#everything except duncan and shirley

[seizethedeansofproduction]

tag urself!!

[tehamelie]

I can't count the reasons I should stay (Community 1.4)

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I got a new mouse today! Such a change, getting to click on stuff just one time instead of 3-10 times, and dragging and marking text without problems. Anyway, this post is like twice as long as any other in this series and it's all for you. Any delays in the schedule I have not in fact said a word about are because of the troubles I had without any money in the bank, and my bad mouse.

Community S1E4: Social psychology

We open with Señor Chang writing some absolutely incomprehensible squiggles on his blackboard. I think I see some traces of both Chinese and Korean writing but definitely no actual written language going on. You can tell Ken Jeong is a Doctor in real life hue hue.

Jeff goes out of his way to avoid having to converse with Shirley. Seems mean even by his default mode of trying not to be involved in the group. Or could it be that he's started caring about these people and that makes it hard to just tune them out?

A "stoner tree" is something every school needs right? There we meet Vaughn, who's got so many things going on it seems like a joke in itself, a short lived side character with honestly more personality than some main characters have shown so far. (I had to think it over hard to remember Annie was even in the last episode.) Vaughn's shirtless, triple-hello-saying, hacky-sack-champion, antioxidant-chasing hippie ways are very seductive to Britta and I guess we should be worried on Jeff's behalf. But I'm too busy giggling at Vaughn managing to somehow fall over and go flying to the ground in a casual game of hacky-sack. Okay when you go frame by frame you can see him attempting to hit the ball with a jump kick and landing on his ass, but a) that's not a move you'd generally expect in this game of gently lobbing a tiny soft ball around with your foot while standing still, and b) to a casual viewer he just appears in the background with a scream, in the middle of eating shit for no discernible reason.

Aaugh, the intro is cut down to just the final appearance of the Community title. That's not gonna work.

Annie brings us the main plot: professor Duncan's psych experiment. It may be the first time we see Annie Edison outside of the study group, but thinking about it, what we see isn't new: She's very excited, she badly wants to excel at the things she does, she doesn't seem to know how to stop talking even when she wants to, she deeply cares about people but sometimes she forgets that in all the excitement. And she's embarrassed when Duncan reveals he thinks she's hitting on him.

"I asked politely and the panda took his pants off" is all we hear of Vaughn's story. I wonder how real it is. On one hand, he seems perpetually stoned and there may not have been a panda or any pants involved except he thought there was, but on the other, he may well lead an enchanted life where something like that happens and it's just a funny story. He's an enigma.

Then Pierce proudly displays his earnoculars. I'm old enough to remember when they sold such spy devices in children's toy stores, and I wanted them then. It's such a temptation to see what people get up to when they think they're alone, isn't it? The thrill, to me, is the idea of seeing what people are like when they don't have to pretend to anyone. To see if there's something I'm missing in human behaviors. Not that you can, you know, with an adult understanding of ethics and boundaries. It's just the appeal of the idea.

Of course Pierce only wants to know what everyone's saying about him. And it doesn't work out for him because he assumes everyone's talking about him all the time and misunderstands everything cause he puts it in that context. The moral here is "a little knowledge can be dangerous."

But I'm getting ahead. At first all we're seeing is wearing a radar dish on his ear makes it hard for Pierce to hear anything reliably and to locate the source of what he can hear. Annie wants test subjects; Jeff immediately declines, Troy hesitantly agrees even though they don't "do stuff to your butt", and Abed goes along with it so they'll be Friends. And maybe they'll even be friends.

"I thought we were like Chandler and Phoebe" he says. Certainly Abed is the Phoebe, aka the kooky one, but trying to think of Annie as the Chandler, the "funny" one, is wrinkling my brain. As far as crushing these rich flawed human characters into one of the six weird stereotypes of Friends go, Annie is totally the Ross, aka the nervous one.

Vaughn seems to convert Britta to drinking green tea, which, I've tried to make it but I don't think I ever got the temperature right. It's really delicate and not that exciting to drink. But if you're paying several dollars per cup to have someone else make drinks for you I guess I could make it a habit in order to be healthy. She said, carefully rationing the last liter of Pepsi max she's going to get on this Sunday so she wouldn't run out of caffeine before the stores opened on payday.

But anyway, this scandalous news delivered by the excited Pierce who stealthily overheard it from like two whole cafeteria tables away, is such a delightful image that sums up just what we said previously about the low stakes world of Community.

