Ntuple Indemnity

This is going to be a summer to remember.

Preferential balloting is a godsend, though it really is a pity that when it was first being implemented over a year ago, Students’ Council didn’t have the basic mathematical common sense to realize that None Of The Above should not be eliminated as if it were any other candidate. However, the dreaded NOTA still has its more symbolic uses, and I see myself putting it ahead of a lot of contenders in this year’s Students’ Union election.

Without further ado, let us proceed to whom I will be selecting to lead next year’s SU and, if we are lucky, fall prey to the occasional nefarious prank.

President: It should be obvious from the title of this post that I endorse Mustafa Hirji. Out of all the candidates, he had the most credibility going into the campaign and the most raw matter coming out of it. He has the ambition to overhaul the SU in such a way that it can vie for long-term results. His breadth of knowledge concerning how the system works is unparalleled amongst his opponents. He has a plan, and he has a clue.

Coming second, third and fourth on my ballot in a permutation I have yet to decide are None Of The Above, Spanky the Wonder Elf and Alex Abboud. None Of The Above has run a strong and convincing campaign for President this year, especially given what most of the contenders ended up offering. Spanky, which only a few days ago I dubbed a joke campaign with an almost inimitable lameness, vindicated himself with a strong Myer Horowitz performance that reminded me of the Myer-only campaign for George W. Bushwhacker two years ago. (The lamest joke campaign this year is actually that of one Graham Lettner, but I’ll get to that.)

As for the rest of the non-Hirji candidates, most of whom have real initiatives but none of whom pose any meaningful change to the system itself, Alex Abboud is clearly the most credible. If we imagined for a moment that Mustafa were not running and I had to choose a status quo President with short-term ideas, Abboud would be the man. It does not surprise me that Wayne Poon’s campaign is all about outreach, student services, computers, and more computers; the frightening similarity to how Orientation tends to depict the SU’s focus cannot be accidental. A valiant effort, but limited in scope; on the other hand, that didn’t stop Mat Brechtel. Then there’s Danny Bennett, who doesn’t seem to know what the Students’ Union even does.

And then there’s Lettner, who has run an incredible campaign full of theatrics… and nothing else. Whether it be videos where he thinks he’s Rick Mercer, or crowd-pleasing wisecracks about Steve Smith Gateway letters at the Myer forum, Lettner has established an indisputable talent for talking a lot and saying absolutely nothing. If the Myer Horowitz were a public speech competition at a CUSID debate tournament, his performance would place. Clearly, he has an awesome campaign manager, and clearly, that campaign manager is working for the wrong guy. But if this is all Lettner has to offer, I have no qualms about putting him last, especially given that Bennett’s going to be out after the first ballot anyhow.

Dear reader – and I say this with the knowledge that this plea of mine is ultimately futile given that my regular audience originates primarily from the already decided hack circle – if you are considering voting Lettner in this election, I implore you to rethink. I implore you to remember that style without substance only goes as far as to get a lot of attention whilst achieving absolutely nothing tangible. Somewhere in a closet there’s a chicken suit that can attest to this.

VP Academic: I endorse None Of The Above, even though it is virtually impossible for Mathieu Johnson to lose an acclamation race given that you can expect uninformed voters to rubber-stamp him through. This was a tough decision. On one hand, Johnson is not incompetent in such a way that electing him will hurt students; on the other, bad posters and an incomprehensible one-point platform concerning Faculty Associations just don’t cut it. I think we can do better.

VP External: I would endorse Sara Katz, but she pulled out before campaigning started. It should send a message that I would endorse her without having even seen a platform. This is because the choice before me is either a rank incompetent who knows almost as little about his portfolio as Danny Bennett, or a woman full of knowledge, experience and ideas with whom I disagree about almost everything on a basic philosophical level and has a history of pushing the overly adversarial activism that the SU would do well to perform in moderation at most. In either case, I hope for a strong President to guide the VPX in the right direction next year, and that President is Mustafa Hirji. I am putting None Of The Above first, but given how it will likely be eliminated on the first ballot, I will err on the side of competence and begrudgingly endorse Samantha Power as my second pick. I cannot justify giving Tim Smith the dignity of anything higher than third.

VP Operations/Finance: Never mind that Jason Tobias is running uncontested – he’s proven himself to be a worthy candidate for this position, opposed or not. I wholeheartedly support him for this position with little further deliberation.

VP Student Life: Because Wayne Poon is running for President instead of here where he belongs, I am voting for Justin Kehoe without hesitation. He has the background, vision and enthusiasm to bring some life into what is rightly generally considered the odd man out of the five Executive positions. Carolyn Nowry can try again when she has those same traits at her disposal; unlike Smith and Bennett, she is a credible candidate who has done her homework, but she has the misfortune of running against a much better one.

