The movie, however, was amazing. I wasn't familiar with the graphic novel, but I loved the world and the characters the film set up - a very cool update on the fascist future dystopia genre and reminiscent of Orwell's 1984. Natalie Portman is brilliant - just like in Closer, whenever she's on screen, the film is at its best.

There are plenty of not-so-subtle references to the current political climate and leaders, complete with Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, and our own anti-V, W.

But I think it'd be easy to make too much of that. Just as when 1984 was first published in the late 40s, readers saw every character as a thinly veiled WWII figure. I think the real point is that fascism isn't going anywhere and we must maintain a constant vigil against our govnernments and ditto-heads.

It is just too easy for people to surrender their individual liberties as soon as their fear level gets high enough. And it's human nature, at least as a first reaction. (After all, who in the middle of the LA Riots wasn't relieved when the national guard arrived and implemented a city-wide curfew?)

But the real danger comes when politicians try to prolong this state of fear and emergency so that they can keep their unlimited power. Our current administration and its supporters are obsessed with emphasizing that we are at war and reminding us what the current terror alert level is and that the enemy is out there lurking.

This too is nothing new. The McCarthyites did it during the early cold-war. Or as Big Brother put it, "Eastasia has always been at war with Eurasia."

The entire notion of a "War on Terror" is absurd and dangerous, just like a "War on Poverty" or a "War on Drugs".

Despite the naysayers, I think Jon Stewart was the best host yet. The awards themselves were tame and enjoyable as usual.

Although I think Philip Seymour Hoffman is a brilliant character actor, I was disappointed that Joaquin Phoenix didn't win. He may have picked some lame scripts in the past ("Swing Away, Merrill"), but like his dead older brother was quickly becoming, Joaquin is a movie star.

I think everyone agrees that the biggest surprise of the night was Best Picture, the producers' Oscar that I hope to win someday. I imagine most people were surprised that Brokeback Mountain didn't win, which as you know I was glad about. But I was surprised that neither of my top two films won.

My friend Mark always says that Best Picture should be called Most Picture, since the movie that usually wins is simply the biggest production or the film with the grandest theme. He uses this to explain why movies such as Titanic or Gladiator win.

But I love huge movies. And I think there should be an award for Best Production (the original name for the Best Picture Oscar). This year, the film that I think clearly embodies the most picture principle was Munich, and it didn't win a single award.

2005 was a decent year for movies. I don't think any of this year's films will become classics, but on the other hand, there were a lot of very good movies. And all of this year's nominations are better than some past winners like The English Patient or American Beauty.

If I were voting, my order for Best Picture would be:
Munich
Good Night and Good Luck
Crash
Capote
Brokeback Mountain

I think the only film that doesn't belong in the list is Brokeback Mountain. I believe it was only nominated because that is the politically correct vote. I'd be thrilled if a gay-themed film really was the best picture of the year, but Brokeback is a small movie with solid performances that is actually a bit dull. A very good movie, just not one of the five best of the year.

Here are the films I wish had been nominated instead:
Walk the Line
Match Point
The Constant Gardener
A History of Violence
RENT
Syriana
In My Country

Below this tier, these were my favorite films of the year:
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Merchant of Venice
Me, You, and Everyone We Know
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Wedding Crashers
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Oliver Twist
North Country
In Her Shoes
Bee Season
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohia
March of the Penguins
Hustle & Flow
Chronicles of Narnia
Harry Potter 4
Kingdom of Heaven
Wallace & Gromit
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Elizabethtown
Batman Begins
Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
Red Eye
Flightplan

And to be complete and fun, these were the films where I really wanted my time and money back:
Domino
Star Wars 3
King Kong
Lord of War
The Island
Pretty Pursuasion
Hitch
Be Cool
Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
Layer Cake
Zathura
Aeon Flux
The New World
War of the Worlds
The Bad News Bears
Fantastic 4
Waiting

I've always loved how social board games are, but like many Americans, the best I've done in recent years has been the annual marathon game of Trivial Pursuit with my relatives on Thanksgiving or Christmas. While visiting New York last Halloween, however, I discovered that my friends Wylie and Molly host a weekly night of board games for three or four couples, which seemed like an inspired idea.

