Opinion Battles Year 4 Round 4 Least Favourite Oscar Winning Actress

Opinion Battles returns with Round 4 and we’re choosing our Least Favorite Oscar Winning Actress. This one was a hard one for myself since I don’t watch a lot of Academy Award movies. However, my choice went out to Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love.

Head over to Movie Reviews 101 to see the other choices and vote for the one you agree with.

Movie Reviews 101

Opinion Battles Year 4 Round 4

Least Favourite Oscar Winning Actress

We have looked at our favourite Oscar winning actresses, now we are going to look at the one we didn’t like, which ones do you think weren’t Oscar worthy?

Next Round – Worst Movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Closing Date Friday 4th May 2018

Milo – Stuff and That

Dianne Wiest – Bullets Over Broadway

Honestly, I haven’t seen Bullets Over Broadway and I don’t know who Dianne Wiest is. BUT, she’s the reason Uma Thurman didn’t win for Pulp Fiction, and that’s enough for my vote. Oh, and it’s a Woody Allen movie, ewwwwwwww….

Cinema Parrot Disco

Gwyneth Paltrow – Shakespeare in Love

Easy. Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare In Love. Because I hate her.

 

Darren – Movie Reviews 101

Cher – Moonstruck

For my pick I have selected someone because I feel someone…

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My Weekly Adventures #38

Time sure flies by! February was a busy busy month. I barely had a moment to catch my breath. As I mentioned in the previous My Weekly Adventures, its really a ton of behind the scenes stuff as I barrel through reading and TV series and movies. I also had an eureka moment over the last two weeks and have finally figured out that I’m a photographer and not an artist so to figure out a beautiful banner for Tranquil Dreams was not going to happen out of graphic design but rather, putting together a photo! It only took 2 years to figure it out. Haha! Sad, right? Now to actually put it together, right? Let’s hope that’ll be soon! Creative juices are flowing through me and it feels awesome! I just have so many ideas and not enough time but I love being busy. Things to look forward to is always great.

However, this past two weeks have been pretty cool with Montreal events picking up yet again. We got some really cold weather and now these past two weeks have been nice and cool.

Musical: Mamma Mia [Farewell Tour]

Mamma Mia

My girl friends and I were incredibly lucky to be able to go to see the farewell tour of Mamma Mia! Sure, we had to pay and all but we learned about this so late and still managed to find seats not exactly next to each other in the same row but we found seats one behind the other in a decent spot. I love Mamma Mia! Love it to absolute bits! I’ve really only seen the movie and despite it not being perfect in some ways, I really enjoy the music and humor and all. Seeing it live in its original musical form was amazing. Everyone did fantastic and it was incredibly fun the entire time.

Montreal Joue Festival

Montreal Joue Festival

Montreal Joue is going on right now. It started with the Independent Games of Montreal that ran on February 25th for 12 hours and had about 30 games. I managed to see all the games but only got the chance to try out 7 of them. Some I have tried at previous festivals and also the reason why I opted out to save myself some time. Others had incredible amounts of people all the time that I just had to skip it because I hadn’t slotted out a full day for the festival. If you want to see a more detail recap, you can find it at That Moment In where all the gaming content I do is here. It is the first time I’ve made it out to this festival and after this I believe the game festivals in Montreal start looping back to the ones I started with last year. It always amazes me how small these spaces look and how many games can fit into it and always with its fair share of surprises. For those interested, there are still lots of events going on like society games and what not. They had the retro games one as well. You can find it all on their festival page.

Oscars Night

Oscars happened this past weekend. If you’ve been a long time follower here, you’ll notice that its the first year since I’ve started covering movies that I haven’t had an Oscars recap. The fact is that since I moved out to my own place, I don’t have actual TV. Last year, I was able to stream it on the local channel online. This year, they blocked it out to only users with a TV subscription and I don’t have that. I find that a little stupid because it feels like times are going backwards. However, #firstworldproblems, right? So, I’ll stop complaining about it. I just thinking that Academy Awards should probably do something about streaming it online since you know, a ton of big shows like these do it anyways. Its the beauty of the Internet. Regardless, it wouldn’t have made a difference to me seeing as I saw none of the best picture picks and only saw Zootopia and Captain Fantastic and perhaps some random smaller categories.

Point is, I didn’t see it so no recap. I’m a little unhappy about how I didn’t get to see it but hey, my husband and I chose a much more fun choice and binged Ultimate Beastmaster on Netflix. Two more episodes to go this weekend and I’ll be doing a recap on that, as a sidenote.

