2010 Academy Awards

It seems like any award that doesn’t recognize Goodfellas is flawed at best. In the 1991 Oscars the Scorsese gangster movie was nominated for 5 awards: best picture, best supporting actor, editing, adapted screenplay and director. Goodfellas is arguably one of the most enduring movies to come out of the 90s, behind Schindler’s List and L.A. Confidential (in my opinion). The eventual winner of most of the awards Goodfellas was nominated for was Dances with Wolves. No disrespect to Kevin Costner, but Dances with Wolves doesn’t stand up over the years nearly as well as Goodfellas (even though it falls apart in the third act). It just goes to show you that a movie can win the hearts and minds of Academy voters regardless of the quality or its ability to stand the test of time. The Searchers, which is widely considered one of the best films ever made, was never nominated for an Oscar. Although it’s the industry standard for quality, winning an Academy Award doesn’t always mean much in the broad scope of things. The 1956 winner for best picture was Around the World in 80 Days. The Searchers wasn’t even nominated.

Around the World in 80 Days. Remember that one?

I didn’t think so.

This year may or may not be the same. Instead of five best picture nominees, there are ten. The acting awards all seem more like coronations at this point. The nominees seem to be, in some cases, a reflection of sentiment rather than ability.

Who cares, though, right? The system may be slightly broken, but it’s all we got. And, heck, they’re just awards.

Predictions
Sound Mixing: Avatar
Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker
Short Film (Animated): Kavi
Short Film (Live Action): A Matter of Loaf and Death
Costume Design: Bright Star (but honestly, why not Where the Wild Things Are?)
Visual Effects: Avatar (no-brainer, but again, why not nominate Where the Wild Things Are?)
Music (Original Score): Avatar (Another no brainer)
Music(Original Song): The Weary Kind (Although I really love those Disney songs)
Documentary Short: Music by Prudence
Documentary Feature: The Cove
Makeup: Star Trek (although I’d like for Il Divo to win)
Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon (although A Prophet certainly stands a fighting chance)
Art Direction: Avatar
Film Editing: The Hurt Locker
Cinematography: The White Ribbon

Best Animated Feature
Will Win: Up
Should Win: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Will Win: Up in the Air
Should Win: District 9 or Precious

Writing (Original Screenplay)
Will Win and Should Win: Inglourious Basterds

Best Director
Will Win: Kathryn Bigelow
Should Win: James Cameron (All due respect to Bigelow, but Cameron created A NEW WORLD. Think about that…regardless of how juvenile his dialogue is or how facile the plot is, he created a whole new mythology in a way that is both believable and compelling. No matter how big an asshole he is.)

Best Supporting Actress
Will Win and Should Win: Mo’Nique (For the life of me I never thought the star of Phat Girlz would ever win an Oscar. She deserves it. Although Vera Farmiga‘s side boob makes a compelling case…)

Best Supporting Actor
Will Win: Christoph Waltz
Should Win: Christoph Waltz and Christopher Plummer (There have been ties before. There should be a tie again. Both actors were wonderful.)

Best Actress
Will Win: Sandra Bullock
Should Win: Helen Mirren (I could have made a couple of “anybody else” jokes here, but I haven’t seen The Blind Side.)

Best Actor
Will Win and Should Win: Jeff Bridges (I think I might have picked Jeremy Renner as the “should win” but he seems like such a jerk. Whenever you seem him at an awards show he looks like he’s having the worst time of his life. Get a grip, Jeremy!)

Best Picture
The nominees if it was my decision: A Serious Man, Precious, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Inglourious Basterds, The Last Station, Avatar, Goodbye Solo, Where the Wild Things Are, Up and The Hurt Locker
Will Win: The Hurt Locker or Avatar
Should Win: The Hurt Locker

In all honesty, this is one of the years in which I’m not going to be disappointed with the winner. Should Avatar win over The Hurt Locker? Probably not, but it’s likely. I think of the films that are nominated, my favorite is A Serious Man. I think it’s better than No Country for Old Men in a lot of ways. It seems to be losing momentum because it didn’t make a whole lot of money. And some people call it anti-Semitic, which is nonsense. Oh well.

A couple of years ago, I was furious that Return of the King swept every category in which it was nominated. The Oscar results made me dislike it so much. But I watched it again recently and I can’t recall a better movie being made that year. So there we are. The Oscars used to be much bigger to me, back when I didn’t watch 500+ movies a year. Now I realize that it doesn’t matter what the Academy thinks: the only validation my taste needs is from myself. I don’t care if The Last Station isn’t nominated for Best Picture. I still think it’s the best movie I’ve seen all year. It just doesn’t matter. I like what I like. You like what you like. Let’s just sit back and relax. And enjoy the show.

