16. And counting.

The nominations for this year's Oscar awards were released early last week and once again, Meryl Streep nabs a best actress nomination for her amazing performance in Julie & Julia. Of course, the buzz generated by "The Blind Side" and the fact that Sandra Bullock is Hollywood's darling this year virtually ensures that Meryl won't win a third Oscar (second for best actress). But her record for most nominations gets even more massive, given that she held the record with her 13th nomination and has now gone three better. If she keeps at it, she may just end her career with more than 20 nominations! (And hopefully, a couple more trophies. I mean seriously, she has to win another Oscar some time soon!)

The interesting thing about the Oscars this year is that 10 films were nominated for Best Picture. Apparently, there used to be 10 best picture nominees back in the day. This means that aside from the expected nominees like 'Avatar' and the 'Hurt Locker', a few other good (if not great) films of 2009 also made the cut, including 'Up' and 'District 9'. 'Up' is only the second animated film in history to be nominated for a best picture award (the first was 'Beauty and the Beast'). It's also nominated for 'Best Animated Film' so I'd be majorly shocked if it doesn't win that award.

The Killers cancel their Asian tour

So today should have been about me watching The Killers live in MOA. Instead, I learned about this unfortunate bit of news:


I waited for this concert for about 2 months and got my tickets in early December, so I was really disappointed to find out that The Killers had to cancel their tour. To add insult to injury, I need to go the Ticketnet main office in Araneta Coliseum between 1 and 8pm to get my refund. Such a frickin' hassle.

I don't know if (or when) they plan to come to Manila again. I just hope that if and when they do come back to perform, I'll still be able to see them play.

The week that was

Fun. Busy. Interesting. That's how the last week was. Or, well, the last week and a couple of days...

I went to a Karaoke bar with friends. Twice. Should've been three times because my friend Joyce organized a get-together in Red Box last Tuesday. But I worked long hours that day and by the time I got off work, I was exhausted and begged off. I did, however, go to Music Match twice. The first time with colleagues two Friday ago and the second time with non-work friends just last night. I remember how I had a lot of throat-related problems towards the tail-end of last year so it's great that I am now once again able to sing for three to four hours straight.

I also headed down South last Saturday to attend the 1st birthday party of Annika, the daughter of my friends Hes and Migs. And I have to say, it has to be the biggest 1st birthday party I have ever attended. From the food to the decor to the booths (for stuff like photo-taking and cotton candy) to the giveaways for both kids and adults, it was really hard to top that party! I was also called on stage by the magician and I have to say that I was impressed when he managed to take my wristwatch from me during his trick. Makes you a but worried though at how good sleigh-of-hand experts can be if they wanted to pick your pocket!

I also went to the baptism of my inaanak Ethan earlier today. Ethan is the second son of my cousin Peachy. It sas a slight disaster though in that I was late by about 15 minutes and by the time I got there, the actual christening had already been done. What's even worse was that all the ninongs were late! But Peachy was very understanding though and was just happy we all made it eventually. It was nice catching up with my relatives too, a lot of whom I only get to see once or twice a year during family reunions.

Apart from this, it's been a huge amount of work. I got thrust into a pretty important project to take over someone who had to be moved to another project. And a couple of my other initiatives continue to require a lot of work. But it's all good. This week was busy but definitely one of the most productive and successful weeks I've had in a long time. Hopefully I keep getting weeks like this. :)

MJ's choreographer and dancers with our very own the Cebu inmates

The Cebu inmates have really made an impact in the world as they are joined by Michael Jackson's long-time choreographer Travis Payne and dancers Daniel Celebre and Dres Reid to learn performances from Michael Jackson's 'This is it'.


video made available in youtube by SonyPicturesDVD

Not shaping up the way I wanted it to

The Australian Open started last week and in what, for me, is the most unfortunate result so far, defending champion Rafael Nadal is forced to withdraw due to injury in his quarterfinal match against Andy Murray.

