Oscar Predictions

So, the awards season is coming to its finale. I thought the SAG awards were great this year and Tina Fey and Amy Pohler did a fantastic job at hosting the Golden Globes. So I wanted to put out my Oscar predictions before Sunday. I want to say that I just checked the Huffington Post and and NY Times predictions, and some of mine seem to be way off, but I changed nothing. I will stick to these.

Best Picture: I'm going on a very very long shot for this and picking Life of Pi. Argo is on an winning streak and will probably go again, but the Oscars can surprise you. And Life of Pi has the most nominations this year.

Leading Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis. This one's a no-brainer. The academy loves him. Truthfully, though, my stand out pick would be Bradley Cooper because I think he was better than Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook and isn't getting half as much attention.

Leading Actress: I'm going to go with Jessica Chastain. Once again, going with the streak would be Jennifer Lawrence, but I'm a rebel. Plus, Chastain has been nominated before and Lawrence is a newbie. If I could pick, though, it would be Naomi Watts who was phenomenal in The Impossible.

Supporting Actor: I'm going with Robert De Niro. I really liked Alan Arkin, but I don't think he has a chance.

Supporting Actress: Once, again a no-brainer: Anne Hathaway. I haven't seen Les Miserables, but my sister said Hathaway made her cry, so I'll take that as a good sign.

Animated Feature: Wreck-It Ralph. Truthfully, I wasn't blown away by any of the nominees here, but this was the best in my opinion.

Director: David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook. I'm just tired of Stephen Spielberg and Ang Lee getting so much attention and Russell is the only other one with a chance.


All Other Categories: Cinematography-Skyfall/ Costume Design-Anna Karenina/ Documentary-Searching for Sugar Man/ Documentary Short-Mondays at Racine/Film Editing-Zero Dark Thirty/Foreign Language Film-Amour/Makeup and Hairstyling-The Hobbit/ Original Score-Skyfall/Original Song-Skyfall/Production Design-Anna Karenina (even though it should be The Hobbit)/Animated Short-Paperman/Live Action Short-Curfew/Sound Editing-Zero Dark Thirty/Sound Mixing-Les Miserables/Visual Effects-Life of Pi/Adapted Screenplay-Silver Lining Playbook/Original Screenplay-Zero Dark Thirty

How to Measure Success

I think there's a lot of pressure on people my age to be "successful." But what does that even mean? What is success in life? Professors and advisers make it seem like a status thing; your career will define your success. Sorority and fraternities act as if it's the number of your friends. Television's weight loss victory stories tell us it's our waist size. Parents and grandparents advise us that it's the ones we marry or the children we raise. You know what I think? I think we define our own success.

People don't all use the same scale. We each have our own ruler. Or yard stick. Or tape measure. Every example I listed above is success on someone's measuring stick. And no measurement is wrong, because success isn't something we do for other people. We do it for ourselves. Striving for success gives our lives meaning in some way.

So here's what I decided are the three criteria of MY success:
1. I will Learn as much a I can. This is not measured by grades or paychecks, only knowledge.
2. I will Love with all my heart. This is not measured in friends or boyfriends. I'd just rather love than hate.
3. I will Laugh whenever I can. I can't imagine a better success than happiness.

So what is your success??

“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I Don't Know Why I Remember...

During one of the first weeks of the semester, I had an assignment in my Intro to Fiction class in which we had to write paragraphs starting with "I Don't Know Why I Remember." I didn't have a blog topic, so I decided to post a few of my favorites that I came up with this week. Although all of these are at least loosely based on real memories, it is a FICTION class, so these are fictionalized. Enjoy!

-     I don’t know why I remember shooting the cats from next door with water guns. The cats belonged to the witch next door. Sometimes we heard her cackling in her house with the peeling blue paint.  Her cats would crawl into the back of our mini van or use our lawn as a litter box. Our parents discussed their “overpopulation.” I didn’t know what that word meant, but as the oldest, I wouldn’t admit it. I told Josh and Brigitte that it meant we needed to have a war with them. That was in our Power Rangers phase. My brother was always the red ranger and my sister the pink. They had first choice, but I was always the leader and that day I led the cats to screech and the witch to cry. But it didn’t feel like a victory.

-     I don’t know why I remember the color of my cousin Heather’s room. Deep Royal Blue. She painted it the summer after my 4^th grade year, just before I came to visit. I remember thinking she’d drown in that blue from all the time she spent locked in her room with her beat box blaring. I sat outside her room in the carpeted hallway, waiting for her to play. She didn’t say a word to me the entire summer. My aunt said it was hormones. I still blame Deep Royal Blue. 

 

-    I don’t know why I remember the M&Ms. Ten of them every Sunday. I sat in the wooden pews with a coloring book on my lap. About halfway through the sermon, my grandpa tapped my shoulder and pulled a Ziploc bag with ten plain M&Ms. He always winked and squeezed my hand after the secret exchange. I slipped one at a time into my mouth, checking to make sure my parents didn’t notice. I’m sure the streaks of red, green, and blue on my sweaty hands gave me away. As I got older the pocket sneaks turned to crumpled five dollar bills or pieces of gum, but I still secretly hope for the ten M&Ms.