Get excited - the French have taken over Hollywood.

It's that time of year! The one day in the year where we get an excuse to have Brad Pitt and George Clooney attend the same party, which just so happens to be secretly hosted by Bob and Harvey Weinstein. 

Now don't get me wrong, I love the Oscars. I just have not loved it since 2008, when those flawless films of 2007 got recognized. Anybody remember 2007? Notable directors who made movies that year included the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Joe Wright, Tony Gilroy and Julian Schnabel. Daniel Day-Lewis won his second Oscar. Marion Cotillard became the first actor to win an Oscar lead performance award for a non-English role. An exotic dancer won the award for best original screenplay. The host was actually funny. Back then, we still had the 5 best picture nominees! Back then, it was more about good movies than getting Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie into every shot! Back then, the Oscars actually cared about movie music! 

For example, these two lovely people who made the world beautiful for the first time in a long time.

Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard showing movie bosses who's boss.

Yes, I haven't really enjoyed the Oscars since 2008. 2007 was still the best year for movies. 2010 came slightly closer, what with The Social Network, The King's Speech and Inception. Good movies slide in here and there depending on the year (remember The Hurt Locker?), but 2007 was SOLID. The films were enriching, the characterizations were thought-provoking, the performances were inspiring, the creativity and artistry were enlightening. 2007's films are the best examples of films as art. I could watch the cinematography of There Will Be Blood over and over again and just die from the sheer technique and crisp photographic eye of that perfect movie. Yes, I will be an annoying brat and a bad movie critic by calling that film perfect. But it was perfect.

This year was not so bad. I didn't have time to see many of the movies that were nominated, but films like The Artist and Midnight in Paris and Bridesmaids definitely made this year pretty good. The actresses were definitely the highlights of 2011, what with people like Glenn Close, Octavia Spencer, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Janet McTeer, Melissa McCarthy, Michelle Williams, Marion Cotillard and Tilda Swinton all pulling in wonderful performances within a 12-month span. Add to that amazing newcomers such as Rooney Mara, Jessica Chastain, Emma Stone, Elizabeth Olsen, Léa Seydoux, Mia Wasikowska and Elle Fanning, I would say that 2011 stands out as being the year of the Actress. So many great roles for women this year, and for that, I quite enjoyed the movies that came out. 

And you really can't go wrong with a red carpet showdown that has Jessica Chastain parading in this: 

Holy shit Chastain, could you be more hot?

Too bad the actual Oscar awards show is still as boring as ever. I have to admit, the only time I actually paid attention was when Cirque du Soleil performed (amazing as ever) and when Jean Dujardin won his Oscar, because he is absolutely adorable and everything he says is like melted butter on a piece of French bread. It's just yummy and amazing. And the fact that George Clooney didn't win was way too overly satisfying. Anyway, I didn't really start liking the Oscar show tonight until Uggie the dog came on when The Artist won Best Picture. And by then, the show was basically over. The Oscars this year was as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. They laugh at bad jokes. They talk about what an awesome year it has been. They laugh at more bad jokes. They bring out props and play out scenes that teenagers could have written and performed better in a high school drama class. They ham up the actors and give them too much speech time while cutting the speeches of people winning the "less ratings savvy" awards such as the one for Best Documentary Short. Because obviously, the public watching don't give a fuck about documentary shorts or foreign films or sound mixing.

I started to think about what I would do to the Oscars if I got to produce the show. And I came up with these changes:

1. Have Ellen DeGeneres or Jon Stewart host. Or Uggie the dog. 

2. Do an Oscar pool at the Oscars. Basically, have the people in the audience submit their guesses for the pool before coming in. During the show, the producers will keep track of how many guesses are correct, and award the person with the highest score at the end with a cool prize. Like a date with Jessica Chastain. 

3. Invite Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard to write all the music for the show. 

4. Don't invite George Clooney. Even when he is nominated. 

5. Get a dance company to perform an interpretive dance representing scenes and/or themes from each of the movies nominated for Best Picture. 

6. Reduce the Best Picture nomination list to five films. Everyone knows the five best out of anyway. For example, when you've got The Artist up for 10 nominations, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close up for 2 (plus being the worst reviewed Oscar picture nominee in years), I can pretty much GUARANTEE that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close isn't going to win jack shit. Why nominate it when no one is even going to tick that off in their Oscar pools? It's like a sick joke. This is one of the reasons I preferred the Oscars prior to 2009. We nominated 5 of the best films because they were the best. We didn't nominate 10 just so the category could double as a sympathy box for movies that were just decent. We didn't nominate 10 just so we could stick Pixar into the mix (and as a result turn the animation category into a loser's field). You need only look at the editing category to know which movies stand the best chance anyway. 

