Streaming Bands of Glory

Friday, March 12, 2010

Year-in-advance predictions for the 83rd Academy Awards

BEST MOTION PICTURE

Biutiful | Focus Features

The Fighter | Paramount Pictures

Inception | Warner Bros. Pictures

The King's Speech | The Weinstein Company

Miral | Pathé

Never Let Me Go | Fox Searchlight

The Town | Warner Bros. Pictures

The Tree of Life | Apparition

True Grit | Paramount Pictures

The Way Back | No distributor as of yet

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Javier Bardem | Biutiful

George Clooney | London Boulevard

Robert Duvall | Get Low

Colin Farrell | London Boulevard

Kevin Spacey | Casino Jack

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Hiam Abbass | Miral

Nicole Kidman | Rabbit Hole

Carrie Mulligan | Never Let Me Go

Robin Wright Penn | The Conspirator

Natalie Portman | Black Swan

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Christian Bale | The Fighter

Ed Harris | The Way Back

Brad Pitt | The Tree of Life

Geoffrey Rush | The King's Speech

Ray Winstone | London Boulevard

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Annette Bening | Mother and Child
Jessica Chastain | The Tree of Life

Pamela Martin | The Fighter
Lee Smith | Inception
Juliette Welfling | Miral

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Russell Boyd | The Way Back
Eric Gautier | Miral
Emmanuel Lubezki | The Tree of Life
Wally Pfister | Inception
Robert Richardson | Shutter Island

BEST ART DIRECTION
Netty Chapman | The King's Speech
Stuart Craig | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows
Dante Ferretti | Shutter Island
Jack Fisk | The Tree of Life
Arthur Max | Robin Hood

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Colleen Atwood | Alice in Wonderland
Louise Frogley | The Conspirator
Janty Yates | Robin Hood
Mary Zophres | True Grit
Unknown as of yet | Miral

BEST MAKEUP
Alice in Wonderland
The Conspirator
The Way Back

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Alexandre Desplat | The Tree of Life
James Newton Howard | The Last Airbender
Abel Korzeniowski | Rabbit Hole
Gustavo Santaolalla | Biutiful
Hans Zimmer | Inception

BEST SOUND MIXING
The Fighter
Inception
Iron Man 2
Robin Hood
Tron

BEST SOUND EFFECTS EDITING
The Fighter
Inception
Iron Man 2
The Last Airbender
True Grit

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Iron Man 2
The Last Airbender
Tron

Friday, June 12, 2009

Senior Reflection #4

This last post is me thinking about my life beyond college. What will I want to do next? Well, it's fairly obvious: film school. Preferably one of the best, so I plan on working hard in order to get into schools such a NYU or UCLA, and to maybe pick up a scholarship or two. Film school is my dream, nothing excited me more than the idea of going to a place devoted to learning how to discuss, analyze, and make cinema. I've been educating myself for the last five years, spending more time researching the history and technique of movies than I would on school itself. It's what I'm passionate about, it's what I want to do for my career, and I genuinely believe that it'll be something that I'll excel at. Right now, as I'm writing this, I'm watching Lawrence of Arabia and marveling at how it is both the most intimate and grandiose epic ever made. Before I go to sleep at night, I read about ten pages of a book that'll deal in the history of great American directors or a magazine giving the skinny on modern movies and what's ahead in the future of film. So yeah, that's what I'll be doing when I graduate college. But of course, there's that nagging question: what if something happens? What if I find interest in something else? What if it becomes economically unfeasible to pursue that kind of career? What if I simply won't have what it takes? I think about these things, and yet my gut sincerely doubts all of them.

(Note: If you'll scroll down past the four senior reflection's you will also find three blog posts. I just don't want to risk you overlooking them).

Senior Reflection #3

College. It's sort of a golden word, meaning so many things. It represents promise, fun, growing up, and is basically the end all, be all of awesomeness. I'm going to Old Dominion University, which I'm pretty thrilled about. I loved the campus when I visited; it's close to the beach but has an urban vibe, the area itself feeling as if it's run by students. Ethan, one of my best friends, is going there, and I'm already planning in my head the great times we're gonna have. My best friend, Brice Weaver, is going to be a sophomore there this year, and (call it playing it safe if you will) I'm relieved that I'll have him around. He's the closest friend I can imagine anyone having; we know each other better than anyone else does, and I'd trust him with my life. I think I'm pretty lucky to have that kind of friend. I'm not sure how I want to handle my major in college yet. My primary goal is in film, but I plan to get an education in that in film school once I wrap up four years at a normal college. ODU's film program isn't out of this world, so perhaps I'll go for literature as my major and film as my minor. These are the kind of things that are weighing on my mind.
I'm excited to live in a dorm, to have a roommate, to get out and live a life that I have to shape. It's a bit intimidating, but all the more exciting for it. I'm interested in how intense the classes will be, although I'm relieved that my mom's insisting that I only take four classes for the first semester. Apparently baby steps are the way to go, unless I want to risk becoming overwhelmed at first and ruining my GPA, which is difficult to fix in the following semesters. The thing that I'm most excited about, though, is the lion statue. At the center of ODU's courtyard is a statue of a lion (the college's mascot), ringed by a fountain. It's customary that before the end of your freshman year you climb on and ride the statue (generally you're supposed to be drunk as well). Only when I do this, will I feel like I'm out of high school.

