Everyone was saying how all the prizes were predetermined and it was gonna be a boring Oscar but PARASITE DID THAT

I need to go to bed but am too keyed up.

I was on Twitter last night instead of here, but YOU GUYS PARASITE!!!!!

I watched with a friend and we made liberal use of the DVR fast-forward function to skip things like the Best Actor speech, but I demanded we be totally quiet when Bong won for original screenplay because, well, "Silence! My crush is talking!"

(Not only is he attractive and funny, but I love his speaking voice.)

Still criminal that Song Kang-ho wasn't nominated for Best Actor. He gave a career best performance and given that his baseline is "amazing" that is basically saying he was miles better than any of the nominees.

(I totally spaced on talking Parasite here, but I did talk about it on DW. [link]

The Song Kang-ho article I linked to in my DW post is so worth reading if you guys haven't. [link]

Stop saying you're not handsome, Song Kang-ho! You are clearly very wrong! (The first time I saw him act, my reaction was, "Damn, that man is magnetic." He's got a striking and memorable face. Plus, you know, pretty much the best actor working right now.)

A First Look at Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch.

A First Look at Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch.

OMG, it's New Yorker Fan Fiction!

It really does appear to be that, Hec.

Fascinating visual landscape, though. The colors and the tone and the costumes! So neat.

I am tensely eager to see Parasite (it sounds like the kind of thing that's going to make me profoundly upset, but worth it). All the more so since when I last saw my dad, just before the Oscars, we went over the Best Picture nominee list and he'd seen almost all of them (I had, and still have, seen exactly none); when I asked him what he thought of Parasite, he said, "Not much. I heard it was supposed to be a movie with a message, but there was no message. There was nothing there."

Since this is a level of meh that he has previously only reached with his reactions to Thelma and Louise and Raising Arizona, I feel pretty confident that his disdain means that Parasite will hit me like a freight train.

Trailer for The French Dispatch: [link]

Every time he makes a movie, I go, "that's the Wes Andersonest he's ever Wes Andersoned!" Then he goes one higher.

That cast is ridic.

The Song Kang-ho article I linked to in my DW post is so worth reading if you guys haven't.

David Ehrlich going all rhapsodic on Song Kang Ho's looks made me chortle, but that's an excellent article. BTW, I really need to watch Thirst, where he is 1) a priest, who turns into a 2) a vampire, which sounds like extremely my shit. He looks edible in the stills from the film: [link] But it's also Park Chan Wook and I have to take ginger steps when it comes to his work. I loved The Handmaiden and Stoker but have never quite recovered from Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which kinda broke me with the depth of its spiritual despair (I couldn't bring myself to watch Oldboy or Lady Vengeance after that because Mr. Vengeance made me wanna stick my head in the oven, even though Song Kang Ho is tremendous in that film).

"Not much. I heard it was supposed to be a movie with a message, but there was no message. There was nothing there."

You know, I am not surprised there are people who feel that way about the movie. It has some heavy handed metaphors but the characterizations are much more nuanced, and the ending gives you nothing close to a neat message. There are surprisingly varied takes on What It All Means, although I think some of them are very wrong.