RENEE ZELLWEGER IN MY FRONT GARDEN!!!

I went outside to take the rubbish out and to my shock and surprise there was Renee Zellweger staring at me. I was a bit scared and tried not to make eye contact while I slowly backed into the flat. I managed to get a quick picture of her before she hissed and ran off!!! See, celebrities can go anywhere in London!

If Nat over at The Film Experience ever saw this he would never be able to look at his cat again.

MY PREDICTIONS!!!!!

Ok, here are my pathetic predictions for this years Academy Awards. I am probably way off on this, but I am going with my gut feeling.

Best Adapted Screenplay
I think this is The Departed’s to lose, but if it were to lose I have a feeling it would be to Borat himself. I can just imagine the Academy putting his name down to see him up on that stage. The show is boring….they may just want the entertainment badly enough!
Prediction – The Departed (Alt – Borat)

Best Original Screenplay
The only real challenger to Little Miss Sunshine here is The Queen or Babel. I think Little Miss sunshine will prevail here.
Prediction – Little Miss Sunshine (Alt – The Queen)

Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Hudson should prevail here nicely, however I get the feeling Abigail Breslin could be nipping at her heals…..I mean who could really vote against Little Miss Sunshine herself?
Prediction – Jennifer Hudson (Alt – Abigail Breslin)

Best Supporting Actor
This is where things get tricky. Eddie Murphy has won the majority of the precursors, however he is not well liked in Hollywood. Alan Arkin gave a good performance as a very memorable character, and has some of the best lines, plus he is in a Best Picture contender. I predict Arkin to the win.
Prediction – Alan Arkin (Alt – Eddie Murphy)

Best Actress
This is Helen Mirrens, and much deserved. The only outside shot would be Meryl.
Prediction – Helen Mirren (Alt – None really but I will put in Meryl Streep)

Best Actor
Clash of the titans! Forest Whitaker has given the most critically praised performance, and has swept all of the precursors, but there is 7 Oscar time loser Peter O’Toole. Can the Academy really let this legend go home empty handed a record 8th time?? I have hope in humanity and think they will give it to O’Toole. Besides the Academy still has an underlying racist attitude. I will probably be way off on this, but this is also my personal hope.
Prediction – Peter O’Toole (Alt – Forest Whitaker)

Best Director
Marty Marty Marty. Only Clint can upset, which is doubtful.
Prediction – Martin Scorsese (Alt – Clint Eastwood)

Best Picture
4 possible winners. All with a good shot. I want to be brave enough to predict Little Miss Sunshine, but still think it is too slight to be an Oscar winner. Letters From Iwo Jima could pull through as older Academy voters will feel it is a big important film, and more likeable than Babel. Babel is a message movie for today, mainly coasting on the Japanese story line….which is a story line powerful enough to win. Lastly The Departed. Everyone likes it, but many feel it is too bloody for a win. A Scorsese film has never won Best Picture!
Prediction – The Departed (Alt – Little Miss Sunshine)

Best Foreign Film Pan’s Labyrinth (alt: The Lives of Others)

Best Original Score Pan’s Labyrinth (alt: The Queen)

Best Original Song Listen - Dreamgirls (alt: I Need to Wake Up – An Inconvenient Truth)

Best Art Direction Pan’s Labyrinth (alt: Dreamgirls)

Best Cinematography Children of Men (alt: Pan’s Labyrinth)

Best Costume Design Dreamgirls (alt: The Devil Wears Prada)

Best Editing United 93 (alt: The Departed)

Best Sound Mixing Dreamgirls (alt: Blood Diamond)

Best Sound Editing Apocalypto (alt: Letters from Iwo Jima)

Best Documentary An Inconvenient Truth (alt: Iraq in Fragments)

Best Make Up Pan’s Labyrinth (alt: Apocalypto)

Best Animated Picture Happy Feet (alt: Cars)

Best Visual Effects Pirates of the Caribbean:2 (alt: Superman Returns)


There we go. Lets see how I do. I am leaning more towards the conservative Academy voter on this one, especially after last year.

Sick day memories.

when I was sick as a kid, I would always lie on the sofa with a ginger ale and watch sesame street. Even as an adult it still never fails to make me smile.

I need Sally Field

At home with a terrible bout of the flu, and all alone. My boogie bear had to go to work, so I am here trying to do things to trick my body into thinking it is better. Not working so far. This is why I have not been doing my music and video of the week this week. Cause I am not listening to anything. But I may watch Steel Magnolias.

Acting is all in the pixels

Jennifer Connolley cannot act!!!!
Or at least it appears that way…read it here
What this means is that soon actors will just have to show up and give a wooden line reading and go home. Great news for Beyonce. Soon the visual effects department will be nominated for acting awards.

I love the fact that Tom Cruise has a clause in his contract granting him full control of his own digital assets. This either means his performances are not digitally altered (in which case he seriously needs a re-think), or they are (in which case visual effects are years off creating human like emotion).

Poor Britney

I guess having all that massive attention at an early age will eventually break you down (look at Michael Jackson). In the grand scheme of things though, I do not think this is such a scandal. I mean bitch just shaved her head. Sure she looks like she is auditioning for Star Trek but it will grow back. She is a broken woman who right now probably feels her worth by how often the press mentions her. These same journalists and photographers who are reaping in the money hounding her and reporting on her mini break down are the same ones who will write pieces about her dramatic comeback should it happen. If she manages to turn herself around you will get big ole sob stories written about her, praising her for being strong and fighting – probably in the same news print that brought her down.
At the end of the day Britney Spears is just a girl (not yet a woman) who had the lime light thrust upon her at 14, who is now going through very human emotions, but she doesn’t have the luxury of going through them privately.

