It’s the Gadget of the Year according to popular television show, The Gadget Show, it’s the most revolutionary phone ever, and it’s just downright incredible.

So I’ve had my iPhone for a little under five months now, and the first thing I noticed about it is how user friendly it is. It’s ridiculously easy to use, even my five year old cousin mastered it after a few minutes.

The camera is high quality and so is the music and video playback. Apple advertise the iTunes store as having ‘an app for everything’ and personally I can’t argue with that; I’ve been able to find an app for anything I’ve wanted and more. I recommend Facebook, FML, Polarize, and Dictionary.com’s app. They’re all easy to use and cheap, or free. Another thing that’s useful about the iPhone is that you can buy anything you like on the move with 3gs, so if you’re on the train and have a sudden craving for a song or require the use of an app, it’s right there at your fingertips. If you’re short of cash, you can always use YouTube to listen to the song of your choice too.

I know the iPhone has its critics and people like to slag it off, but let’s be honest, the majority of those people don’t have one. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard people saying they wouldn’t want an iPhone because they’ve got a bad rep, but I can guarantee that, if offered one, they wouldn’t hesitate in accepting. Admittedly the back gets scratched easily, but that’s probably my own fault for not investing in a case. However, the touch screen is flawless, as is the messaging service, thanks to the layout similar to instant messaging , and the phone is just as good. I particularly like the sound the phone makes when you press the numbers to call someone, yes I know that’s geeky, get over it.

Now, I’m not exactly a techno-genius, but I know my way around a computer and putting videos from youtube or other video hosting websites is simple too. I also managed to unlock and jailbreak my own iPhone after accidentally bricking it a month after getting it, (clever eh?). That’s how simple the iPhone is to use, all you need is a computer, internet connection, and a reasonably good understanding of google

It’s been an epic year for movies.

From James Cameron’s return to the big screen with “Avatar,” to “Star Trek” re-imagined to the star-studded cast of Rob Marshall’s “Nine,” Hollywood has been going big guns this year.

Meanwhile over in independent film a new star was born — Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe — the abused, overweight teen who grabs your heart and won’t let go in “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.”

And a few foreign language films — “The White Ribbon” and “A Prophet,” in particular — simply blew critics’ socks off.

We canvassed a diverse group of movie experts to find out what films they thought were the best of 2009.

To read more click here.

It is so hard to have one’s head above waters in Nigeria due to the situation the country is in. The strong are finding it hard to survive, and the wise can’t just figure a way to exile. The chances of survival are just trimming smaller day in, day out and when a friend or a neighbor breaks through the odds, all we see is envy from some quarter of the society. It is ironic how some people strive to use every traditional, religious or political norm to bring down their fellow human. Omotola Jolade Ekehinde is one who knows more about these. She has received lots of criticisms as well as applauds. She has been there and has done that through every nook and crannies in the search for a way to survive; and for years, she carries the burden of a young lady inspired to successful despite all odds and she was good to her dream. No matter the measures one uses to grade her, she will not be short of an A-plus. In the movie industry, she has re-written the script for been one of the most successful and prominent actresses of all time and never has she deprived herself of the happiness of been a happily married wife and mother. Despite all of these some quarters in the society still envy her success and will never miss an opportunity to criticize some of her actions. At the height of her movie career, she decided to venture into another angle of entertainment industry which was music to be precise, by publicly making her intentions clear with the release of her debut album containing some hit singles featuring some of Nigeria A-list artiste. Well, her critics decided to have sleepless nights by asking the whole world the nagging question……. Why did she decide to be an artiste? Recently, Omotola rebranded herself by working on her physic and her brand name by releasing her recent photograph to the public. The images are so hot that her fan base increased in thousands, but despite all of these, her critics decide to come up with another nagging question…… why does she want to look so good after having four children? The questions on the streets are getting to much for me to handle knowing fully well that Omotola Jolade Ekehinde is well educated and well experienced to have answers for all, so I decided to rest my case by asking her critics my own question……. Is it wrong to be successful, and why can’t they just leave her, her fans, and family alone to live their life?