The 2010 Golden Globe Awards

The Golden Globes have never held as high an import as the Oscars, partly because it is a less humorless ceremony, but also because the college of voters is so small. It seems almost unfair that the Globes are more widely valued than the Critics Choice awards or the various guild awards because it’s voted on by a group of journalists who works primarily for international publications. The Golden Globes should mean more in Europe than they do here (and they may for all I know). I care more about what Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott and Roger Ebert think than anybody who writes film reviews for Der Spiegel or the London Times. Though, just because it is a less relevant award show to us doesn’t mean that it has no value (as superficial as any award show’s value may be).

Three things make the Globes more entertaining than The Oscars: diversity of categories, the inclusion of television and…booze. The Globes are like Oscar’s boozy, uninhibited step-brother who is visiting after a three-week bender in Ibiza. The Globes should be called Oscars while the Academy Awards would be henceforth known as The Felixes. Nobody watches the Globes because they care what 95 writers think about cinema and television; they watch because it’s fun.

That being said, this is who I think should win the Globes.

Best Supporting Actor, TV: I think Michael Emerson from Lost will win this one, but I think John Lithgow put together a really transcendent performance together in the vastly-improved fourth season of Dexter. Emerson was good too, as were the other 3 actors, but Lithgow took creepy serial killer to another level.

Best Supporting Actress, TV: This is a really difficult category because all of the performances are good. I guess I would disqualify Jane Lynch who does a tons with what she has, but her character on Glee is so one-note…except for the episode where she was going on a date with a newscaster. There are glimmers, faint as they may be, of a three-dimensional character. Lynch does fine work in Glee, but she’s kind of sabotaged by the writing. Jane Adams is probably a long shot, too, although she was kind of great as the needy, neurotic poet-turned-pimp on Hung. I didn’t see this season of Damages, but if it’s anything like season one then Rose Byrne deserves consideration, although it’s hard to call her a supporting character since her character is the protagonist. Janet McTeer is one of my favorite actresses and is an absolute fox, but her role as Clemmie Churchill was probably too small the have much of a chance against Lynch. I guess my favorite performance of the year would be Chloe Sevigny as Nicole Grant in the fantastic and underrated Big Love. Her character was put through the wringer and she had such a diverse character it’d be a shame for her to lose this award.

Best Actor/Actress/Mini-series, Mini-series: I didn’t really see any of these except for Wallander, so I’m just going to guess that Kevin Bacon, Jessica Lange and Grey Gardens will win.

Best Actor, Comedy Series: I’m least enthused with this category. I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave the award to Thomas Jane or Matthew Morrison because they’re the new guys on the block. They all are worthy, but it wasn’t a great year for male acting in comedy series. I bet they give it to Alec Baldwin.

Best Actress, Comedy Series: This category is weighted so heavily in favor of one actress that if she doesn’t win, I might eat my hat. And you all think I’m talking about Tina Fey. You’re wrong. Team Toni Collette all the way.

Best Actor, Drama Series: It’d be hard not to give this award to Jon Hamm, especially after season three.

Best Actress, Drama Series: I haven’t seen the second season of Damages yet and I don’t watch The Good Wife or The Closer (but I will if someone gives me five good reasons why I should), so to me it’s between January Jones and Anna Paquin. That being the case, I have to give it to Paquin. But mostly for the nudity.

Best Series, Musical or Comedy: I know that the fandom of Glee is legion, but it doesn’t really hold a candle to any of the other shows, with the exception of Entourage. Glee is a fine show and I think it has a decent chance of winning, but it’s just not as good as 30 Rock on a humor level or Modern Family on an emotional level. Since Modern Family is only mildly less funny than 30 Rock, I’m standing behind Modern Family.

Best Series, Drama: I have so much affection for Mad Men that it’s really hard for me to pick against it. It’s just such a good show. But something weird happened in the fourth season of Big Love. The writers found a way to focus on a multitude of characters and tell their stories beautifully and completely: Amanda Seyfried’s storyline in particular. She kind of gets short-shrift when people praise Big Love because she isn’t one of the three wives. The final five episodes of season three are as good as television gets, Come Ye, Saints, Outer Darkness and Sacrament in particular. It’s just about time Big Love gets some big love (see what I did there?) from the Globes.

