Weekend Update

Hey guys! It's been kind of a crazy weekend. Here's what's up.

Thursday marks the day that the greatest basketball player to ever play for BYU, Jimmer Fredette, played the last game of his college career. In a heartbreaking overtime loss to Florida, we all said goodbye to the most exciting player to step on a court this year. It wasn't his finest game, but that of course won't make us forget what a magical season this has been. A regular season championship, a run to the MWC finals, the first Sweet 16 appearance in 30 years, the most BYU games ever won, tons of shooting records broken, and an all-time leading scoring stat is what Jimmer can say he contributed to this year. Looking forward to seeing you rock the NBA, Jimmer. And you too, Jax :)

Here's just a small tribute to how epic this season has been:

ESPN - College Hoops was better with Jimmer
Epic Jimmer Facebook Thread

 So that's that. I'll be cheering him on in a week when he wins NPOY :)

Friday, BYU had the honor of hearing from the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg! Senator Hatch was sufficiently awkward enough to make the Zuck seem cool, haha. I couldn't help compare him to Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal, of course, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Zuckerberg made sure to state his gratitude for his team and seemed humbled to be speaking in front of such a large audience (the first time he's spoken to a college!) He's also doing a lot of good for the world, stressing the importance of innovation as well as putting a lot of time into his nonprofit organization that focuses on improving education.

Mark Zuckerberg and Senator Hatch

Today was the Festival of Colors celebration! It was my first time going and it was SO much fun! Basically it's a big Hindu festival where people throw colored chalk at each other. There was dancing by the Hindu temple and shops and even llamas! I definitely want to go next year.

Me, Kelly, and Christine

 

Also, only at a DI in Provo would you find this gem of a board game:

 

Yep... I didn't buy it, even though I was tempted to. Oh, Utah. 

Will you reach the sunny celestial kingdom? Or will you be stuck as a telestial star??

P.S. I got my passport today! I'm officially able to travel the world this summer! Woohoo!

March Madness

Tomorrow begins every sports fan's favorite time of the year - Jimmertime! Haha. Or March Madness... either one :)

All I have to say is, it's a bad thing to have as many projects due in school as I do the next couple of weeks... they will be of poor quality, I'm sure. I'm participating in about 6 different bracket pools. I only have one set of picks, though, which makes it more fun, in my opinion. I have Notre Dame as the ultimate champion, in case you were wondering. None of this Ohio State nonsense.

But let's talk about what really matters. BYU. I only have the courage to put them in the Elite Eight, but by far this has been the best year of Cougar basketball I've ever experienced. To think, when NPOY Jimmer is a big NBA star, I will have bragging rights to say that I went to most of his games in person. Pretty dang cool, in my humble opinion. It was sad yesterday at work to think that I may not see Jimmer and Jackson walk through those doors again. But I have confidence I'll see them there next week :)

Here are some pictures and a video of the team on their farewell before the MWC tournament. Dressed snazzy, these boys. But who cares, I still love them anyway.

My boys

Is that Jimmer on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Why yes, yes it is.

Articles to read:
Preview of the BYU/Wofford game 
Best/Worst Case Scenarios of each team. BYU's is by far the funniest. 
JimmerJimmerJimmer 

Crazyness

This week has been INSANE. Between school, work, trying to find housing for next year, doing all my assignments for PR, making sure my money situation's all right, and being depressed about basketball, I've barely had any time to breathe. But it's the weekend now, and I'm gonna have some fun :) I'm seeing Beastly tonight (haha I know... just going for a good time) and I'm going to see BYU whoop Wyoming tomorrow. It's so sad that this is the last game I'll see at the Marriott Center with Jimmer and Jax... Here's a little tribute to them and their amazing-ness:

Oscar talk: So I think I did pretty good in my predictions! I got a little more than half of them right, but most of the ones I missed I kind of knew I'd miss. I still concede that David Fincher and Inception's screenplay were robbed, though. And who even knew that The Social Network had a score?? Kidding... kind of.

