Oscars 2024: Post the Oscar awards from a week ago, I have a couple of thoughts about it. First and foremost I want to send out congratulations to my son Wade on his victory in the fun pool. He bested two-time defending champion, my older brother Scott. Well done to both of you in anticpating the whims of the Academy. Wade had 33 out of possible 40 points, correctly predicting every major category. Scott was 2 points back.

As to the awards itself, I was very pleased that Christopher Nolan finally got the recognition of his work from the Academy. He is one of the best directors presently with a considerable and impressive body of work. His work on the Best Picture Oppenheimer shows off his skills so well. I am a fan. I see his movies in IMAX which he insists on filming in. The film had 13 moninations and won seven awards: including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Cillian Murphy) and Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.).

If you follow the X/Twitter verse, there were plenty of people expecting that Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon would win. I will admit, and have readily admitted here, that I am not a fan of Emma Stone. However, having seen her performance in Poor Things, I had to admit that this was the performance of the year. Emma Stone is choosing very good projects, and her acting has developped and grown over the past few years. She chooses challenging roles, which in no way are mainstream. Can you imagine Meryl Streep or Sally Field (multiple Oscar winners) doing the scenes in Poor Things? Maybe it’s part of the younger Hollywood, because already this year we have multiple winner Jennifer Lawrence doing similar in her film No Hard Feelings. But there seems to be a willingness to be more open certainly with nudity. The same situation occurred with Barry Keoghan in Saltlick, in case you were thinking that this is just a female trend. Can you see Tom Hanks or Daniel Day-Lewis performing all those scenes in that role? Viggo Mortensen yes, but not them. Anyway, it was a gutsy, physical performance as well showed a character who obviously is made up, but she brings it life. I was also very pleased to see that The Zone of Interest won for Best International Film. It is such a commentary on the ability for people to block out the every day things that, however horrendous, become the everyday. You see characters care more for plants in their garden than the multitudes of human beings who a slaughtered on a daily basis literally beside their house. Why does it matter? Because there is a commentary around the world of people willing to overlook events taking place nearby. Other people are regarded as unimportant and basically non-human allowing for them to be ignored and not worthy of empathy. So this year passes and we get back to what 2024 has for us and the 2025 Oscars next year.

Outlander: Many years ago, I was encouraged by a corworker at a bank to read the book Outlander by Diane Gabaldon, also a book that former sister-in-law read with earnest as soon as the latest book hit the shelves. There are currently eight volumes, with another being written, according to the Diana Gabaldon site. It is a book about a time-travelling wife/army nurse who on a trip to Scotland manages to transport herself back from the 1960s until the early 1700s Scotland, before the Jacobite uprising and battle in 1745. I found that the book was written by a woman for a mostly female audience, in similar fashion to Fifty Shades of Grey, with a lead male character capable of anything, rugged, handsome, and always at the ready sexually. Outlander is better written, without a doubt, and it has lead to the popular TV series. Still it seems a bit artifical, but fantasy is not a bad thing (male writers have been doing it for years!)

Starring the very good Catriona Balfe (as Claire Randall) and Sam Heughan (Jamie Fraser) there is obvious chemistry between the two main characters. There is a good supporting cast, including Tobias Menzies, who is the sympathetic first husband who has the supernatural impose itself on his life with his wife just as they are getitng started. He memorably played Prince Phillip for episodes in The Crown.

I began watching the first season soon after release in 2014. The series lost me in an intense and overly long, detailed rape scene that simply turned me off. Time passed. But then, having booked a trip to Scotland later this year, I have been told to watch the scenes if not for anything but some of the scenery in Scotland. So I chose to bypass the scenes in France from Season 2 and watched as Jamie and Claire prepared for the Battle of Culloden. However she knew the history, she and Jamie were still unable to impact the heavy hand of fate.

In any series/movie that deals with time travel, there are always challenges. I think that they do an admirable job here, even now when they are using mutliple time frames to explain what is happening with the characters in different centuries. I don’t know whether to think of Jamie as extremely lucky, he seems to avoid certain death time and again. However he also seems to be caught and tortured in various unbelieveable ways. So living may not always seem like a winning hand. Embarking into season 3 (there are now 6 seasons) there is still plenty of spicy adult content. Neither main character seems to have much concern about nudity. Naturally the reality of living in the 1700s gets lost in some ways with characters with impeccable grooming and teeth, even with a little dirt on the face and arms. As to the scenery, this series delivers well on the scenes of Scotland. The country and highlands are most definitely another character unto itself.

I will continue to watch.