Presidential Inaugurals
I ended up coming across this website from an unexpected source, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. The site contains, among many other things, all the inaugurals from all the presidents - Washington to Obama. It’s really interesting when you read the older ones, such as Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. Those guys really knew how you use the English language.
If you have some time, you should really check it out.
2009 Oscar Nominations
The 2009 Oscar Nominations were announced this morning for the 81st Academy Awards, and I’d be lying if I said I was happy with the results. “The Dark Knight” was left out of Picture, Director, Screenplay and Score. Now, to be somewhat fair, it did receive 8 nominations total, including the much favored Supporting Actor nom for Heath Ledger, but it definitely deserved to receive more of the top tier nominations.
In total number of nominations “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” lead the way with thirteen; followed by “Slumdog Millionaire” with ten; “The Dark Knight” and “Milk” with eight; “Wall-E” with six; “Frost/Nixon”, “Doubt” and “The Reader” with five.
Below are the nominations:
BEST PICTURE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Richard Jenkins (”The Visitor”)
Frank Langella (”Frost/Nixon”)
Sean Penn (”Milk”)
Brad Pitt (”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”)
Mickey Rourke (”The Wrestler”)
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Anne Hathaway (”Rachel Getting Married”)
Angelina Jolie (”Changeling”)
Melissa Leo (”Frozen River”)
Meryl Streep (”Doubt”)
Kate Winslet (”The Reader”)
DIRECTING
David Fincher (”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”)
Ron Howard (”Frost/Nixon”)
Gus Van Sant (”Milk”)
Stephen Daldry (”The Reader”)
Danny Boyle (”Slumdog Millionaire)
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Josh Brolin (”Milk”)
Robert Downey Jr. (”Tropic Thunder”)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (”Doubt”)
Heath Ledger (”The Dark Knight”)
Michael Shannon (”Revolutionary Road”)
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Amy Adams (”Doubt”)
Penelope Cruz (”Vicky Cristina Barcelona”)
Viola Davis (”Doubt”)
Taraji P. Henson (”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”)
Marisa Tomei (”The Wrestler”)
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Baader Meinhoff Complex
Class
Departures
Revanche
Waltz With Bashir
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
“Bolt”
“Kung Fu Panda”
“Wall-E”
SCREENPLAY (Adapted)
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Doubt”
“Frost/Nixon”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”"
SCREENPLAY (Original)
“Frozen River”
“Happy-Go-Lucky”
“In Bruges”
“Milk”
“Wall-E”
ART DIRECTION
“Changeling”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Duchess”
“Revolutionary Road”
CINEMATOGRAPHY
“Changeling”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
COSTUME DESIGN
“Australia”
”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
”The Duchess”
”Milk”
”Revolutionary Road”
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
“The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)”
”Encounters at the End of the World”
”The Garden”
”Man on Wire”
”Trouble the Water”
DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
“The Conscience of Nhem En”
”The Final Inch”
”Smile Pinki
”The Witness — From the Balcony of Room 306″
FILM EDITING
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
“Beaufort”
“The Counterfeiters”
“Katyn”
“Mongol”
“12″
MAKEUP
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
”The Dark Knight”
”Hellboy II: The Golden Army”
MUSIC (SCORE)
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Alexandre Desplat
“Defiance” James Newton Howard
“Milk” Danny Elfman
“Slumdog Millionaire” A.R. Rahman
“WALL-E” Thomas Newman”
MUSIC (SONG)
“Down to Earth” from “WALL-E”
“Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire”
“O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire”
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
“La Maison en Petits Cubes”
”Lavatory — Lovestory”
”Oktapodi”
”Presto”
”This Way Up”
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
“Auf der Strecke (On the Line)”
”Manon on the Asphalt”
”New Boy”
”The Pig”
”Spielzeugland (Toyland)”
SOUND EDITING
“The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”
SOUND MIXING
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“‘WALL-E”
“Wanted”
VISUAL EFFECTS
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”
Upgrade and New Plugin - READ
So, I must apologize for the lack of posts lately…at least posts of substance. The new house has been monopolizing all my time, and when I’m not working on the house, I just want to sleep. Things are starting to come together, though, so I should be able to start getting some posts in. I have a huge backlog right now of things I want to touch on and right about.
First things first however. I finally got around to upgrading WordPress to Ver. 2.7. I realize that 2.8 is probably already on it’s way, but, given the pain it was to get the blog up and running to begin with, I wasn’t exactly anxious to mess anything up. I am happy to say that the upgrade went through without much of a problem and things seems to be working just fine.
Secondly, my good friend Zeus was nice enough to let me know of a plugin (Akismet) that is suppose to help with all the SPAM comments. So, I went ahead and installed the plugin and changed some settings and now you will no longer be required to register in order to make a comment. Hopefully the plugin works. It would things easier on everyone.
Registration Required
Unfortunately, do the increasing number of SPAM if getting getting, I’ve decided to require all users who wish to make comments to register (one time) and log-in before being allowed to make comments. I realize that this is somewhat of a hassle, but deleting 250 SPAM comments from both my blog dashboard and my email inbox every day is simply ridiculous. I’ve been doing it for over a month now and enough is enough. I am hoping that this will fix the issue.
Please let me know if there are any problems.
New House Update
Well, we’ve lived in the house now for a little over a week, and things are coming along. I’d say about 90% of the boxes have been unpacked and things put away. The house is slowly starting to feel like home. This past weekend, we were able to paint the kitchen and the master bathroom. Ashley ended up not liking the original paint color picked out for the kitchen, so we decided to make a change about an hour or two into the project. The master bathroom was a pain in the ass to paint. Though, it was expected, I wasn’t planning on spending the entire day in there. I’m just glad its done…almost. (We still have to do some touching up) With the painting done, we’ll be able to install the mirror, lighting fixture, towel bars, etc.
As a result of getting the dining room painted, I was able to put the blinds back up. Ashley cleaned them, and while she was doing that, I was putting up the curtain rod for the back sliding glass door in the living room. With the rod up and the new curtains on it, we actually have a little privacy now.
The guest bathroom is done as well. We ended up painting it a deep red called “Vineyard.” It came out really nice. The mirrior, light fixture, and towel bars were all installed. I still need to install the toliet paper bar. I have not quite decided on the best way to put it were we want to put it.
My office is slowly coming along. All the furniture is in it’s place and most of the books and files have been put away. There have been two issues, though, that have been slowing up the process. One is that my computer was destroyed by a Trojan and as a result, I’ve had to reformat the hard drive. Anyone who has done this knows that it is a huge hassle and it takes a while to reinstall all the programs and get the machine back into working order again. The other issue is merging and making room for Ashley’s stuff. The office is a good size, but I had it pretty well filled with just my stuff. Adding her’s to the mix has been a little more difficult - organizationally - than I had anticipated.
Next on the task list this weekend will be “re”-painting the kitchen (we’ve decided to go with a darker green because we’ve changed the color we were going with for the cabinets) and painting the accent wall in the living room. So between now and then, we’ll be prepping for that and trying to decide on a paint color for the accent wall.
Moving Day 2009
I am officially and completely moved into the new home. It came and it went. I want to think the following people for helping with the move this past weekend.
- Ashley, I love you baby
- Matt
- Ed
- Chris
- Annie
- Scott
- Navid
- Nina
- Nicole
- Emily
- Will
- Nadi
We traveled over 116 miles, and moved 3 people back and forth across town. The U-Haul was picked up at 8am and dropped off at 4pm. Not bad for a day’s worth of work.
Now I just have to finish all the unpacking…