Over to Duncan's indulgent, self-serving, questionably ethical little experiment that consists of the class watching a video feed of a room full of people slowly losing their shit. They should have some popcorn cause this is pure pop psychology: Telling your test subjects the test is almost ready to begin for hour after hour to see how long it takes before they give up. He even calls it "the Duncan Principle" and explains it in Freudian terms that haven't seen any clinical use in like 75 years. Duncan might not be very good at his job I think. Hey, this is the first appearance of Garret, the man who is "like if God spilled a human," and he is true to form from the start.

The subjects are getting $80 for this? I'd be sitting all day. I'm used to waiting. Used to have to wait for the bus home for over two hours after school sometimes. One time I waited for a bus I didn't even have to take, I just wanted to get into town and spend some money. It was -30°C outside and the bus was over half an hour late. I was even there too early, probably spending 45 minutes standing at the bus stop all told. Another girl showed up at a more reasonable time, and left soon, but I just waited until the bus came. She got Duncan Principled, but I didn't. A warm room with a reasonably comfortable chair? That's nothing.

I like Chang, who of course doesn't lose his shit cause he's shitless by default. But five minutes into the exercise when he gives up, he uses nine fingers to say "nuevo". That reflex of counting on his hands whenever he says a number is deep in there, considering he isn't a real teacher.

Jeff, betrayed by his shoelaces, finally has to spend five minutes alone with Shirley and he hates it so much ("Do you like green--" "You have a kid right?" "What was that?" "Nothing.") until they discover how easy it is to make fun of Vaughn.

Back in the torture chamber, yeah, with only Troy and Abed left of the test subjects the class has given up all pretense. Donald Glover (Troy) does a wonderful job of turning into an incoherent yet hilarious mess both verbally and psychically. Pure improvisation, I'm assuming.

Good thing Vaughn doesn't believe in earnoculars cause Shirley and Jeff gossip relentlessly about him while he makes out in the grass with Britta about three meters away. There follows an awkward conversation that's hilarious to me for completely unrelated reasons - a fake commercial in a Swedish comedy movie once tried to sell laundry detergent to men by asking "Do you have trouble with grass stains on your wife after coitus on the lawn?"

Such drama: Britta recognizes the awkwardness of talking with Jeff about her having a thing with Vaughn, because something something sparks of romance. Okay I may be way too cynical about this but I'm just not seeing why these two on any level think they could or should have a relationship. Maybe Britta senses in Jeff a rebel who will fight the power (for his own gain), but that has to be balanced against a 5-95% ratio of him being an authority figure in the form of a cocksure wealthy young white man. Whereas we know Jeff legitimately has no interest in relationships or feelings or other human beings in general but keeps pursuing Britta because he's read the script gotten hung up on the challenge of winning her over or something.

But when we look at the concrete situation here, team BJ. No wait. Team JB. That's even worse. Jefitta? That works as long as you don't speak Swedish. Okay, Jeff and Britta are making a deliberate effort to be friends and act with consideration towards each other even though they are dealing with some messy feelings and human relationships that they realize they don't have the tools to deal with. That's kind of beautiful.

Cut to Shirley and Jeff's gossiping frenzy. It's pretty funny how Shirley clocks Jeff's reluctance to rip on Vaughn (just because Britta likes him, aww) after Shirley says something about him and Jeff doesn't respond in literally under two seconds.

"It's not gossip if it's fact"? Come on Shirley, don't stand here and be wrong. Here's a fun educational tidbit for this episode: You can in fact commit libel even if you're only saying truthful factual things. Like, if I were to describe Joanne Rowling as an ambulatory meat tube containing several kilograms of disgusting microbes and infectious disease, that would be a fact. But a careful reader may discern it becomes an unflattering and dishonest representation for several reasons including because it leaves out a lot of things.

Over in Duncan's deranged experiment, I'm feeling a bit of Duncan's despair because I put the episode on pause for the night at an earlier point and it feels like I'm right there in the room when we learn Abed has been sitting and waiting in an empty room for 26 hours. Unexpected bonus.

Impressive stamina on the part of Abed and everyone who's still here watching after all that time. I'm going to have to amend my previous take on what I'd do in this situation: In my younger days I'd be right in Abed's shoes. But today I'm 43, I think I'm all out of all nighters, but I'm also much less worried about upsetting people I don't love with all my heart so I'd probably walk out of the room and try to get some information. The idea was to get 80 beans for being part of a study, after all. I've not been told I'm gonna be disqualified if I leave the room or anything. I don't see a problem with taking steps to discern what the delay is, what is being done to address it and if anyone knows how long it's going to take, and would it be a problem if I went to stretch my legs, have a meal and possibly sleep for nine hours?, or at the very least see how far I can go to find these things out before it puts my 80 clams at risk.

