Let's Extend the 'Game of Thrones' Analogy, Shall We?

New York Times opinion writer Maureen Dowd today turned over the bulk of her column to her right-wing brother Kevin, who used the space to gloat over Trump's Electoral College victory. It seems that, along with some Trump "champagne," he brought a little statuette of Cersei, the conniving queen of Game of Thrones, to the family's Thanksgiving dinner. That was to represent the now-vanquished Hillary Clinton.

Well, if Clinton is Cersei, then Trump is Ramsay Bolton, the woman-abusing sociopath of the North and everybody's favorite "man you love to hate" for the past several seasons. Let's hope some Jon Snow (i.e., charismatic progressive) rises from the dead (the current disarray of the Democratic Party) to beat the crap out of Ramsay before turning him over to Sansa Stark (women everywhere), who then feeds him to his own starving dogs (the legions of working-class Trump supporters he will surely betray).

Random Oscar Impressions

It was a pleasant surprise to see Spotlight take best picture. As a onetime newspaper reporter, I really appreciated director Tom McCarthy and his cowriter Josh Singer's depiction of the craft—a brand of serious journalism that, one hopes, is not in its last throes.

As widely predicted, host Chris Rock wasted no time ribbing the academy for the lack of diversity in the nominations. His early line—"I'm here at the Academy Awards, otherwise known as the White People's Choice Awards"—was among his best. The (thankfully brief) moment with Stacey Dash, however, was just plain weird. I hope Rock didn't have a hand in that miscue.

Call me a sucker for a certain kind of schmaltz, but Rock's Girl Scout Cookies solicitation warmed my heart, as did the sight of Michael Keaton munching on one at the end as he joined the Spotlight celebrants onstage.

Owing to my advancing age, I decided to record the show and watch it today. Early to bed and all that. Of course, there was no surprise factor—I couldn't resist checking up on the winners—but DVR technology sure does make it easy to zip through commercials and windy acceptance speeches. Doubtless, this will be my practice in the years ahead.

Wexler and Zsigmond, RIP

Within a week of each other, two great American cinematographers left us. Haskell Wexler, whose credits included Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, In the Heat of the Night, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, Matewan, and most of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, died on December 27. Vilmos Zsigmond, the DP of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Deliverance, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Deer Hunter, passed away on January 1. Both played important parts in the "New Hollywood" phenomenon of the 1970s, both were Oscar winners, both received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Society of Cinematographers. I join with my fellow cinephiles in bidding a fond farewell to these two legends.