Health & Class Update

Moving on to a good and not so good note, 2017 has just been a crap storm in terms of my health. Bugs and ear problems plagued me last time. Luckily, the bug never came back. I even caved and ended up going to the doctor to figure out what was wrong with my ear. Luckily, no infection so that was taken care of and I’m enjoying hearing perfectly well. Its definitely fantastic. Except that same evening that the ear thing was resolved, my eye decided to have something go wrong. If you’ve been here a few years, you’d know that a few years ago, I suffered a few months of that also. It sucks that its back but at least I’m dealing with it the best I can to hopefully get rid of it without having to go have another mini surgery because that hurts like hell. I’m not kidding when its really bumming me out and taking a whole lot of energy to stay positive and just keep on keeping on especially with work going through a stressful phase the past week. Luckily, that is somewhat over…the keyword here being somewhat.

Other than that, my online class is in the final week now. Trying to get ready to do the final assignment and final test. Not a huge fan of tests of any sort but its okay. I’ve learned some cool stuff in this class. While I would have loved to free up time, I apparently am crazy and for some deal thing, I ended up signing up for a month membership for the classes to take up something else. I’m still deciding what but I’m leaning towards photography or guitar. I do have a guitar glaring at me every single day that I don’t know how to play at all but have always wanted to. I’ll decide soon but this is going to be the last month I have planned for any more of these classes since things get busy with work afterwards and I just won’t have time. Plus, all those new segments I’m working on are going to need some time and love to put together. 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic

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Upcoming:

  • Ultimate 90’s Blogathon continues
  • TV Binge posts

That’s it for this time! 🙂
What have you been up to?

Opinion Battles Year 3 Round 2 Favourite Oscar Winning Performance from an Actor in Leading or Supporting Role

This year’s Round 2 of Opinion Battles is all about our Favorite Oscar-winning Performance from an Actor in a Leading or Supporting Role. Just in time for the awards season, right? With the announcement of the 2017 nominees for the Academy Awards, we’re talking about the right stuff. I’m not exactly a huge follower of Academy Awards, Maybe when I was younger, then took a big break and only got back into it because of the blog, so as I looked at the names, one role stood out to me and that’s Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs! There are some great choices here!

Head on over and check it out! See which you like and drop a vote!

Movie Reviews 101

Opinion Battles Year 3 Round 2new-logo

Favourite Oscar Winning Performance from an Actor in Leading or Supporting Role

The Oscars are around the corner and we all know that people either love or hate the Oscars committee decisions. We have had the best or the best winning Oscars but today we are looking at what we think is the favourite Oscar Winning performance.

If you want to take part in the next round of Opinion Battles we are going to be answer the question of What is your Favourite Film from 2015? To enter send your choices to moviereviews101@yahoo.co.ukby 5th February 2017.

Darren – Movie Reviews 101

Christopher Waltz – Col Hans Landa – Inglorious Basterdswaltz

Col Hans Landa is one of the best characters ever created by Quentin Tarantino, he is pure evil known as the ‘Jew Killer’ for his ruthless ability to track down any Jews…

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Recap: Oscars 2016!

Following tradition of the last two years, here’s a little recap! I wasn’t sure if I’d end up catching Oscars but we changed up our plans and ended up joining my mom for sit down and dinner together to enjoy the ceremony. My conclusion is that I make better guesses when I haven’t seen any of the movies than when I do.  I guess bias comes into play at that point and it affects my judgement.

I am glad that Mad Max: Fury Road did so well because it was well deserved.  I gave a personal standing ovation in my mom’s dining room to Ex Machina for winning Visual Effects.  There was a bit of cringing when I felt like Sam Smith was about to go off-tune and he looked nervous as heck to be up there but his speech was inspiring and he looked genuinely enthused to win it even if probably Lady Gaga’s song would have been the win that was deserved but I don’t care much for the “Original Song” category.  The only one I was genuinely a little angry at was Mad Max winning Costume Design because Cinderella may not have been a great movie but it was all about costumes while I mean how many costumes were there for Mad Max.  On a happier note, I am happy that Mark Rylance won for supporting actor.  Even if I didn’t see The Revenant, I was fairly certain Innaritu would win for Best Director and Leo for Best Actor because just from the trailers, it looked like the sort of movie that had the calibre and achievement to rightfully earn it. However, I did end up catching Spotlight over the weekend right before Oscars and even posted my review for it and I’m telling you that to me, it was a justified Best Picture winner.  I don’t think I’ve agreed much to these winners in the last few years but then I haven’t caught up with the majority of them either but Spotlight really connected with me in presenting their story and the content.  Out of all those movies, as wonderful and fantastic as they were, Brooklyn didn’t stand a chance in my book and even The Revenant probably wouldn’t have the depth of telling a story that reflected an issue that is maybe probably unfortunately still present today. For none of the other movies I saw in the Best Picture did have as much of a discussion at my home than Spotlight either and we finished that movie at 2am on Saturday night or something (just to give you an idea).