Of course, the point is just to flip the script on Duncan and have him lose his shit in the face of Abed's stoicism. Statistical outliers always ruin the day of people who think they have people all figured out and under control. His final conclusion, that Annie has "destroyed the Duncan principle" by accidentally finding one person who by demonstration contradicts his silly idea of having a soul read on the general human condition, is sort of frightening. In a Dr Frankenstein placing himself above the timid morality of society kind of way.

Or maybe he's just a drunk throwing a tantrum.

Over to Jeff making friends with Vaughn. What makes Frisbee ultimate? "Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I wished someone asked me that." I realize now I probably quote that line more than everything else from this show put together. It should be the national motto of people who are into stuff nobody else cares about.

Enter Shirley, who prompts Vaughn to take his shirt off in about 4 seconds so she and Jeff can snicker internally at his tiny nipples, although Jeff resists. Kind of telling how gleefully Shirley responds when Jeff tells her she's the Devil, in a your exclusionary religious evangelism is such an obvious front for just smugly judging people way. But we'll probably get more into to that later with Shirley.

A rare scene of Jeff reading a textbook! He seems to actually try to figure his Spanish out. He seems to even be ahead of Britta who he corrects about the days of the week. It could be she's just very preoccupied thinking about Vaughn's penis. She lapses into one of the most intensely psychosexual scenes I have ever seen in movies or TV (maybe just behind that home dentistry in the bathtub scene in The Handmaiden), where she talks about the things Vaughn says "after." Only lasts for a moment, but I'm considering making the effort to get a screenshot just to show you, dear reader*. (Really wishing I had just put the DVD in my PC.) (How did I think this was going to work?) (If you're now wondering about the one shot I show in the post for episode 1, I stole it from the draft of the last time I tried this and never finished episode 1.)

Aanyway, it's just a friendly talk about Vaughn's terrible poetry, thinks Britta, but Jeff cannot resist the gossip covertly shares it. To be fair, rhyming "did ya" with "Britta" is awful and it makes me think less of Vaughn than I already did.

Troy now learns the experiment he thought he bailed on was the experiment. So we'll just casually chalk up terrible follow-up on the big board of professor Duncan's bad psych teacher skills. Did they really just let people have emotional breakdowns and walk out without telling them what was going on in there? Yikes.

Indeed, Britta seems to feel bad about it as soon as Abed (who went through it about 23 hours longer than anyone else did) tells her he put up with it only because she said they were friends.

Now Pierce, predictably, confronts everyone about the things he's wrongly overheard. Most of the fun here is Troy in the background trying to figure out if he's still a test subject.

I think we get a first taste here of why the Greendale Seven is in the "Chaotic Neutral" square of the great sitcom protagonists alignment chart. They are in the middle of ripping on Vaughn (okay, mostly his poem, but then he obviously bared his soul in that one) with some sharp, mean-spirited, dehumanizing barbs. Without giving a care when he enters the room. We immediately see how the group's toxicity ruins Britta's relationship then and there, and Vaughn is really not happy about it. ("This is the least tight thing that's ever happened to me.")

Britta is never going to forgive me. I can't believe I showed you that poem. Oh my God, my life is Degrassi High.

The timing really makes this line. It takes Jeff no time at all to figure it out. As soon as he says the words he understands his life has become a bad high school drama TV show and he's maybe more upset about that than about letting Britta down.

But actually when I see this I can only think of the outtakes of the scene, where Joel McHale (that's Jeff) flubs his line, turns to Yvette Nicole Brown (Shirley) and screams "Fuck you!" and then has to quickly explain he was in fact talking to himself. Brown is so classy about it, just making a theatrical "are you talking to me?" face with fingertips on her chest and giving him a chance to straighten out. Must be a weird method he has, based on vocal self-hate. Anyway. Just what I'm thinking about.

Shirley feels bad, she acknowledges her gossip problem, and she does try to resist when Jeff goads her on about the group of Black women she points out who used to be her study group before they kicked her out. There's a wealth of unexplored plots about the various "other" study groups at Greendale of which we only ever see the merest glimpses. Maybe the movie will give us a taste. . .

