Oscar winning movies and those that should have won

I watched Moonlight (best picture 2017) last night. I enjoyed it except that I had a struggle some of the time to hear the dialogue. A sign of my advancing years rather than a flaw in the film. It was a film that made me feel uncomfortable, at different moments for different reasons, but is a worthwhile exploration of a young man growing up and his various relationships. But it ultimately left me with an impression of lifelong sadness, so it was hard for me to find positives for the character. Not a feel-good film, unlike the film it beat for the Oscar, La La Land. Other beaten films of that year I haven't seen but it seems a weak year to me.

The previous year, 2016, seems to have contained a stronger field. Non-winners (I can't really think of them as losers) include the hugely enjoyable Mad Max: Fury Road, The Big Short, Bridge of Spies and The Martian. The winner was Spotlight but the best, in my opinion, was Brie Larson in Room (she got Best Actress).

2015 had two biographical films, The Imitation Game about Alan Turing and The Theory of Everything with Eddie Redmayne (of whom normally I'm not much of a fan) as Stephen Hawking. Clint Eastwood directed American Sniper and I thought Selma, about the US Civil Rights movement and starring David Oleyowo as Martin Luther King, was perhaps the best of those. The winner was Birdman, which I haven't seen, which I something I may remedy soon.

2014 was a stellar year for me. The outstanding 12 Years a Slave won the Oscar, but the runners-up list includes an excellent batch including Dallas Buyers Club (which I would probably have chosen), American Hustle (a fun A List romp), Gravity, the tense Captain Phillips and one of Leonardo DiCaprio's best roles, The Wolf Of Wall Street.

2013 had one of my favourite softie rom-coms, Silver Linings Playbook, Tarantino's tough Django Unchained, Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (which I would make no. 2) and my no. 1, Beasts of The Southern Wild. For me it's a wonderful movie. And of course, in front of all these excellent offerings, the winner was the worst of them all and possibly the worst Oscar winner ever, Argo. Ugh.

Skip over 2012 and the dreary films such as The Artist, War Horse and The Tree Of life, and move back one final year to 2011, which had one of my favourite films of recent years - Winter's Bone. If you haven't seen it, do so! But it was listed in a truly exceptional year in which The King's Speech won and included Toy Story 3, The Social Network, Black Swan, Inception, 127 Hours, The Fighter and True Grit. One of the best years ever?

I could go on and on but I won't. You'll have noticed I skipped the latest three years. I haven't seen many of the nominations, partly because of my local cinema's dispute with one of the distributors so certain films never arrive in St Austell. But here are brief observations:

2018: The excellent Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri beaten by The Shape Of Water, a film in which a mute cleaner falls in love with a humanoid amphibian; mm.

2019: Olivia Colman wins Best Actress in the very entertaining The Favourite but is beaten by Green Book (which I have downloaded ready to watch) for Best Picture. [11pm] I watched Green Book tonight, discovered after about 2 minutes I had seen it, but it's good enough to watch again, so I did. Highly recommended.

2020: I enjoyed Little Women and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, thought 1917 was one-dimensional and haven't yet seen Parasite, the winner.

Share your opinions in the Comments!

Daily press performance

Turned on my TV to watch some YouTube video, caught a minor front bench automoton lecturing (surely lecturers are the only people who illustrate their points with slides) the hoi polloi on the government's latest thoughts. An art form in which the robot (with almost human controllers) is accompanied by a Greek chorus, to music by Mikis Theodorakis.

Automoton:
   "First slide please"

   "This shows that the situation is still bad and therefore we must"

Chorus:
   "Stay alert!"

Automoton:
   "Next slide please"

   "This shows a graph and some numbers which you, the masses, are too think to understand; all you need to know is"

Chorus:
   "Stay home!"

Human controller:
"No, minister, that was yesterday's slogan"

Automoton:
"Ah, go home!"

Human controller:
"Not quite, minister, things have changed"

Automoton:
   "Ah yes, the government has decided you can all"

   "Go to someone else's home; as long as there is only one person there. If someone else turns up you have to run away in order to "

Chorus:
   "Control the virus!"

Automoton:
   "Next slide please"

   "As you can see, it is now possible for us all to go to work"

Human controller:
   "Well, minister, it'as not as simple as that...."

Automoton:
   "Yes, well, most of you should not go to work and should"

Chorus:
   "Stay home!"

Automoton:
   "Next slide please"

   "We now have these 5 threat levels to tell us whether a terror attack is....er no, whether Chinese bat flu is likely to hit us in a second wave if we don't"

Chorus:
   "Stay alert!"

