DiBiase probably should have known that you have to be golfing buddies with the former president if you’re going to dodge a conviction like I assume Favre will do.

My rankings of the BP nominees:

10) The Fablemans - Just absolutely dreadful. I’m not one of those people who complains that much about the stereotypical Oscar bait trope of “movies about movies”. But the entirety of this movie is just boring as hell or full of characters doing completely unrealistic things. As I said earlier, it’s a total vanity project from one of the last people on Earth who needs one.

9) Top Gun Maverick - Just like the first one, it’s full of unlikable characters that I’m apparently supposed to root for. Since I didn’t like the original, I didn’t have any of those nostalgic feelings that others had. It really felt like rah rah America boomer porn.

8) Triangle of Sadness - Parasite already did this, and did it much better. The first part was totally unnecessary and the ending was stupid. It’s a shame because this had potential, but outside of a pretty solid half hour about halfway through the movie, it missed the mark for me completely.

7) The Banshees of Inisherin - Maybe I just don’t appreciate allegories for the Irish Civil War. This just dragged for me. There just wasn’t enough here for a 2 hour movie. Maybe I would have liked this more as a short film.

6) All Quiet on the Western Front - For the second straight year, we have a remake of a previous BP winner. It was almost a century ago and this one is in German, so I’m more forgiving of this one. But the original is still better, many due to the fact that the ending is far inferior.

5) Tár - Still not sure what to think of this one. The director should be pelted with tomatoes for what he did for the first 30 minutes of the film. I don’t want to see 5 minutes of credits and I don’t want to hear what amounts to an in depth Wikipedia article about conductors I’ve never heard of. Credit for the ambition of the film and Cate Blanchett is great, but I’ll stop there in terms of major praise.

4) Avatar The Way of Water - The script is pretty thin (it’s basically the first movie with some relatively minor changes). But you know what to expect and it delivers. There’s more to a movie than visual effects, and I’m not sure that should have been enough to land it on the BP nomination list, but in terms of pure enjoyment, I have to put it here.

3) Elvis - It took awhile to get used to Baz Luhrmann’s directorial shtick, but once I did, I could just sit back and be mesmerized by an unbelievable performance from Austin Butler. It was so good I could mostly ignore whatever the **** that was from Tom Hanks.

2) Women Talking - The title is definitely truth in advertising. It’s a very dialogue heavy movie (honestly this could have been a play with almost no changes). There are some plot holes that bothered me, but the intense philosophical discussions were enough for me to mostly ignore those. Watching this reminded me of One Night In Miami, though this wasn’t quite as good. I’m seeing people compare this to 12 Angry Men. I really need to see that.

1) Everything Everywhere All At Once - I know this is going to win BP, and it definitely deserves it in an absolute garbage year for nominees. It’s a very good movie. But I’ll stop short of calling it “great”. It tries way too hard as if it’s trying to be Rick and Morty: The Movie. It wants to be deeper than it is. That sounds like a lot of complaining for my #1 pick, but I’m really just pushing back on a lot of the overdone praise it’s getting.

So yeah, this was an absolute horrendous lineup of BP nominees, probably the worst since they expanded the list (it’s definitely either this or 2017). RRR is better than all of these movies. Argentina, 1985 is better than all of these movies.

So, yeah, good luck to EEAAO at the Oscars on Sunday. I’ll mostly be watching for the Naatu Naatu performance.

I haven't seen any of these yet.

Seeing EEAAO compared to Rick and Morty is unfortunate since Rick and Morty just doesn't work for me.

Whether this happens or not, it seems like a stone cold lock that someone at least pitched the idea of parodying the Will Smith thing from last year on this year's show, and whoever did that should have their fingers chopped off and then should be taunted about their lack of fingers for the next decade. I realize that it's unavoidable that at the very least Kimmel will tell a joke about it that will be much more painful than funny.

(In fairness, when SNL parodied this it was way less painful than I expected, so perhaps the bar of low expectations will help.)

Oh God, Kimmel being on also opens up the possibility of parodying the call of the wrong BP winner.

Just a pre-emptive "nope" to everything the writers for this show are going to inevitably have in mind. Just stop taking the most obvious joke available and then forcing the live audience to courtesy-laugh for it.

Assuming you know nothing about any of the BP nominees, it's ironic you chose this as the punishment.

Yeah I have no idea what reference I accidentally made.

Definitely watch 12 Angry Men. One of the best movies ever. Would rate it alongside Resr Window as probably my favorites of the classics.

It's funny that I see all of twitter imagining Jets twitter celebrating Aaron Rodgers' decision to play for the Jets, but I don't actually see much of this celebration coming from Jets twitter.

Sure, he gives the Jets a better chance of winning than they'd have without him this year and they may only have been a QB away, but the compensation and his off the field bullshit are pretty big factors too. Hopefully, the Jets will hold their ground and not give up an entire draft.

I sympathize. It's nothing on the level of Cleveland signing Deshaun Watson - and signing him in a way that gave him maximum protection against losing compensation as a result of his disciplinary issues - but it would be massively alienating if my team took that ****ing guy on.

I guess a SB victory would wash away most sins and it could be worse. At least I don't have to root for DeShaun Watson or Michael Vick.