This month, the New York Times seems to be rampant with features about women in film. It’s funny that it should seem that way, because in the past month, only two notable articles have been published on the subject. Two very lengthy, in-depth, and important articles, nonetheless.

This all came to my attention when my friend Brittany shared an incredible Jezebel interview with me. The women’s interests blog interviewed Manohla Dargis, the Times co-chief film critic. She had some strong and honest words for Hollywood’s rejection, or even fear (see this Washington Post article by Ann Hornaday) of women’s presence and influence in the film industry.

The Jezebel interview followed Dargis up on her own Times article on the subject, “Women in Film 2009 – At the Box Office but Not Directing.”

Basically, Dargis voices the truth: There’s a severe lack of women in Hollywood, and – in the film business – men are allowed to fail in ways that women are not. Take this quote from Dargis in the Jezebel interview:

Do you think that a woman would have been able to get forty million dollars to make a puppet movie the way that Wes Anderson has been able to make, bringing to bear all the publicity and advertising budget of Fox? After two movies that didn’t make a lot of money? I think this is true for a lot of black filmmakers too – they’re held to a higher standard. And an unfair standard. You can be a male filmmaker and if you’re perceived as a genius – a boy genius or a fully-formed adult genius – that you are allowed to fail in a way that a woman is not allowed to fail.

The first thoughts that went through my mind were something like – Hell yeah! and Wow, I’ve never actually heard someone in the industry say those things before. I think it’s simultaneously crucial and disheartening for a female film expert to come out and say these things. Because now that they’ve been said by someone who knows, it’s suddenly a harsh reality and not just something for us feminists to rant about amongst ourselves.

The day after the Jezebel-Dargis interview, another female Times writer wrote about women in film. Daphne Merkin’s “Can Anybody Make a Movie for Women?” is a seven-page cover article revolving around director Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give). With Meyers’ newest film It’s Complicated (starring Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin), critics seem to be noticing an “aimed towards middle-aged women” trend. They’re either annoyed by it and dismiss it, or they try to delve into it and give Meyers some credit, like Merkin.

Similar to Dargis, one of Merkin’s points is that women are condemned for certain techniques and choices that perhaps a male director would not be. For instance, on the flack Meyers gets for doing numerous takes during filming:

John Burnham, the I.C.M. agent, has a simpler, X-versus-Y-chromosome view of the whole thing. “If Mike Nichols said to do another take,” he crisply notes, “there would never be any issue.”

There’s another point that caught my attention concerning women directors’ aesthetic choices:

Meyers herself is unapologetic about creating sets that look as if they might be photographed in a shelter magazine, most notably the mouthwatering Hamptons house in Something’s Gotta Give, which did actually make an appearance in Architectural Digest. “The fact that there is nice fabric on the chairs is fun,” she says. [and later]…”I like that stuff.”

This reminds me of the general public’s rejection of Sofia Coppola’s extreme ornamental aesthetic in Marie Antoinette. (See my post defending the film from a few months back.) Men make pretty movies all the time. But when a woman does it, it’s suddenly “too feminine,” which automatically reads as: “not real film.” There are some films that we normally “wouldn’t know” were directed by women (see: “didn’t think a woman directed it because there are so few and this one didn’t look that ‘girly’”) – such as American Psycho, for instance. But can the “for women, by women” concept in film ever be taken seriously, without the eye-rolling and the “told ya so’s” of Hollywood and audiences?

Yes, some films directed towards women are awful in terms of “good film.” These, of course, would be the “chick flicks,” though I hate the term. And though I know plenty of men who love Meyers’ Something’s Gotta Give and her other films, she is being dubbed as the director of “postmenopausal chick flicks” (as Merkin says), or middle-aged women’s fairy tale love stories. Dargis says she enjoys Meyers’ films, but doesn’t think they’re necessarily “good as films”, while Merkin applauds the director for at least making middle-aged women be sexy and fall in love in movies. (And really, what other movies really care to set that kind of standard other than Meyers’?)

