"And the Oscar goes to..."

...The King's Speech just like I figured it would...hmmm. All in all I did fairly well with my predictions. I was 5 of 6 for the main awards. On my official Oscar ballot I only got 50% right on the rest of the awards.

In general, I thought the broadcast was not great. The co-hosting by Anne Hathaway and James Franco was awkward and often stilted. The best thing about Anne was her costume changes and the song she sang to Hugh Jackman. James Franco seemed stoned throughout the entire show with a strange smirk on his face. Otherwise, a ho-hum show. Please bring back Billy Crystal!

The fashions were fun but not amazing this year. My favorite dresses were worn by Jennifer Hudson, Hailee Steinfield and Sandra Bullock. Natalie Portman looked very sweet with her baby bump showing. My least favorite dresses were worn by Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchette. I reserve the right to change my mind after all the magazines with the best and worst dressed stars comes out tomorrow.

Can't wait until the 84th Academy Awards show next year and we can do this all over again!

The 83rd Academy Awards

The Oscars are MY Superbowl and today is the day! The "pregame" show is all about red carpet arrivals and what everyone is wearing. The only part of that that I don't enjoy so much is the awkwardness of the interviews as the stars are forced to make small talk and be witty just before they sit down to nervously wait for their categories to be called. I'm sure they'd rather be somewhere else having a drink! I would rather watch them glide down the red carpet, smile, pose and wave so that I can see their beautiful gowns, tuxes, hairdos and jewels. That's enough for me. It keeps some of fantasy of the big day alive for me.

Before I make my predictions for this year, I will confess that I didn't see all the nominated films and performances. Ron and I do try to get them all in, but there were a few movies we just couldn't bring ourselves to watch - 127 Hours, Rabbit Hole and Winter's Bone. These are films that you have to be in the mood to watch and then you have to really seek them out because they are small and independent showing in limited release at out of the way theaters. We didn't get it done.

So for whatever it's worth, I will tell you now who I would choose but then who I think will actually win...can you stand the suspense?!

My Picks

Best Supporting Actor - Christian Bale in The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress - Melissa Leo in The Fighter
Best Actor - Javier Bardem in Biutiful
Best Actress - Annette Benning in The Kids Are All Right
Best Director - David Fincher for The Social Network
Best Picture - Toy Story 3

Who I Think Will Win (because Hollywood is a political machine)

Best Supporting Actor - Christian Bale
Best Supporting Actress - Melissa Leo
Best Actor - Colin Firth in The King's Speech
Best Actress - Natalie Portman in Black Swan
Best Director - Darrin Aronovsky for Black Swan
Best Picture - The King's Speech

I will check in later tonight to let you know how I did with my predictions. Just a few hours away until the red carpet arrivals start...Yay!

By the way, I watched Shutter Island (on Netflix) and The Karate Kid 2010 (on DIRECTV) yesterday and surprisingly enjoyed them both- who would have thought? Remind me to tell you about them sometime.

What gives, 2011?

At the end of January, I wrote that I was glad the month was over because it was awful - the worst start to a new year that I can remember. I was hopeful that February was going to be better. Once again, I was sorely disappointed. So all I have to say about that is, "What gives?!"

Without going into a lot of detail about all the different ways things went wrong, I am going to put a heartfelt request out to the universe that March be the real beginning to 2011 - a better beginning than we have had so far. What a crazy world we live in! I am going to focus on March being a fresh start, clean slate, right?

Wish us all good luck!

Another Adam Sandler Movie

I forgot to tell you that we went to see "Just Go With It" with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston yesterday after the 2 soda fiasco. As it turns out, I am fairly certain that it's not going to be one of those movies that goes down in history as being especially memorable or a career changing event for either Adam or Jennifer. There are some surprise cameos in it that were pretty funny and I won't give them away.

Adam Sandler makes the same movie over and over again...different lead actress in a different city, but the same movie over and over. I went from thinking he was really silly-dumb on SNL to wondering what people saw in him in Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore to being certain that there was something really wrong with him in The Water Boy and Little Nicky. Occasionally he would redeem himself with a movie like Wedding Singer or 50 First Dates, but then back to stupidity in movies like Don't Mess with the Zohan. My favorite of his is Spanglish and I keep hoping some of his other movies will end up being as good - so far, not so good. Mandi and Beckie, both big Adam Sandler fans, told me NOT to see Grown Ups! I took their advice.

Jennifer Anniston is a much better actress than any of the recent movies she's been in have shown. I don't know if she is to blame or if it's her manager. Someone is not taking care of her career, but she is gorgeous and looks fabulous on the big screen.

Bottom line for this movie - I didn't hate it, but I don't need to see it again. I recommend you wait til it comes out on DVD.

Return of the Valentine's Day Curse

For the history on this subject, please read my blog post from last year on February 14th called "Ron & Laura and the Valentine's Day Curse."

So, in our attempt to move on from this history, I don't have any expectations about Valentine's Day anymore. I don't say this grudgingly at all. I just grew up. And to be honest, it takes some stress out of my life because I don't have to come up with a perfect gift idea, either.

