"Flow" is the only movie up for an Oscar that I've seen.

I've blogged about it twice — here and here. 

I didn't watch the Oscars, but somebody who did and knew I only cared about "Flow" gave me this minimalistic update:

Here's a Hollywood Reporter report about what I see was an upset: "Independent Movie ’Flow’ Wins Best Animated Feature in Upset/‘Inside Out 2’ and ‘The Wild Robot’ from powerhouses Disney and DreamWorks were also nominated in the category." 

"Flow."

I watched this on Max over the weekend and recommend it for the beauty of the visuals — I love the light and the water — and the wordlessness of the storytelling. 

There are various animals — cat, dog, secretary bird, lemur — but I was interested to see the capybara, because I'd just been reading this New Yorker article by Gary Shteyngart, "How the Capybara Won My Heart—and Almost Everyone Else’s/It’s not hard to understand why capys have a cultlike following on Instagram and TikTok. I fell for the giant rodent decades ago."

Looking back at that now, I see that Shteyngart discusses the movie "Flow":

"The Russian government has blacklisted the California-based Wayback Machine, a comprehensive archive of the Internet..."

"... over an Islamist video available on the website."

The video, called "The Clang of Swords," by the notorious terrorist group Islamic State, was declared extremist by a court in Russia's southern Stavropol region in July.

The state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said on its website Friday that it had found 400 online copies of the video and requested their removal.

A handful of sites, including Wayback Machine's domain Archive.org, did not comply, leading to their blacklisting.

I'm impressed that the Wayback Machine lasted as long as it did. I'm sure it gets you too all sorts of things the Russian government would prefer its people not to read.

In other freedom-of-speech news from the Moscow Times:

A notoriously outspoken Russian actor and former Orthodox priest who suggested last week that Ebola victims were coming back from the dead as zombies has been banned from entering Latvia over earlier incendiary comments he made about gay people.

In December 2013, [Ivan] Okhlobystin said that all homosexuals should be burned alive because they represent a "living danger" to his children. 

So his comments were literally incendiary.

Last week he suggested that some victims of the Ebola virus were turning into zombies, explaining that he had heard of many cases in which those who died from the virus were mysteriously resurrected several days later. In case there was any doubt, the actor added that he "was not joking" and that he had purchased a crossbow, "just in case."

A crossbow? On a zombie? Does that even work?

"Estonia remained one of the last corners of medieval Europe to be Christianized."

"In 1193 Pope Celestine III called for a crusade against pagans in Northern Europe. The Northern Crusades from Northern Germany established the stronghold of Riga (in modern Latvia). With the help of the newly converted local tribes of Livs and Letts, the crusaders initiated raids into part of what is present-day Estonia in 1208. Estonian tribes fiercely resisted the attacks from Riga and occasionally themselves sacked territories controlled by the crusaders. In 1217 the German crusading order the Sword Brethren and their recently converted allies won a major battle in which the Estonian commander Lembitu was killed. The period of the several Northern Crusade battles in Estonia between 1208 and 1227 is also known as the period of the ancient Estonian fight for independence."

In Estonia, today's "History of" country, which looked like this before September 21, 1217:

Hello.

Latvia.

"What the mid-Bronx might feel like if it had narrower streets, was on a beach..., and for some unearthly reason became a tourist destination."

That's Barceloneta, described by RLC, who is driving around Spain with his old friend Dan. They go to a bar and watch basketball: Spain vs. Latvia.

How are things in Latvia?

Check out this new blog, written by an American. As his first post shows, he emailed me something about my blog, and I encouraged him.