we're bad at this

Let me just say, the Oscars this year were stupid. And it’s not just about Sandra Bullock getting the Best Actress Award while Meryl Streep was also nominated, or the Hurt Locker vs. Avatar battle, there are a lot of things that I disagree with (not like somebody cares, I’m not a member of this stupid Academy). One of the biggest misunderstandings this year for me is the Best Animated Feature Film Award. The Oscar went to Up, of course, because we aaaaall loove Pixar and what they can do. But the fact is that they do the same thing every year and it might be great, but it’s booooring. I think that the Academy usually doesn’t look very hard for good animations. They take something from Disney, something from DreamWorks and sometimes something a little bit different just for a change (like a Ghibli film or Persepolis).

Let’s go back a little. In 2009 they gave an Oscar to Wall-E and in 2008 to Ratatouill-E. And while I can somehow understand the former, the latter is a no no. Maybe we should consider the fact that the competition wasn’t good enough (although Surf’s Up was better that the cooking rat in my opinion). But this year.. this year they had Coraline, they had Fantastic Mr. Fox (forget about the Frog, I don’t know why it was even nominated)! But most of all they had The Secret of Kells.

Don’t get me wrong. Up was not a bad movie, but if the Academy was looking for something new, beautiful and you know .. worthy, they should have chosen The Secret of Kells. I know that a lot of people wont agree, because Up is sooooooo great (forgive my sarcasm), and I also think that the story in The Secret of Kells could have been told better, but I stand by what I’ve said. And even if it was not nominated and I never had the pleasure of seeing it and considering it the better choice, this stupid Academy still got Coraline! What were they thinking..

С този пост искам да честитя 3ти март на всички българи, затова и ще го напиша на български (не само защото не ми се занимава да го пиша на английски). Признавам си, че съм една от тези, които дълго време са отбелязвали днешния ден като почивен, а не толкова като национален празник. Нека оставим настрана това, че за мен всеки ден тук е неработен и един вид не ми пука дали ще спестя бачкането или не.

Заточването в чужбина може да действа на човек по различни начини, като в моя случай, помага да осъзная колко е хубаво да имам дом, където винаги мога да се прибера, място, към което винаги ме тегли сърцето. Разбира се, понякога се случва човек да избяга от родината си и да намери своето място в другия край на света, аз не бих винила и тези хора. Но за мен България е там, където обичам да бъда, не защото е неповторима или защото хората са безгрешни, мили и безгрижни, а защото си е наша. И тъй като не искам да навлизам в дълбоките води на деликатните въпроси, които не ме влекат, ще спра тук.

В крайна сметка загърбете всички подробности и празнувайте днешния ден, независимо къде сте. Да ни е честит!

You know how you’re ready to do everything before an exam, everything except actually preparing for it? Well yesterday I succeeded to get Jazz Jack Rabbit running on my Mac, not the second or the third, but the first Jazz that usually runs on MS-DOS. The thing that amazed me was that Google can answer almost all your questions (except this thing with Soul Reaver and Windows Vista); in this case something about dosbox and, voila, some slow guy gives you a tutorial on youtube seconds later.

Anyway. Jazz Jack Rabbit was the first game with some sort of story that I played when I was little (Tetris doesn’t count) and even now it’s still so amazing! The music is so disco and the graphics are very 2D and everything. If you have a favourite OLD game like this you’ll know what I mean when you try Dosbox after you finish reading this post. How to use it? Ask Google.

And by the way my editor has a birthday today so we wish him sugar, spice and everything nice, because he’s great

I’ve read some comments about the movie Keith I want to write about now. People say that young girls shouldn’t watch it because they might get it wrong, they can give up their studies, future and their lives just because of something as unimportant as .. love. Put like this the idea really sounds stupid but there’s more to it than that. In this movie the situation is not just some illogical teenager love-story (we have a lot of these, like Twilight), it’s more about friendship and kindness.

What I like the most about this movie is that it has a different approach. For example we have a similar story in A Walk to Remember, but parents would like it better because the boy is exposed to very good influence, he accomplishes most of his dreams and becomes a doctor or something. On the contrary in the story of Keith the girl Natalie realizes that her dreams are not the same as her parents’ dreams for her. Which might be confusing.

Well my parents always tell me that the most important thing is to be happy. The movie doesn’t have a happy ending but it shows that it’s not always the “right” thing that can help you find yourself. Sometimes it can be something else which everybody else considers as “wrong”. But we should be careful with this, it’s a thin ice and we don’t want to end up like Bella, right?

When I was still in Germany two weeks ago I heard the first album by Jerihon “New Day”. Well it’s not something I’m going to listen to every night before I go to sleep but I quite like some of the songs. Like Last Victory and Everyday for example. But I couldn’t help but notice the lack of imagination when it comes to the names of their songs. I mean, what’s with the word “day”? Seriously.

So anyway, names are not important when it comes to quality music. I love the guitars (not only because I know the guy with the guitars and I sympathize with everything he does) and the vocals although somebody told me it would be better if only one person sings.. I don’t know about that. I had the pleasure to see and hear Jerihon live some years ago and they were great. And
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if you have some free time and you like good rock ‘n’ roll why not give them a try? You can also go and see them at Rock Club Angel Heart next Friday at 22:00!
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