But until there are more options for women to see themselves reflected on the big screen, most of them will continue to flock to the “chick flicks.” As Dargis profoundly assesses:

There’s a reason that women go to movies like Mamma Mia. It’s a terrible movie… but women are starved for representation of themselves. I go back to Spike Lee and She’s Gotta Have It. I remember going to see it at the Quad in New York, surrounded by a black audience. People are starved for representations of themselves.

Minorities are starved for images they can relate to on the big screen. Images of themselves, which are largely absent in Hollywood. Damn. I had never really looked at it that way before, but it’s so hideously true.

As for women in film, I’m reminded of something my female film history teacher once said (and I apologize for the language): “They call them ‘chick flicks,’ but do you realize that all the other movies are ‘dick flicks’?”

Yes, the rest of them are. But let’s hold out and hope that one day we will be able to count female directors on more than just the fingers of one hand.

We hope nobody! But as we know, a lot of people did!

It is so naive to be thinking, “Why hasn’t President Obama done anything yet for”-fill in the blank.

Everybody knows that critics and haters are not going to like his job performance.

But to all of the supporters and the people who don’t mind giving their president a chance to do what he said he was going to do, then that becomes a problem.

Already it is approaching the president’s one year anniversary in office. 

But a lot of folks are acting like it’s been longer than that. Like he’s been in office for couple years or more.

If these so called critics weren’t complaining about former presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush senior, Reagan, Carter, and who ever then they don’t have any credibility whatsoever to complain about President Obama.

It all sound like a double standard to us. Obama has not change at all.

He was the same way throughout the campaign and he’s trying to govern the same way.

The president is doing what he said he was going to do. True, that certain things are going to take longer.

Some promises are going to be put on the back burner for now.

Also we shouldn’t forget that everything has to go into a process before it can pass.

He has to work with Congress, he can’t do it all by himself, right?

That makes sense. Obama has constantly said that he’s the president for everybody, not only for blacks, gays, liberals, independents, etc.

We all know he would not have gotten elected if he was only a  president for certain groups.

He needed a majority to have gotten elected. People should just give the man time to do what he promised.

If enough time has gone by, and nothing’s change-then if you don’t think he’s done a good job, then don’t vote for him again next term. It’s as simple as that.

At least, let him get through half of his term first, before you start throwing things at him.

It’s just that people are so impatient. They expect everything overnight.

Again we need to remember that it took years for this mess to unravel.

So it’s going to take more years to get out of this deep black hole.

And don’t forget, if you think you can do better, then why don’t you run for president in 2012 against Obama!

It is a hard job being president, you know. It’s not a easy task.

If anybody is surprise or was expecting Obama to become a superhero, then they are seriously misinform, naive, and ignorant!

We are not surprise nor were we expecting anything out of the ordinary, but we are surprise that a lot of folks are complaining now.

So again we have to ask, “Who expected Superman on Obama’s first year in office?”

I just read the American Film Institute’s picks for the best 10 movies of 2010, and I wanted to deliver a eulogy, just to be the first speaker at the funeral for American cinema, since cinema played an important role in my life.

This is a comment on the article linked to below:

“I’m sorry Greg, but you miss an important point. None of the Global warming denialists will see the nuances in Randi’s writing. Consider the case of Noam Chomsky and a holocaust denialist in the early 80s. Chomsky wrote an essay in support of intellectual freedom when the French government planned to ban the book based on its falsehoods and distorted history. Chomsky did not like the idea of state-sanctioned history. He prefers to have a history book fail on its lack of merits rather than state intervention. But he allowed the author to use the essay “whatever way he chooses.” Oops. Epic fail. The holocaust denial book was published and we see “with a forward by Noam Chomsky” on the cover in nice big letters. The creep used the essay to promote the book (not the original intent of the essay nor did the essay support the content of the book).”

via Say it ain’t so, Randi! : Pharyngula.

How out of touch is this guy? He thinks he understands, but obviously he doesn’t. William F. Buckley was 1000x intellectually superior to this dead head.

via Noam Chomsky is a Dead Head ~ Notoriously Conservative.

