Here are my annual picks and predictions for this year's Academy Awards: Best Actor: My choice: Bradley Cooper Prediction: Daniel Day-Lewis Actual Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis Best Actress: My choice: Jessica Chastain or Quvenzhane Wallis Prediction: Jennifer Lawrence Actual Winner: Jennifer Lawrence Best Supporting Actor: My choice: Robert De Niro Prediction: Tommy Lee Jones Actual Winner: Christoph Waltz Best Supporting Actress: My choice: Anne Hathaway Prediction: Anne Hathaway Actual Winner: Anne Hathaway Best Animated Feature: My choice: Brave Prediction: Brave or Wreck-It Ralph Actual Winner: Brave Best Director: My choice: David O. Russell Prediction: Steven Spielberg Actual Winner: Ang Lee Best Picture: My choice: Argo Prediction: Argo Actual Winner: Argo For the second year in a row, I will be live tweeting the awards show here and will update this page as winners are announced. xoxo c -------------------------------------------
I have to be honest, I have not been as excited about this year's Academy Awards as I have in years past. I do not know if it is because I am just not that interested in the nominees or if it is because I am far away from all my friends and cannot have my annual Oscar Party this year. Regardless, here are my 2012 choices and predictions for the 84th Annual Academy Awards:
***Updated with winners***
Best Actor: My choice: Gary Oldman Probable winner: Jean Dujardin Actual winner: Jean Dujardin
Best Actress: My choice: Michelle Williams Probable winner: Viola Davis Actual winner: Meryl Streep
Best Supporting Actor: My choice: Christopher Plummer or Nick Nolte Probable winner: Christopher Plummer Actual winner: Christopher Plummer
Best Supporting Actress: My choice: Melissa McCarthy Probable winner: Octavia Spencer Actual winner: Octavia Spencer
Best Animated Feature: My choice: Rango Probable winner: Rango Actual winner: Rango
Best Director: My choice: Woody Allen Probable winner: Michel Hazanavicius Actual winner: Michel Hazanavicius
Best Picture: My choice: Midnight in Paris Probable winner: The Artist Actual winner: The Artist
Since I am not having a party this year, I will be live tweeting the awards show here. I will also try to update this page with the actual winners as the night goes on.
xoxo c --------------------------------------------
When we get married, we marry, like, one girl, 'cause we're resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think, 'I'd be an idiot if I didn't marry this girl, she's so great.' But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option...'Oh, he's got a good job.' I mean, they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who's got a good job and is gonna stick around."
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Okay, so this is technically old news (a whole week old) but I just have to officially say that, I am so excited that Henry Cavill was cast as the new Superman! If you have read any of the articles about him lately, you know that he was up for the role in Superman Returns and lost to Brandon Routh, James Bond and lost to Daniel Craig and was Stephanie Meyers first choice for Edward in Twilight but could not do it because by the time the project was made he was too old to play a seventeen year old. While I am glad the last one did not work out, I am even more glad that he is finally getting recognized for his talent. I realize that I have not been on this bandwagon for very long, only since last year really, but he is a wonderful actor and I am happy that people will finally get to see that in a mainstream film. I really had no plans to see the new Superman, but now I will have to.
On a completely separate note, being stuck in your house for several days because of snow can be very boring. Thank God for OnDemand. In the past two weeks I have watched Despicable Me, Red and Buried.
From the trailers, I did not really understand what the plot of Despicable Me was before it started. I thought it was supposed to be about a super villian, Gru, and his rival. But once I realized that it was more about the relationship between Gru and the three little girls than it was about him being a super villain, I actually really enjoyed it. I will probably have to watch it again to truly appreciate it, but I will do so gladly.
Red was another movie where I did not really know what to expect before it started. It had gotten good reviews when it was in theaters, but I did not really have any desire to see it. However, I have to admit that it was pretty enjoyable. A little ridiculous at times, but mostly enjoyable. I do not think that it was really aimed at my age bracket (my mother also really enjoyed it :o), but it was entertaining enough to hold my interest.
Buried was also really good and I am surprised that Ryan Reynolds did not receive more recognition for his performance. I was hesitant to see this movie because, well, the thought of being buried alive inside a coffin does not really sound all that appealing to me, to say the least. However, the movie was quite captivating. Reynolds' character did have access to a cell phone, so you hear other character's voices, but he is the only person you ever actually see. I thought it was very well done and even had an ending that I did not really expect. Obviously, being buried alive, you do not see the typical humor that you see in most of Reynolds' characters, but he still did an excellent job.
When the snow did stop, I finally made it out to see Blue Valentine at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute.
We all know that I am partial to Ryan Gosling movies, but honestly, Blue Valentine is fantastic. Though, it is definitely not a happy movie. There are happy moments at the beginning of their relationship, but by the end of the relationship they just seem to be going through the motions. The thing I liked most is that you do not see the middle parts of the relationship, which I think makes it more real. They do not know how they got to the place that they are in their relationship and neither do we as the viewer. It makes us wonder how one gets to that point in their marriage where they just seem to be tolerating each other. It makes me hope that I never end up in a relationship like that.
Oscar nominations have also come out since my last post. I was a little shocked that Christopher Nolan did not get nominated for Best Director and, after having seen Blue Valentine, I think Gosling is a little more deserving of a nomination than Jeff Bridges, but other than that, the nominations were not a huge surprise. I will post my predictions when the show gets a little closer.
A few more mid-season TV shows have started or are starting this week and I will tell you how I feel about them once I have watched a few episodes.
I hope that everyone is staying warm and I especially hope that Punxsutawney Phil was right and Spring is on its way :o)
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)
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." -------------------------------
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...
The good news is, I found a job. The bad news is, it is only part-time and is not in the field I want to be in, so it is not permanent. It also means I have less time for movie and TV watching :o) If only Bradley Cooper would realize that I am the girl for him, then we could get married and I would not have to work and I could just watch movies all day. Until then, my job search continues...
I saw When In Rome Friday afternoon and I thought it was super cute. Going in, knowing that it was a Disney movie, I was not expecting anything spectucular and it was a little cheesy, but overall I liked it. Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel were really funny and I liked their chemistry. I also thought Dax Shepherd's character was funny, however, the other characters played by Jon Heder, Will Arnett and Danny DeVito were a little cheesy/creepy. It was worth seeing, but definitely not the best romantic comedy that I have seen.
The latest news on the Veronica Mars movie is that creator Rob Thomas has pitched his idea to Warner Brothers but they do not feel that a movie would do well at this time. Kristen Bell has been saying in interviews and on twitter (@IMKristenBell) that if When In Rome does well it will hopefully show the studio that she can carry a movie. I also feel like since Veronica Mars has been cancelled, it has gained a lot of fans and that the already existing fan base would make it a huge hit. I am a little biased as I would LOVE a VM movie, but still, sometimes I think the studios are out of touch with their audience.
I FINALLY saw Up In The Air, which was excellent. It is a movie about a guy who spends 250 days of the year travelling around the country firing people. There is obviously more to it than that, but as someone who was recently let go from her job, that aspect of the movie was a little surreal. My favorite part is actually when George Clooney is telling Anna Kendrick the fastest way to get through airport security. He says, "Never get behind old people. Their bodies are littered with hidden metal and they never seem to appreciate how little time they have left. Bingo, Asians. They pack light, travel efficiently, and they have a thing for slip on shoes. Gotta love 'em."
This is not that scene, but it is another good one:
The whole movie was very well done and George Clooney was amazing, as usual. I also have to say that, Anna Kendrick's acting skills are definitely not getting put to good use in the Twilight movies. She should be playing a much bigger role than just one of Bella's high school friends. She should have been Bella. If it were not for Mo'nique's amazing performance in Precious, I would say Anna should win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
I also finally got Angels & Demons from Netflix. I saw The DaVinci Code in theaters, but was unimpressed so I was not in a big hurry to see Angels & Demons. Although, I had read the book, so I did want to see it eventually. As a person of faith, I always found Angels & Demons to be a more interesting read than The DaVinci Code. Apparently that is also true of the movies because I did not think that The DaVinci Code movie was very good at all. I thought that Angels & Demons was very well done and much easier to follow than its prequel. Interestingly, the book Angels & Demons was written after The DaVinci Code, but chronologically took place before. In the movie though, they implied at the beginning that Angels & Demons took place after the occurrences in The DaVinci Code. Anyways, if you too did not see the second movie because you did not like the first, then I suggest you give it a try because it was much, much better.
I also had no interest in seeing Bright Star in the theater, but it was getting such good reviews that I thought I should watch it. However, I thought it was just alright. The story of writer John Keats and his three-year romance with Fanny Brawne was interesting and the acting was good, but there was something about the movie that threw me off. For instance, there was never any indication of time. By that I mean, some times it went day-to-day and sometimes many days or months would pass and you never knew when that happened. It just felt kind of abrupt and choppy at times.
Last on my list for this posting is Wonder Boys. Although, it was not quite what I was expecting, I thought that it was pretty good. I was expecting it to be more about a professor who is having trouble writing his second novel and forms and odd relationship with one of his students. And while, that was, I suppose, the main plot of the movie, it had more to do with the crazy circumstances that happen over a few days. Michael Douglas is the pot smoking professor who is having an affair with the dean's wife, and Topher Grace plays the quirky student. It also stars Robert Downey, Jr. who was hilarious as a gay, book editor who shows up with a transvesite that he picked up on the plane. Like I said, it was not really what I was expecting, so it took me a while to get into the movie, but I eventually found it to be quite entertaining.
Also this week, Oscar nominations were announced. There were not really any surprises, except that Up was nominated for Best Picture. Which was not really a surpise so much as, I just disagree with the choice. I have already expressed my feelings on that movie. Here is the full list for your viewing pleasure: http://oscar.go.com/nominations/nominees
I hope that everyone is staying warm and that if you live in the east coast you have a few good movies at home to watch when we all get snowed in this weekend :o)
xoxo c
ps. Haiti still needs our help, so if you have not done so already, please consider donating. Here are some of my choices:
