Oscar Predictions 2K13

As per requests from the V's, here is my prediction for quite possibly the tightest and best Oscar race in my lifetime. Trying to beat my record set two years ago of 22 of 24.

Tough categories were Best Director (still going back and forth between Lee and Spielberg for the past two weeks), Production Design (between 3 period pieces in 3 different countries, all taking place in the 1860s) and one of the greatest Supporting Actor races in Oscar history between 5 nominees, whom have all won in the past. 

Best Picture - Argo

Dark Horse: Lincoln

Best Director – Ang Lee

Dark Horse: Steven Spielberg

Best Actor in a Leading Role – Daniel Day Lewis

            Dark Horse: Hugh Jackman

Best Actress in a Leading Role – Jennifer Lawrence

            Dark Horse: Emmanuelle Riva

Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Robert De Niro

            Dark Horse: Tommy Lee Jones (Possibly Christoph Waltz as well. So close)

Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Anne Hathaway

            Dark Horse: Sally Field

Best Original Screenplay – Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained)

            Dark Horse: Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty)

Best Adapted Screenplay – Chris Terrio (Argo)

            Dark Horse: David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)

Best Cinematography – Claudio Miranda (Life of Pi)

            Dark Horse: Roger Deakins (Skyfall)

Best Film Editing – William Goldenberg (Argo)

            Dark Horse: William Goldenberg (Zero Dark Thirty)

Best Production Design – Anna Karenina

            Dark Horse: Les Miserables (Lincoln maybe as well. Tough call)

Best Foreign Language Film - Amour

            Dark Horse: Yeah. It’s just gonna be Amour.

Best Animated Feature – Wreck it Ralph

            Dark Horse: Brave

Best Costume Design – Anna Karenina

            Dark Horse: Les Miserables

Best Makeup and Hairstyling – The Hobbit

            Dark Horse: Les Miserables

Best Live Action Short Film - Curfew

Dark Horse: Death of a Shadow

Best Animated Short Film - Paperman

            Dark Horse: Adam and Dog

Best Documentary Feature – Searching for Sugar Man

            Dark Horse: The Gatekeepers

Best Documentary Short – Mondays at Racine

            Dark Horse: Inocente

Best Visual Effects – Life of Pi

            Dark Horse: The Hobbit

Best Sound Editing – Zero Dark Thirty

            Dark Horse: Life of Pi

Best Sound Mixing – Les Miserables

            Dark Horse: Skyfall

Best Original Score – Mychael Danna (Life of Pi)

            Dark Horse: John Williams (Lincoln)

Best Original Song - Skyfall

            Dark Horse: Les Miserables

-AM Film

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Animal Update

Hi ho, here, it's Fisti with your Animal Update for the beginning of 2013.

Every single weekday, without fail, my husband will spend at least a half an hour of his workday searching through NBC's, Yahoo's, and NatGeo's Animal Photos of the Day or Week. He will then, without fail, compile these images into a special e-mail for me that usually gets to me by 2PM that day of all of my favorite critters.

Its great. Its like, "Hey, did some kid spit on you? Here, look at this otter playing basketball." Seriously everybody look at this otter:

Also, I'm exploring tumblr right now (I know I'm late to the party but I brought chips so...) and I found Birds with Arms. Some of them ain't so great, but some of them are funny as shit.

JACK SPARROW

Lastly, in an attempt to go to obscure and crazy-fun stuff like the Iowa State Fair, MP and I are working on attending the Tri-State Basset Hound BoardWaddle. Its a convention of basset hound owners who get together, day drink, and make their dogs do stupid shit. But then, they're bassets so the dogs AND the owners get lazy as hell. Full report.

That's all the animal news for now, my fine feathered friends.

Wannabe ASPCA Member,

fp

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Amy Started a Blog

Amy started a blog. She is a good writer. Its about women and the things they can do. There are boobs. Women to Woman

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~T. Clap

Paperman

Disney just released this new short yesterday. It features a snazzy new technique for combining hand-drawn and computer generated animation which is cool and all, but more importantly, it's adorable and perfect for the pre-Valentine's season. Quick people, start riding trains and carrying papers around again. An iphone smacking me in the face might not have quite the same effect.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTLySbGoMX0&feature=youtu.be

(The video is unlisted, ie only those with the link can view it and I'm prevented from embedding it prettily into the blogger interface at the moment)

-LAB

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Noah St. John - Storyteller

This year's NPR Snap Judgement Performance of the Year. Needless to say I shed sloppy tears on my laptop watching this.

