Catherine's Movie Blog

I swear that this will be the last post I make about the Oscars. With the Oscars happening this past Sunday, there were plenty of surprises, outrage, and celebration over the winners. I was pleasantly surprised with some of the winners, for example Olivia Colman. I for sure thought that Glenn Close would win for Best Actress because she had won all of the other awards leading up to the Oscars. In my opinion, it was the biggest upset of the night. Watching Colman give her speech was awesome. She was so real and authentic up on the stage and it has made me want to see The Favourite even more than I already had before. I was happy to see Black Panther get a lot of love at the Oscars from Best Costume Design to Original Score and Best Production Design. The speeches for the women behind the costume design and production of Black Panther were captivating. It was simplistic and packed a punch and that is something that an Oscar speech should be. I was happy to see the song "Shallow...

With the Oscars coming up on Sunday, I figured I would make my predictions and see if I come anywhere close to making the right prediction. With all the mess leading up to Sunday, I am interested to see how the show goes. Here is my list of predictions for the big categories at the Oscars. Best Picture : I am going out on a limb and saying Roma will win Best Picture. The movie was stunning to look at and had a substantial story that might get some love for the Academy. I could also see A Star is Born getting Best Picture too so it will be interesting to see which movie comes away with the biggest award of the night. Actor in a Leading Role : The only actor I have seen from the nominees is Bradley Cooper from A Star is Born and I think his performance is excellent and had many layers to his character. Lady Gaga's performance elevated his own to a different level but with all that, I don't think he'll win. I think Rami Malek will win the Oscar for his performance in Bo...

With the Oscars coming up very soon, the Academy recently said that they wanted to condense the show to three hours and with that, cut out four awards from being presented live and instead, present those four awards during the commercial break or after the show is over. With that, their speeches will be cut out as well. The four awards that will be cut are for Cinematography, Film Editing, Hair and Makeup, and Live Action Short Film. To the Academy, it will be able to run the show in an efficient manner and give everyone an "appropriate amount of screen time." What is the Academy thinking with cutting these four awards out from the live broadcast? They must be losing their minds or something because this is just unacceptable. Every part of a movie should be celebrated and by taking that away, it is showing that certain parts of a film are more important than others when in fact, all of the Oscar-nominated categories are pieces of a puzzle that come together to create a work...

After watching the movie Bicycle Thieves fairly recently, it had me thinking about the importance of foreign films as a whole. Foreign films are important to the film industry because it allows filmmakers from other countries to have their content be shown in the United States as well as globally. It allows filmmakers to show issues that are important to them. They can show what is happening currently or something that happened many years ago. It allows for creative freedom. For example, in Bicycle Thieves , the director portrays Italy post WWII through the eyes of poverty stricken people looking for any kind of work to support themselves and their families. Another example would be the film City of God . The director shows teenagers living through a drug war from the '60s into the '80s in Brazil. If it were not for these two directors putting these stories out there, these stories would not be seen by others and be lost in the ashes. I am sure there are more examples of this ...

With taking a break from the awards season, I thought it would be fun to let you guys know some of my top ten favorite films of all time. These movies may not be ones that the critics love but they have made an impact on me growing up. All these films have special memories attached to them as my parents showed me most of these movies.  There is no special ranking with these but have shaped me into the person I am today. The first movie in my top ten is My Cousin Vinny . The first time I saw this film was my sophomore year of high school. My civics teacher thought this film was somewhat accurate to a legitimate court case. He was a weird teacher. Nonetheless, I loved the humor and how quotable this was. My mom then showed me the R rated version and I have seen it so many times since then. The amount of times my mom and I quote this movie is ridiculous. The second movie in my top ten is A League of Their Own. I don't really remember the first time I watched this movie but my mom m...