Directors On The Move: Must Know Updates And Rumors

     The month of April has its up sides but when it comes to movies there really isn't much happening throughout the month which is a horrible thing, specially in light of exams being on the horizon and the need for an escape from regular activities being ever present due to stress. April is the last month before we start getting a series of blockbuster films starting with May 04th where we'll start this whole thing off with "The Avengers", its less than a month away, this is going to be good. Late April does offer us some better movies but for right now we get movies like "Lockout" which should feature Mark Wahlberg or Jason Statham but  does not which means that there are no redeeming factors to this brash action movie, not to worry though we do get a Statham movie later this month called "Safe" We don't want to ruin the plot of this movie but it's another Statham movie, which pretty much tells you the plot. On to this week's must know movie news.

   Stoller's New Comedy

     Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie, need we say more? On the last week of April we will start to get some good movies, this being the first one on the list. The story revolves around Segel and Blunt's characters as they get engaged and tracks all theirs difficulties throughout the whole process of preparing a wedding. The movie is directed by Nicholas Stoller, he directed movies like "Get Him To The Greek" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", so this movie is sure to be a fun one. It was about time Stoller got Segel back on the big screen and delivered us another great comedy. Plus it's Jason Segel, the guy has not disappointed us yet, think "How I Met Your Mother" and "The Muppets", yeah, the guy is good. "The Five Year Engagement" will surely be another great success, we recommend you add this to your must watch list.

    Tarantino's Latest Project

   This week Tarantino finally gave us some more insight into his upcoming movie "Django Unchained", the movie centers around a slave who after being freed becomes a bounty hunter and is on his way to rescue his wife from a Mississippi plantation owner, knowing how Tarantino works this movie will surely be a blast. Tarantino did not pull any punches for this one gathering a long list of amazing actors to perform in this latest addition, actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Kurt Russell, Jamie Fox, and Kerry Washington, an amazing cast for sure. The movie should be coming out during Christmas time and is a project that we'll be sure to talk about again, you know something good and different is coming when Tarantino is involved.

    Ridley Scott's 2013Project Already In Talk

   If Ridley is not on the top of your radar list then we advise you to add him to it, here is man whose career deserves full attention. Ridley's latest movie "The Counselor" will be releasing sometime in 2013, not much about the movie is known as of yet except that it involves a lawyer and drug trafficking. The big rumor going around this week is that Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem and Michael Fassbender will all be performing side by side in this thriller. Though not confirmed there is talk of Angelina also being involved in this project, the first rumor was that Natalie Portman was to have the role but there are no conclusive news about it all as of yet, as soon as we hear more you'll hear more. If you are unfamiliar with Ridley Scott (God forbid) here is a sample list of some of his movies that should keep you busy this weekend, "Robin Hood", "Body Of Lies", "American Gangster", "Gladiator", "Blade Runner" and the upcoming gem "Prometheus" which looks fantastic.

   Burton Is Back With More Johnny

   Tim Burton just recently unveiled his upcoming vampire comedy "Dark Shadows" which will be featuring (Burton's favorite) Johnny Depp. There are some people who have begun to critique this movie already, for some reason there is a strong online following against Tim Burton, we don't think it matters much, Tim is still a brilliant guy and he has been behind amazing projects in the past, Burton and Depp have worked together for years and know how to bring out the best work from each other, therefore this movie should be on your watch list, its as simple as that. "Dark Shadows" will come out this year May 11th, we recommend that you watch the preview above, it looks like its going to be a really funny movie. If for some odd reason you are unfamiliar with Tim Burton's work then please do yourself a kindness and go watch some of his movies, we recommend "Batman", "Edward ScissorHands", "Ed Wood", "Sleepy Hollow", "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Big Fish", there are more of his movies we could add to this list but that would take up too much space, Burton's got a lot of good movies.

 "Catching Fire" Rumor Mill

  We mentioned previously this week the fact that Lionsgate lost their director for the sequel in the "Hunger Games" trilogy "Catching Fire" and how this could be a good thing or a really bad thing, turns out this might be a really really good thing after all. There are rumors going around right now that there are three directors in talks about taking the movie over, the first is Alfonso Cuaron who is known for movies like "Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Children of Men", the second is Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu who directed "21 Grams" and "Babel", and thirdly the one and only David Cronenberg whose career is vast and impressive, he's worked on movies like "The Fly", "Scanners", "Eastern Promises", "A History Of Violence" and a ton more. The bottom line is this, we have three titans fighting for this movie, which means that "Catching Fire" will be the "Empire Strikes Back" of the "Hunger Games" series, meaning that it'll probably blow our minds and be amazing. We'll be watching this story closely so as soon as we get more updates you'll get more updates.