Senior Reflection #2

This morning's first period was the last class I'll ever have to do in high school. That is a trippy realization, however it has not sunk in at all nor do I think it'll ever sink in. It feels like a natural progression, the flow I felt when I entered my freshman year. In about a little less than a week's time I'll be having my graduation. That ought to be interesting, and definitely exciting. I'm not that thrilled that senator Wolf will be speaking; he does not know any of us personally and I'm not looking forward to hearing a politician and what he might say. Any remarks that are intended to influence how we'll vote next election, and I'll boo him off the stage. The weekend's going to be filled with grad parties; whether or not I'll go to all of the ones I'm invited to I'm not sure yet. It would be rude not to, but at the same time I'm not sure I'm up for going to the same event several times over. What I am most looking forward to is the summer, when I'll be working full time, spending my time studying things that I'm specifically interested in, going to the beach, building up my music interests and collection, and spending time with my friends and family. I think that during the school year you lose sight of all of that, and how it's the best bits in life.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Senior Reflection #1

I entered high school expecting it to be wholly intimidating and intense. I remember being five years old, regarding high school students as if they were titans, reigning over all who were younger. I expected the textbooks to be epic tomes, thousands of pages in length. I expected the hallways to be massive, making me minuscule in comparison. It's funny how much larger things seem to us when we're small. I formed all of these notions when I was too short to reach the kitchen cupboards. High school was a little underwhelming, I'll admit. Not in terms of fun; it was a blast in that respect. But it wasn't as, I dunno... grandiose as I was expecting. There was no drastic change, just a couple of subtle variations from middle school. I know that I've changed drastically since then. I'm not sure if high school itself has done that; I think it's the people I've met along the way that have done that.

Gay Marriage... why the drama?

One of the most argued over issues in the 21st century is that of gay marriage. People debate the issue so fiercely that, dare I say it, froth begins to seep from their sputtering mouths. Conservatives are against it, particularly the religious right. Liberals are generally all for it. My question: why in the world is this such a definitive issue? It practically was the main topic during the 2004 Presidential election. I wonder this because I think it's a simple matter of human rights. I wonder this because there are more dire issues to be dealt with. I wonder this because I would like for humanity to move on.
I've come up with a theory as to why the religious right dislike homosexuals. Strong Christians do not approve of sex before marriage; in fact they (at least in public) believe that sex should only be reserved for procreation. Two men or two women cannot reproduce, and therefore their sex is, in the church's point-of-view, just good ol' promiscuity. It is to them a clear cut case of hedonism. That homosexuality is 99% of the time a genetic matter does not seem to compute with hardcore Christians. Then again, these are the same people who still ignore the reality of evolution. But when you have 1/10 of people being gay, you'd think that the general population would learn to be more accepting. Is it such a difficult concept to think that God loves his children equally, and doesn't give a damn about their sexuality? I think that in forty years we will look back upon this era with the same puzzlement and disappointment that we feel today when we recall segregation.
What is the problem here? That to grant homosexuals gay marriage would defy the sanctity of it? I think that sanctity was defiled already when the government turned marriage into a legal contract, complete with tax exemptions and all. What makes two people worthy of a marriage? Isn't that they are in love good enough? Apparently not so; apparently a dude and a chick who get married only to get bitterly divorced two years later are more worhy of marriage than, say, two men who want nothing more than to spend the rest of their lives together. This, I think, is obviously a matter of civil rights, only hindered by prejudice and the ignoring of God's message in favor of honoring rigid rhetoric of a time in the world where for someone to be different would be reason enough to burn them at the stake. I'm tired of this issue being argued over, and I want it resolved. Cooler heads should prevail, and then focus their energy on terorism, the economy, and genocide in Darfur.

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power. Not to be mispronounced as new-cu-lar. Nuclear power is the cleanest, most efficient energy source on the planet, as far as we know. It creates massive amounts of power with little to no effort. I looked up how it works, and it's pretty fascinating: it works when radioactive uranium rods are used to heat and boil water, which turn turbines. So it's basically like all energy sources, man finding a way to have a force create friction. As opposed to coal power, which burns its fuel to create heat, the uranium rods react to generate energy.
So why is it that we aren't capitalizing on this awesome force? Well, unfortunately the word nuclear is an unattractive title, most people associating it with something catastrophic. There have also been several accounts of nuclear power going wrong, Chernobyl being the most famous example. Radioactivity is its vice, most people regarding the energy source as just a ticking time bomb waiting to give them cancer and deform their yet-to-be-born children. President Obama have said that he thinks we can take steps in the right direction to make nuclear power a clean and efficient source of energy, but other Democrats fear it and think we have other alternatives. The problem about this is that while Democrats whine about nuclear power, they are stingy in funding research in alternative resources. So what we have are a bunch of lawmakers damning our current addiction to oil while not taking the initiative to solve issue.
I believe that a suffix should not define the noun, and that the term nuclear shouldn't be an immediate alarm-raiser. All great endeavors come with risk, and usually the greater the risk the greater the payoff. I wish that congress would buckle down and reconcile their neurotic grievances, and would give this energy resource a chance.