I was the in-house editor for the Library of America’s recently published collection of Manny Farber’s film writings—not the first time I’ve had the pleasure of working with Robert Polito, the book’s editor and a passionate Farber devotee, and I hope not the last either. (Only J. D. McClatchy has edited more LOA books than Polito, not counting Ross Miller’s general editorship of the Philip Roth set.) Having known little about Farber, I confess, when I set to work on the project, I was soon immersed in the weekly reviews he filed for The New Republic in the 1940s as its movie critic, a post followed by later stints at The Nation and Artforum. Much admired by a coterie of film critics such as Kent Jones, Farber has exerted his considerable influence almost exclusively through the longer essays gathered in Negative Space, a collection that had pretty much been the only way to see what the Farber fuss was about. Reading the microfilm copies of his uncollected weekly dispatches put me in the temporarily privileged position of suddenly knowing more about Farber than many of his ardent fans, at least until Farber on Film was published. Now that the book is out, I think we can regard Farber less as an essayist or theorist—largely the voice of Negative Space—than as a writer mastering the volatile stream of his own perceptions, brought on by a heady immersion in movies of all sorts.

He often gazes at films with an eye to their documentary value, even in unlikely places. This is especially true of the early columns. He ends his piece on Raoul Walsh’s war movie Operation Burma with the send-off that it “tends to seem a little like a boy-scout hike,” but only after he has praised its feel for the everyday work of soldiering: “The movie gets likably excited over the technique of paratrooping and makes its excitement felt.” He regards Pride of the Yankees with an irritated sense of a squandered opportunity, because the filmmakers showed no interest in the “artistic grace and coördinated power that is great ball playing, the thing that makes a lightning throw from short to first as thrilling as Koussevitsky conducting Sibelius.” Farber is interested in more than just the precision of movies to depict specific human activities like sports or making war; he thinks films should preserve, or create, a sense of aliveness, of possibility, that can elude even the best directors. In a largely negative review of Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, he blasts the “theatrical or posed” quality of the action: “When a person or group sits in the boat you feel instinctively that they were arranged there a moment before and aren’t going to do anything that isn’t in the script.” For Farber, films possess the magic to reveal, through and despite their narrative contrivances, something of the way people move and comport themselves in the world beyond. Down to their most mundane gestures: “When its people are going through the motions of every-day living—passing in and out of lobbies, motoring to the beach, asking to speak to someone on the phone—’The Blue Dahlia’ is beautifully accurate in showing their tension, controlled behavior, suspiciousness and the personalities of people who don’t expect to live long or happily. It is perfect on atmosphere. The drive the hero and heroine take to Malibu is gummed with literary chit-chat, but anyone who likes night driving will be pleased with the airiness, the 50-mile-an-hour movement, the lights of roadside drive-ins that flash by, the sense of having been on the road a long time.” 

Taking in Farber’s columns in quick succession is a bracing experience. Because of the sheer number of movies he wrote about from the 1940s to the 1970s, there unfolds in Farber on Film an idiosyncratic history of the medium in that era—tough-minded and pugnacious, at times crabby, yet also exquisitely alert to film’s more ineffable qualities of light, speed, and ambience. Farber seldom says what one expects, and often veers into unexpected byways to remark upon some bit actor’s performance, say, or a singular effect of the soundtrack. Although he is known for championing directors such as Walsh and Val Lewton and, in his most celebrated essay, for pitting the fustian of lumbering, “worthy” films (“White Elephant Art”) against the subterranean workings of less self-consciously refined movies (“Termite Art”), Farber’s aim is rarely one of mere advocacy. The rendering of an overall verdict on a film is never as important as the delivery of his crackling, jangling sensibility, and there are passages when his scumbled prose defies paraphrase, as a poem might. It must be said, too, that at times the vigor of his judgments can seem relentless and alienating. Every reader of Farber on Film will come away quarreling with more than a few of his pronouncements; Farber, to his credit, never aimed to please.

I have always been a fan of Nicholas Cage. And his 2009 release ‘Knowing’, interested me initially only because of his presence. I didn’t find much boom for this movie in the IMDB rating, but I decided to watch it.