Board of Governors Representative: Roman Kotovych is a hard double-act to follow, and neither of the candidates do the trick. However, both of them are competent and knowledgeable in their own ways, and this is not a race worth weeping about should I not get my way. That said, my vote is going to Shawna Pandya. As much as I admire Adam Cook’s record and what he brings to the Board, so much that I endorsed him for President last year, it worries me that the best reason he can come up with to vote for him over Shawna is that he’s better at “schmoozing”. While his performance as a coherent orator in this year’s campaign is a tremendous improvement on his implosion back in his Presidential run, this just isn’t good enough.

Health Plan Referendum: I will be voting No, thanks to the overwhelming evidence that the Health Plan basically amounts to paying a lot of money for nothing, and potentially paying more than that with each successive year. I’m frankly amazed that such a bad idea made it this far, but the blame for that lies squarely on an ineffective Students’ Council that lacked the sense to defeat it from the start.

The best moment of the Myer Horowitz forum, for those keeping score, was Chris Jones’ question to the Yes side of the referendum, which was something along the lines of: “Do you not agree that the alternative of catastrophic insurance coverage is better than your unsustainable, unaffordable, and unnecessary health plan?” Naturally, it was dodged.

Overall, I must agree with the prevalent sentiments that this year’s campaigns turned out to be terribly mediocre and didn’t live up to the expectations of the original candidates’ announcement – which, given fiascos like Johnson’s late entry in the VPA race, was already not that high a bar. But on Wednesday and Thursday, you still have a chance to draw something good from the experience and, metaphorically speaking, save Christmas. How? Vote Hirji.

As of this morning, it’s official: the formerly biennial National Scrabble Championship will now be held every year, effective immediately. This year, it’s being held in Reno, Nevada on 19-24 August; the main event has been shortened back to 28 games (New Orleans had 30), with a televised Division 1 final presumably subject to all the same ESPN regulations as usual. If I were to enter, I would be facing a similar field of competition as last year due to minimal fluctuation in my rating (albeit a slight recovery), though I wonder what turnout will be like on such relatively short notice.

15 March is going to be a very expensive day. Coming to the Nintendo DS is Yoshi’s Touch & Go, an intriguing side-scroller played entirely with the stylus. Then there’s Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for the GameCube, an even more intriguing side-scroller played entirely with a pair of bongo drums. Coming to DVD are The Incredibles and Series V and VI of Red Dwarf. Although many rightly consider the third and fourth seasons to be the pinnacle of the series, these seasons are not without their classic, must-have episodes; “Gunmen of the Apocalypse” in particular remains one of my favourites. After he left the show, Rob Grant worked a lot of the material in “Gunmen” into Backwards, singularly the best and most readable of the four spinoff novels – and that’s coming from someone on record as, on principle, one who dislikes spinoff novels. When it comes to the likes of Star Wars, “dislike” may even be a tad kind… but that’s a discussion for another day.

In general, all last-ditch campaigns to save cancelled television shows are futile experiments that would get ignored if they were ever noticed in the first place. I must say, though, that Enterprise fans are putting up an admirable fight; when they offer private donations in the million range, you know they’re serious.

I have yet to attend a single election forum, but Chris Samuel harnessed the power of wireless networking to deliver a live report from SUB Stage earlier today. On another note, next year’s candidates already have a hard act to follow: I find it hardly conceivable that someone could possibly run a joke campaign lamer than the pathetic showing put on by Spanky the Wonder Elf.

Finally, while I am reluctant to post endorsements until after the Myer Horowitz, consider me a decided voter. This is going to be a close race in statistics only; as early as it seems, I feel sufficiently informed to make a clear and possibly unwavering choice in every race. Stay tuned for the rationale; in the meantime, rest assured that posters were not the sole consideration.

So, how did I do for predictions? Passing on the two Documentary awards leaves 22 categories, of which I managed to guess 15; curiously, I underestimated The Aviator in the technical categories, yet I incorrectly pegged it for Best Picture. In the eight “majors” (Picture, Director, acting and screenplays) I got everything but Picture and to some extent Supporting Actor, though I was definitely fence-sitting when it came to Owen and Freeman.

In retrospect, as much as I enjoyed Million Dollar Baby, I do stand disappointed that Scorsese and The Aviator did not take home the top two. Once again, the Academy went for the safe, perhaps even slightly compensatory choice. Honestly, what does Martin Scorsese have to do to win an Oscar? But then one thinks of the usual stable of examples – Howard Hawks, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock – and quite frankly, this is the Academy’s loss.

