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 :)

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?

Like Scanners

Seriously. My head will soon explode.

So many feelings and obligations and issues running around concurrently but I think I can do it. For some reason, despite all this chaos, I really just keep getting this feeling that something good will happen. Something good can and will come of this.

On a totally awesome note, you can click here, search for my name, and see my Professional Educator’s Certificate now!!!

On Friday night, Adam and I went to see The Happening with Mark (“Markie Mark” as Adam calls him) Wahlberg. We heard it was bad, but we wanted to see how bad and decided to go spend $2 to see it at the Dollar Theater only to discover we overpaid.
I was seriously taken aback at how awful the film was. There was no character development, no plot, a horrendous script, and to top it all off, the role just didn’t suit Markie Mark. He’s better in roles where he can be an action star or an asshole. This role theoretically necessitated some very serious dramatic acting, which he just didn’t have going on.
Very little had been accomplished when “A Film by M. Night Shyamalan” faded into the sky after a brief 91 minutes. “Um, what?” I said to Adam in disbelief that 1) The film was over and 2) absolutely nothing “happened.”
I still wonder what the movie execs at 20th Century Fox were thinking. I sat there dumbfounded waiting for something to “happen,” wondering what I was watching and yet, despite the fact I have a crush on Zooey Deschanel, I was still amazed at how bored I was. Maybe that’s Shyamalan’s big “twist” this time, that we’re all waiting for something to “happen,” and that this “happening” is never coming.

This was also the facial expression I made when, after 91 minutes, the film was over and nothing had "happened."