The movie began with a flashback. Set 50 years ago, a school has its students prepare notes for a time capsule which is supposed to be opened only 50 years later i.e. 2009. This very  idea came from a nerd looking girl. The girl itself generated a sense of interest and Gothic ambience in me. Few things about her remained unanswered till the end of the movie and this kept the interest in the movie going. The strange look in her eyes, the suspense she created by writing a sequence of numbers for the time capsule instead of a picture as told by the teacher : All in all,the movie had substance in the beginning.

Year 2009 : Introduces Nicholas Cage, an expert mathematician and professor ,who was interested in the magic of numbers as well as a caring father,who loved his son more than anything in this world. When the school opened the time capsule, his son gets the letter written by the girl 50 years ago. Then the movie rolls with Cage deciphering the numbers to date, death count, latitude and longitude of the place of major disasters in 50 years of history. To his interest, the girl predicted in her numbers, all the major disasters between 1959 to 2009. And for 2009, she had the date, but the death toll was scribbled as ‘e’, which is apparently infinity.

The appearance of men from outer space created a fantasy feel to the movie. But still, the D day animation with sun flares melting down the earth was a marvelous work. Also, an air plane crash was filmed with absolute geniuses.

The movie captivated me for its theme, the music that blended well with the theme and the excellent graphics used in the movie, which looked so natural.

The only con I felt was the landing of the children(I havent mentioned entire story, since it’s a worth watch) in a heaven like planet with the tree of knowledge in the centre. I just realized that the aliens left the earth children there to have a new beginning.

A start over….

Best Picture:  The Hurt Locker

Best Director:  Kathryn Bigelow

Best Original Screenplay:  Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)

Best Adapted Screenplay:  Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach (Fanastic Mr. Fox)

Best Actor:  Colin Firth (A Single Man)

Best Actress:  Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

Best Supporting Actor:  Christian McKay (Me and Orson Welles)

Best Supporting Actress:  Mo’Nique (Precious)

Best Animated Feature:  Coraline

Best Foreign Language Film:  You, the Living

Best Documentary:  Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Best Cinematography:  Roger Deakins (A Serious Man)

–

Quick Notes:

Once again, ‘The Hurt Locker’ is voted as the best film of 2009 by another critics group.  It is quite outstanding what this little film from the summer is doing all over the nation during awards season.  Let’s see if the film can keeps its momentum up when it counts in early March.

Mo’Nique appears to be sweeping these critics awards for Best Supporting Actress.  Do not be surprised when she holds the golden statue behind the podium during the Academy Awards.

Colin Firth has emerged as Best Actor over George Clooney.  Like I said before (and most people know), this year is an extremely tight race for Best Actor.  I’ll do a separate post about it later.

And finally, Kathryn Bigelow wins Best Director again.  Will this be the year a female director finally wins the award???

Mo’Nique is about to clean up. Hollyweird loved her portrayal of a lonely, overweight-abusive-black female; go figure:

The early indications are that this awards season is going to be a very busy one for Mo’Nique. The comedian’s terrifying portrayal of…

a mother on the brink in the Oprah Winfrey-produced, independent film Precious, won best supporting actress from both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Boston Society of Film Critics. The critics also agreed on best film of the year: The Hurt Locker, a nerve-rattling drama about an elite army bomb squad operating in Iraq. They both named its director, Kathryn Bigelow, as best director, beating out amongst others, her ex-husband, Avatar director James Cameron.

The Boston critics chose Hurt Locker’s star, Jeremy Renner, as best actor, while the L.A. critics went with seasoned vet Jeff Bridges, playing a boozed-up country singer in Crazy Heart.

For best actress, the Boston critics were charmed by Oscar-perennial Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia, while L.A. went the more obscure route, recognizing Belgium-born Yolande Moreau for her performance as a troubled painter in the French film Séraphine. Showing their taste for villains, both groups of critics picked another delicious bad guy for best supporting actor, tapping Cristoph Waltz’s opportunistic Nazi in Brad Pitt’s Inglourious Basterds.

Reminds us of Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball. Go head Mo!