   Well consider yourselves updated on important movie announcements and rumors that occurred this week. We hope this Friday is a great one for you and that this weekend might be restful. If you can't think of anything to do for this weekend then we recommend that you look into some of these directors, they will all blow your minds.

Love from your humble blogger,

The 84th Academy Awards Highlights!!!

      This year's Academy Awards were filled with memorable moments, from Billy Crystal outdoing himself once again showing us how brilliant he is, to the red carpet wowing us all this year, to Cirque Du Soleil impressing us all with a fantastic performance, this year housed many great performances and for the most part very tasteful jokes, there were a few people that went overboard, but in the end this year looked like a family gathering, that is the best way to put it, it really looked like everyone cared about one another, seeing old friends, remembering old friends lost, and honoring the greatest performances of last year, overall a job well done by the Academy.

    The Red Carpet

    There were so many good dresses this year, it was quite astounding how all the celebrities this year kept the affair elegant. Every year there are always a few people that want to out-do someone else, there is always an outfit that looks ridiculous and makes us all wonder why anyone would ever wear it but this year there were none, there was no one dress that stood out to us that made us go "what is she thinking?" and that is a blessing. A battle took place here as we tried to establish who our top four picks of the night were but here they are, in order: Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer, Ellie Kemper, and Michelle Williams. There were a ton of great dresses, but these four stood out to us the most, in some cases it wasn't so much how gorgeous the dresses were but it was how much the dresses fit each celebrities' personality that tipped our votes to these four. We're just glad that this year there were no swan dresses, that is always a relief.

     The Host

   Billy Crystal did it again, he showed the Academy that not only is he a great choice but that he is always a safe choice. Safe is important here, for it takes a certain talent to be able to joke with celebrities and not get them angry or bitter towards you and the Academy, here Billy shines, there is something about the guy, a swagger about him that allows him to say things and do things ordinary people would not be able to do, the guy convinced Clooney to kiss him on a video montage, Billy Crystal is good. Hiss jokes throughout the night were all kept tasteful, though in some cases they were a little too 'in the know' for most, for many didn't get half the jokes, some of us had to pause every few minutes or so to explain the jokes along the way, besides that the performance was flawless, it was everything one would expect from an Oscar and more, a job well done.

    Memorable Awards

    It came to no surprise to us that Woody Allen won for best original screenplay, but we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of awards "Hugo" won, Martin deserved to win all those awards, the movie was truly deserving of being up there with the other nominees. "The Artist" won for best picture, deserving so, and to our dismay the majority of people watching had never heard of it, not watched it, or plan on watching it, this depressed us a little for it was a fantastic movie deserving of everyone's attention. Some of the more emotional awards were Jean Dujardin winning for best actor making him the first French man to win the award, Meryl Streep winning for her fantastic performance in "The Iron Lady", and of course how could we not talk about Octavia Spencer winning for best supporting female actress for her brilliant performance in "The Help".

    Performances

   Cirque Du Soleil again showed the world why they are the best, their performance was mere flawless, it was tasteful and not over the top, just a good quick demonstration of everything they can do while keeping us thirsting for more, we felt this was a great addition to the show. We also really enjoyed the incorporation of the cast of "Bridesmaids" within the show, from the sketch with Billy, to their presentation of awards we felt the Academy was wise here in playing alongside the line but not crossing it, a hard thing to pull off. We need to talk about Octavia here, her emotional reaction while receiving the award stole all of our hearts, we already loved her, but now we adore her, she showed us what these awards are all about, it was deeply moving. The only thing we were disappointed about was that there was no music number done by "The Muppets", it's tradition for the winner to perform the song, or for all the contestants to play their songs, but this year we didn't get that, and this year would have been the year to do it, can you imagine Jason Segel up there with Kermit and the crew singing and dancing, that would have been magical, a truly surprising absence. 

