Oscar…Madison?

So tomorrow morning the Oscar nominations are going to be announced. The following lists reflect my best guess for who I think the academy will pick.

Best Picture:
Frost/Nixon
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Actress:
Kate Winslet – Revolutionary Road
Angelina Jolie – Changeling
Meryl Streep – Doubt
Anne Hathaway – Rachel Gets Married
Kristen Scott Thomas – I’ve Loved You So Long

Best Actor:
Brad Pitt – Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dev Patel – Slumdog Millionaire
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
Sean Penn – Milk

Our old pal Oscar...what a stiff bastard.

I guess we’ll find out tomorrow morning how right or wrong I was :)

Americans

Ok Ok so why don’t we talk just about American film directors… what about that?

Naïveté?

Last night I watched the French movie Innocence and I got to say it was a rather odd film.

It’s not that I don’t like odd films, anyone who knows me well knows I’m a big fan of deranged cinema. Takaski Miike is the shit.

Innocence is such a chill film at first glance, but its ability to create such a sense of heightened anxiety is impressive. After the opening credits, the movie opens with an underwater shot of rushing water followed by a group of young girls clad in exploitatively short pleated white skirts and shirts to match. These young girls are shot showing their bodies from the waist down so as to emphasize their young, bony, awkward legs and the lack of skirt. In the middle of the shot is a small coffin. The oldest girl, Bianca, opens the coffin while the other girls help to reveal a naked 6 year old named Iris. As soon as I saw this scene, I knew it was going to be an interesting movie.

As the movie continued, I began to feel more and more as if I was a voyeur spying on these perfectly manicured young girls. I appreciated how the story focused on a variety of personalities and hence a variety of reactions to the given situation.

I do not want to “give the movie away,” but I will say that by the end of the film I decided that while I believe teaching young women rules and self discipline is very important, the manner in which it was done in this movie is not anything that aligns with anything I would ever endorse.

My goal as a teacher, more specifically the only female teacher at my facility, is to be a positive role model and teach the female students. I want to tell them and *show* them that they don’t have to grow up dressing like sex toys in order to get respect.

Feel free to comment, I’d looove to hear from YOU!

Direction

For some reason, I feel like analyzing film today.  I am not entirely sure why, but that is the type of mood I am in.

I attempted to use the new “poll” thing in order to get an opinion from people who are reading. 

I would very much appreciate comments, discussion, and so forth in the way of posts, so please feel free to comment on this entry with your thoughts on film directors.

I Drink Your Milkshake.

Perhaps the best YouTube video ever.

Got Yourself A Job

Thoughts from today…

1) I am still obsessed with Nas.  I love Nas.  He’s just about all I can listen to.

2) I really like my job.  My first day was interesting and… pleasurably overwhelming.

3) What do you do when you really love so much about someone and you know that that person would be there in an emergency but you just don’t feel you are getting appreciated the way you should?

4) I love animals!  Oreo is the strangest little dog.  He really does look like a baby deer, a cat, and a dog all at the same time.  I know that sounds hideous, but he’s really cute, I swear.

5) The medical system in this country is so beyond messed up I could not even begin to describe it in this entire blog let alone one sentence.

6) Trying your best is just necessary.  All the time.

So… If you were making classroom rules for at-risk students, which would you choose?

Because he’d always wanted to.

I can’t say there is anything all that new to report.  My school is still in danger of closing and we still have no idea what is going on.  I still have not given up hope.  I hope for the girls’ sake that something good happens very soon.  They NEED this.

Recently, I watched a movie called “Danny Deckchair.”  It’s an Australian movie from 2003 where actor Rhys Ifans plays a happy-go-lucky cement truck driver who loves camping and has all sorts of silly ideas; including but not limited to tying a bunch of balloons to a deckchair and flying wherever the wind takes him.The most intriguing thing about Danny is that he is not the “run-of-the-mill” romantic comedy movie flirty hunk.  Danny has his own charm and he is fiercely himself.  He has unique interests and beliefs that, throughout the course of the film, prove to be the most important thing to him.  Danny dares to be himself and break the mold of the boring male love interest.His actions in the film inspire other people to do things they wouldn’t normally do. 

There is one line that I feel humorously encapsulates the film’s purpose.  A newscaster reporting about Danny’s trip says, “Danny’s journey has inspired many people.  Today a local man climbed to the top of a telephone pole with a chair and sat there all day.  When asked why he would do such a thing, he replied because it was something he’d always wanted to do.”

My point in writing all this is to ask you this: What is it that you have always wanted to do?  Are you doing it?  What is stopping you?

I say go get it. 

I leave you with a quotation from the infamous Todd “Too $hort” Shaw

Short Dog's In The House

“You should be gettin it, everything you wanted
Everything you dreamed of, never have to front
you should be gettin it, gettin money
I’m talking about you black, don’t laugh it aint funny
You should get a good lawyer, like Johnny Cochran
Swear to tell the truth, hell no I didn’t pop him
Get your kids in school, so they can get an education
Get a degree, and take a vacation”