A perfect day for us is a Saturday during which get our errands done, maybe lunch out and a good movie. Yesterday, we were on the right path... 1. We had some chores at home to do - check! The garage is reorganized and all the Christmas decorations are back in storage! 2. We had some errands to run - check! Post office, Wal Mart, recycling center was closed (darn), Office Max... We're making great progress so let's go to lunch. This is where the day turned...

We decided to go to BJ's - a restaurant in San Mateo. It's a great place to get burgers, pizza and specialty beers. Luckily, we didn't order beer. We ordered some drinks - Pepsi for Ron and Diet for me, looked at the menu and decided what we wanted. The waiter brought us our drinks. I was chatting on the phone with Mandi while we waited for our food. As I relive this moment, I am seeing it in slow motion...Ron reaches for his drink and accidentally knocks it over. He knocked it TOWARDS me. The cold Pepsi is dripping off the table into my lap and as he reaches to try to pick up the knocked over glass, he knocks over MY full glass also towards me - DOUBLE WHAMMY! Good thing I was wearing brown pants, huh?!

While I was cleaning myself up in the ladies room, I looked at myself in the mirror and started laughing. "The Valentine's Day curse lives!" I thought. Another woman walked into the bathroom about that time and saw me laughing. She smiled at me and said, "I'm sorry for laughing, but it looks like you are ok." I told her that I was fine and told her that Ron was worse off than I was. You should have seen the look of guilt on his face as I rushed off to the bathroom.

When I got back to the table, there was no evidence of the spilled soda and there were also two fresh drinks on the table. Ron wanted to take me somewhere to buy another pair of pants, but since we had ordered lunch, there was nothing to do but sit down and wait for it. We laughed about the curse and ate our lunch. By the time I wandered around the nearby Old Navy store after lunch looking for a pair of replacement pants for the day, I realized that I was dry. No harm no foul.

We finished our errands and even went to see a movie. If that is the worst that happens this Valentine's holiday, I think we will be fine. I will let you know at the end of the day tomorrow. Just remember, don't cry over spilled soda!

Superbowl XLV

Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers and all their fans! We were rootin' for the Packers here, too. Was anybody really surprised that they won? Not me.

There was actually nothing that was really surprising about the game. I guess I am over the hype. It seems to get more intense every year. The pregame shows started at 9 am today - Cheese and Rice! That's a lot of pregame STUFF.

Once the game started, I was waiting for a really funny, stand out commercial....eh...kinda disappointing. There were some that were kinda funny - Ron liked the Bud Light commercial with the dogs playing poker and I am always a sucker for the E*trade talking baby. Other than that - eh...

Halftime was ok, fun - I always feel bad for the musicians who can NEVER sound as good live as they do in the recording studio(except for Lea Michelle and Christina Aguilera - they were both very good). I like the Black Eyed Peas and I am a fan of Will.I.Am. The production value of the show was great - glow in the dark costumes and good choreography.

Second half - still waiting for something amazing to happen. I started chatting with facebook friends and before I knew it the game was over. Oops - I missed it! Oh well...at lease we get a new episode of "Glee" now!

"Biutiful"

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film although I knew going into it that Javier Bardem has been nominated for an Oscar for this portrayal. It is usually impossible for me to get Ron to go to a foreign language film - he's not a fan of subtitles. I had to watch Pan's Labyrinth all by myself because he was never quite in the mood to see it - even though our favorite, Doug Jones, was the star of that film. Anyway, he was totally willing and ready to see Biutiful.

I was completely captivated by this film. There were aspects about it that were absolutely heart breaking. Javier Bardem was the only actor that I was familiar with here, but all the actors were all wonderful. I don't want to give any of the story line away, but I will tell you that I cried more than once during the course of this film. If you have any inclination to see it - do. I highly recommend it!

Still have a few more movies to see before I can make my predictions....

Award Season!

Award Season is in full swing now. Last week we watched the Screen Actors Guild awards and the week before that was the Golden Globes. You know what a movie lover I am, so now that the Oscar nominations have been announced, Ron and I have our homework assignments for the weekends until the big show. We still need to see Rabbit Hole, Winter’s Bone, Biutiful and 127 Hours.

I think I like that there are now 10 films up for best picture – it gives small films a better chance of being recognized. I’m happy because Toy Story 3 was nominated for Best Picture. It was MY choice for best for 2010. As far as the other awards, I believe that it’s a popularity contest. Now that Colin Firth has won best actor at the Globes and SAG awards, he will probably get the Oscar too, not that he doesn’t deserve it, he was great! Although I have my opinions about who should win, I won’t make my predictions until I have seen all the nominated films and performance.

Until then, I will have to try to keep from getting distracted by this year’s movies, some which won’t be nominated for anything next year. One such movie is “No Strings Attached.” Ron and I saw this movie last weekend. The truth is that I liked it. I really needed to see a funny, likeable Natalie Portman after having seen her in “Black Swan.” She WAS funny and likeable and so was Ashton Kutcher. OK, so he is NEVER and I mean NEVER going to win any acting awards, but he is definitely easy on the eyes and very believable. This was a grown up romantic comedy. The story was interesting and the pay-off at the end was good and not too Hollywood. There won’t be any awards for this movie, but it was pleasant and I enjoyed it.