Good luck Britney, hope everything works out for you. Stay indoor till it grows about an inch, and then venture out when you are mentally strong and show off your new-cropped do!
And by the way hon, I am sorry. We all did this to you by buying the magazines and new papers in the first place (expect me…It was front page on Yahoo news! FRONT PAGE!!!! Wow this world is f*cked) so at the end of the day it is our responsibility. We all could have turned our back and allowed the girl time to breathe.

Mini Review number 10 - Half Nelson

Half Nelson tells the story of a talented history teacher, trying, and succeeding to inspire the kids in the inner city school he teaches at. He is bright, young and understands that the way to get through to these children is to act as an equal, find a common ground and then can you make them rise.
His closet crack habit, however, is a self-inflicted gash. Dan leads a double life, inspiring by day but a warning at night.
What could have easily been a typical “over coming obstacles” movie that warms your heart quickly changes by the discovery of his secret by one of his students Drey (Shareeka Epps) that boosts the story to a higher place. In a wrenching scene, borne of Dan's foolish risk-taking, Drey looks on as he tries to preserve some shred of authority through his heroin haze. Her eyes tell the story, another adult she had faith in has disappointed her, but this time she didn’t expect it.
The pair negotiates their silent agreement; Drey could easily ruin him, but she's not interested. She already has her share of turbulence, with a single mother (Karen Chilton, who I expect big things from) working overtime as a paramedic and an older brother in jail.
Our hopes quickly shift to Drey, who seems the worthier of them.
Even as Dan plummets down the rutted skids of his addiction, he tries to play the white knight against Drey's drug-dealing protector, Frank, who is also his supplier. Anthony Mackie renders this role with surprising nuance, a family man whose assistance makes sense within his context, even as it risks drawing Drey to the same fate as her brother.
Ryan Gosling gives an emotionally honest performance as a young man unable to control his own life, but still trying to be a mentor to the kids he teaches. You feel the sadness in his eyes, and the disappointment in that this is what he has become.
But it's Epps who haunts, swept past the errors of her elders with a gaze that absorbs. Her entire performance is in her eyes, her hopes, her dreams and her disappointments radiate out of them even as her mouth is frozen shut. This is not an act of defiance, it is teenage protection…..don’t stand out too much…..and it makes the moments when she smiles all the more alarming.

Lets all download!!!

I went to see the Gilbert and George exhibition at the Tate Modern on Saturday. I loved it, and was so visually inspired by it, but it got me thinking about technology and what the way forward should be. Sure I loved the work I saw, but bugger me if I am going to fork out £100 for a print. I may as well get my creative juices flowing and do my own thing with Photoshop. Make it personal. Or heck, if I love it enough, find a high res file online and print it off myself!
What I would like more than anything is to be able to down load all the things I love, and this is mainly TV, film, and music. Thanks to the people over at Apple , we now have iTunes which does some TV and whole slew of music for the picking. But what of film?
Sure we can download movies to rent, but what I want it to be able to download a current release right to my pc, convert it to iPod format, and play it through my idiot box.
The movie studios complain about piracy and bootleg movies being sold, but they need to understand why.
When a film like Little Children comes out, with no fan fare, or push by the studios, people have to flock to specialist cinemas to see these films.
Some people cannot even get to these places as they live in bumblefuck nowhere and the only cinema for miles is playing some bloody buggery blockbuster that was slated by critics, but for some reason people flock to see it. For the poor cinema junky who yearns for something more, they either have to move to a city, or do something illegal.
So they go online onto their file sharing software and type in ‘ Pan’s Labyrinth ’. Lo and behold it appears, they click, and it begins to download.
And then what happens is these people get something we others do not. They get to watch a current release in the privacy of their own home. No talkers, loud sleepers, people getting up to pee, kids. They can lie on their sofa, put their feet up, unplug the phone and be transported without interruption.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds plenty good to me.
Some movie just work better in the cinema, you get the large screen, the atmosphere, and the crowd, but others work equally well on the small screen. If I could download Letters From Iwo Jima I would. There are some films (like during Oscar season) that you would never usually go and see, but because of awards buzz you feel obliged. I wasted valuable time seeing Blood Diamond , and Babel , when I would have much rather downloaded the file over night, and caught it the next day, watching it on the sofa, wearing my pj’s and scoffing down hob nobs.

Movies studios need to stop the bitching about piracy and start offering up movies to download. Sure it could spell doom for some of the large cinemas, but that was already happening due to the fact you can install people can now have large flat screen TV’s with surround sound. Cinemas will always exist no matter where technology goes. They just need to be run right.
I am a member of my local Picture House. I can take in a glass of wine, and lay back and not only watch current releases, but older films that they have special showing of. I mean who wouldn’t pass up the chance to watch Cabaret; It’s a Wonderful Life and Gremlins on the big screen on a lazy Saturday afternoon? This cinema is always packed, and always busy because it is managed correctly.
The big studios have an amazing opportunity on their hands. When will they grasp it?

Am I evil for laughing???

This really did tickle me pink when I read it. Not that I hate the woman in any way, it is just she has never struck me as a good actress, so why try (Selena and Out of Sight were hardly mind blowing people)!!
Any way, read it HERE!

Carolyn, I think you will have a little laugh too. Be sure to look at the pics!