This year I decided to do my Oscars recap of the winners in advance and now, let’s check out the Top 5 Best Dresses.

Oscars 2016

Cate Blanchett

Oscars 2016

Charlize Theron

Oscars 2016

Alicia Vikander

Oscars 2016

Saoirse Ronan

Oscars 2016

Priyanka Chopra

Elegant, beauty, grace: These ladies all had it.  Not to mention, Cate Blanchett picked the perfect dress for the category she was presenting for: Costume Design. Just look at the intricate flowers on her dress! Its amazing! And kudos for Charlize Theron pulling off that style because normally, I’m not a fan of that cut of the deep V plunge (or whatever you call it) but she accessorized well and made it look very nice.

And then for some great moments that I liked quite a bit.

Jacob Tremblay & Star Wars

Oscars 2016

Mark Ruffalo Winking for his Nomination

Oscars 2016

Michael Keaton Fist Pump for Spotlight Win

Oscars 2016

I was equally as happy as Michael Keaton was when I heard that Spotlight won.  This reaction is just priceless!

Brie Larson in Awe

Oscars 2016

And her speech thanking everyone including the movie-goers! It warms my heart even if I didn’t see it in theatres and bought it on the Play store 😉

Leonardio diCaprio Winning Speech

Oscars 2016

Leonardo diCaprio winning was *almost* set in stone.  I was pretty sure he made a solid performance even if I only saw trailers.  However, he didn’t just win an Oscar.  He also delivered a meaningful speech and the best part was his final line about not taking the planet for granted, he wouldn’t take his Oscar win for granted.

I think to wrap it up this year, Lady Gaga’s song deserved more recognition.  I haven’t found the time to watch The Hunting Ground but it does intrigue me. While I can’t find the video for the Oscars performance she made and I only saw a snippet as I left my mom’s at that point and only had snippets online.  The song holds true meaning that deserves to be heard.

That’s it for Oscars 2016! It was a great year with some outstanding movies this year! 🙂
Did you watch the Oscars 2016? What were your fave moments? Did any winners surprise you? Any disappointments?

Opinion Battles Round Four – Least Favourite Oscar Winning Best Picture

Check out Round 4 of Opinion Battles! This time, we are choosing our least favorite Oscar winning Best Picture. The obvious choice for me was Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King! Whether you agree or not, head on over and check out the other choices and vote! 🙂

Movie Reviews 101

opinion battles

Round Four Least Favourite Oscar Winning Best Picture

We are about to hit Oscar season and what better than to pick our Least favourite Oscar Winning Best Picture because let’s face it we do love some more than others, this time it is the ones we have less love for.

If you want to take part in the next round which is Favourite Action Hero (non-Superhero/comic book) to celebrate the release of London is Fallen. if you want to take part end your pick to moviereviews101@yahoo.co.uk by Sunday the 6h March 2016.

Darren – Movie Reviews 101

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Kinglord of rings

I have decided to pick a film from the modern era because I really do struggle to enjoy or give the real credit to a lot of older work deserves. I am going to go with a pick that many people will…

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Opinion Battles Round Two Favourite Oscar Winning Best Picture

Head on over and vote in Round 2 of Opinion Battles! This time, we’re choosing our Favorite Oscar-winning Best Picture film. It was a difficult choice but I picked a well-rounded favorite, The Sound of Music.

Movie Reviews 101

opinion battles

We are about to hit Oscar season and what better than to pick our favourite Oscar Winning Best Picture because let’s face it we do love some more than others.

If you want to take part in the next round which is Favourite Ryan Reynolds Role to celebrate the release of Deadpool, if you want to take part end your pick to moviereviews101@yahoo.co.uk by Sunday the 7th February 2016.

Darren – Movie Reviews 101

Silence of the Lambssilence

Silence of the Lambs brings us one of the greatest horror villains we have ever seen in Hannibal Lector we get one of the strongest leading female performance from Jodie Foster. This is the sort of film I could watch over and over because I love the investigation storyline but placing serial killer as support when it comes to solving a new serial killer. Buffalo Bill is arguable one of the…

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Recap: Oscars 2015!