Automoton:
   "Let's hear from Nigel in Cornwall"

Nigel, on the beach with 100 friends in Cornwall:
   "Please, my dear government, all this is totally unnecessary. Do you think we are idiots? (don't answer that, minister) Every day is the same bad, sad news accompanied by suspect data and approximation curves. And you and your colleagues patronise us with drivel slogans and defensiveness statistics. Just give out the numbers in a press release and go home...or actually go and do some work...if you're allowed to"

Automoton:
   "Well thank you, Nigel, very good points, I can think we can all agree that we need to"

Chorus:
   "Save lives!"

I think we probably can agree on that.

Food and drink dilemmas

I'm drinking peppermint tea. Or is it just peppermint? That's what it says on the box. I thought "tea" was a generic term for drinks you make by pouring boiling water over leaves. But maybe tea is a protected term in some post-colonial Anglo-Indian trade treaty. Or maybe peppermint is different from peppermint tea? Who knows.

Should you make coffee with water which is boiling, nearly boiling or what? (This is obviously not for those who use the pesky machines). How do you get a kettle to produce water nearly boiling? I guess most people are like me and try to time it to the microsecond but miss out and...it boils. Is post boiled water the same as nearly boiled? Does anyone notice any difference?

Should you put the jam first on a scone, or cream first? This depends, of course, on whether you are in Cornwall or Devon. The answer, as we Cornishmen know all too well is....hang on, let me check -
in Cornwall it's jam first (correct), in Devon cream first (incorrect).

Should we decant wine from screwtop bottles? Wrong question - should we even be drinking from screwtop bottles? (I mean wine in screwtop bottles; don't get the impression I drink from the bottle) Corks good, screws bad, as George Orwell said.

And there's the age-old problem of eating spaghetti. Do you twirl the spag around a fork against the side of a spoon, cut into pieces with the spoon against a fork, suck in a genteel fashion (is that a sexist term? If so, add ladylike for balance) or just duck your head and slurp?

Don't get me going on chopsticks. Whoever invented those? I mean the person, not the nation. What ridiculous implements. I get that maybe they pre-dated knives, forks and spoons but now? That's just silly.

Enjoy your dinner, people! Or should it be supper? I think one is for a meal you cook for family and friends and the other involves eating in a restaurant but I don't care enough to check this. It's just food! And drink. Obviously.

Celebrity Nigels

I have never really liked my name. I accept it in a Zen kind of way but it definitely isn't cool. I don't know how my parents chose it; to my knowledge there is no previous Nigel in the family. Then I thought that maybe, in 1944, there were famous Nigels around and I was named after, say, an atomic scientist who had just invented the atom bomb, or a heroic general in the Allied armies.

So I researched.

The National Army Museum website tells me:

"During the Second World War, Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott founded the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPP) to undertake covert beach reconnaissance. This proved vital for the success of Allied seaborne invasions."

Various obituaries in 2001 told me:

"Nigel Clive was one of the heroic small band who were parachuted into the Greek mountains to assist the Greek resistance against the Axis occupiers in 1943-44...he received the Military Cross in 1944"

I don't think my parents would have named me after these heroes, so I thought maybe Nigel was the most popular boys' name in 1944. I checked a list on BabyNames.it and Nigel came...not at all in the top 1000. Seriously, Mum and Dad? Behind Willie, Alvin, Marion (!) and even Grant - although I don't imagine Grant Grant would have helped in life. Oh wait a minute, these are American names. Ah, obviously Nigel is supremely British, maybe even English, so let's see if I can find an English list of boys' names in 1944.

Ah, he we are, I am number 69, far ahead of common names such as Reginald, Jack, Daniel (ha!) and Mohammed - what? there were Mohammeds in England in 1944? Wow. The no. 1? Do your own research!

So I have no idea what was going through my parents' minds. Maybe they just new a nice chap who they admired, and thought "let's have one of those".

So far, no celebrities. At least what we in 2020 are made to believe are celebrities. My two WW2 heroes definitely should be but I imagine they were pretty much unknown to the public at the time.

So, a few modern Nigels.

One who I wouldn't mind having been - Nigel Kennedy, supremely talented but definitely weird/quirky.

One who I'm glad I'm not - Nigel de Jong, Dutch footballer hard man who should have been sent off by Howard Webb (as he himself later admitted) in the 2010 World Cup Final for a wild king fu style kick.

And I'm not going to mention Nigel F...

When I was at school, my O Level Spanish teacher, in the first lesson, asked us each in turn what our first name was. He then told each student what the Spanish equivalent was and that name would be used in class. Plenty of easy and obvious ones - Leonardo, Antonio, Miguel, Alejandro...I was the only one for whom there was no Spanish equivalent! The embarrassment; maybe that was the moment I started to dislike my name.

What did he decide to call me?

Rafael.

Now there's a classy name. I'd have liked that and, at some time later in life, maybe changed my name by deed poll.

Boris at 7?

I don't think I'll be watching. Not quite the gravitas and sincerity of her maj (and I didn't watch her).

Same old, same old depressing news and prospects with a few tweaks. Can we even believe the data? Are the scientists all they are cracked up to be?

You know, I've never been a fan of Matt Hancock. He has always been too fond of the limelight and of crass sound bites (which politician isn't?). But in this case, he has definitely drawn the short straw and, particularly while the PM was off sick, held the fort nobly and quite responsibly and robustly. He has struggled, yes, but who wouldn't have? There have been mistakes, yes, but maybe we'd all have made the same ones. Or worse.

But what can the PM say which will make a difference to my life currently? Very little, I imagine. Whatever he says, I shall continue 2 metre distancing, continuing exercising when I feel it will be beneficial (I've always been happy to take two short walks in a day rather than the ridiculous "one a day" advice (or is it a rule? I don't know).

I will be happy to be able to visit my garden centre soon, but I'd prefer the recycling centre to be open. Both would resolve some gardening issues. Even better would be outdoor tables in pubs. I don't see that happening but I think it wouldn't be that hard for pubs with beer gardens and outside tables to implement table service by staff with masks, tables to be isolated. If we can walk in the outside areas of garden centres, why not outside tables in pubs?

I recently had to go to Halfords to get a new car battery. They had implemented what seemed to me to be a robust isolating process which felt totally safe. Similarly, B&Q and the pet shop in the same small complex. I just feel more could do so. I don't understand why my local garage is closed when the one up the road is open.

Right from the start, I have felt that the emphasis on enforcement and police powers is too great. The vast majority of people are able to see the sense in behaving responsibly and not mixing or getting too close to others. If you come across those who don't do so, keep away from them. And I guess I have been ignoring the advice by driving a short distance to an area to take a walk - that seems totally appropriate; the argument that it isn't necessary is the wrong argument. I have noticed quite a few of our elderly residents resting on conveniently place bench seats to have a breather during their walk; good on them.

Then there is football. Amidst all the severe social distancing restrictions, we are going to allow 22 sweaty men and women to chase around, grapple and tackle, puff, pant and splutter all over each other? I'm the first to want footy back on screen but we all know it's about money.

There - this wasn't supposed to be rant, but that's what it has become. Sorry readers, sometimes that's what you get from bloggers.

I may be wrong; maybe he'll cheer us all up.

Quotations

Civiization VI is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) turn-based strategy game, my favourite computer game.

The aim is to take a civilization from the ancient era through the years into space and beyond, accumulating science, culture, faith and gold and using them to pursue a victory such as being the first player to reach the distant stars.

Here is a screenshot from one of my current games:

I am playing as the Mapuche, a South American people, led by Lautaro. I am at war with the Netherlands, led by Wilhelmina. I have just captured her city of Mbwila. That doesn't sound very Dutch, I hear you say? It was originally a city belonging the Kongo but the Dutch captured it; now they are getting their comeuppance. (She also captured Hong Kong, as you can possibly see; very rude)

Each turn I use each of my units - builders build improvements such as farms and mines, apostles spread religion, planes attack units, artillery bombards cities, etc. When I have finished my turn, the AI civilizations take theirs.

This particular game is moving into the end game: I am building a spaceport, although I'm still using my (now ancient) tank armies. But do not worry - I have just discovered uranium and am on my way to researching Robotics, after which I will be able to build Giant Death Robots - Wilhelmina, beware!

Here's another game I'm playing:

Here I am the Maori, on a true world map. The Maori, led by Kupe, started in the ocean in the game, discovered and settled New Zealand (obv) and have now settled Australia. Australia is led by WWII PM John Curtin but are absent without leave in this game!

Enough of this nonsense, I hear you say. What about the quotations? The Civilization series has always prided itself on historical authenticity and, every time you research a technology or a civic, the mellifluous tones of Sean Bean utter the words of some worthy. The words are always authentic (i.e. were spoken or written by the author) but not necessarily true (i.e. may have been fake news).

Here are some of them.

My favourite is:

• “NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.” (Will Chabot) [Space Race civic]

These are for bloggers:

• “Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.” (Paulo Coelho)
• "Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words." (Mark Twain) [both Writing civic]
• "Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?" (Jane Austen) [Social Media civic]

There are so many good ones that I had a hard time whittling them down to a few more, to complete this post:

• “I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” (Winston Churchill) [Animal Husbandry tech]
• “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder … Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.” (Capt. E.J. Smith, RMS Titanic) [Shipbuilding tech]
• “The good thing about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.” (Ted Nelson) [Computers tech]

Finally, the iconic:

• “I’ll be back.” (Arnie as The Terminator) [Robotics tech]

You can read them all at https://lowrey.me/civilization-vi-quotes/

Play the game and enjoy Sean Bean's droll delivery!