I’m not usually one for easy Mississippi jokes, but this story is like dangling low-hanging fruit in my face and daring me to pick it. So it turns out, Mississippi had never officially ratified the 13th amendment, and it wasn’t until a professor at the University of Mississippi saw Lincoln that anyone decided to do anything about it. Now if we could just get Spielberg to make a movie about dental hygiene and vegetables, ha ch-cha cha cha.

Last November, Dr. Ranjan Batra, associate professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, saw the Steven Spielberg film and wondered afterward what happened when the states voted on ratification.
After Congress voted for the 13th Amendment in January 1864, the measure went to the states for ratification.
On Dec. 6, 1865, the amendment received the three-fourths’ vote it needed when Georgia became the 27th state to ratify it. States that rejected the measure included Delaware, Kentucky, New Jersey and Mississippi.
In the months and years that followed, states continued to ratify the amendment, including those that had initially rejected it. New Jersey ratified the amendment in 1866, Delaware in 1901 and Kentucky in 1976.
But there was an asterisk beside Mississippi. A note read: “Mississippi ratified the amendment in 1995, but because the state never officially notified the US Archivist, the ratification is not official.” [Jackson ClarionLedger, via CinemaBlend]

You see? It wasn’t because they’re racist and 20 years behind Kentucky, it’s because they can’t read or write or mail. (Sorry, Mississippi, but you totally walked into that one).

To make a long story short, Dr. Batra told his friend Ken Sullivan the story, who found out that in 1995, democratic state senator Hillman Frazier had introduced a resolution to ratify the amendment, which passed both bodies of the state assembly without a single nay vote. But for some reason, the then secretary of state never sent it to the Office of the Federal Registrar (I like to think it was because he was a horse). Thanks to letters by Sullivan and Batra, the matter has since been corrected by the new Mississippi secretary of state, named, I shit-you-not, Delbert Hosemann. Anyway, congratulations, Mississippi, welcome to the twentieth century. And to think, all it took was a guy who’s not even from there watching a movie directed by a Jew from New Jersey.

[inset picture via the ClarionLedger]

As part of their always-solid “musicians review…” series, NextMovie brought in Oderus Urungus and Balsac the Jaws of Death of Gwar, to review the one-time Oscar favorite, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (these days, the smart money is on Argo). A year after calling War Horse “Snore Horse,” Oderus Urungus, presumably speaking for the pair, said, in part, “Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln blows! It’s boring and stupid. Everyone says it’s good, just because he directed it.”

Balsac the Jaws of Death, meanwhile, went on to level an even more specific critique at Sally Field’s portrayal of Mary Todd.

BALSAC THE JAWS OF DEATH: You know what I didn’t like about this movie? It’s that Gidget did a horrible job as Lincoln’s wife.

ODERUS URUNGUS: WHERE WAS THE MADNESS OF MARY TODD!?

I know I say this all the time, but I agree with Gwar. Spielberg tried to illustrate Mary Todd’s bi-polarity by showing her sad that her only son wanted to go off to war, which, while perhaps true, is also the most boring, played-out, period war movie cliché ever. Give us some juicy stuff, like maybe she bathes in the blood of Christian babies to stay young, or rigs up a special harness to have sex with her horse. You know, really spice things up.

If I could critique this critique, I would ask why Oderus Urungus and Balsac the Jaws of Death get to do all the reviews. They should get their bassist, Doug Peters, in on these. Doug is from Oregon.

Oscar voters are out of touch, milquetoast, hopelessly middlebrow, and so old that they couldn’t even figure out how to e-vote, but it’s always been this way, and we still argue about it anyway. Even after Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction, The English Patient over Fargo, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan, etc. The list goes on, and we should know better. In 2013, no one should be surprised that the Academy’s choices are two parts wrong and ten parts boring, but if we’re going to bitch somewhere, it might as well be here. I may be a lot of things, but allergic to money isn’t one of them. And hey, as bad as the Oscars are, they’re still a thousand times better than the Grammys and the Emmys put together. So here they are, the best and worst of this year’s Oscar nominations. KNIVES OUT, SHITHEADS! IT’S TIME TO END SOME FRIENDSHIPS!

(FYI, you can find my reviews and best-of list and Burnsy’s Worst list at these links. The full list of nominations is at the bottom below).

