Oscar Hives and Walk the Line

The Oscar's are on Sunday people. I am so ecstatic I literally don't think I am going to be able to contain myself for the next few days. In order to calm myself down a little bit, I'm going to talk about one of my all-time favorite movies, which has also won and been nominated for some Oscar's.

Walk the Line. This movie tells the epic story of Johnny Cash, played by Joaquin Phoenix,  and his journey to becoming a music phenomenon as well as falling from that fame and again rising to the top. The movie also includes a side plot of his love story with the one and only June Carter, played beautifully by Reese Witherspoon. 

A very interesting fact about this movie, is that Phoenix and Witherspoon recorded all of their own original covers of the Cash and Carter songs for the film. Both actors, neither of whom had ever sung before, questioned their abilities to perform the task. However, they rocked it. Witherspoon won the Oscar for Best Female Performance in a Leading Role. And whether or not you agree with me on that fact, I may be biased by my love for Johnny Cash and love stories that last a lifetime, here are some what other people thought:

IMDB (International Movie Data Base, if you've been living under a rock) gave it a 7.9 out of 10, pretty good if you ask me.

Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 82%- saying that the movie's "superior acting and authentic crooning capture the emotional subtleties of the legend of Johnny Cash and his inevitable downfall with a freshness that is a pleasure to watch."

If you haven't seen the movie, take a look at the trailer and decide for yourself, whether or not you think it is worth it to watch.

One of the best things I like about this movie is that is just feels so warm and homey. All of the colors and costumes are inviting, and you feel like you right next door from Johnny Cash sitting on the porch playing his guitar. This movie is inviting and inspiring and it makes you feel like even if you fail at something, or make a wreck of your life, you can always turn around and fix it.

So curl up with some cocoa and pop in Walk the Line. You only have about 56 hours until the Oscars, so you might as well spend it doing something productive; and hot cocoa is always productive.

Oscar Fever

With the Oscar’s only days away—literally 10 days, can you feel it?—I’m going to give you some insight into the movies that I have seen that are nominated for roles.

First off, I want to discuss The Fighter, and why I think that Mark Wahlberg didn’t get a nomination for Best Actor when three of his costars (Melissa Leo, Christian Bale and Amy Adams) were all nominated for their performances. It is my belief that Mark Wahlberg had the best intentions when approaching his character in the movie; however, unlike the other three actors which I previously mentioned (hopefully you were paying attention), he didn’t take his acting to a deeper level. He embodied on the surface what it meant to be Micky Ward. He was physically fit after training for months, he executed the timid and shyness of the character, but he did not embody what it meant to be Micky Ward. It seemed to me that he did not discover for himself where that shyness came from and that is what made is performance ineffective. Wahlberg didn’t know for himself where his actions were driven from and therefore the audience couldn’t discover where his actions were coming from.

Adams, Bale and Leo were so deeply committed to their roles and their characters that their performances deeply impacted and affected the audiences who went to see the movie. Their motivations, actions and intentions were all genuinely cultivated within themselves, making their performances truth.

When you contrast Wahlberg’s performance to that of Colin Firth’s in The King’s Speech the difference is extraordinary. (By the way, Firth just recieved a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, obviously the most important tell of achievement in Hollywood) In Firth’s interview on Inside the Actor’s Studio, which comes in four parts, he recounts his process of undertaking the role of King George. Firth didn’t try to mimic the physical stutter of the King, yet he discovered for himself where the stutter psychologically came from. He recoutns lines from Beckett "I can't go on; I must go on; I'll go on," this is the process that Firth believes King George went through when he had to overcome the dreadful silences he was led to by his stutter. Firth dissected the actions of the king and generated genuine feelings when preparing for the role that came out onscreen and led him to be nominated for Best Actor, an award which I believe he will win.

There are so many categories that I have absolutely no idea who will win, there are just too many good candidates (which I guess is a great problem to have). Two of the Oscar’s that I am most looking forward to are for Directing and Best Writing in an Original Screenplay.

There were just so many good nominees this year. You can check out the list of nominees, if you haven’t already, which I really hope you have, here. Once the award show has been broadcast, on February 27^th (please tell me you’ve already written this date in your calendar), I will take a look back at the winners and try to offer a little insight, because I know you all are dying for a path into my brain.

Until next time, grab an umbrella because it has been dreadfully rainy here the past couple of days.  



Soul mate, where are you?

The search to find your soul mate, isn’t easy, especially if it is your social bookmarking soul mate. How am I supposed to find another human being that not only wants to talk about the same things that I do, but actually writes about them AND bookmarks his websites. This is a tough feat to accomplish. I have spent the day searching and while I have come up with a few contenders, I haven’t felt love at first site just quite yet. However, as it usually occurs in life, there is that one person who I think is the one because he is almost everything that I think that I want in a soul mate (that is until my actual soul mate comes along), but for now he will do.

Meet Rocky Blizzard, yes I know, it was the name that drew me in too. Rocky Blizzard is interested in all types of movies, big releases, independent films, documentaries; and not just the films themselves either. Like me, he is interested what makes these films so compelling, or in some cases, so horrible. He even has some interests in theatre, not as much as I do, but you have to compromise a little right?

One major downfall of Rocky Blizzard however, is that I’m not really sure if he exists anymore. He bookmarked so frequently in 2008, tagging sites left after right and categorizing them in a flash. He would book mark stuff every couple of days and definitely have at least 10 posts a week. However, on that fateful day, November 9, 2008, Rocky marked his last site. What happened to him will never be known. Maybe he just went on vacation to the Bahamas and never returned because he got sucked into the Bermuda triangle.

Before his fateful departure from social networking world, Rocky had a pretty good system of organization to set up his bookmarks. He had almost 600 tags, 599 to be exact, that he used to categorize many different web pages. The more tags that applied to the page, the more he would apply. I can just tell he was a man of great detail.

Because all of his posts are from 2008 and before (I’m beginning to think we should break up), I unfortunately cannot use many of his bookmarked pages. I am more into contemporary entertainment, as in stuff that is currently happening. If you guys want a little bit of back story on Avatar or other film franchises that began a few years back such as “Transformers” or “Pirates of the Caribbean,” then definitely check out Blizzard’s bookmarks because you will find some very interesting stuff.

My two favorite bookmarks he has are a link to James Cameron talking about the Terminator franchise and one about a star from Slumdog millionaire.

Until next time, I will keep searching in the quest for my true Social bookmarking soul mate; it doesn’t seem that Rocky Blizzard and I are going to make it.