Oscar Liveblog, Part VI: The Morning Afterparty

I am staying home from work today with my fever, my chills, my fatigue, my aspirin, and my extreme grouchiness at being sick. I hate being sick -- beyond all the physical stuff, it's really boring, especially when there's a beautiful day outside and a great deal of work to be done, and I feel like maybe if I just got moving everything would be okay . . . but no. Bah.

• Jill: Jessica Alba. Hiro: Ken Watanabe (though I'm afraid I can't think of any other Japanese actors). Carrie: Michelle Williams, in sparky rather than beaten-down mode. And I'm recasting Ted with Orlando Bloom, again with the long hair.
• Thinking more about "Crash" -- I did have a strong emotional reaction to it, which tends to be my first criteria in judging a work of art, did it move me. But all my emotional reaction came from shock at the horribleness and bluntness of these people rather than from any genuine emotional connection with the characters. And they were consistently cheap shocks the filmmakers knowingly provoked under the guise of making a serious, "important" film about race. It was well-acted, well-constructed, all that, and I appreciated the "we are all connected" theme, but the more I think about the film, the less I like it.
• If Lisa Yee is going to be played by Michelle Yeoh, she really needs a good action sequence. I'm envisioning her delivering the manuscript for her next novel to FedEx when suddenly four armed bandits hold up the store, looking for a trunk of nuclear submachine guns that's mistakenly been directed to South Pasadena. But the clerk refuses to give it to them because it means they lied on the form about shipping dangerous materials. While they're arguing, Lisa spins into action, disarming one with a Tae Kwan Do move she learned from her daughter, taking out another with the help of her attack dog Maggie, engaging the third in a long round of hand-to-hand combat that concludes when she stuffs the Moon Pie of Death in his face, and, the piece de resistance, whapping the last over the head with the manuscript of EMILY EBERS. Boo-ya!
• Are there any such things as nuclear submachine guns? I don't know.

I'm going to get out of bed and take a shower now, and maybe try to read a manuscript or clean up a little. But I will probably be around again later. Consider yourselves forewarned.