The Oscars 2015 came and went last night.  I feels like this year is zooming by.  Although, I didn’t manage to get to catch up with a lot of Oscar nominees (not just Best Picture), I was looking back at my past two years and realized this year, the whole having a week of watching Oscar nominees, was effective because I actually watched 10 movies that were nominated in various categories.  I beat my own personal record so thats something. I’m guessing, next year, I’ll try to schedule Oscars earlier, except how? The Valentine’s marathon clashes with it a little.  Anyways, I have a year to figure it out.

We celebrated Chinese New Year dinner while watching Oscars this year, so that was a pretty nice addition because for once, I’m not sitting there by myself with a cup of tea in a lonely dining room.  I actually had my mom and her friend, plus my boyfriend (who was dozing off eventually).  It was appreciated because its one thing to talk about red carpet in my head but its always more fun to hear other opinions.

Lets start this with Best Dresses that wowed me! 🙂 The order is from left to right for Top 5.

Anna Kendrick Cate Blanchett Rosamund Pike Scalett Johansson Naomi Watts

After that, I also liked: Emma Stone, Margot Robbie and Gwyneth Paltrow.

I’m a little on the fence with Marion Cotillard’s dress.  I can appreciate its elegance but the back part wasn’t really my cup of tea.

BEST MOMENTS

This year’s Oscars had a lot of moments.  The moments are not in any order.  I’m just numbering them so that I don’t get carried away.

1. Neil Patrick Harris, Anna Kendrick and Jack Black opening act

Oscars 2015

Respectable and paying tribute to a ton of epic movies with awesome singing and adding a little funny moments with Jack Black butting in from the audience.  It was classy and fun all at the same time.  Unfortunately, Neil Patrick Harris cracked only a few jokes last night that I found worked and didn’t feel awkward. Can we have Ellen back for next year?

2. Patricia Arquette’s speech & Meryl Streep’s reactionOscars 2015

Oscars 2015

Oscars 2015 was not only full of surprises (which were more like unexpected turnouts), but it was full of meaningful speeches.  Not so many people thanked the Academy but rather used the opportunity to share a personal view.  Patricia Arquette spoke for women rights equality.  While, documentary winners also did it: Citizenfour spoke out for fighting for privacy and democracy, while Crisis Hotline:Veterans Press 1 shared a heartfelt speech dedicating the award to her son and making a point that suicide should be “talked out loud”.

3. John Legend and Common’s performance followed by John Legend’s speech

Oscars 2015

Other than “Everything is Awesome”, which was a really fun performance, I haven’t heard any of the other songs.  In the Red Carpet/pre-Oscars part, they had talked to Tim McGraw and how it was going to be a tissue-worthy performance.  It was an extremely calm and soothing song.  Then, John Legend and Common was on for the last original song performance for Selma called “Glory” and that was just absolutely awesome.  They had to win this and they did in absolute style with John Legend’s inspirational speech.

4. Eddie Redmayne for Best Actor in Leading Role

Oscars 2015

Its always great to see an Oscar winner completely shocked by winning.  Plus, talk about an awesome honeymoon gift, right? Eddie Redmayne’s shocked and enthusiasm was amazing and charming and adorable all at the same time.  I kind of started hating myself a little for not finding the time to watch The Theory of Everything before the Oscars.  But then, its still rented and I’m going to try and get that in this week some time.

5. Lady Gaga’s performance for The Sound of Music 50 year tribute

Oscars 2015

The Sound of Music is my most favorite movie of all time.  I was wondering what Lady Gaga’s performance would be for and when they announced it, I paused a little because c’mon, Lady Gaga? The Sound of Music? Not exactly a match.  BUT, other than the fact that there was a few parts you can tell her forcing an English accent as she sang to replicate the song, she did a fine job and her voice is a lot more than Bad Romance and all her other funky hits (that I’m not exactly a huge fan of). She did a stellar performance and Julie Andrews looked absolutely touched by it all.  Julie Andrews is incomparable and her showing up at the Oscars made my night 🙂 Lady Gaga’s gown here looks a lot better than that avant-garde one she wore on the red carpet, just my preference…

THE AWKWARD AND SLIGHTLY CREEPY MOMENT

Oscars 2015

It all started great with making fun of John Travolta and his butchering of Idina Menzel’s name last year.  But when he turned around and got all touchy and making that weird face.  I was a little disturbed with the whole thing.  Oh goodness…Need to move on and not look at that…

In terms of awards, there were a few unexpected but well deserved surprises.

grand budapest hotel

The Grand Budapest won all the artistic merit ones: Best Costume Design, Best Hairstyling and Makeup, Best Production Design and Best Original Score.  I personally loved all of those things and I loved that each of those winners thanked Wes Anderson for thinking up the fun and quirky adventure that the Grand Budapest was.