And speaking of stories we aren't told, I want to know what Shirley thinks Jeff did wrong in his life to end up taking remedial classes at Greendale after something went wrong with his Doctor career. Yeah it's just to tell us she, and maybe the study group in general, aren't really invested in each other (yet), and Jeff isn't really much of an outlier in knowing nothing about the others, but dang it's just such a funny image.

Now that we're already buried in such levels of detail, I like the little touch where we see Jeff was holding his schoolbooks in his lap the whole time he was sitting at the table. On a first glance it may look like he's trying to hold down a boner after Shirley tells him "the ultimate gossip" - that Britta had a sex dream about him - but thinking about it, what we're really seeing is how desperately guarded Jeff is in all matters even approaching his personal life. He just didn't want to put the books on the table where people might see them!

Meanwhile, Annie apologizes to Abed with what must surely be a symbolic gesture of an Indiana Jones movie collection. (Is there any world where he would not already own those?) But he immediately forgives her because it's obvious she knows what she did was not okay and when you're Abed you process feelings quickly and think more about what you're going to be feeling towards a person after you're done being conflicted and operate from that conclusion. Okay I may be projecting here.

Jeff is also sorry for overstepping and for making Britta mad at him, if not for making Vaughn break up with her. (He's really not, but he tries to be.) Our two fated attractive white heterosexual lovers have a kind of grown up conversation where they attempt to speak clearly about what kind of relationship they want to have with each other, for about six seconds before Britta finds out Shirley told Jeff about her dream. Ah well, I guess that's an average amount of honesty for human interactions.

People (including Shirley) repeatedly refer to Shirley as a "pot stirrer" in this episode and I can't help but think the term I would later internalize is "shit disturber." I mean if you think about Malvo in the Fargo TV show, would you describe him as a "pot stirrer" or a "shit disturber"?

At a gathering of hippies (beneath the stoner tree?) Jeff misses gossiping with Shirley, but as he encounters her walking with Britta they giggle and run away. These two ought to have an amazing relationship, but we don't see any of it that I can remember. Pierce, of all people, delivers our moral about how you shouldn't talk about or try to overhear people who are not directly in front of you.

This was the one thing that bothered me in the movie adaptation of Fight Club, by the way. In the movie, Tyler just arbitrarily makes it a rule that "Jack" is not allowed to talk about him with Marla. It's so important to him, the [spoilers] happens the moment "Jack" breaks that rule. In the book, contrarily, Tyler makes the argument that he doesn't want "Jack" to talk about him behind his back. I found this reasonable. I've tried to follow this rule with people in my life ever since I read it. It wouldn't have hurt the movie to take three seconds to include that, would it?

But if you're going to live in the world with all the people in it, you have to make peace with the fact you're not entitled to know what everyone thinks. You're not supposed to listen to their private conversations. We get close here to making a thesis about the human right to privacy, but that may be beyond the scope of both this show and myself. Just trust that this right, like all the human rights, are written for a reason.

The stinger is on theme, with Troy and Abed making fun of everyone they see in the hallway outside the study room until they're told everyone can hear everything they're saying and they can only escape by pretending to fall asleep. It hurts our dignity when we ignore the boundaries of privacy, I suppose.

[theimprobable1]

Community characters as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend songs

I think about this every time I listen to a CXG song, so here goes:

Jeff: (Tell Me I'm Okay) Patrick, I Could If I Wanted To, I Hate Everything But You (addressed to the study group)

Britta: You Stupid Bitch, Flooded with Justice

Abed: The End of the Movie, Slow Motion, only the very last line of Gettin' Bi: “It doesn’t take an intellectual to get that I’m bisexual”

Troy: Ping Pong Girl (weird choice I know but I feel like it could be reframed as Troy thinking “this is what straight guys act like”), Sports Analogies (in a smiliar way), Thought Bubbles

Shirley: Maybe This Dream (except with toned-down lyrics)

Annie: JAP Battle if Annie Kim was Jewish, One Indescribable Instant

Pierce: My Sperm Is Healthy

The Greendale Seven: Friendtopia

The Dean: You’re My Best Friend (And I Know I’m Not Yours), Feelin' Kinda Naughty, Sexy French Depression (when he’s learning excel)

Duncan: Greg's Drinking Song

Frankie: Who's The New Guy

Britta’s ex-boyfriend Blade in Jeff’s mind: Research Me Obsessively

Blood-drinking Jesus: Trapped In A Car With Someone You Don't Want To Be Trapped In A Car With

Jeff/Britta: Oh My God I Think I Like You

Troy/Abed pillow fight: You Go First

Abed/Rachel: Gratuitous Karaoke Moment

[clitemnestralove]

The world, orientalism and Quieta.