Best Foreign Language Film: I haven’t seen any of these films yet, so let’s just go with The White Ribbon since it’s getting so much buzz.

Best Animated Feature: I love Pixar for their ability to make consistently great films and Up is no exception, but Fantastic Mr. Fox was better. Sorry…it just was. Up will win, though, and the truth is that it deserves it based on the first 5 minutes of the film.

Best Song and Best Score: These go to…who cares? Crazy Heart for song and Avatar for score. The score to Avatar was pretty fantastic. I think you can judge a great score by whether you can imagine a high school doing a marching band show with it. So…I can absolutely see a band doing an Avatar show in the next couple of years. Great score.

Best Screenplay: This is kind of where the Globes get screwy. I give this one to District 9 for being such a great idea. I think Up in the Air might take it, or maybe Inglourious Basterds, but I think District 9 deserves it.

Best Director: I guess the consensus is that The Hurt Locker is the best film of the year, so I find it hard to give it to anybody but Katheryn Bigelow. Other than an unneeded character arch, it’s a pretty flawless film. Does James Cameron or Quentin Tarantino deserve it for making the movies they made? Sure, of course. Katheryn Bigelow just made a better film.

Best Supporting Actor: Chris Waltz has had this one in the bag since June, right?
Best Supporting Actress: Mo’nique has had this one in the bag since November, right?

Best Actor, Comedy: I haven’t seen any of these except for (500) Days of Summer and Sherlock Holmes, but I don’t think either Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Robert Downey, Jr. will win this one. If I had to bet the barn on this award…well…I probably wouldn’t. Nobody particularly sticks out to me. Michael Stuhlbarg I guess?

Best Actor, Drama: Morgan Freeman’s performance as Mandela was good, but not mind-blowing. I haven’t seen Crazy Heart, but I’m betting on Jeff Bridges winning. Tobey Maguire would have been my choice between him, Freeman and George Clooney. I hear great things about Colin Firth’s performance in A Single Man, but I think Bridges has this one in the bag.

Best Actress, Comedy: This award is all Meryl Streep. But which one? I think she was good in Julia and Julia, but it was closer to imitation than anything: a fantastic imitation, but imitation no less. I guess I’d give it to her for It’s Complicated. She’s good in that. I guess. Comedy acting nominees aren’t that impressive this year.

Best Actress, Drama: I think Gabourey Sidibe deserves this the most. Her portrayal of Precious was daring, nuanced and sublime. I hope she has a big career in film. She’s a fine actress. Too bad she’s going to lose this award to Sandra Bullock, who, granted, gave a decent performance in The Blind Side. So what, though? Doesn’t Sidibe’s performance carry any extra currency for being so brave and meaningful? To me it does.

Best Picture, Comedy: Ugh…I’m surprised they didn’t stick up in the Air in here. It seemed more like a comedy at times. If I had to pick one of these five, I’d pick (500) Days of Summer. It wasn’t necessarily funnier than The Hangover, but it was a better movie. I think It’s Complicated probably picks up the win. I’m not sure why voters love it so much. It’s such a flawed film. Not flawed enough to lose this award, I guess.

Best Picture, Drama: My favorite of these five is Inglourious Basterds, but I loved Avatar and The Hurt Locker, too. I think it’s going to be a tight race between The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air. I don’t have any problem with that, except that Up in the Air didn’t seem as good as everybody made it out to be; it was good, but nowhere near as memorable as some of the better films this year. It’s a lot like Jerry Maguire; both movies are good and funny, but they never really seem as important as a The Hurt Locker or all four movies Jerry Maguire was up against for the Oscar (The English Patient (winner), Shine, the fantastic Secrets and Lies and Fargo).

No matter how many of these predictions I have correctly made, don’t forget to tune in tomorrow night. If not for the actual awards, than for 3 hours of a drunk, live Ricky Gervais. I hope you all enjoy the awards as much as I will.

Movie Monday: The Holiday Edition – Part 1: Amuse-Bouche

I’ve been neglecting movie Monday for a couple weeks, so I’m going to split it up into 4 or 5 parts.

