A Well Earned Break (Link)

As you'll have been able to tell my posting has been few-and-far-between since the festive period began. Most of this involved heavy consumption of Stella Artois (will my stomach ever be the same? :'( ) and when the New Year began I was forced to confront the dreaded reality of Uni assignments. I'm currently wrestling (although 'cuddling' seems a more apt description) with a 2,500-word write-up on the treatment of life and death in animation. It's mainly Disney, with a little bit of Burton thrown in there for the macabre segment. Needless to say, this is taking up a lot of my time at the moment, so for the next week or so things are gonna stay relatively vacant -- apart from Golden Globe predictions and reaction of course!

I never got around to writing a review of Changeling, and likely won't. After seeing Courtney Hunt's Frozen River online this week I feel more compelled to write about its squandering of social knowledge in greater depth. As I've said though, it ain't gonna happen for at least a week. I've also seen Che: Part One, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (online again - don't judge), Man on Wire, and The Reader, which is probably my favourite of all those mentioned in this paragraph, though it does have its fair share of problems. I was actually really surprised to find that the screening of it I went to was packed. I could tell a good few liked it, too.

Anyway, let me link you to a few entertaining pieces, if you haven't seen them already...

And the Winner is..: New Oscar predictions. Gran Torino in 6th for Best Picture?

Awards Daily: All the details on the guilds this week (DGA announce later today). Boy, didn't The Dark Knight need that PGA nom? Where's the Wall-E love, people? I hear Stanton is ineligible so it looks like it's gonna have to cling on to critical and audience popularity if it's gonna make it.

BBC: The Times' writer James Christopher puts forward the notion of BANNING the biopic. Imagine if that happened. Would we get more original films creeping into AMPAS territory, or an even bigger influx of novel adaptations in the December crowd? An interesting thought. Oh and try to ignore the fact that he doesn't like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich. It took me a while to get past it but I succeeded.

Goatdogblog: Top Ten Rentals/Revivals of 2008, and it includes Gone With the Wind. Adoration does not fulfill my feelings for this epic masterpiece.

Film Experience Blog: Ever fallen asleep at the cinema?

In Contention: The BAFTA Foreign Language nominations. Pretty standard. I'm happy for Waltz With Bashir and Baader-Meinhof (despite its problems). I'm cooling on the Scott-Thomas flick a lot.

Mainly Movies: Hitchcock is the new guest oeuvre! Why does everyone love Notorious by the way? I love Hitch but I wasn't fussed by that one at all.

Enjoy! Back to the grind!