-av
Lover of Love


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Great Teacher, Greater Message

Haven't posted anything in a while then I came across this.

It starts out as this wonderful story about this High School physics teacher who does great demonstrations and interactive lessons with his class (they show a few and they are awesome) but then shifts into this really incredible lesson/message he gives all of his students. It is quite the beautiful message and well worth watching.

Peace & Love,

 - sf

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You GOTTA Try My Sweet & Spicy Nuts

These are the best candied nuts ever.

 

Ingredients: 

1 lb bag unsalted roasted mixed nuts (Trader Joe's makes a good one)

3 tablespoons salted butter

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or more)

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons of honey or agave nectar

3 stalks fresh rosemary leaves, cut fine

1 stalk fresh rosemary (whole)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 250 F.
2. Add butter to a large saute pan and melt.
3. Add dry ingredients and honey/agave, stir and add the nuts.
4. Stir for 10-12 minutes over medium/low heat. Watch the heat as sugar can burn; you can always finish cooking in the oven.
5. Remove from saute pan and spread on a cookie sheet. Bake at 250 F for about 10 minutes to reduce oils and then leave out to cool.
6. Once cool, store in a large ziplock and add another large sprig of rosemary (whole) to add to the aroma.

Snapchat: A Parent's Worst Nightmare

Hi y'all.

Introducing Snapchat, this adorable little app that lets you take pictures and send them to your friends who can view them for only a few seconds and then the pictures vanish. POOF!

Now, as an adult, I understand that "vanish"ing on the Interwebs is a relative term. That shits stored somewhere, right? We all know it is. But I teach and mold the minds of youths. Who have no fucking clue where the internet came from and how to use it for anything besides sex and illegal music.

Snapchat has become my personal hell. And if I was the proud owner of a Sex Trophy (aka, my own child) I would toss their phone out the window at this point. Basically all of my students either use Snapchat to take pictures of goofy faces they make and send them to friends. But more likely than not, they take pictures of theirs or others junk and send it and then the pictures "vanish." Its become a competition to see who can snap a photo of balls quicker and send it to their friends - who get the picture, open it for 1-6 seconds, shout "GROSS! What was that!?", and then put their phone away. DURING CLASS. IN THE HALLWAY. AT HOME. WHILE DRIVING.

Truly, its become the new come-on for girls to send dudes pictures of their tits under their shirts during class.
Attention all Dudes: When/If you have a daughter, remember to tell her that she's incredible and pretty and that you love her very much so we don't end up with shit like that photo above.

In other news, there's CinemaGram, an app that lets you animate photos is wicked cool ways. I actually love this one.

Good luck out there,
fp

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Slenderman...I'm Rull Sorry

I am rull sorry to be the one to post this. I am NOT a scary-things person. If you're not, just forget this.
Maybe you've heard of this. I had not.

Today I had an old person moment. Two students of mine were raving about building their own version of this game called Slender.
Student: "Profe, you know Slenderman right?"
Me: "UH...wuh?", she mumbled, looking up from her balanced checkbook and responsibilities.
Students: "Profe...you don't know Slenderman? Its Slender!?"


So, doing a quick Wiki search (because my students told me that its a horror story game, and I don't stand for that shit) I found that Slender is a computer game. I had seen the app dozens of times and noted how even the app picture looked creepy, so I just ignored it and scrolled on by.

See what I mean? Creepy.

I come to learn that it is an internet sensation. Its a first-person survival horror game and basically you can scare the pants RIGHT OFF yourself. The downloadable game was taken off the Internet because it crashed after being offered for free.

The game haunts you with The Slenderman, an image/icon/character started by SomethingAwful.com.  He is always depicted as being tall and thin and able to stretch his appendages to whatever size necessary. Necessary for what? For kidnapping children, that's this Boogeyman's MO. Something Awful sponsored a "paranormal pictures" contest and asked users to manipulate old photos to create a fakelore story. A man named Victor Surge created these two images with the backstory that after these photos were taken both the photographer and 14 children went missing.





