Contest Results!

Well, everyone, the time has come! With an astounding 5 submissions (no sarcasm intended), this edition of the Eye-dentification Banner Contest was the most popular yet. Before I announce the winner, I just want to say thanks to all of you who participated. It's always a lot of fun and I do hope that trying to guess those eyeballs isn't too frustrating.

On that note, though a lot of you had trouble individually, collectively there was only one pair of eyes that nobody identified, and they were these...

Interestingly, more than one of you thought they belonged to Ashley Judd, which actually makes sense.

BUT! 'Twas not the case. They actually belong to the always amazing Toni Collette in the classic "Muriel's Wedding".

"Waaaaaaterlooooooooo..."

Here's a full list of the eyes up there, from left to right:

---Ellen Wong (Scott Pilgrim VS The World), Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose), Catherine O'Hara (For Your Consideration), Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind), Viola Davis (Doubt)---

---Keir Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey), Audrey Hepburn (Wait Until Dark), Bjork (Dancer in the Dark), Naomi Watts (I Heart Huckabees), Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny)---

---"Paprika", Beyonce (Obsessed), Ellen Burstyn (The Last Picture Show), Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love)---

---Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding), Cate Blanchett (Notes on a Scandal), Emile Hirsch (Milk), "Ratatouille", Bae Doona (The Host)---

Anyway! On to the winner. With a whopping 21 points, the winner is none other than...

Amir from the blog Amiresque!

Congratulations Amir! As the winner, you get either a custom song about whatever your heart desires, written by yours truly. Or, a guest post on this very blog! Email me to claim your prize.

To everyone else, thanks again for entering! And keep your eyes open, because soon the banner will be changing to a 2010 tribute version as I begin the first ever "Golden Cornea Awards". Hehe, see what I did there, with the name? Haha.

The King's Speech (2010)

I have nothing against period films. In fact, as of late, my preconceptions have been proven quite wrong about a lot of them ("Bright Star", for example). Still, it does take quite a bit of prodding to get me particularly excited about seeing one. I knew I had to see "The King's Speech" because of its awards buzz and the three lead actors whom I quite like, but I wasn't as enthusiastic to see it as, say, "Black Swan". It seemed like it could have fallen apart - the World War II subplot seemed stuffy, the "inspirational" subtext a recipe for an Oscar bait disaster. But as usual, I was proven completely wrong - "The King's Speech" is really a treasure of 2010.

The film tells the true story of King George VI (Colin Firth), known more commonly in the film as Bertie, whose speech impediment caused him great angst amongst his family members, his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), and the people of the United Kingdom. After failure after failure with speech doctors, Elizabeth decides to hire a rather avant-garde speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), to try one last time to cure Bertie of his problems. The narrative puts the backdrop of impending war on the progression of Bertie's work with Logue.

Director Tom Hooper realizes completely that film is a visual medium and uses this to his utmost advantage. Every room and costume is impeccably and beautifully designed (to be expected from a period film, after all). Then there's the cinematography - perfectly framing every moment of dialogue, the camera shakes and moves with Bertie, focuses in and out on his quivering mouth as he struggles to get out a word, focuses completely still on a single glance from Elizabeth. The masterful direction is what gives this film such a power - we feel so completely and so perfectly the tension and the frustration when Bertie is stammering.

Another art that Hooper has evidently mastered is that of the montage. The speech exercises montage near the middle of the film is so fun, so revealing, and ultimately, so effective. Later on, as Firth gives the film's titular speech, the combination of Beethoven's music and the use of different shots makes the scene one of the year's best. Speaking of music, Alexandre Desplat does wonderful work as usual, though I consider this some of his lesser work. Of course, it's lovely - and the fusion of Beethoven into the score is smart and moving.