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, dir. Wes Anderson) -  It’s obviously very difficult to make a stop-motion animation film.  I think it’s even more difficult to make one this engaging.  The point at which I fell in love with this film came early.  The titular fox speaks and acts with grace and dignity…until he eats.  His wife hands him a plate of breakfast food and instead of politely eating the meal like we all expect our anthropomorphic animals to do, Fox snarls and gobbles the food up with the abandon of a wild animal.  This is startling and funny.  The film has more moments like this, but I’ll let you discover them.  In the midst of all this humor lies the heart at the center of all Wes Anderson movies.  This is absolutely one of the year’s best.  Grade: A-

2. Taking Woodstock (2009, dir. Ang Lee) – This is one huge mess of a film.  Is it a sexual coming-of-age story?  Is it an examination of 1960s suburbia and the various tensions the come with living in a place where there is nothing to do?  There’s one thing for sure: nobody ever takes Woodstock.  Ang Lee forgets to put any kind of concert footage in there and all but ignores the musical side of the concert.  It could have been a pretty fine film if the script moved more toward…you know…taking Woodstock than veering toward multiple storylines simultaneously.  Grade: D

3. Nicholas Nickelby (2002, dir. Douglas McGrath )- First off…how is it that Charlie Hunnam, star of Lords of Anarchy and Undeclared, have such an awful British accent and still be British?  When I first saw him on Undeclared, I thought that Judd Apatow did an awful job hiring an American actor who couldn’t do British.  Turns out Charlie Hunnam is as British as Fish n’ Chips.  His horrendous accent aside, this film is fantastic.  McGrath never falls into the typical trap in which most fall when adapting canonical literature into film.  He never treats Dickens’ dialogue as sacrosanct so the humor and humanity come through loud and clear.  This film whizzes by and succeeds in reintroducing Dickens to a generation who must think of his work as stale and boring.  Grade: B

Weird

It’s weird that one of Brittany Murphy’s last movies was called The Dead Girl, in which she played the dead girl.  I can’t say that we lost one of the great actresses of our generation.  She’s wasn’t Anne Hathaway or Kate Winslet.  Her movies trend more toward mediocre than great.

That being said…it’s sad to hear of her go.  If she didn’t act with much particular range, depth or deftness, she certainly knew how to light up a screen.  And maybe sometimes that’s all we need.

Movie Monday 12-14-2009

Every Monday I will be recapping everything I watched in the previous week.  To avoid rehashing the synopses, the wiki for each film is linked.  The films are listed in the chronology of when I saw them.

1. Terminator Salvation (2009, dir. McG):  The fourth movie in the Terminator series is probably the third best.  It’s not as bad as the third film starring Nick Stahl and Claire Danes, but it neither captures the same feeling of dread as Cameron’s first nor is it as cool as the second.  The actors seem to do just about as well as they can with a mediocre script.  It feels more like an introduction to more Terminator movies, which isn’t a horrible thing because there is some promise in the Anton Yeltchin character.  Maybe it would have been better if they had either shortened or lengthened it by 20 minutes.  I’d like to say that Sam Worthington stole the show enough to warrant his emergence as a superstar, but there were no real highs.  There were no horrible lows, though, either.  McG knows how to blow stuff up good and that was, apparently, enough to make 170 million.  Grade: C

2. Flame and Citron (2008, dir. Ole Christian Madsen):  This delicious Danish thriller is about two resistance fighters during World War II and their attempt to free Denmark of the Nazis.  I love resistance movies and this one is no exception, but it’s not quite as exciting as Melville’s Army of Shadows, which I consider to be the standard of greatness for resistance movies.  As in every film about the resistance two things are certain: the title characters cannot trust anybody but themselves and there is a mole in their organizations.  You probably recognize Citron as Le Chiffre from Casino Royale (Mads Mikkelsen) and Flame as one of the young Swiss Guard in Angels and Demons (Thure Lindhardt), but they do such a fine job at embodying the two fighters that their previous work does not hinder their authenticity.  Exciting and tense, the highlights of the film is a scene in which Flame is trying to assassinate the Danish head of the Gestapo in a  wine cellar and the final shootout between Citron and a company of Nazis.  More than anything else, I think this is an examination of a time when morality was ambiguous because the need to justice and vengeance was so strong.  Grade: B+

