Recent Award Winners
Everyone seems to be going ceremony crazy, so decided to hand out our own awards! No gold statues, no plaques- just the praise and scorn of our whips and pens. We’ll start with movies, work our way into music, and finish off with some literature.
Our “best recent DVD award” goes to Chumscrubber, an indie film that you probably missed in theaters. Now is your chance to check out the excellent movie that our reviewers thought mixed Donnie Darko and Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys with a little more cynicism. Plenty to say about families, and several great characters/actors. The title refers to a videogame inside the movie’s world- is there a name for these sorts of products that live only inside of the movie? Regardless, Chumscrubber is a tad depressing, but don’t miss a chance to see kidnapping done high-school style.
Next up is Waterborne, a film deserving of attention if only because it features that guy from Office Space. Oh, and it’s the first movie to be sold on Google Video. We thought it deserved the “implausible disaster” award, due to it’s inability to explain exactly what was going on. The premise is that unknown terrorists have attacked LA’s water supply, and the entire movie is a structural homage to Crash or Magnolia with interweaving plots and characters that manage to connect by the end. The unexplainable happens when no one suggests/attempts boiling the water, and no one explains why there aren’t more companies like Coke and Pepsi on hand selling/giving away beverages bottled from out of the area.
Moving along, we’ve been listening to some great music coming out overseas. The British band Arctic Monkeys have been garnering more than their share of press, and thus deserve the award for “Most Overhyped Group of 2006 So Far”. We’ll reserve some words for other artists, like Pier Bucci, whose album Familia came out recently, and proves that Chile can make some extraordinary electronica. This album, his first with the label Crosstown Rebels, wins our brand new award for “Best Emerging Artist That We Actually Like”.
Finally, for those who like their entertainment on flattened dead trees, you can’t get much more varied and interesting than David Foster Wallace’s latest tome, Consider the Lobster. Assay these essays on a range of topics (for example linguistics; seafood). The book is justly deserving of our trophyless-trophy for “Best Footnotes, Acronyms, Layout in a Non-Fiction Setting”.
That’s a wrap! Send us your suggestions for future awards, and let us know what you think of ours by leaving a comment.