As for the hosts, I was actually pleasantly surprised by Anne Hathaway. She definitely gave it everything she had. And James Franco was stoned out of his mind, but his job was to stand there and look amazing, which he did quite well. And I loved the video at the beginning. And Halle Berry's dress. I want it.

Dang I am just full of videos today. Not much else is going on, but I thought I'd start a new segment: What I'm Watching on Netflix. I recently finished season 2 of Parks and Recreation (which if you still have not seen, please rectify that immediately. Even if you didn't really care for season 1. It's a million times better. Ron Swanson is such a man.) Now I am watching the first season of Drop Dead Diva, a cute and witty comedy about a model who is transported into a fat girl's body when she dies. The show really resonates with me and has really good insights about the way society treats larger women. It's Freaky Friday meets Legally Blonde. You should check it out.

My Oscar Predictions

Hey everyone, as you should all know, the Academy Awards are only a week and a day away. I haven't seen all of these movies, but I have researched and read enough about them that I believe I can make an informed guess as to what will win. We'll see if I'm right! The predicted winners are highlighted in bold.

(Also, I'd just like to point out here that in the Oscar poll in my theater job a couple of years ago, I came in second place by only one point. I still concede that Mickey Rourke should have won. I'd be $110 richer)

My mind is subject to change before the final awards. Just so you know. 


Best Motion Picture of the Year
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network (The King's Speech is also a very real contender here, but the Academy knows its the obvious choice, and The Social Network is more relevant to our day.)
127 Hours
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Annette Bening (The Kids are All Right)
Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole)
Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone)
Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Javier Bardem (Biutiful)
Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)
Colin Firth (The King's Speech)
James Franco (127 Hours)
Jeff Bridges (True Grit)

Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale (The Fighter)
John Hawkes (Winter's Bone)
Jeremy Renner (The Town)
Mark Ruffalo (The Kids are All Right)
Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech)

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Amy Adams (The Fighter)
Helena Bonham Carter (The King's Speech)
Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3

Best Documentary Short Subject
Killing in the Name
Poster Girl
Strangers No More
Sun Come Up
The Warriors of Qiugang

Best Short Film (Animated)
Day & Night; Teddy Newton
The Gruffalo Jakob Schuh and Max Lang
Let's Pollute Geefwee Boedoe
The Lost Thing Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann
Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary) Bastien Dubois

Best Short Film (Live Action)
The Confession Tanel Toom
The Crush Michael Creagh
God of Love Luke Matheny
Na Wewe Ivan Goldschmidt
Wish 143 Ian Barnes and Samantha Waite

Achievement in Art Direction
Alice in Wonderland
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Inception
The King's Speech
True Grit

Achievement in Cinematography
Black Swan (Matthew Libatique)
Inception (Wally Pfister)
The King's Speech (Danny Cohen)
The Social Network (Jeff Cronenweth)
True Grit (Roger Deakins)

Achievement in Costume Design
Alice in Wonderland (Colleen Atwood)
I Am Love (Antonella Cannarozzi)
The King's Speech (Jenny Beaven)
The Tempest (Sandy Powell)
True Grit (Mary Zophres)

Achievement in Directing
Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)
David O. Russell (The Fighter)
Tom Hooper (The King's Speech)
David Fincher (The Social Network)
Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit)

Best Documentary Feature
Exit through the Gift Shop, Banksy, director (Paranoid Pictures) (still angry Waiting for Superman didn't get a nod)
Gasland Josh Fox, director (Gasland Productions, LLC)
Inside Job Charles Ferguson, director (Representational Pictures)
Restrepo Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, directors (Outpost Films)
Waste Land Lucy Walker, director (Almega Projects)

Achievement in Makeup
Barney's Version
The Way Back
The Wolfman


Achievement in Film Editing
Black Swan (Andrew Weisblum)
The Fighter (Pamela Martin)
The King's Speech (Tariq Anwar)
127 Hours (Jon Harris)
The Social Network (Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall)