7. Give winners for categories such as Best Cinematography and Best Documentary more speech time than the winners for the performance categories. Why? Because as much as I want to hear actors or actresses cry and act shocked even though they had the award in the bag coming into this crapfest, the people in the less scrutinized categories actually give better speeches most of the time. Remember Luke Matheny's speech for his award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2011 for "God of Love"? Man, that kid was so precious - the definite highlight of the 83rd Oscars. 

8. Bring back original song performances and let them play the song in its entirety. Include a segment for original score nominations, to be performed by a full orchestra and to be accompanied by a light show. 

9. Troll the paparazzi hard and have everyone come to the Oscars dressed as Muppets. That way, they can dodge the awkward "What are you wearing" questions and just say "Elmo, duh." 

10. Give Anderson Cooper front row seats so that whenever the host says a stupid joke, the mic will be close enough to pick up Cooper's giggle and we can all laugh at that. 

There we go. I may not have planned out a good broadcast show, but damn if it's not better than anything the Oscar producers have shelled out recently. The ratings seem to decrease as the years go by, so the producers nominate better known and accessible films, they nominate and invite more famous people. Little do they know that having Brad Pitt sitting in the front row will only get people watching for so long. If you can't make the recognition of interesting movies interesting, then you need to try something new. I quite like the Muppets idea. Let's run with it.

So, Academy Awards, please hire me to be next year's producer. I'm ready. Markéta Irglová is so totally ready to seduce me - with her music, of course. Ahem.

That is one lucky jacket.

I should have danced with you at that party in Harlem

Yesterday evening, I saw one of the best shows in my life, starring two of my favourite celebrities, 

Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon.

Because Canadians do it better.

Okay, so they're not exactly "celebrities" in the sense of the word "celebrities" - ie. everyone knows about them and PVRs their reality shows and writes reddit threads about them and watches their sex tapes. 

But regardless, they're celebrities in their own right in that they are actually talented (which is rare in the world of celebrity), and are known by people who actually matter - people like me. But this isn't a post about narcissistic, self-perceived sophistication, so I will leave the subject of myself for another time.


For those who do not know about them, here is a bit of background on these lovely artists.


IVAN E. COYOTE is a writer/performer from Whitehorse, Yukon who has thus far published seven books, recorded three albums, and collaborated with enough people to make you super jealous of her life. She has been a writer-in-residence in Ottawa, Vancouver and Winnipeg, and been a columnist for Xtra Magazine. She has been nominated for many prestigious awards, including the Lambda Literary. She is the unofficial wizard of Commercial Drive in Vancouver and most of her performances will make you cry, no matter how bad ass you may think you are. 


RAE SPOON is a folk musician from Calgary, Alberta who has thus far recorded and released nine albums and collaborated with enough people to make you super jealous of his life. He currently resides in Montréal, Québec but has lived in various parts of Europe as well, including Germany, which inspired his seventh album. He has been nominated for many awards, including the Polaris Prize (you know, the one Arcade Fire keeps winning). His voice is the kind that reminds you of all the things that make a sunrise beautiful. 


The performance that I went to was a collaboration between Ivan and Rae, a show that they wrote back in 2006 when they decided to travel and live together in Dawson City, Yukon. The adventure involves moving into a haunted house, cooking moose meat, purchasing a permafrost map of Canada, and eating Safeway chicken atop a white hearse. The show was driven by Coyote's stories of her family's initial settlement in Whitehorse, interspersed with the experience she had going back there with Rae, as well as the revealing of the character and spirit of the Yukon Territory itself. Her stories would be accompanied by Rae's electric guitar, and with the closing of each chapter, Rae would perform a song connected to Ivan's themes. As this all went on,  a screen behind the two performers would show video clips and photographs of the Yukon landscape as well as of Coyote's family.


The venue was the Studio Theatre at the Surrey Arts Centre, which houses 129 seats (yes, 129. They couldn't bother rounding it up to an even 130). So basically, it was like being in someone's larger than normal living room; only there is no television to distract you and no one's trying to serve you cold pizza bagels and stale donuts. It was perhaps the most personal "event" I had ever been to, especially with both storytellers on the verge of tears as they told their stories. I am a huge fan of both Ivan and Rae, not only for their queer activism but for their sheer skill at tapping into emotions you had that you never knew anyone could ever express, until they do. So to see them together, using their creativity to recount poignant and funny memories that are their own and yet are very universal, was quite simply magical.


Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon may not be all that famous, but they're more beautiful than most of the people who end up on that stupid annual People's list, and I was more nervous meeting them than I ever was meeting David Hasselhoff in New York City (which I barely remember. No offense, David Hasselhoff).


I woke up the next morning with dreams of going up North in a white hearse. Hey, it's not my fault they made the idea of it quite romantic.