.

If you are one of the screen writers of this film and happen to be reading this, shame on you. Have you no pride? How can you look yourself in the mirror in the morning? You should commit suicide at once, as you have probably done so for your career already.

Weird Al’s been around for ages, but his style’s been to spoof directly. When you take an existing song and replace the lyrics with something funny, you’re creating a way for yourself to be a comedian but you’re not creating a genre. Imagine a Weird Al section of your music store and how its bands would compete: they’d have to fight for unspoiled songs, pounce on ripe music first, or go head-to-head with someone else’s spoof. Impossible, it’s a niche, very unmarketplacey.

Musical feature films from a few years ago like Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd proved that modern humans could actually follow musicals even if they weren’t avid theatregoers. I’d even hazard that South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut and Team America: World Police demonstrated that if you don’t have enough material to fill ninety minutes you can actually improve the quality of a movie by adding hilarious songs like Pearl Harbour. As crazy as it sounds, people of today might have learnt that to get value from some songs they should listen to the lyrics. And once you open Pandora’s music box of not just humming and mumbling along to a tune, then bands like Flight of the Conchords and The Lonely Island have a helluva lot to offer.

Ideally, a comedy band provides three things… It churns out good-quality, catchy songs (complete with videos born of a reasonable production budget), slap-your-grandmother funny lyrics (even if they’re absurd), and a bit o’ satire. Absurdity and serious satire make charming bedfellows, as in The Lonely Island’s “Like a Boss” or Dr Horrible’s “With My Freeze Ray”. …Or that’s what I tell people to convince them that I still have class when they ask me why I find Andy Samberg having rough sex with a giant fish so entertaining.