Screen Actors Guild Awards: Predictions

I officially believe more in the Screen Actors Guild more than the Golden Globes. Avatar wasn't nominated for anything, and HALLELUJAH, neither was The Hangover. How either of those were noticed for what they were is beyond me. Anyway, I'm predicting:

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

Georgoe Clooney, Up in the Air

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

Gabourey Sidibe, Precious

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

Mo'Nique, Precious

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

Nine with Daniel-Day Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Sophia Loren, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Fergie, Kate Hudson, and Nicole Kidman (Though I'd be perfectly happy if it went to Precious. I just figure anything with Daniel-Day Lewis, Penelope Cruz, and Sophia Loren in the same movie is bound for great thing.)

Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture

Star Trek

I could care less about Primetime TV. The only one I'm going to wait for is Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy, for either Glee or Modern Family. Hopefully Glee, though.

A three-day-weekend

Is the only thing I love more than a regular weekend.

The only thing I love more than a three-day-weekend is the four day week that comes after that. Thanks to the calendar, we have FIVE of those left this quarter. Out of eight. And that makes me very, very happy.

A: What have I just about lost faith in?

Q: The film industry of today.

I paid little attention to the TV part of the Golden Globes (Except Best Comedy Series---yay Glee!) and instead waited for the film categories. At the beginning, I was doing fairly well...then it went downhill.

Best Supporting Actress was pretty much given. Mo'Nique was incredible in Precious, and that paid off. Her speech was a wonderful way to start the evening, with a check mark for "WON" on my predictions sheet.

Several more accurate wins went my way---Meryl Streep in Julie and Julia, Up for original score and animated feature, and The White Ribbon for best foreign language film. All was well. A couple losses ("Winter" by U2 for Original Song, "Inglorious Basterds" for screenplay) and I'm going down.

Suddenly, EVERYONE is losing. Best Director, Jason Reitman? Goes to James Cameron and Avatar. Stanley Tucci for supporting actor? Carey Mulligan in drama actress? Morgan Freeman for drama actor? DANIEL DAY-LEWIS for comedy/musical actor? All lost.

The Best Picture awards really made me believe they pick the winners out of a hat. Out of Nine, 500 Days of Summer, The Hangover, It's Complicated, and Julie & Julia, guess who won Best Movie Comedy/Musical?

The Hangover. Yes. Really. No joke. That just about made me cry at how low our standard have sunk that THAT prevails over something like Nine or 500 Days of Summer. I don't even know how it was nominated.

I don't want to beat around the bush, so out with it: Avatar won Best Picture: Drama. Box office success? Yes. Nominated? Oh, certainly. Better than Precious and Up in the Air?

Not so much. It's Pocahontas in blue wash. The story is paper-thin. It's not original. Nobody accomplishes anything (except someone gets his legs or something). It's just James Cameron trying to prove what he can to. It'd be really impressive for a talent-dump, actually. That's pretty much what it is: a mixture of good stuff without much purpose and without much drive.

If the Oscars go like this, I'm going to be writing some very angry letters.

Golden Globe Predictions

Tomorrow will be the first time when I can watch the Golden Globes without worrying about how late I'll be getting to bed. It's a three-day weekend, and with Monday off, I don't care HOW late they run. Therefore, I'll definitely be watching them.

Much like I did with last year's Oscars, I have my predictions set for who's going to win what. Of course, considering my limited viewing of a lot of movies and TV shows, I could be totally wrong on all of these, and some are simply who I WANT to win, which I'll indicate.

Anyway, for movies, I'm thinking that:

Best Drama: Precious
Best Comedy or Musical: Anything except The Hangover. I'd love it if it went to Nine but anything will do. Just not The Hangover.
Best Actor in a Drama: Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Best Actress in a Drama: Carey Mulligan, An Education
Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy: Daniel Day-Lewis, Nine
Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy: Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia
Best Supporting Actor: Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, Precious
Best Director: Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
Best Screenplay: Inglorious Basterds
Best Original Score: Up
Best Animated Film: Up
Best Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon (Germany)
Best Original Song: "Winter" by U2 from Brothers

There's very few that I'm sure of, but the two that I'd be terribly surprised if it didn't turn out would be Mo'Nique and Stanley Tucci. I saw both Precious (Early December) and The Lovely Bones (last night), and their performances were the standout points in both films. Mo'Nique was extraordinary, and Tucci was perfect in every way. There was an ominous feeling throughout the entire theater whenever even his eyes appeared on screen for just the briefest moment.

As for TV...these are even less accurate, if that's possible. Just hope that Glee wins all four it was nomminated---Best Comedy, Best Musical/Comedy Actor (Matthew Morrison), Best Musical/Comedy Actress (Lea Michele), and Best Supporting Actress (Jane Lynch). Oh, and please, please, PLEASE don't have True Blood win Best Drama. Seriously. Please let it be Dexter.

Golden Globes begin on NBC at 8 PM EST on January 17th. Can't wait!!

Why I should be a diplomat

I have no idea what they said, and it was probably spam. Whatever it was, though, I thanked them and gave them a smiley.

Little tidbits like this

Actually remind me why blogging is fun:



I also re-found this video on YouTube that I've probably blogged before, but always puts me in a December mood (Read: not agonizing about the upcoming holiday smash).



There's only ONE Raoul.

(What would have been) NaBloPoMo: Day 30

Today's the last day of November, and if I had gutted through NaBlo for 10 more days, then I would have been able to put up the satisfaction sticker. I didn't though, and I can't say I regretted it. Blogging hasn't seemed nearly as exciting as it used to: life's been going fairly steadily, and that which hasn't (Which made all the good material in middle school) I really don't want to tell the entire world.

So I might pick this up again, but it's truly a distraction in my ever-going quest to break my internet addiction. I'm trying to par down on my accounts and am starting with MySpace. In the end, I want to be left with an active FaceBook with a DeviantArt on the side. I'm probably not going to delete this, per say, but I'm probably not going to write.

And who knows? Maybe after all the insanity of the semester is done (3 weeks, 3 weeks, 3 weeks...) and winter break runs it course, I might decide I want to start fresh and do another Blog365. Maybe. I'm just taking things as they're thrown at me.

I think

I'm just going to go back to blogging when I feel like it.

No, I'm not in some manic depression that is making me not want to write. The truth is, nothing's going on, and it's getting annoying to have to post that.

Blogging

Is really starting to get old.

I'm not looking forward to the final almost-two-weeks of NaBloPoMo, as I keep posting stuff like this at around this time. Blah.

APUSH homework

Is done.

German homework isn't even started, but that can wait until Encore.

Before midnight is actually a fairly early night.

Silver Lining on a Passing Storm Cloud

Knowing my wonderful time management skills, last night was another wonderful all-nighter. It was spent on APUSH, no surprises there, more specifically on a main idea log and John C. Calhoun report. My teacher never said anything about the report, but I figured that if it were on the syllabus, I better do it anyway.

Last night was actually one of the better all-nighters that I've had. My friend Meghan was online in the same time crunch that I was in, so we kept one another company in the early hours of the morning as it turned from November 15th to 16th. We had a rather nice discussion, to include fascinating subjects such as Special K bars and Glee, and the homework finally ended for both of us at 3 AM. We told each other to have a nice 3-hour nap and that we'd see each other in English in a few hours.

Report and MIL in hand, I went into 5th period APUSH after dragging through English and nearly falling asleep in German to discover something extraordinary:

The Calhoun report's due date was randomly changed to Wednesday. Great news for everyone who didn't remember it, but I had stayed up all night to discover that I had two extra days to work on it.

Even though I wasn't totally pleased with how the paper turned out, I turned it in anyway. I just wanted to get rid of it. I suggested to Meghan that we make cookies while everyone else does their summary, but it sounds like she has other commitments. I wonder if there's any brownie mix for Mom and I to celebrate with, though.

Bad News: I've had 7 hours of sleep in the last 50 or so hours

Good News: I'm apparently ahead in APUSH and have devised a plan to stay at least one assignment (hopefully soon to be one chapter) ahead in case another scenario where I need to stay up all night comes around.

The most important silver lining of the cloud, though, is that I've made it through another thunderstorm and am still able to see the cloud and try and prepare for the next one.

Review

Okay, so I still have a ton of stuff on my to do list (actually only 4 things, but it includes 2 papers and a main idea log, so it isn't the quickest), and I have a few spare minutes I'm granting myself before going onto my next English paper. Not much happened today, as I was working on another paper all day, so here's a review of a movie I watched yesterday.

I took a nap yesterday afternoon, at after finishing my German homework at about 1 AM, I still wasn't tired. Figuring I'd just watch a little bit of The Crow to put me to sleep, I went on YouTube only to find that I couldn't immediately find the movie watching channel I usually referred to. Thus, I turned to Wikipedia, and after a bit of clicking around, found myself on Vincent Perez's page (He was Ashe Corven in the second Crow movie). His filmography was pretty impressive, though most of them were in German, Spanish, French, or Swedish. Apparently, he's multi-lingual.

The only other movies in English that I could find were Queen of the Damned, I Dreamed of Africa, and Swept from the Sea. I watched the trailers to all three and read up on the synopsis and figured that, though it seemed the most well-known and probably best, Queen didn't sound like a movie I wanted to watch at 1 in the morning. I Dreamed of Africa, though it seemed interesting, had horrible reviews, and even won the Razzie Award for Worst Actress. That left Swept from the Sea, which had favorable enough reviews, and a synopsis consisting of "Someone is shipwrecked knowing how to play chess, not how to speak English."

I really was surprised at how good it was.

The music, one of the first things I noticed, was phenomenal. It was by John Barry, who also did Out of Africa and Dances With Wolves. The cinematography was wonderful, and the location (Cornwallis, England) was complete eye candy.

The acting, of course, is what sold it. For a good third or half of the movie, Vincent Perez's character, Yanko, speaks Russian or nothing at all. Even without subtitles or lines, he managed to portray someone completely lost and alone in somewhere completely different. This was the first Rachel Weisz movie I've seen, and I'll probably look into others. Anything with Kathy Bates or Ian McKellan is bound to be amazing, so putting them both in the same movie (and often in the same scene) was cinematic perfection.

I'm currently looking for it on DVD, as it instantly became one of my favorites. Though the title originally threw me off (It reminded me too much of a certain "By The Sea"), it was a prime example of how you can never judge a book by its cover.

Flashback

Nothing happened today besides rehearsal and homework, and homework will happen more tomorrow. Therefore, here's a moment from Thursday's German II class that made me giddy:

One of my friends was trying to convince my teacher to raise her grade to an A+, and therefore decided to draw a picture on the board. It was the typical cutsy-stick-figure-outside kind of picture, but it really surprised me when she drew the sun.

It was blue, and she announced "That's a blue sun."

I have no idea if she knows it, but she totally just quoted one of my favorite movies (The Crow: City of Angels). Of course, pretty much nobody else has seen that movie (The Crow is sort of a cult movie franchise), so I didn't say anything. Still, after two tests in 1st and 3rd and one coming up in 5th, that did make my day.

I wrote love on my arms

Did you?

Today was the official "To Write Love on Her Arms" Day. TWLOHA is this totally amazing non-profit educational organization that helps spread suicide and self-mutilation awareness, especially "cutting". Though I probably gave myself lead poisoning (and broke a ton of dress code rules by drawing all over my arms), I figured I could participate, as "love is the movement."

Draw a little heart on your arm and take a picture of it right now---it still counts.

(Note: my webcam is really the only method I had of taking pictures when I was. It's illegible on my arm when it isn't backwards anyway, but basically I wrote the "To Write Love on Her Arms", "LOVE", and several synonyms. And a purple heart. Can't forget that.)

EDITED TO ADD: See? Mom's getting in the spirit:

Better late than never

Maya convinced me to join NaNoWriMo along with NaBloPoMo.

Let's see how long it takes before I go insane!

Another late night

I hatehatehate all nighters, especially when I've worked the majority of the day before said all nighter. But tonight seems to be doing rather well in the stay-up-studying department. Tonight, I have to finish THIS:

- Annotate "A Modest Proposal"
- Study English tone words
- Finish packet on fragments (Yes, I hate it too)
- Study German
- Study APUSH by typing up review and knowing I know everything on it

My contacts are getting crusty, so I have to go take them out. I'm glad my bed is made and therefore I can't get under the covers---I might wind up studying there.

Tomorrow I have three tests all in a row: Vocab for English, Chapter 11 for German, and Unit 4 for APUSH. If Environmental Science put the chapter 3 test off for today, I think I would have to make myself sick.

So for now I'm just listening to a mix of Hayley Westernra, Ragtime, Avenue Q, and Glee as I work. I've noticed that background noise actually helps me a lot---as long as I don't have to keep clicking over to change it.

Speaking of Glee: tonight's episode was AMAZING. Probably the most intense one yet, and a real turning point largely for Kurt, Sue, and Artie. If you're not a Gleek, then you'll have no idea what I'm talking about...but otherwise, tell me what you thought! Was the entirety of "Defying Gravity" amazing, and the ending insanely sad?

Oh, and what is UP with Finn? I'm never sure whether or not to like him.

NaBloPoMo: Day 10

I'm trying to branch out in other styles of art other than portraits. I want to try photography again, branch into sculpting...but right now I tried landscape with paint. Here's the result, "Northern Lights":

On a brighter note

The right size of my new Level 27 hoodie finally arrived:



Thank you mommy!

Protest

I am currently protesting against James Cameron.

Those of you who know me know I'm completely for artistic appreciation and protecting other people's art. I try and refrain from bashing movies (There's always going to be at least one redeeming feature, even if I don't like the movie), but I have exceptions.

Ever since 6th grade, I've been working on a fantasy story-turned-novel. It was truly an allegory, reflecting on most of my middle school career. In a nutshell, it was about Humans coming onto a previously-unknown alter world (Darhoumnd) and trying to colonize it to better help people on Earth, Elves and people called Trovens already live there and pull the "Hell no, I won't go" card, war breaks out. I had shown several people, and a few of those said that if I finished and edited it, it could have publishing potential. As I hit high school and was both

a) Not as miserable as I was in middle school and
b) Didn't have as much time as I used to.

From there, I casually chipped in bits and pieces when I had time. Largely, I spent time in easier classes just wondering what it'd be like and if it ever could be published. From the urging of my friend Aubrey, I posted the prologue on my DeviantArt to get some critique and inspiration to keep writing.

I saw this trailer this afternoon and nearly cried.



He called it "Pandora" (Which, mind you, is both Greek and an online RADIO STATION), and painted his people blue. I can't help but imagine that he found my DeviantArt, read the prologue (Which, truly, is the only part that is copied), altered some quotes and made the people blue.

Even if this is a huge coincidence, it kills me knowing that if I had only kept writing, turned it into to someone sooner, then apparently it'd be a huge commercial hit. Seems it'd be made into a movie.

Whenever I write, I cast my characters into what they would be if they were a movie. True, my ideal movie wouldn't work, as I cast my protagonist as Brandon Lee. But I hate not seeing Laura Michelle Kelley as my leading lady. Where is Ed Saunders? Why isn't this a Peter Jackson movie?

To top it off, Cameron is flaunting this to the world with various articles on how "original" he is:

"One aspect of Avatar that seems to have gone pretty unnoticed amongst all the praise and hype around the visuals and the technology invented for the film, is the fact that it’s a completely original script. This doesn’t have decades-old stories (e.g. Lord of the Rings) or an existing fan base (e.g. Harry Potter) to play off of. Although Cameron will undoubtedly have been inspired by sci-fi films of the past, when it comes down to it, this is a newly created entity that’s about to be unleashed on the movie going public."

"Cameron goes on to talk more about the very true fact that he won’t be letting a massive amount of people down if they don’t like Avatar – no one (by that I mean the majority audience out there) knows what Avatar is, no one has been able to read Avatar the novel, or the graphic novel and the majority of people will be going in with a blank slate, free of worry that it won’t live up to the source material… because there ISN’T any."

"It’s actually really refreshing to see an original project like Avatar making its way to our movie theaters. So many movies nowadays are based on existing material in some form or another – not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. But I’m sure I’m not the only one looking forward to not having any comics, books, TV shows or past movies to hold up against Cameron’s latest effort.

What about you? Are you glad to see a through-and-through original movie of this scope getting made? Do you think it will help or hinder the movie at the box office?"

I'm this close to getting rid of my copy of Titanic. Nevertheless, there is no way in hell anyone will catch me at a movie theatre to see Avatar.

Actual post in a few minutes...

I know I've been cheating you all, but it's three minutes until midnight.

"Quantity over quality."