Last night we played Clue (which is a bit too easy for adult gamers) and a new Book Lovers' Edition of Trivial Pursuit, which was ridiculously hard and fun. I'm looking forward to playing Scrabble, Taboo, and Turbo Cranium at upcoming game nights, and if anyone has any recommendations I'd love to try them as well.

I think board games reveal a basic truth about people. We love nothing more than to chat and hangout, and if possible, maybe show-off a little. I think this is especially true as people get older. It's why people play golf or go lawn bowling - the structured excuse to walk around and chat.

When I was in my early 20s, I was drawn to exotic (and expensive) activities, like flying airplanes, skydiving, scuba diving, and skiing. All of those things are exciting and worth doing once in a while, but I used to do them every weekend. (Fortunately, I had a much higher income in those days.)

Perhaps I've mellowed or become more pedestrian, but now I'm just as excited about spending an afternoon sailing or doing yoga, or even better, having dinner and playing games with friends. Then again, maybe I'm just much poorer.

This is not strictly true since there are whole areas of activity that I have no interest in ever exploring, but I do like to dabble in new hobbies.

Like blogging. Last summer, I announced that I would try blogging "at least for the few weeks that my attention span will probably hold out."

The problem is there is no reason for me to blog, or for anyone to read this. I don't have a particular cultural rant or political spin or even a specific project to journal about. Nor do I have a huge network of friends and family that would have no idea what was going on in my life or what movies I liked without an online update. So I make no promise to post anything unless I find myself with too much free time. (After all, it does says occasional musings up at the top.)

As it happens, I happen to have some free time again. And so I've been chalking up new hobbies as quickly as my bank account will allow.

This week I added both beermaking and winemaking to my repertoire. I like wine and I like making things, so it seemed like a fun thing to try. (Then again, I like food too, yet I don't feel particularly inclined to cook. Go figure.)

Anyway, Tabitha bought me some books on winemaking for Christmas, and thanks to The Home Wine, Beer and Cheesemaking Shop, I now have six gallons of White Zinfandel fermenting as well as a gallon of spiced apple wine.

The problem is that wine takes six months to a year before it is ready to drink, often even longer. So while waiting, I decided to try making beer. I didn't bother reading any beer books--just bought some large pots and a recipe for five gallons of a London style ale. Beer is a little more initial work, requiring an afternoon of boiling various ingredients, but it's ready to drink in a month or two, which I'm looking forward to.

I have no idea whether these new hobbies will become something I stick with for years (like yoga) or just a few weeks (e.g. racquetball) or maybe something I pick back up every once in a while (such as tennis or blogging).

For now, the fermenting beer and wine smell great, and I'm hoping the bottles will make nifty little gifts.

In the meantime, I need to find a few more hobbies to try.

But I should've gone. Because it is quite good. Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, William Hurt, and newcomer Ashton Holmes all give amazing performances. The shots are steady and cinematic - none of the extreme close-ups and frenetic editing that plague so many movies. The story - apparently based on a violent graphic novel - is simple and unfolds smoothly. Which is nice, since as Jordan points out, given the source material, in the hands of lesser directors, this could easily have turned into another Sin City.

However, ever since growing up watching The A-Team, it's been one of my goals to be able to drive any vehicle. That way if Hannibal ever shows up and Murdock is unavailable, I'll still make sure the plan comes together.

So far I've learned to fly small airplanes, ride motorcycles, ski, surf, skydive, scubadive, and now sail.

After crewing for Katie a few times and refining our racing skills, today I took her boat out and became the first person to sail it solo. While the Capri is not exactly the Argo and I'm hardly ready to call myself Jason or Sinbad, I did technically captain a ship.