3.  Brothers (2009, dir. Jim Sheridan):  Finally…a movie that takes advantage of how alike Jake Gylenhall and Tobey Maguire look.  Brothers suffers from the mis-advertisment bug.  It’s being advertised as though it is a thriller, which in places it might be.  Their are scenes of harrowing psychological and physical trauma, but at the heart of the film is the relationship between the two brothers.  Everything in this film is polished and good enough, but the performance Jim Sheridan pulls out of Tobey Maguire is ultimately what I remember about the film.  Sam, a marine who is married to Grace and has two children, is redeployed to Afghanistan.  His gunship is shot down and he is presumed dead.  It’s not a spoiler to mention that he is not, in fact, dead and that bad things happen in the aftermath of the crash.  Sam goes from a calm, confident father/soldier to a restless, scared time bomb consumed by paranoia and the thought that his wife did not stay faithful.  At one point, after he has returned home, Sam is shaving and his wife comes into the bathroom.  It’s a small scene, but the fear that Sam shows really foreshadows the coming scenes.  It comes really close to being melodramatic, but Sheridan seems to rein in the actors before they reach that point.  Brothers isn’t a Nicholas Sparks novel, after all.  Grade: B++

4. Five Minutes of Heaven (2009, dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel): In his follow-up to Downfall, Hirschbiegel tells the story of two boys: one of them shoots the other’s brother because of their clashing religious beliefs.  Set in 1970s Belfast for the first 20 minutes, the story shows the shooting, simultaneously, from both points of view.  The film flashes forward to a meeting of the two, now older and played by Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt respectively for a television taping of their first meeting since the shooting.  Neeson plays the grown-up murderer with enormous guilt and a desire to prevent his crime from happening again.  Nesbitt, who steals the film, plays the grown-up brother and it is evident that the character has neither moved on with his life nor forgiven Neeson’s character.  The title refers to Nesbitt’s desire to murder Neeson and how that moment would be his five minutes of heaven.  Hirschbiegel doesn’t seem to want us to take sides; the point is not that murder is wrong.  That is obvious.  The point is that terrorism and vengeance leaves victims on both sides of the fence and is, ultimately, completely self-serving and purposeless.  At least that’s what I took from Five Minutes of Heaven.  Grade: B=

5.  Dr. No (1962, dir. Terence Young): This is the first James Bond movie.  Having seen it for the first time, I realize why people love Sean Connery’s James Bond.  It’s the same reason I love Daniel Craig’s Bond from Casino Royale: neither are films are formulaic parodies of previous Bond movies.  This one is the original, the one before James Bond movies became predictable and cliché.  Julius No is such a solid villain that he has been the mold from which all other Bond villains (with few exceptions) have been molded.  From the three blind mice in the beginning to the heroic rescue of Honey Ryder, Dr. No is a whole lot of fun.  Grade: A-

6. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009, dir. Werner Herzog): Nic Cage is one BAAAAAAAAD LIEUTENANT!!  I don’t really know what to say about this film.  It’s one, like a lot of Herzog’s best work, that requires multiple viewings.  At the end of one of his earlier films called Stroszek, the titular character goes into a tourist trap with rabbits driving toy firetrucks and chickens playing toy pianos.  He gets on a ski lift with a frozen turkey and a shotgun after abandoning his car to do donuts in the parking lot and kills himself.  Bad Lieutenant is like 122 minutes of that.  The plot doesn’t matter; just Nic Cage.  And Nic Cage goes absolutely bananas.  I haven’t seen a performance quite like it.  He plays a glorious car wreck that you can’t help staring at as you drive past.  In a good way.  Grade: B++

7. Invictus (2009, dir. Clint Eastwood):  I’d say that this is the best Eastwood picture of the decade if it weren’t for Mystic River, Gran Torino, Letters from Iwo Jima, Changeling and Million Dollar Baby (sorry Blood Works and Flags of our Fathers…you lose!).  Invictus is predictably inspiring.  Nothing is really unexpected, but that’s okay.  Eastwood realizes that the story isn’t about shaking things up and he restrains from straying from his purpose.  Through the film we find out how innovative a thinker Mandela is through his empathy and compassion.  Mandela, through the Springboks, shows how to reach compromise and manipulate his people not for his own political gain, but for the good of the country.  This is something that rings home for me and probably does to most moderate-minded Americans who wish that the partisanship of our government would cease in favor of the real greater good instead of the greater good of a political party.  Mandela and Eastwood realize how important sport is: it  helps galvanize a population and both treat it with the utmost respect.  One of my friends asked me why people follow sports: I’d show him this movie as my answer.  It brings us together.  Maybe the message behind the movie is greater than its plot.  Additionally, Eastwood shoots the game of rugby as well as anybody has since Lindsay Anderson’s 1963 masterpiece This Sporting Life.  Invictus is a film with more heart than guts, but that doesn’t stop it from being great.  Grade: A–