The best acceptance speech of the evening was, without question, Jorge Drexler singing after winning for “Al Otro Lado Del Rio” – a deserving winner.

Film clips were by and large absent, and nowhere was this more noticeable than in the Animated Short category. Chris Landreth had to accept his award in the aisle instead of onstage, and I wonder if some technical budgets were slashed this year. Speaking of which, it has come to my attention that the National Film Board has Ryan available on its website for viewing online. Take fifteen minutes out of your busy schedule and watch it.

And that closes the book on 2004, minus any straggling films I did not catch, of which the most notable is Hotel Rwanda. But given that March consists of exactly one and only one new release that strikes me as interesting – Robots – I have plenty of time.

I want to discuss Oscars of a different sort: the Rainbow Oscars that are the centrepiece of the wacky film-spoofing video game Viewtiful Joe 2. Well, not the Rainbow Oscars themselves, but what you need to do to get them; as with most video games, it involves the systematic defeating of what a Campbellian mythologist would call “threshold guardians” – in vulgar terms, bosses.

The original Viewtiful Joe was, in terms of a niche GameCube action title that was somehow enough of a sleeper hit to be named the best game of 2003 by USA Today, legendary in many ways. As a 2D side-scrolling anime-styled beat-em-up in a market favouring photorealistic 3D environments, it was a daring and unique blend of old-school values and modern technology. What really made it stand out, though, was its rogue’s gallery. If I were to name the most exhilirating, albeit frustrating boss battles of the past five years, Viewtiful Joe would claim at least three of them.

One of the toughest challenges in the original Joe was the sixth chapter of seven, “The Magnificent Five.” Basically, it was a slap in the face of anyone who might have emerged from the first few boss battles scathed, but self-satisfied. This chapter pitted you against the Raging Stones, tougher versions of the first four bosses in the game in back-to-back succession with no saving or powering up in between. Not only did you have to beat them all over again, you had to do it cleanly and without taking a whole lot of pain, or start from the very beginning. Then you were rewarded with a duel against none other than Fire Leo, a nine-foot flaming beast in a volcanic cavern, who had a tendency to dispose of you in about ten seconds until you figured out how to exploit his weakness, after which he would dispose of you in the more gracious span of two minutes. On the standard Adults difficulty, Fire Leo dragged me to the “Game Over” screen kicking and screaming no less than thirty times. He gave my delicate piano hands cramps.

Viewtiful Joe 2 is in many ways as great a game as the original, boasting a selection of bosses that have a lot more personality – the squid-like mad scientist Dr. Cranken, for example, or Fire Leo’s brother Frost Tiger, a cool-as-ice samurai who punctuates his entrance with lyric poetry in the style of Basho. (The exception to the rule is the rocket-powered Egyptian sphinx Flinty Stone, who spends half his showdown asleep.) It also has a similar sixth chapter where you fight your way through iterations of four earlier bosses that move faster and take a lot more punishment before yielding. The problem is that the sequel, unlike its predecessor, is merciful; you get a chance to save and heal between every battle, which turns the entire exercise into a purely temporal endurance test as opposed to an attritional one. This is Viewtiful Joe, for crying out loud! I expect to be punished. Every point of damage should strike terror in my heart.

I should note that this is one of the few irritations in an otherwise phenomenal game that was sadly ignored when it was released in November (thanks to the blitz of Halo 2, Metroid Prime: Echoes, Half-Life 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and World of Warcraft), but I do find it a concern when such a fast-paced game repeats itself for such a long stretch. Really, though, if you have a GameCube, there is absolutely no excuse to not have the two Viewtiful Joe titles in your collection.

Still to come: a preview of film in what looks to be a busy 2005, and Students’ Union election coverage in tandem with the campaign season kickoff this morning. Disappointingly, both Katz and Bazin pulled out, leaving the Presidential race as the only one of interest.

I will preface this with that rare, hard-earned endorsement of a fellow blog; several in the immediate University of Alberta circle popped up earlier this week. There are few that completely win me over as a regular reader within the first two or three posts, but Lycée Stephen Potyondi is one of them. Now give the guy an audience as a sign of positive reinforcement so I don’t have to wait another month for his next substantial post.

As was the case last year, I will now proceed to offer my eleventh-hour endorsements and commentary on the golden statuettes to be awarded tonight.

Actor (Leading): Incredibly, Paul Giamatti got screwed out of a nomination for the second year in a row. Even judging only by American Splendor and Sideways, he has already established himself as the best everyman actor since the pre-superstardom Tom Hanks. The Academy has also always been loath to recognize Jim Carrey, even though Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine was probably his most engaging role since The Truman Show seven years ago. No matter; this year, the award should and will go to Jamie Foxx. His portrayal of Ray Charles in Ray was not just the most compelling performance of 2004 – it’s one that only comes about once every few years.