@raindrop-on-a-spiderweb

This are all fanarts thst i made of a work of the wonderful writer named Quieta, in Archiveofourown.org

Appointment in Samara could be called From False Love to Hate, and yet the reader would not expect all the pain of emotional manipulation that the protagonist, Shirley Duncan has to endure.

At the hands of her husband, a reflection of her own father, who takes it very seriously to take a woman for a wife, and nullifies her personality until there is nothing left of her but to be the wife. her servant. That of the media and the spectators and voters, for whom she is more of a carnival monkey than a human, and for whom she has to be Shirley Deforge, no one except the shadow of Buck, the presidential candidate. And finally, the most physical and lasting suffering, at the hands of three mercenaries, for whom she is nobody and everything.

It still has few chapters, but the city of Xauen/Chefchauen is the main landscape that we only peek into from a dark and oppressive room of a hostel where we will see the worst of men and the female understanding of it. We will also see the breakdown and revenge of a woman who has nothing left but herself.

It is also one of my main inspirations in these times when we have all had to be confined, even if it was for opposite reasons and they have not been torturing us.

This is one of the fisth fanarts. Based on the actor Pierre Clementi, Doe Eyes is described as a olive skined creepy manchild, who is the less sadistic of the four mens

The Blondie is the most profesional and experienced of the mercenaries, we can say that is the older of all too. You can expect the best anf the worse of him. A master of the old school of misoginy.

-Shirley, after an attack of one of the men, probably Fox.

- Another and first version, with the messed hair.

The last man is Fox, all of them are named for Shirley, and is a pretty obvious the reasons of his name. Probably the most hateful of the three.

- Fox raping Shirley, in a calm before the storm.

The other femenine character is the lover of the Shirley husband, a not common character...

Blondie reading in Xauen.

****BE CAREFUL, SPOILER ILUSTRATION*****

I had and instagram for all the fanart of more Quieta stories and for thewritingamateur stories, https://instagram.com/clitemnestralove?igshid=1eajonqr1e40p where i upload more fast than in tumblr. Or wach the Quieta discord.com if you want to see more of this 🥰.

[phantomofthepairofdice]

The Rosscars 2020

Wow. It’s that time of year again, only this time it’s different because it’s on a blog that no one will read! (hold for applause) Welcome to the first annual online publication for the Rosscars (hold for applause while the reader acknowledges how positively droll it is that I combined my name with “Oscars”). Who can forget such indelible Rosscar memories like when Steven Soderbergh surprised us all and won Best Director for Out of Sight or Bill Irwin’s beautiful speech upon winning Best Supporting Actor for Rachel Getting Married?! The Rosscars mean something different to everyone, but we all know that they mean quality choices made by a committee of one schmuck. This year’s Rosscars are bizarre because in an effort to be more like the Academy guidelines, film’s nominated have been released between January 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021. As usual, theatrical windows be damned, streamers are welcome. Of course, I have my gripes. I like categorizing movies by release year – specifically, when they become available to the plain old public like yours truly – not at festivals, limited runs in NYC and LA. Well, the Oscars are still weeks away and I feel like everybody wants to forget about last year and move onto this one that we’re already three months into - So here are my awards for the films, performers, and craftspeople that stood out in a pretty exceptional year for movies even though distribution was stranger than ever. 

**A few caveats and guidelines to Rosscar newcomers (which I imagine is just a formality since we all know the Rosscars so well)**

The rules and categories are a little different around here. First, not every category is honored directly. That’s for a few reasons, chiefly that I don’t feel qualified to reward the technical categories properly – I suppose I should say that I feel less qualified to do so than the “above the line” categories. In keeping with the Academy standard, there are five nominees in each category, except for Best Picture, Best Non-Fiction/Documentary Feature, and Best Ensemble Cast which allow up to ten. Every category, save those three, will have the possibility of honorable mentions, because I want to highlight some things that just barely missed the cut. The narrowing down of a lot of these categories was awfully tough.

Nominees are listed alphabetically, and the winners are in bold and italics.

Also, it’s important to keep in mind that I couldn’t see everything (this isn’t a job and it’s still $20 to rent The Father, y’all) and that these are just the opinions of one (self-described) “bozo on the internet.” If you’re a reader and have different picks, feel free to share!