But one cannot even begin to speak of "The King's Speech" without mentioning the brilliant acting on display here, especially from Rush and Firth. Rush gives Logue such subtlety, such nuance and such character that even the smallest eyebrow raise or mouth twitch tells us a wealth of things about his character. His audition scene, near the beginning, is absolutely marvelous and though I haven't seen Christian Bale yet, I'm wont to say that Rush deserves the Oscar. Firth's King George is a brilliantly layered creation and that stammer is perfect. It's as if it comes not from his vocal chords but from the bottom of his soul, from the inner depths of his persona. He uses it more here, less there and ultimately dissolves completely into the character, making us forget he's acting at all.

Overall, "The King's Speech" does exactly what a film is meant to do - it tells a story, a great story, and it tells it with finesse, skill, beauty and charm. It's an ultimately inspiring film that absolutely belongs in this year's Oscar race and will hopefully be remembered for years to come as a period piece that stood up to its hype.

See it: If you're following this year in cinema at all, if you want to be genuinely inspired, if you want to see a couple of the best male performances of the year, or if you like good montages.

Skip it: If you'd go solely for Helena Bonham Carter. She's quite fabulous as usual, but the film doesn't give her too much to do - this is Firth and Rush's movie.

9/10

New Year Banner Contest!

Well, it's that time again...for a eye-dentification Banner contest! I've had this current banner for far too long and it's almost time to switch it out, so you know what that means....you guys get to try to identify whose eyes are present!

AND, this time around, the prize is extra-special! Or anyway, it's kind of cool. If you win, I'll WRITE YOU A SONG! And record it, and give it to you in mp3 format! Yeah! I'll write it about whatever you want. If you want me to write a song based on your favorite movie, sure, or maybe a love song to you, or even if you want me to write you a song about like, flying ponies taking over Mars then that's cool too. It's allllll up to you.

Or, if you don't want a special song, then you can take the prize that I normally give out - a guest post on this blog! Or something else. The prize is negotiable. Heh heh.

Anyway. Let's review the rules.

1. Look at the banner at the top of my blog. You know, the one with all the eyes on it. Haha!

2. Send me an email at marioman60@gmail.com and write down the actor/actress and the film that the eyes are from. For animated films, just the name of the movie is fine.

3. Points are given for each correct part of the answer. So you get 1 point for the right actor, 1 point for the right movie.

4. Whoever gets the most points WINS!!!

All right so that's all there is to it. You've got two weeks to do it (the deadline for entries will be the 19th of January. GO!

I'm a LAMB ya'll!

Guess what everyone, I'm finally a member of the LAMB! Hooray!

OMGLEE

Well peeps, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know how I have a love/hate relationship with Glee, emphasis on the hate. In fact, you can read all my thoughts on last season of Glee by clicking here. Anyway, so, watching the season premier today on Hulu, I was expecting it to be everything that I remember hating about Glee. You know, the convoluted storylines, horrendous acting from Matthew Morrison, and yeah, the good stuff too.

But...*gulp*...I was proven wrong.

The season premier was actually......

...ya'll are gonna laugh at me...

...GREAT.

I know, c'est shocking! But, yes, I loved it. From the beginning sequence that pretty much made fun of everything I hated about the show last season, to the very emotional "What I Did For Love" sung beautifully by Lea Michele, it was just great. It was so funny, the storylines were realistic and pleasantly structured, and Matthew Morrison didn't make me want to barf! Yea!

I really like the new characters as well -Coach Bieste was very well portrayed as both sympathetic and insecure. Very nice. Sunshine and that blonde kid are cool, and I like that Mike Chang finally is being recognized. He's got lines now! Yea him!

Perhaps Glee has finally settled into what it wants to be, and its more focused direction in this season premier gives me great hope that this season may actually be really, really wonderful. But, let me not speak too soon. Who knows what could happen in the next few episodes...we all know how ridiculous the show can get in a short period of time. ;)

The one problem I did have with the premier though - WHERE WAS JAYMA? :'(

Have you seen the premier yet? Are you all wallowing in my love for the premier? Sound off below!

I hate to say it...but...

...I just saw a commercial for next week's season premier of Glee and...

I'M ACTUALLY EXTREMELY EXCITED.

And, Modern Family starts next week too! Hoorah for my television shows!