Actor (Supporting): Of the final selection, my personal preference is for Thomas Haden Church for his embodiment of testosterone gone awry in Sideways. Pundits are calling this a race between Clive Owen for Closer and Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar Baby; I did not see the former, and as for the latter, I think while Freeman portrayed a very interesting character, it was as much a typical Morgan Freeman performance much like how Clint Eastwood pulled off a typical aging post-Unforgiven Eastwood performance. It was very, very good, mind you, but almost a bit too constrained within the typical Freeman mould. On statistical grounds I predict Owen, but Freeman could take it just as easily.

Actress (Leading): Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby. Case closed, though an Eternal Sunshine upset by Kate Winslet would be awesome. It won’t happen, though, and given that I consider Swank’s performance in Baby to be worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of great movie boxers, this is hardly problematic. I did not see Vera Drake, but word is that Imelda Staunton is the closest in contention.

Actress (Supporting): Please, please, please give it to Cate Blanchett for being as perfect a Katharine Hepburn as you could imagine (aside from the distinctive Blanchett look) in The Aviator.

Animated Feature Film: What’s the thoroughly mediocre Shark Tale doing here instead of The Polar Express, which – while entirely a surface-level visual experience and not that great of a narrative – was, well, not irritating? As for the win, I think it’s pretty obvious where I stand. Shrek 2‘s box-office clout is the only worry here, but I find that Pixar will win the day this year whereas it did not with Monsters, Inc. back in 2001.

Art Direction: This category presents an incredible lineup, and one hardly notices that missing in action are Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and, more significantly, The Incredibles. I have never quite understood why animated films get no recognition here, but that may be partly because this prize rewards set construction just as much as it does concept art. As much as I love the lavish opera house in The Phantom of the Opera, I seriously think this should and will go to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I never posted a complete review of that film, but it really is a Brett Helquist illustration come to life, equal parts Gothic, Victorian, and vintage 1920s. Count Olaf’s tower, Aunt Josephine’s house on Lake Lachrymose – gorgeous to behold, and it’s a pity that the film did not achieve a similarly extravagant replication of the wit and substance of the source material.

Cinematography: Yet another strong category, though I favour Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is strangely absent here as it is from so many other categories. That aside, this should go to House of Flying Daggers, though none of the others can truly be ignored. In terms of light and colour, A Very Long Engagement presented itself as an older, darker Amélie bathed in yellow, and the end result is the same mix of beauty and melancholy as is present in the movie itself. One should not ignore that for better or for worse, this award will be consolation for two foreign releases that did not make it into the Foreign Language category.

Costume Design: Where’s The Phantom of the Opera? That said, give it to A Series of Unfortunate Events. The look of the film exceeded my expectations, even if the rest of it did not.

Directing: It is a crime, a crime, that Michel Gondry is not on the shortlist for his work in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; if you see it, you would understand. That said, I really think Scorsese should take home his first Directing Oscar for his breadth of imaginative acumen he displays in The Aviator. I can name shot after shot from that movie that I want to frame, and scene after scene that I envision I will cite in future cinematic discussions for some time to come. Gangs of New York sputtered and died in its final act; The Aviator didn’t. But all this aside, I just have a sinking feeling that Clint Eastwood – who, after all, some may feel was ignored last year for Mystic River (not me, as the real travesty in my mind would have been to ignore Peter Jackson) – is going to pull an upset here. That would be no surprise, either, as the intimacy of the character work in Million Dollar Baby is something to be treasured.

Documentary Feature: I’ll pass on this one, having seen none of the nominees, though two of them – Super Size Me and Tupac: Resurrection – have high profiles on their side. Not as high as, say, Fahrenheit 9/11, but its disqualification here was Michael Moore’s own doing.

Documentary Short Subject: Pass. They really need to start screening these once nominations are announced.

Film Editing: On one hand, we have Ray, with the lasting image of its record-label transitions and tactfully-inserted watery flashbacks. On the other, we have The Aviator, with its superimpositions over Howard Hughes films, spectacular aviation sequences and Hughes caressing Kate Hepburn one moment and his baby aircraft the next. I err on the side of the latter, and once again, bemoan the absence of Eternal Sunshine (and to a lesser extent, House of Flying Daggers).

Foreign Language Film: A Very Long Engagement was not in the running for deadline-related reasons, but there is absolutely no excuse for the absence of House of Flying Daggers; both would have been prime choices to take this one home. It will instead go to The Sea Inside.