8. The Cove (2009, dir. Louie Psihoyos): Every year in Taiji, Japan, 23,000 dolphins are herded into a cove by fishermen and culled mercilessly, for no apparent reason.  The Cove is about a group of activists and filmmakers who try to uncover this killing.  The plot unfolds much in the same way as it did in Man on Wire.  The filmmakers hatch an elaborate plan to get camouflaged cameras into the cove.  The best part of the film, though, is how they seem to anticipate every question that I raised about the practice of cetacean culling.  When I thought that the Japanese were entitled to their own traditions, the filmmakers showed me that the practice of mass dolphin killing is virtually unknown and reviled in cities other than Taiji.  When I thought that it was no big deal because they must eat the meat, the filmmakers showed me how dolphin meat has been rendered toxic by the rising mercury levels in the ocean.  When I thought that the practice was a small one, they showed me how the Taiji government was pushing dolphin meat as the new protein for school lunches and how the fisheries are selling dolphin meat to people when they thing they’re getting whale meat.  The point is that I had some very reasonable questions about why this practice is bad and the film answered all of them without resorting to the “dolphins are cute” defense.  This is an important film with bigger implications: 7 out of 10 people on Earth consider fish their primary source of protein and we believe that the ocean is a limitless source of seafood, an inexhaustible  all-you-can-eat buffet waiting for us to collectively waddle up for seconds.  This is a film that changed the way I think about dolphins.  I’m not an environmentalist by any means, but aren’t we supposed to be better than this?  Shouldn’t we avoid inflicting pain and suffering onto things if it can be avoided?  The Cove isn’t just a great film; it’s an important film.  See it.  Grade: A

 

Until next week, friends.

 

Something for Something

As a brief introduction to myself and my situation, I have to mention that I am an unemployed 28-year-old male living with his parents.  Not in his “mother’s basement”, haters, but in a very moderately-sized room with a door and carpeting and a walk-in closet.  This room houses most of my earthly possessions which consist primarily of digital versatile discs and paperbacks.  As a jobless cine-audio- literophile (“nerd” in layperson’s terms), I spend most of my time devouring my way through a vast and endless buffet of movies, books and albums.  I’d be remiss if I failed to mention my burgeoning video game habit.  The sum of all those wretched parts is that my once Pantragruelian physique is now something much more Gargantuan, much to my dismay. 

Having said that, things are not so dire.  Not yet, at any rate.  I’ve spent an increasing number of my free hours attending to more active pursuits and, due to a nasty case of gall stones, I have cast nearly all fatty food completely asunder.  Gone are the days of eating whatever or whenever one wants.  Doctor Atkins would shudder in his grave if he knew with how much rancor I now direct toward meat, both white and red.  If not for some of the more healthy poultry that I enjoy, I would have become a full-blown pescetarian.  All of this frightening change to stave off the exponentially more frightening inevitable for, hopefully, decades to come. 

I’m learning to embrace the change.  All in all, it feels nice to exercise and eat more for sustenance than for pleasure.  Sometimes I even browse the interwebs for places in which I am encouraged to be more active. 

I was doing exactly that when I stumbled upon an exercise program for children in my general vicinity.  I couldn’t help feeling envious of the children who take advantage of such a great program.  Before I continue, let me reiterate much I believe that these opportunities are exemplary and genius.  How different would my life be if my childhood had been more centered on fitness.  Sure, I played rec soccer and baseball from first grade to middle school, but I can’t claim to have been much of an athlete.  An adequate role player, for sure, but I wasn’t much for running, an attribute that lingers on to this day.  Luckily, on and off for the past 3 years, I have felt the various benefits of personal training.  I applaud the people who promote healthfulness in our society. 

It’s just…couldn’t they come up with a better name than Fitness for Health? 

I don’t mean to demean the nobility of their mission or sully their collective reputation, but come on…Fitness for Health?  What does that even mean?  I don’t think it’s my inner sloth rearing his ugly head when I point out that, in most circles, fitness is synonymous with health.  Even if the two words are slightly differing in meaning, they are two twigs on the very same branch.  Furthermore, why else would someone want to be fit?  Every benefit, whether becoming more acceptably attractive to the mainstream or just being able to move with more fluidity and ease, falls into that general “health” category: so much so that one would be completely well within their faculties to say that fitness is health and vice versa. 

Fitness for Health.  Pssh.  Why not Fitness for Cake?  Or Fitness for Yellow?  Perhaps the underlying lesson of this unfortunately-named fitness company is that my time reading books was time well spent. 

Signing off from the dark of the matinée.