And there's something exhilarating about whipping across the water powered only by wind and skill, just as pirates have done for thousands of years.

In the meantime, I've gotten several calls about line producing work, which is very nice, since for my first few years in this business I was grateful just to get an unpaid internship.

I've also learned from an entertainment attorney that my current position in the Hollywood hierarchy is called a golden retriever: a young producer who goes out and grabs a piece of material then brings it to a real producer who can hopefully get the movie made.

Robert Evans says he became a producer by controlling material--optioning books that people wanted to make into movies.

But securing exclusive film rights to a successful, published book is no easy feat, even if the book isn't called "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Godfather".

Then again, easy feats are seldom worth doing.

So when my friend Scott brought me a book he had loved as a kid, I read it and we decided to go after it. The writing is mundane and the book hardly has a plot or ending, but there is a charming quality to the nerdy young protagonist and her supernatural powers. More importantly, the book has been continuously published for 25 years and has a remarkable fan-base of readers who were touched by it at just the right age.

It took several months of pitching and cajoling to convince a major New York literary agency and the late author's estate that they should tie up the rights to their beloved book with a couple of aspiring filmmakers with no produced credits and no real money on the table.

But somehow we did and Scott and I finally controlled the rights to a published book.

Which is nice, because this morning we got our first nibble:

A young development executive at The Robert Evans Company called to tell me that he's always loved the book and is thrilled he's finally tracked down the rights and is eager to hear my take on the movie. He said they're currently in the business of making mid-budget family fare, and from my three sentence pitch, he feels we're on the same page.

So now Scott and I have to hammer out our treatment and see if we can get Evans to partner with us and set it up at Paramount.

Then the next step will be for us to stay in the picture.

The story is charming and the movie entertaining - a bit reminiscent of the book Cheaper By The Dozen fused with 1950s Americana and kitsch.

I went because I'm a huge fan of Julianne Moore. After Far From Heaven and The Hours, she is clearly the go-to actress for portraying the 1950s housewife-as-emotional-prisoner-of-conscience. (Woody Harrelson is quite good as well, although the ten kids are mostly forgettable except for Tuf, who was originally the story's protagonist.)

After the screening, AFI did its requisite Q&A with writer-director Jane Anderson and surprise guest Woody Harrelson. Jane mostly waxed about finding the inner-Buddha in life and her characters, so this Q&A was no less anticlimactic than usual. (Although Woody was funny and self-deprecating, and Jane did reveal that Robert Zemeckis was originally set to direct and she only got to make her feature debut because he couldn't stomach the idea of working with all those children.)

I think this is just as true for producers or anyone else trying to generate a career out of nothing.

I don't have a real job. I don't even have a fake job. No one cares whether I get out of bed or spend the day sailing or surfing or reading the paper... (which has its perks, of course)

Although unlike many freelance workers, I can't sit around trying to get hired either. I'm supposed to be the one creating the jobs, thinking up ideas for movies, finding or commissioning scripts, pitching them, getting them packaged and financed, and eventually hiring all my crew-member friends to shoot the movie.

(Actually, there's a middle ground, which is when I get hired to line-produce someone else's movie, and then I have all the structure and benefits of a real job--including the paycheck! Those jobs are great fun, but there's a lot down time in-between, and ultimately I want to be a creative producer anyway.)

So being a "creative producer" - at my low level especially - requires some discipline. With no boss or co-workers or paycheck, it's not always easy to convince yourself that there aren't better uses for your time than sitting around reading scripts or brainstorming story ideas or writing extensive notes for screenwriters about how to improve their screenplays which will probably never sell anyway.

But how else are you gonna make it?

So from Monday to Friday, I force myself to get up and drive over to my little office on Hollywood Blvd. Since I work alone and have a desk and internet at home, it's hard to justify paying $400/month for this privilege. But it does give me a cool place to have meetings, a structured time and setting to develop my producing projects, and a reason to get dressed.