KIDS?! TALL CREEPY GUY?! TENTACLE ARMS?! OLD PHOTOS?!

Ladie and gents, THIS is my Kryptonite. I like to READ about American Horror Story - not watch it. NO no no. So, Slenderman has been occupying most of my Wikipedia searches. Trying to understand how something like this gets big and gets to be one of iTunes top apps. Just TRY Googling this shit and your computer will blow up with information. Information about a FAKE story about a mythical creature.

What the fuck is WRONG with people,
fp

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Tryptophan: An Investigative Report

Cheddar Cheese Has Twice As Much Tryptophan As Turkey. Postprandial Somnolence Is The Technical Term For Being Rull Sleepy After Eating. Postprandial Somnolence Occurs When Our Parasympathetic Nervous System Perks Up To Deal With The Food We Just Ate. Our Parasympathetic Is The Other Side Of Our Fight Or Flight Response Coin Which Is Powered By Our Sympathetic Nervous System. The Parasympathetic Nervous System Wants To Sit And Digest And Rest. Glucose Is Sugar And Everything is Sugar When We Eat Sugar Insulin Does Work So Our Blood Can Keep Doing Its Thing In The Mean Time All Sorts Of Amino Acids From Our Food Are Finding A Spot To Chill. Tryptophan Is An Essential Amino Acid With No Place To Chill So It Keeps Floating Until It Gets To Our Brains Where Our Brain Does Magic And Makes Tryptophan Into Serotonin Then Magics That Serotonin Into Melotonin. Serotonin Makes Us Happy And Melotonin Puts Us To Sleep.

-JV
Investigative Wikipedia'r

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Bob Ross: Hardass

As Google delightfully pointed out, today would have been Bob Ross's 70th birthday. I f-ing love Bob Ross. Such an amazing painter (also good animated, and especially good auto-tuned).

But apparently Bob wasn't always such a laid back guy. He used to be in the military. BOB. ROSS.

“I was the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work,”' he told the Orlando Sentinel. “The job requires you to be a mean, tough person. And I was fed up with it. I promised myself that if I ever got away from it, it wasn't going to be that way any more.”

Unreal. 

Meanwhile there is a happy little tree going by my window.

-SD
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Iron Man Three

Has Everyone Already Seen The Iron Man Three Trailer? I Just Did. Its Awesome. RDJ Can Do No Wrong The Red White And Blue Suit Look Ssick And Every Superhero Needs Some Time In The Snow. Come On April

JV
Fan
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Critique the Creek, Y'all

Guys, this is NOT a hella-long post about Dawson's Creek.

But if you want it to be, head over to my new spinoff blog: Critique the Creek

I can't not talk about this show, but I realized that die-hard fans usually know nothing about Seasons 5 + 6, the college years, because we were all making our real life Dawson's Creek plotlines happen.

So, enjoy, visit, oh and

Yours,
Fisti

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Tina Fey Voice of Reason

Sometimes no one can say it better than Tina Fey.

You can watch a clip of her speech here.

-av

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NPR and Christmas Unicorns

 I've been encountering a lot of new music that I actually like lately (as in this morning). Enjoy!

1. Maybe you don't listen to Sufjan Stevens Christmas albums all year round or even celebrate Christmas. It's cool, just give it a try, this stuff is great. Sufjan's releasing the next installment (volumes 6-10) of Christmas music, on November 13th AND THAT IS NOT ALL: he has planned a tour to promote said box-set extravaganza. The tour is entitled: "Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice". Sounds pretty fun. Some Plus1Press contributors already have tickets, everyone else should consider coming too.

Here is the only currently released track off the album, the single "Christmas Unicorn":

 

2. NPR is killing it right now. They have an online series entitled "Heavy Rotation" where the radio show staff members take turns picking favorite new tracks from their shows. The current ones are great, click this link and go now to listen before they change them! I like the last two best, "Dream in Blue" by Stray Birds and "Perfectly Yours" by Robert Francis (rocking a sweet "mom" tatoo).

he looks a bit like a scruffy joseph gordon levitt

If you're in the mood for something entirely different to listen to, check out my friend's sister's book review and Weekend Edition interview with Linda Werthheimer  on npr about her debut novel. It's getting really great reviews, which is terrific for her first book. I read this stunningly chilling novel in one sitting and can gladly loan it to anyone in the Boston area. Or buy a copy yourself for $10.50 new, $7.87 used and support the author!

