Tuesday, March 23, 2010

"You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret, all the best people are."

The past week and a half, I have been very distracted. My friend's older brother has been in the hospital and they are not totally sure what it is. they think it is transverse myelitis or vasculitis. He is intubated and semi-conscious and he has been getting better but it is little each day. I have known the family since I was three and he is like a brother to me, so it has been really scary and I have been spending time at the hospital, helping the family in any way I can and just trying to keep myself distracted so I do not think about it too much. Basically that involved a lot of Grey's Anatomy. In some weird way, it has helped. I do not know if it is just because it was familiar and meant I did not have to think very much or if the medical stuff had some kind of reverse effect and calmed me.

I had forgotten just how good this show used to be. I think it slowly started to get worse right around the time when Meredith died and then came back to life. Aside from the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's episode, the most recent season has been much better, but I still miss the original episodes.

I am not really sure how it helped, but it helped, so I kept watching. Seasons one through three in a week and a half. I did not get much else accomplished.

However, before my mental break-down, I did watch a few other things...

I went 19 for 24 with my Academy Award picks - I think that might be my record. However, it was a pretty predictable year, so I do not know how impressive it is :o)

I watched Michael Jackson's This Is It. I have to admit that, even though I was a child of the 80's, I did not really follow popular music. My mother mostly listened to show-tunes, classical music and sports and my father was an oldies man. I did not start listening to popular music until I was in middle school and I needed to know it to be part of the conversation. I obviously knew who Michael Jackson was, but I was not really a fan. By fan, I do not mean that I did not like his music, I just did not know it. I do remember watching the Thriller video at my best-friends house with her brothers, but I would not say that Michael Jackson shaped my childhood very much. That being said, I have since come to love his music and appreciate his influence in the musical community.

To be honest, over the past couple years, I have not even paid much attention to what he was up to. I think everyone heard about him holding his child out of a window with a towel over his head and about him potentially molesting children, but I feel like he had pretty much kept to himself these past couple years. And after hearing about how many drugs he was on when he died and how many issues he had, I did not know what to expect when I started to watch This Is It, and I was blown away. He could still sing! And he could still dance! It really is a shame that he did not get a chance to tour the world one more time, but I am glad that we got to see this last movie. The movie itself was nothing spectacular. It was literally clips of him and his dancers and band rehearsing. But if you like Michael Jackson's music or grew up in the 80's then you should definitely see this movie.

My mom and I also went to see Alice In Wonderland. The imagery was amazing and typical of a Tim Burton film and Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter and Anne Hathaway are always awesome. However, it was not quite as good as I was hoping it would be. Do not get me wrong, it was a good movie, just not as good as I expected.

I have also discovered an AWESOME new TV show. I know what you are thinking. How could I possibly watch more television?! Have I mentioned how much I love my DVR? :o) Anyways, it is called Justified and it is on FX Tuesdays at 10pm. It stars Timothy Olyphant, who you might recognize as Sam, the hot "twenty-something" that Carrie makes out with for an entire episode of Sex and the City, or as Fritz, the best-friend of Jennifer Garner's dead fiancee, in Catch and Release. In this new show, he plays U.S. Marshall Raylen Givens who is reassigned from Miami to his hometown in Kentucky. He now has to deal with an outlaw father, a church-bombing white-supremacist who is also an old friend and an ex-wife who works in his building, among other things. If you are not watching this show, you absolutely should be.

It has been a rough couple of weeks, but I have kept myself distracted and my friend is slowly starting to get better. All I can hope for is that his progress continues and he does not have too many more set-backs. Otherwise I might have to go out and buy seasons four and five of Grey's Anatomy :o)

xoxo
c

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Sunday, March 7, 2010

And the Oscar goes to...

Okay, here they are, my Academy Award predictions and, in some cases, my preferred winners:

Best Actor:
My choice - Jeremy Renner or Colin Firth
Probable winner - Jeff Bridges

Best Actress:
My choice - Sandra Bullock
Probable winner - Sandra Bullock

Supporting Actor:
My choice - Stanley Tucci
Probably winner - Christoph Waltz

Supporting Actress:
My choice - Mo'nique or Anna Kendrick
Probable winner - Mo'nique

Best Animated:
My choice - Fantastic Mr. Fox
Probable winner - Up

Best Director:
My choice - Kathryn Bigelow
Probable winner - Kathryn Bigelow

Best Picture:
My choice - The Hurt Locker
Probable winner - The Hurt Locker

xoxo
c
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Friday, March 5, 2010

"The one constant through all the years has been baseball...

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again."
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The Olympics are over and I have no more Curling to watch, so I guess I should get back to my movies :o)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was good but I was not blown away by it. I think I am just over the X-Men movies. Enough is enough. There were lots of plot twists, but i was not really shocked by any of them. It was kinda like, "Okay that make sense that he was being deceived, I am not surprised" :o) The action sequences were cool, I just think if they are going to keep making these movies, they need to be better. Let's hope that Ryan Reynold's Deadpool does just that.

Rachel Getting Married has been sitting on top of my blu-ray player for about a month and a half now. My mom saw it in the theater and said it was pretty depressing, so I just have not been in the mood to watch it yet.

I have also been really bad about watching all my Oscar movies, so I tried to cram a lot in this week. Thank you Bryn Mawr Film Institute for playing all the nominated films that I had not yet seen!

A Single Man was a beautiful movie. Colin Firth was amazing. He played a man, dealing with the sudden death of his partner of sixteen years and, not really knowing how to live without him. When it started, I thought it was going to be way too artsy for my taste, but I loved it. It was sad without being depressing and it was very visually pleasing. Nicholas Hoult was also excellent. I did not even recognize him at first until I got home and checked imdb.com to discover he was the little boy from About A Boy all grown up. This is definitely a movie that everyone should see.

Crazy Heart was good, but not amazing. I thought Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal were excellent, but they are both good actors, so that was not a surprise. Maybe my expectations were too high? Jeff Bridges has been getting all this Oscar buzz that I guess I just expected to be totally blown away by his performance, and I was not. He is a good singer, but this just felt like a country version of The Dude to me. I thought Jeremy Renner and Colin Firth were much more impressive in The Hurt Locker and A Single Man respectively.

I could not get through District 9. It was weird and I just could not get into it. I only watched about forty-five minutes of it, maybe it got better, I guess I will never know.

Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to see An Education. It is a bit of a long shot for any Oscars and I just did not have the time to get to the theater again this week. It did get really good reviews though, so I plan to see it next week :o)

To sum up my Oscar prep this year, of the ten Best Picture nominees, I recommend seeing the following (in no particular order): Avatar, The Hurt Locker, The Blind Side, A Single Man, Precious and Up In The Air. And I will give you my winner predictions soon, probably Sunday afternoon. I am having my annual Oscar Party and I do not want to give my friends any tips :o)

In non-movie-related news, Spring Training is officially underway, which makes me ridiculously happy! It also means that the Phillies road to the 2010 World Series is underway. You can even follow Jayson Werth's Beard on twitter! So, to put you in the baseball spirit, and since I just watched this movie on TV, I leave you with Tom Hanks...



xoxo
c

Haiti, and now unfortunately, Chile need our help. Please give what you can:
Hope For Haiti Now (H)
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UNICEF (H&C)

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