BEST PICTURE:

Best:
Django Unchained. After getting snubbed at the DGAs and WGAs, it’s nice to see Tarantino’s latest get some love from the Academy, even though the very things that make me love it instead of just like it – that it’s so gleefully vulgar and deliberately lowbrow – are the same reasons it won’t win and didn’t receive more nominations.

Worst:
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Les Misérables. I’ve already gone over in great detail why Beasts isn’t a great movie.  Even in terms of movies that appeal hard to pedantic white liberal fantasies, Life of Pi did it better, and in a much nicer way (not to mention, it had a carnivorous island full of meerkats).

Les Mis is just… God, it’s so predictable. You had the choice of nominating less than 10 (you’ll notice there are only nine nominees this year – here’s a refresher course on why), and Les Mis still made the list? I think of it like this: There are times in my life when I’ll be riding my fixed gear down to my local San Fran latte shop listening to This American Life on my iPhone; and other times when I’ll be eating chicken wings with my bros while we watch football and trash talk each other’s fantasy teams down at the sports bar. In both instances, I’ll think to myself, “God, I feel like such a stereotype right now,” and try to change something up. Oscar voters… never seem to have that thought. “A movie full of famous actors with dirty faces singing French songs about poverty and trying to f*ck each other? Oh hell yeah, more of that plz.” Les Mis would be insulting to Academy voters if they weren’t so dumb. Les Mis can derelicte my balls, capitan.

Snubbed:
No Magic Mike? Are you kidding me? But I’m not surprised. It was inevitable that the Academy voters would only see the guy pumping up his blurry dick in the foreground, and not the nuanced, melancholy story about trying to find a place in the modern economy that those blurry dicks were framing. Looper? The Master? Again, not surprised, but the fact that Les Mis got in but not the best original sci-fi in years and Joaquin Phoenix’s most watchable performance isn’t going to go unmentioned here.

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The Oscar nominations are out, and you probably want to see them. You’re in luck, because here they are. (Will be updated with commentary shortly). Lincoln leads with 12 nominations. A Spielberg movie about a beloved dead guy? Who could’ve seen that coming? Life of Pi is second with 11.

Best Picture:

“Beasts of the Southern Wild”

“Silver Linings Playbook”

“Zero Dark Thirty”

“Lincoln”

“Les Miserables”

“Life of Pi”

“Amour”

“Django Unchained”

“Argo”

Best Supporting Actor:

Christoph Waltz, “Django Unchained”

Philip Seymour Hoffman, “The Master”

Robert De Niro, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Alan Arkin, “Argo”

Tommy Lee Jones, “Lincoln”

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Daniel Day-Lewis did his ridiculous method acting thing in Lincoln, and it’s hard to imagine the movie without him, but did you know that he initially rejected the role? At the New York Film Critics Circle Awards (which, additional trivia, Armond White is a three-time former chairman of), Spielberg, presenting Day-Lewis’s best actor award, read the Dear Steve letter Day-Lewis sent him. That’s right, a letter. Like, through the mail, with stamps and ink and everything, just like in olden times.

Dear Steven,

It was a real pleasure just to sit and talk with you. I listened very carefully to what you had to say about this compelling history, and I’ve since read the script and found it in all the detail in which it describe these monumental events and in the compassionate portraits of all the principal characters, both powerful and moving. I can’t account for how at any given moment I feel the need to explore life as opposed to another, but I do know that I can only do this work if I feel almost as if there is no choice; that a subject coincides inexplicably with a very personal need and a very specific moment in time. In this case, as fascinated as I was by Abe, it was the fascination of a grateful spectator who longed to see a story told, rather than that of a participant. That’s how I feel now in spite of myself, and though I can’t be sure that this won’t change, I couldn’t dream of encouraging you to keep it open on a mere possibility. I do hope this makes sense Steven, I’m glad you’re making the film, I wish you the strength for it, and I send both my very best wishes and my sincere gratitude to you for having considered me. [THR]

Typical Daniel Day. “There is no choice. ‘Acting?’ Nay, for that you must call an actor. I merely choose to live my life a certain way, and if that manner of living happens to coincide with a story in a script, I consent to being filmed for a movIe. For one cannot ‘act,’ only live. I would never lie to my audience.”

Spielberg later had Tony Kushner re-write the script, Day-Lewis accepted, and the rest is history. Another piece of trivia, Daniel Day-Lewis actually acquired the “Day” in his surname after marrying former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day-O’Connor while preparing for a role as a judge. Maybe.