That's all, folks.

-lab


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Council Bill 2012-226

http://www.upworthy.com/this-preacher-attacks-gay-marriage-and-it-makes-me-want-to-marry-him?c=bl3

I can't embed the video but don't let that turn you off. Watch it and see how much this guy dislikes gay rights . . . 

or does he?

standing on the right side of history,

jbb

92.9 Is My Jam

I Listen To The Radio At Work. During The Day For The Most Part Its Static And Oldies. The Morning And Afternoons I Am Driving Though And I Was At A Loss For What To Listen To. I Am Driving With A Wide Mix Of People And Pleasing Everyone Is A Noption A Non Option. I Can't Do KISS In The Morning Because Matty Has Gone Sour And Cruel In His Old Age He Shits On Everyone And Takes FOREVER To Do It. Ive Never Laughed At A Jam Scam. There Goes 94.5 The New 103.3 Is A Good Pop Station Again Though Wide Mix Of People And Only I'm Into It No 103.3. Then Miraculously 92.9 Solved All Of My RadioProblems. If You Listen To It For An Hour You Are Going To Hear A RHCP Song A Nirvana Song Some Classic Rock And Then Sublime. And The Commercials Are Comparable To Pandora Which I Accept. Madness By Muse Is 92.9's Jam Right Now. And The Accasperation Of Every A  Capella Group From Here To There. As A Vocal Suspects SuperFanForLife I Wish I Could Time Travel Back To The Hide And Seek Days And Have You All Go Straight From Love Fool Into Hide And Seek Into Madness And Then Drop The Mike And Collect Your Trophies. Don't Watch The Video It Adds Nothing Hit Play And Close Your Eyes. Shout Out To Radio.


-JV
Silence Filler
not really though
I mean sometimes

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Bieber's Best

As Long As You Love Me Came Out Over The Summer. I Had Heard It Before. This Morning I Listened To It And As Long As You Love Me Grooved Its Way Right Into My Brain. I Back To Back To Back'd The Video. As Long As You Love Me I'll Be Your Silver I'll Be Your Platinum I'll Be Your Gold Is A Golden Line. You're My Hallelujah Is A Rose Golden Line. The Production Value On The Video Is Feature Presentation And If You Hate Fun You Can Just Stick Around Until The End When Mr. Blonde Goes HAM On Biebs For Being His Daughter's Silver Platinum Gold.


JV
I Love Love

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Mr. Wes+ Mr. West

Okay, so this is pretty great, have you guys seen this?

This blog combines screen caps of Wes Anderson films with Kanye West lyrics. Plus1Press has a heavy following of both Wes and West fans, so this is kind of a high-urgency must-post-immediately type subject.

 Favorites:

The Royal Tenenbaums/All of the Lights

Moonrise Kingdom/Robocop

And, this is an excellent French commercial for cheese, with monsters.

Happy Friday everyone!
LAB

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Letters of Note

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm a sucker for snail mail. It's always seemed to be a miracle how the whole thing works. All you have to do is write the address correctly and put enough postage on the envelope, and then days or weeks or months later the little message will end up in the correct hands.

Perusing the blog of Anis Mojgani, I stumbled upon a wonderful thing called "Letters of Note". It's an archive of correspondences between all sorts of fascinating people. One in particular I think the Plus1Press community will love is a letter written to Maurice Sendak by his editor, two years before his famous children's book "Where the Wild Things Are" was published.

There is also a hilarious and graphic letter written to Jack Kerouac by a friend who would be Jack's inspiration for Dean Moriarty in On the Road, and a letter from the nephew of Hitler to President Roosevelt, asking to allow him to join the army and fight in the war.

I'm not a librarian, but my new office is in the library on campus, and I think it's starting to rub off on me. Online archives are getting me pretty fired up these days.

-LAB, resident nerd

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