This is bad news (at least to us Nadal fans lol). Rafa was unable to defend his lone Grand Slam title last year and will lose a whole lot of points. It's also been a very long 8 months since he won his last title. His confidence can't be that good after losing 6 times to top 10 players in the last 2 months (prior to December, he had the best H2H record against top 10 players in 2009). And if he's injured this early in the season, it's not a good sign for how things will shape up the rest of the year.

He did put up a good fight against Murray in the first two sets before having to retire though, so there are good signs that he will do well once the ATP tour hits the clay court season. He does have a lot of points to defend between now and May so hopefully he finds his 2008 form sooner rather than later.

Random stuff

So this bit of news is almost a week old, but congratulations to Meryl Streep for winning her 7th Golden Globe award. Her portrayal of Julia Child in the film 'Julie and Julia' got her another trophy for best actress in a comedy or musical. So she now holds the record for the most Golden Globe wins AND nominations. She's also nominated in the Screen Actors Guild awards. Here's hoping she wins that and gets nominated for a 16th Oscar.

*****

Major bummer. This is the single most horrible season of Liverpool since I became a fan more than 8 years ago. No chance for them to win any title this year, and it's only January. They are currently 6th in the Barclays Premier League (although 5th place Man City and 7th place Aston Villa both have a game-in-hand) so they have to fight really hard to get a top 4 finish and secure a spot in the Champions League next season. Really hope they start doing better...

*****

American Idol 9 has started. I can remember how I used to rush home on Wed and Thu nights to make sure I caught it on Starworld. Somehow I've lost a large amount of interest in it, despite the fact that a lot of talent has come out of the last few seasons. It took a while for me to figure out why but I realized that I got turned off due to the fact that now, the judges have a habit of excessively 'pimping' their favorite contestants.

It didn't use to be like that. Or at least not to the degree that it's been done the last 2-3 seasons. It must be the Taylor Hicks effect. Coz in Season 5 and in all seasons before it, there was a lot of favorite-pimping going on but good praise was shared as well to other contestants a lot of the time, and favorites were also criticized when they didn't meet expectations. Now in S5, Taylor was the hands-down winner even if the show really wanted either Christ Daughtry of Katharine McPhee to win. As it turns out, Taylor never really broke into the mainstream and is the first Idol winner not to have sold more than a million albums. After that, the powers that be must have figured that by pimping their favorite contestants, they make sure that someone who they feel is hip and current and can sell lots of records ends up winning.

The problem with this is that now, when the favorites turn in a sub-par performance, they still get praised to the high heavens while other contestants who do incredibly well get a cursory nod. I was getting so annoyed so often that I realized I didn't really want to watch it as often anymore. If I'm home and it's on, I tune in. But it's definitely not in my list of fave shows. And with Simon leaving next season, I'll probably start tuning in even less.

Al Jarreau sings 'Take Five'

Check out this unbelievable live performance of 'Take Five' by jazz legend Al Jarreau.


video uploaded in youtube by user tomgadd

So many things to be utterly impressed with in this performance: from the injections of scatting in the opening spiel, to how the song begins, to Al Jarreau's incredible breath control, phrasing and creativity/inventiveness, to the absolute mad skills of the band.

This is such a difficult song to sing as it requires superior control and as if not satisfied with that, Al increases the degree of difficulty with his scatting. I mean, rather than take a breath during what could be instrumental bits, he scats non-stop. Most people would be out of breath after a minute of doing what he does but he sustains it for more than 6 minutes.

Also, a lot o f times he'd sings at a fairly high key then he'd drop his voice to a really low note then jump seamlessly back up to the higher register (pay attention to the parts from 3:48 to 3:53 and from 4:32 to 4:36). To do this and remain pitch-perfect as Al does is not easy by any means (try it yourself and see). In fact, Al is pitch-perfect throughout the entire song. Geez!

A spectacular performance from a true jazz legend. Doesn't really get much better than this.