Makeup: A Series of Unfortunate Events will take this one, once again for the work done with Jim Carrey as Count Olaf, which is every bit how I expected him to be handled. It is interesting that The Passion of the Christ essentially got a gore nomination, which is appropriate, because damn, it was gory.

Music (Score): Where’s Giacchino for The Incredibles? Where’s Williams for The Terminal? Where’s Rolfe Kent for Sideways? I think the score to Azkaban is easily Williams’ best and most original of the three, but traditionally, Williams only wins if he knocks one out of the park in comparison to his already impressive oeuvre, as he did with Schindler’s List. Kaczmarek delivered some very gentle, sentimental incidental music for Finding Neverland, and will likely win. I quite enjoyed Thomas Newman’s work in A Series of Unfortunate Events, but it was stylistically too similar to his win for Road to Perdition and moreover, his amazing compositions for Finding Nemo last year.

Music (Song): Perennially the silliest category to keep around given that the original movie musical is extinct, I can’t even see Phantom winning it with the new “Learn To Be Lonely” motif, which was basically stuck in the movie in a bid for this award, and even sounds extraneous. The Globe winner, “Old Habits Die Hard” from the Alfie remake, isn’t even in the Oscar shortlist, so there is not point of reference. That said, I will in fact go with “Vois Sur Ton Chemin” from Les Choristes, which I haven’t even seen, but intend to. This one is anybody’s game, and irrelevant nonetheless.

Best Picture: This is between The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby, with the latter suddenly becoming the talk of the town at the expense of the former over the past few weeks. Baby is the tighter, better-paced and more emotionally engaging film, albeit at the expense of novelty. Remember, this award isn’t about winners or losers so much as it is about what people will come back to rediscover years, even decades from now. Given its scale, ambition and overarching sense of fun – not to mention the best senate commission hearing scene since The Godfather, Part II – I am rooting for The Aviator. I do not in any way consider Baby to be an “inferior” film; it takes a wholly different approach to storytelling and does some things much better. But on a holistic level, and looking at a film as a complete production in terms of both the whole and the parts, The Aviator would be my pick. (Well, no – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would be my pick, and I also think it a shame that Phantom got killed by the press before it even made it into the lower nomination slots – and let’s not get started on A Very Long Engagement, which would be a contender if it were not French, which it cannot help being.) My wavering prediction of who will actually win is a split: The Aviator will take Picture, Clint Eastwood will take Director.

Short Film (Animated): Let’s hear it for Ryan!

Short Film (Live Action): As with all the other categories recognizing shorts, they really need to screen these every year after nominations are announced, so I can actually begin to comment. Word is that Wasp will take it, but I can neither confirm nor deny.

Sound Editing: Perennially almost as bogus a category as Original Song, but the nominees this year are not quite as bogus as in the past few years. I see a Spider-Man 2 sweep of the technicals as a distinct possibility, but the more Oscars The Incredibles wins, the better.

Sound Mixing: As before, this will likely go to Spider-Man 2, though by this point my predictions are pointing to an Aviator near-shutout in the minors, and that does not bode well statistically for its Best Picture chances when Million Dollar Baby scored three acting nominations.

Visual Effects: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow got the shaft, but after watching more DVD features and reading articles on the effects pipeline of this year’s visual powerhouses, I am convinced that Spider-Man 2 should win this one. The blending of old-fashioned mechanics and newfangled computer wizardry to create Doctor Octopus is alone worthy of recognition.

Writing (Adapted): Traditionally the writing awards have been recognized as a sort of consolation prize for the small-scale films that do not have the grand, epic production values clout of the heavyweights, but it is usually well-deserved, given that the small films rest on the strength of their screenplays and principals anyway. In other words, Sideways, though a Million Dollar Baby win is not out of the question, nor would it be undeserved.

Writing (Original): Can it be? Can it be Eternal Sunshine‘s one gasp of air, one moment of recognition this Oscar night? One can only hope. I am already elated that Brad Bird was recognized with a nomination for The Incredibles. Then again, The Aviator needs to pick up what it can, or it will undergo the biggest nomination-to-win drop since, well, Gangs of New York (zero for ten). That would be unfortunate, because unlike Gangs, The Aviator was consistently fun to watch, and it boasts a screenplay full of moments worthy of study. But seriously – please give this to Eternal Sunshine.

This is probably the closest year since 2000, so the race tonight will be a fun one to watch. Keep your eyes peeled for Marlon Brando being featured in the annual obituary clips, and whatever it is Chris Rock comes up with in his first turn as the host. Quite frankly, I’ve never been too impressed with the guy, but let us see what he comes up with before we start evaluating.