Great Read: Spillover

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

• Author:  David Quammen
• Published:  2012
• Publisher:  W. W. Norton & Company
• Pages:  587
• First Line:  “The virus now known as Hendra wasn’t the first of the scary new bugs.”
• Last Line:  “It all depends.”
• Awards:  Shortlisted for PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award  /  finalist for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
• First Read:  Fall 2012

I get a lot of books out of the library, in the same way that I used to read new books at various stores back when I worked at bookstores.  I rarely, however, read those books more than once.  That’s why I buy books: so I can read them again and again.  But every now and then there is a book I go back to and I pull out of the library again.  Such a book is Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, which I first grabbed off the shelf when it was a brand new book and I was working at the Booksmith and which I just dived into for a second time because it keeps pulling at my brain.  There’s a reason for that.  It’s not only a really well-written book, one that tells a good scientific story, a fascinating human story and does it all very well.  It’s also because I have an interest in viruses.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2004

The DiCaprio side of the DiCaprio-Scorsese collaborations takes a quantum leap.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. The Aviator  *
2. A Very Long Engagement
3. Sideways  **
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  *
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
6. House of Flying Daggers
7. Closer
8. The Incredibles
9. Kill Bill Volume 2
10. Silver City
11. Hero
12. Hotel Rwanda
13. Million Dollar Baby  *
14. Spider-Man 2
15. Kinsey
16. Bad Education
17. Finding Neverland  *
18. Vera Drake
19. Shrek 2
20. Mar Adentro

Analysis:  Ray and Eternal Sunshine actually tied for the 5th Consensus nominee spot.  Million Dollar Baby, with a third place finish, is the first Oscar winner not to be #1 or #2 at the Consensus Awards since 1995, and no film has finished below 2nd since (through 2016).
All 20 of these films are **** and there are no other **** films.  It’s a magnificent Top 10 and the third best Top 20 to-date.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Animated Film – 2004

The gang’s all here. And hey, look, Frozone found his super suit!

The 77th annual Academy Awards, for the film year 2004.  The nominations were announced on 25 January 2005 and the awards were held on 27 February 2005.

Best Animated Film:  The Incredibles

• Shrek 2
• Shark Tale

Most Surprising Omission: The Polar Express

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

Rank (out of 16) Among Best Animated Film Years:  #8

Oscar Score:  76.9

Alternate Oscar Score:  91.8

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1959

Karin: Hush, hush! The actor is tuning up his lute. The Grave Gentleman bids us dance. He wants us to take each other’s hands and form a chain. He himself will lead us, and the actor will bring up the rear. Away from the dawn we shall go with measured tread, away to the dark lands while the rain caresses our faces. (tr. Randolph Goodman and Leif Sjoberg)

My Top 10:

1. The Seventh Seal
2. Some Like It Hot
3. The Diary of Anne Frank
4. Anatomy of a Murder
5. Ordet
6. Compulsion
7. Pather Panchali
8. Sleeping Beauty
9. Tiger Bay
10. Aparajito

Note:  There are 16 films on my list.  Two of them are listed below, as they were Consensus nominees (Ben Hur – #11, Room at the Top – #14).  The other four are all the way down at the bottom.

 

For Love of Books: The Adventures of Tintin

Introduction:

A Note on the Order of the Books:

The Tintin books are listed here in the order in which they were originally written and published in French.  That is very different from the order in which they became available in America and the order in which I first read them.  Because my family collected Tintin books as Atlantic-Little, Brown originally published them in the States, I can give an idea of when they were published in America, although there is at least a little confusion with that.  My (now falling apart) original copy of The Crab with the Golden Claws lists four titles on the back.  Yet, one of those titles is King Ottokar’s Sceptre.  My (now falling apart) copy of King Ottokar’s Sceptre is a “First American Edition” and lists eight titles, the same eight titles listed on the back of my (now falling apart) original copy of Cigars of the Pharoah, which is a “First American Edition” and is from 1975.  In Tintin in America (“Third American Edition”) it lists 20 books on the back – all except Soviets, Congo, Blue Lotus and Alph-Art.  Tintin in America was in fact, the twentieth published in the United States (it says so on the back of the book).
One of the oddities is that two of the books that were among the original four, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure, were published during the decade as serials in Children’s Digest.  I still have the cover for the January 1977 issue of Children’s Digest with The Secret of the Unicorn on the cover.  Odd, that they would only at that point be publishing a story that was already available in book form.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2003

“We set out to save the shire. And it has been saved. But for not for me.”

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King  **
2. Mystic River  *
3. Lost in Translation  *
4. In America
5. City of God
6. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World  *
7. Finding Nemo
8. Kill Bill Volume 1
9. A Mighty Wind
10. Whale Rider
11. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
12. American Splendor  *
13. Dirty Pretty Things
14. The Station Agent
15. Nowhere in Africa
16. The Triplets of Belleville
17. Tokyo Godfathers
18. The Barbarian Invasions
19. The Last Samurai
20. 21 Grams

Analysis:  After three straight years where the Consensus race came down to less than 100 points, Return of the King almost doubles any other film.  Master and Commander, on the other hand, becomes another film to earn nominations from the five awards groups but win none of them.
The Top 10 is eight points lower than the year before and it still tied for the second best to-date (and third best ever).  The Top 20 is 14 points lower than 2002 and 13 points lower than 2001 but still the third best to-date.  The Top 5, though, is actually the best since 1996 and tied for the third best ever.
The first 18 films are **** films.  The last two are ***.5.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Animated Film – 2003

Sweeeet.

The 76th annual Academy Awards, for the film year 2003.  The nominations were announced on 27 January 2004 and the awards were held on February 29, 2004.

Best Animated Film:  Finding Nemo

• The Triplets of Belleville
• Brother Bear

Most Surprising Omission: Tokyo Godfathers

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  Tokyo Godfathers

Rank (out of 16) Among Best Animated Film Years:  #3

Oscar Score:  91.9

Alternate Oscar Score:  73.3