Blog: THEME FOR GREAT CITIES

Can Oscar resist a Gallic beauty in a tux? I hope not. It's beginning to look a lot like it will be yet another predictable year at the Oscars. Although the nominations won't be announced until Tuesday, January 24, a clear pattern has already emerged. After the January 13 Broadcast Film Critics Association's Critics Choice Awards and the Hollywood Foreign Press's Golden Globe Awards two days later, the 2012 Oscar frontrunners are all but set in stone. Sound familiar? It should. In recent years, there's been little [...]

WTF?! Oh my Victor Lord Jr.! He's alive! Although I would give the Friday the 13th One Life to Live series finale an A for almost awesome (the final frame of Victor Lord Jr. was a a truly WTF moment that I can't imagine anyone saw coming and the perfect cap to nearly 44 years of Friday cliffhangers), that doesn't mean there weren't enough gaping holes for me to fit my entire body through and some true head scratchers. Here are 10 of them. 1. If Todd [...]

I recently received an email from my brother Alexi, who I believe had sent it to everyone in his address book, with a link to an article titled "30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself." In the 15 seconds it took me to read the title and save the email (which I'm glad I did), three thoughts ran through my head. The first one: Thank God, Facebook has more or less done away with "forwards." Remember "forwards," those annoying emails that we all used to get from friends (always the same ones) who seemed to [...]

"But he's been pretty much yellow And I've been kinda blue But all I can see is Red, red, red, red, red now What am I gonna do?" -- "Red Red Red," Fiona Apple The color red. My God, there was so much of it in Drive ! I've really got to learn how to stomach red red red, particularly when it's gushing forth from human bodies on movie and TV screens. For weeks, reviews that promised there'd be lots of that in [...]

The Best Thing About Drive (Besides Ryan Gosling) I've really got to learn to handle the sight of blood. Reviews that promised that there'd be lots of it in Drive for weeks stopped me from putting my screener into the DVD player. While watching it was too unsettling an experience to put it on my Top 10 of 2011 list, watching it was worth the visual pain. (ouch!) If music is a lady, then AB's score deserves a BSA nomination in addition to the Best Original Score one that it probably won't get. [...]

Today I've got men on my mind. Now get yours out of the gutter. All of them are fully clothed -- and singing. Nearly three months ago, I wrote a post titled "Five Great Songs By Five Great Female Singers That Should Have Gone to No. 1," and doesn't it figure? Musically speaking, I'm always dwelling on the creative and performing virtues of the fairer sex. I guess I'm gay like that. There must be some microchip hidden in the brains of gay men that makes us respond more readily to women -- female pop stars, actresses, style [...]

You'd better sit down, kids. I'm about to make a declaration that's certain to leave my dear readers gasping or shouting "Blasphemy!" in unison at the computer screen. Had Meryl Streep won her third Academy Award way back when she truly deserved to (for 2002's Adaptation , or 2006's The Devil Wears Prada ), she might not even be in the Oscar discussion for The Iron Lady , the new biopic in which she steps into the heels and wears the bouffant hairdo of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. [...]

Where do you see yourself in five years? If ever there was a contender for the world's most annoying question, that would have to be it. It's one of those cliche job-interview questions, that, thankfully, I've never been asked. In the past, if I had been, I probably would have come up with some canned response that would have made me look confident yet humble, ambitious but not ruthless. You know, the sort of answer that would have gotten me the job. That's not to say I was living without a game plan. For [...]

Anyone who has known me for more than a hot second, or who has read the "Info" page of my Facebook profile, is probably aware that, like Oprah Winfrey, my all-time favorite quote by someone else is from the iconic American writer Maya Angelou: "The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them." I've also seen it written, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them," but the gist is still the same: Stop! Look, listen and learn. I also like "People don't change, they just get [...]

My mama didn't raise no fools. Well, maybe she did (if you're reading this, Mom, just kidding), but I wasn't one of them. I wouldn't jump off a bridge just because everyone else was doing it. I mean, who would? Okay, I know there are some people out there who are born followers, and would do ridiculous things like jump from a highly elevated point just because their friends are, but I'm not one of them. Still, Richard Ashcroft -- formerly of the Verve, sometimes solo, and recently of RPA & The United Nations [...]

You'd think that starring as J. Edgar Hoover, one of the most controversial men of the 20th century, in J. Edgar would be Leonardo DiCaprio's ticket to the podium on Oscar night. Right? Wrong. Probably not with Brad Pitt ( Moneyball ) and George Clooney ( The Descendants ) in the running. And definitely not with Meryl Streep expected to finally bring home the gold for the third time for playing former British Prime Minister [...]

I have this thing about strangers. I don't like to get too close to them. I've never been much of a hand holder, and I always hated kissing people I'd just met on the cheek in Argentina (even a hand shake, in my book, is pushing it), so why would I want random people regularly invading my personal space? Occasionally, I go a little extreme, and perhaps a tad bonkers, with my aversion to the nearness of strangers. If I'm walking down the street, and I feel someone walking too closely behind me, I'll sometimes stop and [...]

Until a few hours ago, it had been six months since I last stood on Melbourne soil, and now that I'm back, it feels just like we never said goodbye. The third miracle of 2012? Not exactly. I had no doubt that my love affair with Melbourne would pick up right where it left off. In fact, I think I might be even more enamored of Melbourne the third time around. Here's why. 1. Immigration Immigration Immigration After location location location (and mine, at 572 St. Kilda Road, is exactly what it [...]

Two days, two miracles! We're only two days into 2012, and already this feels like another one, a second unexpected miracle. As you might recall from my previous post (and if not, you can read it here ), my first one was waking up solo on New Year's Day. Now, for the first time ever, I actually want to see a movie starring Robert Pattinson. I'm one of the lucky few who has never seen a Twilight film, and I have no desire to ever do so. Despite a short-lived passing interest in [...]

Today most of last night is a bit of a blur. That will happen the day after a New Year's Eve spent accepting one Jack and coke after another from fellow revelers when you'd already reached your limit about an hour earlier. This much I know for sure: 1) All night, I only saw one single firework (an homage to Katy Perry's hit?). 2) Unlike in New York City, Buenos Aires, London, