Oscar Predictions!

With just a few hours to go before Oscar lift off, here are my predictions. But first I have to say that for the first time in ten years, I will not be watching the Oscars as they are broadcast live. Except for that time two years ago when we had stock take on the morning of the Oscars and my boss wouldn't let me have the day off. But that was all conspired against me. This time I'm doing it on purpose.

It's always kind of a pain to get up at 2am and drive off to someone's house (usually BFF Ruby Slippers, who has satellite tv). But it's worth it to enjoy the show. However, when they put ad breaks between every single award, and play the same three ads in those breaks over and over over the 4 hour period, not to mention during the pre-shows, it kind of makes me want to stab my eyeballs with a fork. It's funny, really, that the Oscar bigwigs are always trying to find a way to make the show shorter and more interesting, and if they just took out ALL THE BLOODY AD BREAKS it would be, and people might actually watch it. And then they'd make no money. Ha.

Anyway, I'm still pretty Oscar-keen, so I'm getting up at about 6:30am and driving through to BFF's house. I should arrive as the show ends at around 7am, and then she'l give me the tape she recorded it on, and I'll drive home, eyes averted from all news headlines on the side of the roads, and watch it With No Ad Breaks. Bliss.

So here are my predictions:

BEST PICTURE
Avatar

BEST DIRECTOR
The Hurt Locker (Yup, I'm predicting a split here)

BEST ACTOR
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

BEST ACTRESS
Sandra Bullock, The Blindside

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Mo'nique, Precious blah blah

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

ANIMATED FEATURE
Up

ART DIRECTION
Nine

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Avatar

COSTUME DESIGN
Nine

EDITING
Avatar

MAKEUP
Star Trek

ORIGINAL SCORE
Sherlock Holmes

SONG
Crazy Heart

SOUND EDITING
Avatar

SOUND MIXING
Avatar

VISUAL EFFECTS
Avatar

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Up in the Air

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Inglourious Basterds

FOREIGN FILM
The White Ribbon


As you can see, I'm predicting a bit of a sweep for Avatar, as is, you know, THE WORLD, but aside from all the effects and CGI stuff and sheer beauty of it, I don't think it deserves too much. It was a visually stunning film with a tired old plot and very little heart and soul. Personally, having now seen 8 of the 10 best picture nominees (The Blindside hasn't opened yet and Precious only opened on Friday, and I didn't have the time) I think the best films are An Education and Up in the Air, but if we're equating groundbreaking and impressive with "good", then Avatar will win every time. But it won't stand the test of time, once every movie looks like that...

AFI Movies # 2, 3 and 4 done!

I'm totally on a movie roll this month. I've been trying to spend less time arbitrarily clicking round the internet, and more time watching movies I've been meaning to forever. Which is why I made that list of 15 movies on the AFI Top100 List to watch this year. I already posted that I'd watched Jaws. Since then, I've watched:

 

Which was rather sweet and quite fun. You have to be in the right mood for Chaplin (well, at least, I do), but when you are he can be such fun!

  

Which was about what I'd expected: typically 70s, angry protagonist in an imperfect world, and not my kind of movie at all. It's not bad, though, and I'm glad I watched it eventually.

This was pretty good. Maybe a bit too over-acted, but that's how they did stuff back then, and the 40s is one of my favourite movie decades. It's pretty much all about greed and how it affects one. Good stuff.

This leaves me only:

1) On The Waterfront (#19)
2) Chinatown (#21)
3) Duck Soup (#60)
4) Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (#73)
5) The French Connection (#93)
6) A Streetcar named Desire (#47)
7) The Bridge on the River Kwai (# 36)
8) Modern Times (#78) .
9) Bonnie and Clyde (#42) .
10) M*A*S*H (#54)
11) Lawrence of Arabia (#7)

But right now, I'm off to catch up on my Oscar movies. Predictions tomorrow!

Movie #1 Done!

Remember my New Year's Goal to watch 15 movies I hadn't seen off the AFI Best 100 List? Well, I started in at the bottom and watched this:

And, much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it! I don't see what it's doing on a Top Film list, to be honest, but it was a great, fun, adventure, with a nice number of "jump in your seat" moments (though, to be honest, the one that startled me the most had nothing to do with the shark at all!), and a nicely-paced story. I'd been worrying about how on earth they could be on a boat looking for a shark for the length of an entire movie, but the set-up took a good portion of the film, and I enjoyed it too.

Not a bad start to my 15! Let's hope the next 14 are as enjoyable, though I have my doubts about a few... :-)

Oh, by the way, I found the most wonderful time-wasting movie site. It's called ICheckMovies, and it's basically a checklist of every top movie list ever made, including the AFI, Oscar winners, Roger Ebert and so on, as well as things like "top sequels" and "top horrors". Go. Play.

Another one gone

I just heard that Kathryn Grayson died yesterday, and I'm inexplicably sad. Now before you all go, "Kathryn who?", she was one of the big musical stars at MGM in the 1940s and 50s. She co-starred with people like Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Mario Lanza. She was in Showboat and Kiss Me Kate. I'm not exaggerating when I say she was one of the biggies.

And I didn't even like her.

I never was a big fan of the soprano leads in musicals, like Kathryn and Jane Powell. I found them a bit shrieky and I never liked the songs they chose for them. I'm much more of a jazzy, alto, Judy Garland-type lover (well, duh, if you know me at all). But I'm so SAD about Kathryn's death. You see, with her passing, we come ever closer to losing every last one of the great stars of my favourite film era of all time - the Golden Age of Hollywood. And THAT makes me want to cry.

As soon as I heard the news of Kathryn's passing, I went and dug out the list I made a few years ago of the big classic stars who are still alive. Maybe it's a bit of a depressing list, but I'm morbid that way, and anyway, I LIKE lists. I hadn't looked at it for some months, and I immediately had to delete Jennifer Jones, Jean Simmons and Karl Malden, as well as Kathryn. What saddened me is I didn't even know that Jean Simmons had died until a friend told me last week. I guess it just wasn't big enough news, which makes me even sadder.

I love old Hollywood. I adore it. And yes, I know these stars will live on through their films, and them being alive or dead really makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. But for me, it's like a piece of magic has disappeared off this earth.

Here is the list of those magic-makers who are still with us. Please let me know if I've forgotten someone, because I very likely have! And it would make me feel so much better if the list were longer.  The dates next to them are their dates of birth.

Luise Rainer (1910)
Tony Martin (1912)
Kirk Douglas (1916)
Olivia De Havilland (1916)
Joan Fontaine (1917)
Lena Horne (1917)
Ernest Borgnine (1917)
Celeste Holm (1917)
Maureen O' Hara (1920)
Mickey Rooney (1920)
Jane Russell (1921)
Deanna Durbin (1921)
Esther Williams (1921)
Doris Day (1922)
Eva Marie Saint (1924)
Lauren Bacall (1924)
Tony Curtis (1925)
Gloria DeHaven (1925)
Angela Lansbury (1925)
Farley Granger (1925)
Patricia Neal (1926)
Leslie Nielsen (1926)
Gina Lollobrigida (1927)
Sidney Poitier (1927)
Ann Blyth (1928)
Shirley Temple (1928)
Jane Powell (1929)
Tippi Hedren (1930)
Joanne Woodward (1930)
Rita Moreno (1931)
Debbie Reynolds (1932)
Peter O' Toole (1932)
Elizabeth Taylor (1932)
Omar Sharif (1932)
Kim Novak (1933)
Shirley Jones (1934)
Sophia Loren (1934)
Shirley Maclaine (1934)
Julie Andrews (1935)
Margaret O'Brien (1937)


Please tell me someone else is sad about how short this list is! And I can't even let BFF Ruby Slippers know, because she's on holiday in the bush, with no cellphone reception. :-(

Yours, sadly,
Ruby Slippers

The best Trash the Dress photo EVER.

I just wish it was mine!

It won't let me save it, but do yourself a favour and go see it here. Because, wow.

Dream Home

I think I might have found my dream house (or loft, in this case):

Look at the low-running bookcases! I want!

There is a little garden IN the kitchen! And the space! Divine.

I think this might be the most perfect bathroom ever. Be still my beating heart.

 

See the rest here.

in the hospital

So. Remember my last post, where Mr Ruby Slippers had a stomach bug and I was sitting on the computer in the middle of the night to avoid his possible vomit? Yeah...turns out, not so much a stomach bug. We went off to the doctor in the early morning, after the poor guy was unable to sleep because he was in so much pain. Many X-Rays and ultrasounds and even more $$$ later, it was discovered that he had a blockage in his intestine. And they had to operate. Twelve hours after I wrote that last post, he was being prepped for surgery.

I did NOT see that coming.

I was assured that he was never in any danger and that it was all pretty routine, but it was just so...hard. Hard seeing him lying there, barely able to move, with tubes down his nose and in his arm and up his...well, you know. Hard to drive to the hospital two or three times a day to see him. Hard to be strong for him when I just wanted to cry. And hard to carry on with work when all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep. I never realised just how exhausting it is to have someone in hospital. I don't cope well with stress, I think.

Mr RS was released from hospital eight days after his operation. He hobbled around at home for a while, and he had his stitches out last Thursday. Now, aside from a painful and quite scary-looking scar, he's doing okay. And my mind is getting more or less back to normal. I felt quite hazy for a while there.

As for what caused the blockage, we still don't know. The surgeon said it was something he ate, something mostly fibrous, that hardened into a bezoar (and yes, I also immediately thought "ooh, those have magical properties!"). Unfortunately we didn't get to keep it :-)

Anyway, so that's where I've been for the last two weeks.

I'm going to leave you with a pretty picture I found on desiretoinspire.net:

 

It's a fairytale. LOVE it.