My marathon to the Oscars

I've decided this year to try to watch all the movies that have been nominated for the 79th Academy Awards...

u can of course get the list of all the films online http://www.oscar.com/nominees/, this is something I've always wanted to do and though only Mounir in Montréal could ever get a chance to see all the movies - if he weren’t such a film snob (which I totally understand, cause who really wants to see all the crap) but with the help of internet and a comet I've been able to watch about 17 of the 58 movies...and I'll try to supply u with my predictions... So far I've seen some amazing films...my favorite is still "The Queen"

an amazing portrait of a woman who is an institution, a political turmoil and some good tabloid ...Helen Mirren kicks royal ass. It's a great film all around....yet it looks so demure. I mean it is the queen of England in pajamas to some extent, but it is also about a woman who has been living in this strange bubble of power and privilege and tradition in a stratosphere above everyone else who suddenly realizes she is out of date - and not in a good way. It's a brilliant portrait of a woman and a time...totally worth seeing and I'm sure this film will get its share of Oscar nods. Some of the other noteworthy films that I've seen throughout the year are:

Volver - a great comeback from Almodovar and Carmen Maura. Almodovar seems to make one good and one bad movie after another...I'm so happy he went back to his roots, making "women's films" about the sex he loves and adores. As for Penelope Cruz - Wow...can she act! and somehow she blends into an Almodovar heroine so easily.

Little Miss Sunshine

- a beautifully disturbing film with some amazing performances from all the cast.

Borat - of course, I likah vewry match!
The Inconvenient Truth - for tell all the environmentally unconscious people to wake up or die a slow miserable death.

Jesus Camp is another amazing doco about the very disturbing indoctrination of kids in the ways of Evangelical Right Wing Christianity that is sweeping the United States...a warning I've been yelling out since the late 80's.

Marie Antoinette - for being so thoroughly hollow, another great portrayal of a queen, unfortunately it is so hollow people will always ask the question "why make the film at all". And I saw Curse of the Yellow Flower on my trip to Montreal - another hollow epic with great visuals.

Oh and I saw Superman returns...I think he could have stayed where he was.

Now my Marathon will start as I watch the rest of the movies.

Happy Valentine

A simple evening this was, my night at Tops and Bottoms Valentine edition.

All my life, with few exceptions, I have found Valentine's to come at a very bad time, I never seem to have someone that I can share all those sappy senitmentalities with in Februray...and frankly when I did have a boyfriend to share it with, I kept missing the deadlines for it.

anywhoo...tonight I was helping out David with his special night of TanB where the guy that I've had a secret cursh on for years was bound to be there...well maybe my crush for Philip is not so secret, I've never been very good at subtelty...it's just not my forte

...well the good thing is that Valentines comes just at the cusp of spring when the first bulbs start to bloom. My favourites Gallanthis (Snow Drops - start to bloom on Feb 3rd) are the first things to bloom in my garden...they are the first of a whole barrage of bulbs that bloom beatifully until June.

Happy Valntines' day everyone

Invisible Cities

On my last trip to the bilingual city I once called my Montreal, I got one of the red-eyes so I could arrive in the morning and surprise my parents at home. Plus, as always, I can't sleep before leaving on a trip, so I thought I might as well use that time to roll in the miles instead of fidgeting around the house as I always do before.
Anywho... on the way there, I got to fly over the country at night...the cities look so beautiful at night, I took a few pictures, but it was very hard to take a good picture with my camera, something about the shutter speed setting and flying at 1000k/hour...

The cities looked so beautiful in their nightlight, you can almost make out shapes and patterns, but you can’t have any sense of which city it is…it’s almost magical. It made me think of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, where Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the wondrous cities of his empire the MP recently visited. The book is told in short vignettes with each chapter describing one detail or a characteristic of a particular city. What we get is not a surveyors description of a city, or much less a travel guides’, but it impressions of a place - a memory, that fleeting sense of the past...it's a very personal telling of Marco Polo's Journeys after having left his beloved home of Venice told to a man who has left his beloved village to conquer the world.

They see the world in very different ways, one sees it full of possibilities and wonders, while the other sees them all filled with loss and nostalgia. In the end it turns out that Marco Polo is describing only one city to the Khan - Venice. He is only thinking of his city as he wonders the world searching for his sense of home, describing it to the man who doesn’t relate to his sense of loss...


Going back home was an amazing experience.

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