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
Biutiful (Mexico)
Dogtooth (Greece)
In a Better World (Denmark)
Incendies (Canada)
Hors la Loi (Algeria)

Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
How to Train Your Dragon (John Powell)
Inception (Hans Zimmer)
The King's Speech (Alexandre Desplat) (I want HTTYD to win though)
127 Hours (A.R. Rahman)
The Social Network (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)


Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song)
"Coming Home" from Country Strong Music and Lyric by Tom Douglas, Troy Verges and Hillary Lindsey
"I See the Light" from Tangled Music and Lyric by Alan Menken Lyric by Glenn Slater
"If I Rise" from 127 Hours Music by A.R. Rahman Lyric by Dido and Rollo Armstrong
"We Belong Together" from Toy Story 3 Music and Lyric by Randy Newman

Achievement in Sound Editing
Inception
Toy Story 3
TRON: Legacy
True Grit
Unstoppable

Achievement in Sound Mixing
Inception
The King's Speech
Salt
The Social Network
True Grit

Achievement in Visual Effects
Alice in Wonderland
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Hereafter
Inception
Iron Man 2

Adapted Screenplay
127 Hours (Simon Beaufoy and Danny Boyle)
The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin)
Toy Story 3 (Michael Arndt, story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich)
True Grit (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
Winter's Bone (Debra Granik and Anne Rossellini)

Original Screenplay
Another Year (Mike Leigh)
The Fighter (Paul Attanasio, Lewis Colich, Eric Johnson, Scott Silverand Paul Tamasy)
Inception (Christopher Nolan) (although it'll probably be The King's Speech... I just want some love for Inception, and this category is the most likely one it'll win outside of the tech categories)
The Kids are All Right (Stuart Blumberg and Lisa Cholodenko)
The King's Speech (David Seidler)

I feel super out of it today... it's a good thing work is really slow (all the basketball games are finally sold out!) or I wouldn't be able to handle it today I think. Not sure why I'm so tired... maybe because I stayed up watching the first season of Parks and Recreation instead of going to sleep...

Anyway, today at the Bradley meeting we learned about how to utilize our blogs and other social media websites to showcase our talents and the things we are interested in. I think I've been doing a decent job of that so far... I've only just started out in the major so I don't have much to show for it quite yet, but I think you can all tell that I'm interested in entertainment media :) Ah it would just be so cool to do PR for an entertainment company... I'm just saying :)

I'm going to work on highlighting things that pertain to my future career more in the future. But for now... here are some gems by that ultimate time-waster - stumbleupon.com. Enjoy.


List of films considered the worst
If Best Picture Movie Posters Told the Truth
Mature People Truths
Ridiculous Celebrity Look-Alikes

And this lovely gem :)

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Despite being single, I still do like this holiday. It gives me an excuse to eat chocolate and watch cheesy chick flicks, so why not? Although I have to say, even though I don't mind being single and love being independent and all, why can't I meet a guy who feels the same way as MIKA?

Ah well... Maybe some day. But as for now, here is a list of the people I do love:

• my family
• my wonderful friends
• myself - can't love others without loving yourself :)
• Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ

Basically, I love all you guys. You're awesome. Be my Valentine?

Bill Murray and the Groundhog

According to good ol' Punxsutawney Phil, spring has officially begun. Which is great, except that it was TWO DEGREES outside today. That's right, TWO. I may never feel my ears again.

However, it wouldn't be a complete Groundhog Day without mentioning the movie of the same name. It's tradition that I watch Groundhog Day every February 2nd. I love this film so much. Bill Murray has that dry sense of humor that I love, and the scenarios are just hysterical. The theme of the movie is also really powerful, and each time I watch it reminds me that I need to live each day to the fullest, by serving others around me.

"What did you do today, Phil?" "Oh nothing, just same old, same old."