Eight is Great

Though Melissa Leo did not end up with the big goldie, the night d'Oscars still was consumed largely by Slumdog Millionaire, as predicted. I didn't quite think it would earn 8, the most of any pic since The Gourd of the Flings: Return of the Bling Bling, but I was more than satisfied. Yay for Sean Penn, too!

Overall, it was a relatively easy year of predictions -- my score was 17! However, I don't think anyone expected Japan's nominee for Foreign Film to win over Israel's Waltz with Bashir. WTF??

Tomorrow

Surprises are what tomorrow brings about, and hopefully more for the better.  I hope for surprises because many awards to be given already seem to be definite, thus "dull and boring," lacking suspense.  There's new tension in existence, though, with such categories as Best Actress.

Winslet and Streep are neck and neck, which is possibly bringing about a surprise attack from Melissa Leo.  Her performance in Frozen River is the true indie of the bunch, and it's been getting critical acclaim for some time.  However, she won an Indie Spirit Award today, and she is Ebert's selected choice for who will win.  She might just pull this off...

Parrots in SF!

On a spontaneous jaunt-by-foot with my dad to visit Coit Tower in San Francisco, I got a bigger bargain than I expected: I also encountered the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill! They were kind, although they squalked quite loudly...

Anyhoo, the whole experience is now up and running at GPicturama, including the journey there and afterward events.

Since I mentioned those lovely parrots, it is only right to show you the trailer for the documentary made about them!

Quit Happens

Despite WALL-E musical pair Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel winning not one but TWO Grammies this past weekend (and even nom'd for a 3rd), the Motion Picture Academy has officially done something so wrong that Gabriel now refuses to attend this year's Oscars.

Yes, you read that correctly. As if cutting down song nominations from 5 to 3 wasn't slashfest enough, the Academy wants to combine all of the songs into a medley to cut back on time. Thus, the song from WALL-E would only receive 65 seconds' worth of airtime. I'd imagine something similar would occur for each of Slumdog Millionaire's songs as well.

Diehard Gabriel fan or not, I respect Newman's work beyond words, so I, too, am rather outraged.

It Is Written

This past evening, Slumdog Millionaire and Milk won WGAs for Best Adapted and Original Screenplays, respectively. This continues to confirm Slumdog's destiny of reaching Best Pic status, and that Milk is bound to win at least 1 or 2 significant Oscars as well -- perhaps Sean Penn will get his 2nd? I simply must wait until my Oscar Party on the 22nd for the final results...

While it may not be fate, the new code for the redesigned movie web pages has certainly been written [by yours truly]. I decided that it might look better to put links regarding various available media at the side, rather than have the media occupy half of the page from the getgo. It all now appears in a media layer once the links are clicked...

So far, it's only been officially uploaded into the 2005 movies, Abrupt and The King Who Rained, as an experiment. More should be uploaded soon...

Followsite Widget

Apparently, this site has been noticed (or robotically tracked) by the site followsite.com, which may (or may not) help site readers learn when new info is available here after being updated.

Though the button immediately above is only an image, there is an identical one to that at the very bottom of this page that is an active widget.

BTW, I saw Slumdog Millionaire this past weekend. Flippin' awesome. Go see it -- it is the one to beat.