Best Actor
Will Win: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist"
Dujardin should ride the goodwill from his win at the Screen Actors Guild awards to victory here, announcing himself as the next big foreign star to hit the States. If you’re thinking, “nah, I’ve never even heard of that guy before,” think back to Marion Cotillard’s win for “La Vie En Rose” a few years back.
John Edgar Hoover took over the post of Director of the Bureau of Investigations in 1924 (they wouldn’t add the “Federal” until 1935), when an Amherst graduate sat in the White House, the Chicago Cubs hadn’t won a World Series in 18 years and race riots, union strikes and anarchist bombings made Occupy Wall Street look like child’s play. Hoover would remain in his office until the day he died 48 years later, when Tricky Dick ticked off entries on his enemies list, the Vietnam War just kept raging and the Chicago Cubs hadn’t won a World Series in 66 years.
Halloween and horror movies go together like Will Smith and the Fourth of July: it just feels wrong to have one without the other. There’s nothing to send the chills down your spine like turning out all the lights and curling up with your favorite frightful flick in anticipation of a sleepless night (and you will not be able to blame that midterm this time).
Fight for your family. Fight for your country. Fight for your home, your job, your life. Fight the banks, fight the bureaucracy, fight the war. Fight hard. Fight on. Fight back.
This nation is grappling with itself. Unemployment, foreclosures, the national debt, education, health care, conflicts abroad: day in and day out, people are struggling over issues that, for a long time, we took for granted. We are uncertain, insecure; we have been hurt, and don’t want to be hurt again. We are tired, and we are angry.
For almost three months, St. Petersburg held me tight in its icy grip. After my arrival here in late January, a combination of bureaucratic complexities (the Russian visa system is an enigmatic process worthy of a Kafka novel) and personal indifference meant that I never stepped foot outside of the city. I say indifference because I never had any particular desire to leave; why bother going out to explore Russia at large when Petersburg alone had so much to offer?