Special Commendations for some things that I want to recognize: • Ludwig Goransson for his Tenet score which is an absolute banger • The costumes of Emma. (Alexandra Byrne), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Ann Roth), and Small Axe (Jaqueline Durran, Sin��ad Kidao, and Lisa Duncan) all struck me as exceptional • Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross with their scores for both Soul and Mank. Crazy that Pixar is working with the guy who made “Closer” • The cinematography of Da 5 Bloods (Newton Thomas Sigel), First Cow (Christopher Blauvelt), Beanpole (Kseniya Sereda), and A White, White Day (Maria von Hausswolff)

The Rosscars red carpet was, as usual, a bizarre affair. People filed into the theater and it seemed like the only encounters were awkward ones. Vin Diesel showed up in character as Bloodshot, Aaron Sorkin started getting really verbose about what a lovely night it was, and it became clear that most of the celebrities in attendance didn’t read their invitations closely enough to realize that this was not, in fact, the Academy Awards.

Everyone’s seated, and the show is under way. After a medley about the nominees this year by Common and Seth McFarlane that was more corny but clever than it was funny, the first official category is here, and the presenter is none other than... Ross!

Best Supporting Actor:

1. Chadwick Boseman for Da 5 Bloods

2. Matthew Macfadyen for The Assistant

3. Jesse Plemmons for Judas and the Black Messiah

4. Paul Raci for Sound of Metal

5. Glynn Turman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Honorable Mentions:

• Lucas Hedges for Let Them All Talk

• Orion Lee for First Cow

• Bill Murray for On the Rocks

Best Supporting Actress:

1. Vanessa Bayer for Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

2. Candice Bergen for Let Them All Talk

3. Gina Rodriguez for Kajillionaire

4. Amanda Seyfried for Mank

5. Yuon Yuh-jung for Minari

Honorable Mentions:

• Jane Adams for She Dies Tomorrow

• Charin Alvarez for Saint Frances

• Talia Ryder for Never Rarely Sometimes Always

• Debra Winger for Kajillionaire

Everyone loves a montage. The audience gets comfortable in their seats as the video screens start to show a montage of some of the most famous moments from Hollywood’s most magical movies. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers waltz, gliding across a dance floor like two hovering angels. There’s a clip of Leo declaring himself king of the world in Titanic, the flying bicycles in ET, Bogart stares longingly into Bacall’s eyes, and then there’s some scene where Tom Cruise rides a motorcycle from 2010′s Knight and Day. The audience all seems confused how that last one got in there. The John Williams music swells as little Kevin McAllister screams when puts on aftershave. We see clips of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia embrace Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Bruce Lee smoothly declares that boards don’t hit back and... wait... was that a clip from Michel Gondry’s Green Hornet with Seth Rogen? And that’s a clip from What Happens in Vegas... Bad Teacher... Vanilla Sky... Shrek 2... Any Given Sunday... Everyone is flummoxed. The last clip fades out and a sole editing credit appears: Cameron Diaz. The lights come up and there’s some applause, but mostly confused murmurs. 

The ceremony has had a bit of a misstep, but nothing it can’t recover from, especially as the next category is announced over the PA, and it looks like the presenter is... Ross!

Best Ensemble Cast:

1. Bacurau

2. Da 5 Bloods 

3. Kajillionaire

4. Let Them All Talk

5. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

6. Minari

7. Nomadland

8. Pieces of a Woman

9. Small Axe

Best Original Screenplay:

1. Danny Bilson and Paul Dameo & Spike Lee and Kevin Wilmott for Da 5 Bloods

2. Lee Isaac Chung for Minari

3. Brandon Cronenberg for Possessor

4. Sean Durkin for The Nest

5. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles for Bacurau

Honorable Mentions – a very difficult task to weed this down to five.

• Shaka King and Will Berson for Judas and the Black Messiah, from a story by Kenny and Keith Lucas

• Steve McQueen, Alastair Siddons, and Courttia Newland for Small Axe

• Kelly O'Sullivan for Saint Frances

• Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm for Another Round

Best Actor:

1. Ben Affleck for The Way Back

2. Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

3. Delroy Lindo for Da 5 Bloods

4. John Magaro for First Cow

5. Mads Mikkelsen for Another Round

Honorable Mentions:

• Riz Ahmed for Sound of Metal

• John Boyega for Small Axe

• Daniel Kaluuya for Judas and the Black Messiah

• Hugh Jackman for Bad Education

• Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson for A White, White Day

We have a break in the action and it looks like Darius Rucker has showed up to perform what he would have nominated for Best Original Song. The crowd is absolutely furious as he starts playing a song that apparently was in Trial of the Chicago Seven. An ocean of sonorous boos and curses overtakes the the once docile crowd. The Rock just ripped his chair from out of the ground. Jane Lynch somehow smuggled in a civil war era flintlock pistol that she’s now pointing at the stage! Suddenly, the crowd unifies around what started as a confident chant of one lone audience member - John C Reilly. It’s growing... Ja Ja Ding Dong, Ja Ja Ding Dong, Ja Ja Ding Dong - it’s like the macabre circus performers from Tod Browning’s Freaks, but instead of chanting “Gooble Gobble” they’re clearly pining for Darius to change his tune to the silly and delightful jam from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Darius, scared for his life, leaves the stage, but here come Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams to deliver the goods. Busy Philips and Michelle Williams burst into tears. Tom Hanks nods in approval. A segment saved by brave artists placating a toxic group of fans... we’ve just witnessed a live version of the Snyder Cut, folks.

Jack Nicholson seems completely unfazed, giving a thumbs up to the camera and blowing a kiss to the next presenter. Coming to the stage is... Ross... again...

Best Actress:

1. Jessie Buckley for i’m thinking of ending things

2. Carrie Coon for The Nest

3. Han Ye-ri for Minari

4. Sidney Flanagan for Never Rarely Sometimes Always

5. Vasilisa Perelygina for Beanpole

Honorable Mentions – these cuts were especially painful

• Haley Bennet for Swallow

• Morfydd Clark for Saint Maud

• Frances McDormand for Nomadland

• Christin Milioti for Palm Springs

• Geraldine Viswanathan for Bad Education

Best Adapted Screenplay:

1. Charlie Kaufman for i'm thinking of ending things from Iain Reed's novel

2. Sarah Gubbins for Shirley from Susan Scarf Merrell's novel

3. Kelly Reichardt and John Raymond for First Cow

4. Simon Rich for American Pickle from his short story "Sell Out"

5. Mike Makowsky for Bad Education from Robert Kolker's "The Bad Superintendent"

Best Non-Fiction/Documentary Feature:

1. Boys State

2. Collective

3. David Byrne’s American Utopia

4. Dick Johnson is Dead

5. Feels Good Man

6. In & Of Itself

7. The Painter and the Thief

8. Time

Jimmy Fallon has come out on stage to do a bit about the pandemic and watching movies at home. People are just absolutely not having it. He tries not to laugh at his own jokes while doing what I guess is technically a pretty good impression of Dr. Fauci interviewing James Corden as Martin Scorsese (the less said of this impression, the better) on what is or isn’t cinema. The bit doesn’t track and Fallon is absolutely tanking. The producers cut away from the stage to spare the viewers at home from this monstrosity. We see crowd shots of Millie Bobby Brown shaking her head in dismay, Colin Firth is simultaneously grimacing and trying to stave off laughter, Cynthia Erivo is texting, and director Tom Hooper is taking notes for his next film. Corden yells, “Carpool Karaoke! Remember?!” Ron Howard has fainted. This thing is almost completely off the rails.

Coming back to the stage is the next presenter, a clearly embarrassed... Ross! He’s in a total flop sweat, but stumbles his way through a joke about how Fallon should try co-hosting the Oscars with James Franco sometime. There are scant chuckles throughout a crowd that mostly just wants to see who won and go home.

Best Director:

1. Christopher Nolan for Tenet

2. Spike Lee for Da 5 Bloods

3. Steve McQueen for Small Axe

4. Kelly Reichardt for First Cow

5. Chloé Zhao for Nomadland

Honorable Mentions:

• Kitty Green for The Assistant

• Eliza Hittman for Never Rarely Sometimes Always

• Charlie Kaufman for i'm thinking of ending things

• Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round

Best Picture

1. Bacurau

2. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

3. Da 5 Bloods

4. First Cow

5. i'm thinking of ending things

6. Judas and the Black Messiah

7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

8. Nomadland

9. Small Axe

10. Tenet

Accepting the award for best picture is none other than Eve, the cow actor who played the titular First Cow! The audience is enamored with how graceful she looks in her cow gown, and her speech, though indecipherable, is likely simple, observational, and deeply profound for those who speak cow.