I'll place a bet that Rodgers follows Favre by flaming out of the Jets after 1 year then goes to play for the Vikings immediately after that

Didn't particularly care for the newest Mando. And people who aren't steeped in SW lore seem like they'll like it significantly less than I did. The only way I really know how to describe the episode is that it seems like an arrogant thing to have even attempted.

Welp, we had a good ~25 post run without talking about Star Wars.

Well, I haven't gotten the newest internal newsletter question yet, so I'm kind of short on original content.

Though in reality I did face a torturous decision during the past week. A week ago today, I was approached and soft-offered the opportunity to return to my old area of the office (the one that I posted about forcing my way out of previously) with a promotion where I would be the one heading the whole thing up. Would have been a significant bump in rank and pay.

There were numerous red flags that spooked me (for one, they appear from the outside to be bleeding top people at an unusual rate), and I ended up turning it down. Basically I spent several days with a leaning toward "no" but really kind of trying to get to "yes." But I couldn't shake off the feeling that it was the wrong move for me. I was able to catch up with the outgoing person voluntarily vacating the position that I would take over, and while she didn't have entirely negative things to say, she did confirm all of the things that I was skittish about. It made it much easier to just finalize a decision of no, and by the end of that day I politely declined.

Kind of annoying that this was how the timing worked out, because a few years ago I would have jumped at the same opportunity. I'm sure there will be recurring what-if thoughts. But I'm confident that turning it down was the right play here.

Yeah, that sounds like a massive increase in stress.

Assuming you're relatively comfortable with the day-to-day and the pay that comes with your current position, I'd probably do the same thing in your spot.

Thankfully this rare employee-friendly market worked to my advantage, as my employer gave significant pay increases to everyone just a few months ago, and now I'm perfectly happy with what I make; while obviously I would have appreciated the additional raise that came with this (probably something like a 20% bump from my current salary), it was hard to consider the money to be a big draw in making this decision. I'm presently cocooned under highly sane managers in a way that allows me to strongly limit my interaction with any high-level drama, I almost always get to just work normal business hours and then fully mentally check out until the next day, and that sort of peace is a lot to give up.

I'm amazed at how long it takes (if ever) so many folks to properly value reporting to highly sane managers. Have seen a good amount of colleagues leave our department (which isn't perfect, but the VP I report into is near-universally beloved) for 30-50% pay increases at chaotic start-ups or conglomerates, only to work twice the amount of hours with nightmare management.

IME you were right to turn down that offer - every VP+ I've seen perform a mass-culling of directors/sr managers has been an absolute nightmare to deal with

It was weird, but I'm curious enough to see where they go with it. There has to be more to it.

The guy I would have reported to was a known quantity; he was at the top before when I left, and I've had a fair amount of direct dealing with him. He's...okay. He's not super relatable, but day-to-day dealing with him is usually not painful. That said, if he gets leaned on from above in any way that requires him to make his subordinates' lives unreasonably harder, he will simply roll over, and can't be counted on to look out that strongly for his employees' best interests.

Also, during that whole drama when I was forcing my way out of the division, and I was among the supervisors of the team (albeit at a more secondary level than what this would have been), he, uhh, demoted me with the Sideshow Bob method. Late on a Friday afternoon, he sent out an email to the whole team with a few items of business. One of them included saying, "Your supervisors will be:" And then he named every existing supervisor except me. I mean...WTF. I was forcing my way out, of course they shouldn't plan long-term around me, but no heads up before sending that email was just completely insane in my book.

They're setting up the damn Palpatine cloning thing, it seems like. It had Andor vibes without the accompanying quality. The Din/Bo bookends were good though.

The cloning stuff was so poorly explained in sequel trilogy that hopefully, they'll give us something better here. They had to get to it at some point in this time period.

Feels like sunk cost fallacy to even bother trying to patch up The Rise of Skywalker. Difficult to imagine it feeling worth it. But maybe it could be independently interesting, who knows. It was a tepid start.

That said, I do approve of them moving further away from mission-of-the-week and more toward dovetailing with the other shows.

I watched season 1. I was captivated for a few episodes. And then my interest slowly waned. I just tried firing up season 2 and my lack of enthusiasm caused me to turn it off quickly.

The show isn't without its charms, but overall it just didn't work for me. I don't even have any specific criticisms to air about it; it just didn't hold my interest.

Oh man, you gave up when Aya Cash was introduced?

100% correct call to abort then. She makes everything better, so if she didn't do it for you, it wont work.

Took my son to go see EEAAO at the theater yesterday because his girlfriend hasn't seen it yet.

Some thoughts: Quan should have been nominated for best actor instead of supporting. He also should have won in that category.

JLC is a treasure and absolutely should not have won her oscar for this. She probably shouldn't have even been nominated.

Stephanie Hsu should have been much higher on the supporting oscar odds. Her performance gets better with each watch. Its very difficult to pull off a character that is equal parts funny, scary, and pitiful, and she nails all three when the movie calls for it.

Still a great movie. I am enthralled every time Quan is on screen. Less so with Yeoh, although that's exactly how the character should make you feel. She should be understated in almost every scene, and she is, which is a testament to her performance.

Ive told him the same. This along with Vertigo are the only two on my perfect movies list.

Its so good, I even enjoy the 40 year remake with Tony Soprano, Tony Micelli, and Gil Grissom (though to a much lesser extent)