Mon, February 14, 2005

Let it never be said that I don't love: a) deliriously entertaining time-wasters; b) stealing the brilliant ideas of others; c) snarking at length about movies (especially movies I haven't seen); d) jefftidball.com.

It came to my attention (late, as all things do – God, where have I been? The sad thing is, I know, and so do you – and it will have been worth it!) that a website I rarely read called The Morning News is doing this ingenious thing called the TMN Tournament of Books, in which prominent and praiseworthy books from 2004 are pitted against each other NCAA Sweet Sixteen-style. (You can even print out a bracket to help you track the progress.) This is not only a very ingenious thing (very! ingenious!) but also coincides with my decision to try to do more reading. (As it turns out, I still know how. More details forthcoming – isn't everything?) It turns out there's a damn good reason why TMN is at the very top of the very long list of sites I don't read very often but wish that I read more often.

So that takes care of A and D. Let's see if we can't fold B and C into the mix. And here it is.

I'm proud to announce onebee's First Annual Movie Tournament (of Movies) – with apologies to TMN and Tidball's brilliant Choose or Perish Tournament. I've drawn up a bracket of sixteen 2004 films – not necessarily the most worthy, but the most acclaimed/awarded/notable. My selection process was similar to TMN's in terms of being wildly arbitrary. #1 seeds (and one #2) went to the Best Picture nominees for this year's Oscars. The other 11 slots were filled by movies which earned multiple Oscar nominations, wide critical acclaim, or my adoration (sometimes all three). The bracket will be available for download by the end of the day, but the voting for Round One begins now!

We are under a bit of a time crunch if we want to finish by the time of the Academy Awards. (Stupid things coming to my attention late!) So, we're going to vote on a couple of match-ups each weekday. Voting on previous match-ups won't close until it's time for the winner to move on to the next round of battle, so hopefully this will still give everybody a couple of days to catch up in the early running.

Come back often, and make your voice heard! I look forward to announcing a winner on the 27th!

Update: Download the official bracket for the 2005 Movie Tournament (of Movies), and fill it in as the winners are announced!