   There was so much that happened in this year's Academy but these are the most memorable aspects to us, there were a few things that shocked us a little, like the tool move by the "Emperor" of dumping sand on Ryan Seacrest's jacket was tasteless, though it was funny, it was still tasteless, one cannot help but wonder what was going through Ryan's mind as he was going through all that. Another thing that surprised us was the number of Spoilers that "The Descendants" had, it was almost like they were doing it on purpose, maybe the thought was "no one came to see it, maybe if we insert some spoilers it'll spark some interest", it wasn't a good move overall, Spoilers are always bad, period. But if you take the whole thing into consideration these are miniscule things, out of everything that could have gone wrong these two things are nothing, thus overall this was one of the most successful awards as of late, we praise the Academy for a job well done.

  We hope that your week might be a good one, and pray that you have a fantastic Monday,

Love from your humble blogger,

The Importance Of Personal Growth: Heroes

      There is a difference between heroes or people we look up to and role models or mentors, at least for the sake of this entry. Heroes are people we look up to that we do not have interactions with, and probably will never do so, this could be a movie celebrity, a music artist, a sports icon and so on. We all have either a few heroes we love or just one person we idolize and follow. This does not mean you are a stalker of said person, it just means that that person is somewhat of hero to you, he or she is someone you resonate with or someone that inspires you to be better, and thus there is an inherent importance of caution when deciding who will be the heroes in your life.

      There are good celebrities and bad celebrities, there are those that we should look up to and those that are headed down a road of destruction that we should stay away from. The issue here is advertising, some celebs are horrible people lacking in good character and function more on selfish actions than anything else, we've seen plenty of those throughout the years, though through TV shows and advertising some celebs that should never be looked up to are regarded as great role models. We aren't saying here that Kim Kardashian is a horrible human being, we are also not saying that she never does anything good, what we are saying is that one should think twice before modeling their lives after hers, that Kim is not the best role model in life, we could include a series of other actors/actress, musicians and so on that one should not look up to like Lindsay Lohan for instance, though Lohan went off the deep end the example stands, there are plenty of good people to look up to and plenty of bad, be careful who you idolize for they will influence your life.

    Though there are plenty of bad people out there, there are some actresses that continually blow our minds with how awesome they are. There are so many good examples here, Natalie Portman is a clear choice, here we have a good actress who doesn't do the whole paparazzi thing and became amazing with her rap on SNL, she won our hearts that day. She is not alone though, there are plenty of other actresses that are regarded as not only good actresses but good human beings like Julia Roberts, or Emma Stone, both of which have been in amazing movies and have had the opportunity to be horrible human beings but have chosen the higher ground and seek to portray good images of themselves, here are people worth looking up to.

   The guys are a lot funnier here, only because their cases are so obvious that only a few people really miss the point here. An example of a bad hero "The Situation" from Jersey Shore, some people actually look up to the guy and every time they do our hearts die a little of sadness, we're talking a guy so ridiculous that Abercrombie and Fitch actually paid him not to wear their clothing on the show, yeah that happened. There are really cool guys out there though, this is also a solid list like Ryan Gosling, Paul Rudd, Ryan Reynolds, and so forth, though our favorite has to be Hugh Jackman. Hugh is not only an awesome actor he is also known for being best friends with his limo drivers, security and so forth, the guy just drips with charisma, he's a man worth looking up to, here is a guy that actually is attempting to live a good life.

    There are those though that inspire us with their words, either written or spoken words, these people come forth and establish an example of what it looks like to attempt to live a life worth re-living. Here we cannot help but mention C. S. Lewis who authored the great Narnia series, here was a good man who gave us great works of fiction and also great works on life. There are so many authors we could bring up here, one notable author who happens to be looked up to within almost all mediums of entertainment is Neil Gaiman. Neil is the author of one of the most famous comic book series out there called "The Sandman", he was also the author of books like "Coraline", "Stardust" which were both made to movies, and now there is talk about his book "American Gods" to be made into a HBO show, which is of course due to his brilliance as a writer but his character played a huge role into him getting as far as he did. Neil is a rare breed in the sense that few people do not like him, everyone that has worked with him love him, thus here is a man worth looking up to, here is a true hero.

NPH is the man, 'nough said

     One might think that who your heroes are does not influence how you behave, but this is not the case, a simple truth in life is that you will always be influenced by the people you look up to, its an inescapable truth, one you should know, for it is important to discern who those heroes are and if they are worthy of being called that, analyze your own life and seek people of good character, thus by doing so you will grow in a positive fashion. To sum up the series, one should always be careful when choosing a mentor, the friends you surround yourself with, and the heroes you look up to, choose people of good character and you will grow to possess good character, so choose wisely.

  We hope you have a great weekend, be safe, and rest well,