Wow, what a ceremony! Hearts were broken, property was damaged, dreams were fulfilled... blood was shed? Damn it, Meryl Streep came in and mugged Charlie Kaufman before absconding with the trophy. Oddly, she’s a previous winner, so the attack isn’t out of need for hardware. People are reading through articles about production on Adaptation for potential motives. Streep made time for a photo opportunity, but remains at large.

I could go on ad infinitum about all of these nominees and winners themselves and why they did or didn’t make the cut, but that’d be better served in a different piece. For now, my thoughts on most of these can be found on the Best of 2020 write-up and over on my Letterboxd. And, as always, these awards can be revoked and redistributed at will, so don’t get too cozy with that statue, Danny Bilson!

On behalf of the RAOGL (Rosscars Association of One Guy at a Laptop), thanks for reading, and stay tuned as we’re establishing a tip line for anyone has seen Ms. Streep or her stolen valor Rosscar. We’ll see you next year. Keep watching movies, and keep arbitrarily quantifying them in terms of subjective quality!

[scullys]

I am dying for more of your community opinions! Could you elaborate on your favorite characters, episodes, or dynamics? Or honestly whatever you want, I just love hearing people’s first time community takes

hell yeah i could. although not everything is completely processed in my mind so it might turn out confusing lmao

okay so favorite characters are jeff and annie obviously (and holy fuck my brain might be starting to develop an opinion about how sitcom couples are actually better than drama couples) i love jeff and his vulnerability underneath all the crap. he really is the one that feels the most huh that’s so adorable i can’t even begin- and annie oh my god i’m so attracted to her? she’s such a badass and such a cutie at the same time??? i’m scared of her but also aroused???? probably how jeff feels all the time too. again i really hate the age difference i do not feel comfortable with that at all, but it really really helps the fact that jeff was so aware of the creepy aspect and the power imbalance and just admired her from afar. also that it was acknowledged and so we know for a fact that he really is deeply in love with her as a person, despite her age, and that he respects her and is smart enough to know that a relationship at that stage of her life wouldn’t do them -especially her- any good. i’m actually quite satisfied with the way they handled most of it EXCEPT I REALLY WANT THE MOVIE WHERE THEY’RE FINALLY READY AND IN A RELATIONSHIP THANKS.

abed comes next because i relate to him a lot, from not understanding social cues to taking jokes too literally to oversharing to absorbing fictional characters’ personalities to make me feel more comfortable in my own body, to being a source of endless useless information but struggling to do simple math etc etc i might have issues and then troy because he’s just so fucking funny, his timing his delivery his loyalty his sensibility everything and troy and abed together make me emotional. i want a friendship like that so badly damn

hot take i really don’t like britta. i noticed her characterization changed A LOT in the second half of the show (jeff pointed it out twice “you seemed smarter than me when i met you” and “when did you become the group’s airhead?”) and though i don’t particularly love her ‘airhead’ part it did give her an adorableness that softened me towards her because before that i really found her deeply obnoxious. her fake wokeness got on my nerves sooo much. that episode where britta becomes friends with a girl just because she thinks she’s a lesbian and it would make her look cool and progressive? oh my god i wanted to slap her lmao. i like her personality as it was in the last season. she still has that “anarchist” attitude (visualize me rolling my eyes or clenching my teeth whichever you prefer) but she takes herself a little less seriously?? idk maybe it’s because her life’s such a mess at the moment and so she doesn’t feel as entitled and pretentious but i empathized with her a lot more.

i’m pretty indifferent to shirley as a character. i like her more in relation to the group as a whole. i love the thinly veiled rage she has and her changing from a sweet high-pitched voice to a deep threatening voice in a second gets me everytime. she is super religious and pretty homophobic sometimes so that’s annoying but it’s not shoved in my face every single episode so i got to like her a little bit.

pierce was hilarious and i kinda missed him when he left because of that tbh but he and chevy chase can go fuck themselves

i adore ben chang. that’s it. i enjoyed prof duncan whenever he popped up, didn’t know john oliver was in this show before

i couldn’t tell you my favorite episodes because i just finished binge-watching yesterday so it’s all a blur but as soon as i start rewatching i’m gonna be able to tell everything apart lmao off the top of my head: the timelines episode, the ass crack bandit episode and well the series finale. i remember laughing really hard at particular episodes but i don’t remember which ones they were so

overall this is one of the very few shows where i found myself saying “holy shit that’s good” out loud, be it for the dialogue, the writing in general or the concepts they came up with. it’s gonna be a comfort show for sure i love it so much. i’m downloading all the seasons right now so i can start giffing