I haven’t seen Whiplash but I didn’t really expect it to win Film Editing.  But then, all the other nominees had a deserved spot to be there, just looking at the concept.  I only knew Boyhood and that one had good editing too. I need to find Whiplash and check it out 🙂

Which goes to say that I’m going to be searching out Birdman now because it won all the awards I had wanted Boyhood to win.  Boyhood was a little gimmicky but I hold true that it was a brilliant movie.  We’re all entitled to our opinions, right? Thats what makes the blogosphere so fun 🙂

This has gone on long enough! Time to wrap this up!

Did you watch the Oscars? Which dress did you like the most? What was your favorite moment? Were there any surprises?

Oscars 2014!

Wow! Two years in a row I watch this! Sometimes, I wonder why I do it since I saw 3 movies that was nominated through all the categories.  Shameful as I’m building a blog that getting more and more focused in that area.  I’m going to try harder this year, thats all I can promise!

Back to the biggest night of Hollywood! My boyfriend was finishing up a movie so I lost a bit of the red carpet action, still, I caught most of the outfits as I did watch the whole Oscars and even used commercial breaks to check out tweets! I have to say that I’m a huge fan of Ellen so I loved her quite a bit! I mean, she crashed Twitter with that crazily retweeted selfie? Did that actually happen? AND she ordered pizza, which was super hilarious! 🙂

Moving along…I did it last year and I’ll do it again!

My favorite dresses at the Oscars last night! (Top 5 because I couldn’t pick 3 *ahem*)

Cate Blanchette

Cate Blanchette

Lupita Nyong'o

Lupita Nyong’o

Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock

Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron

Emma Watson

Emma Watson

Cate Blanchett oozes elegance, at least to me, she’s the symbol of it.  No one quite does it like her! And I’m totally loving the blue shades on Lupita Nyong’o and Sandra Bullock along with the design, simple but so pretty 🙂 Charlize Theron was just stunning (especially when she was presenting next to Chris Hemsworth). And Emma Watson knows how to choose her clothes.  I’d love to mention Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence and Anna Kendrick’s dresses. They were super beautiful too!!

Last year I didn’t do the men but they were so handsome!

Matthew McConaughey

Matthew McConaughey

chris hemsworth oscars

Chris Hemsworth

Will Smith

Will Smith

Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper

Matthew McConaughey was totally charming in his suit. Chris Hemsworth was hot in his burgundy.  Will Smith was looking pretty good and Bradley Cooper surprisingly took my breath away in his suit 🙂

The best speeches of the night goes out to these two awesome people!

matthew mcconaughey speech

Matthew McConaughey’s speech was really meaningful and encouraging. He thanked his belief and faith, his family and his future self.  That blew my mind! This man was already awesome in my book and think he just went even higher!

lupita nyong'o speech

Before Matthew McConaughey got his award, her award seemed like the absolute best.  It was completely heartfelt and so meaningful.  I mean reminding children from everywhere that their dreams are valid (paraphrasing her words, of course), is just beautiful!

Aside from actual on-spot live speeches, I feel the Governor Awards is worth a mention because I was totally happy about Angela Lansbury getting it.

angela lansbury

Bedknobs and Broomsticks was so fun! She’s awesome! I was very happy to see this!

angelina jolie humanitarian award

Aside from her, we have Angelina Jolie that I have to give a mention because I was never a huge fan of hers but her speech was very touching and she’s done some pretty awesome work.  Impressive, right?

Last thing I’m going to talk about is for the songs.  They were all pretty good performances, no? Frozen totally deserved it and Idina Menzel blew me away as always.  She has a monster voice! BUT, the show was hit off on a very positive note with Pharrell Williams performing Happy and dancing with some of the ladies. This right here:

amy-adams-dance

My girl crush on Amy Adams just grew a little (okay okay, maybe a lot)! 🙂

I’ve held you all up too much now so I’ll stop here!

Did you watch the Oscars? Who was the best dressed? Which speech stole the night? Were there any surprise wins?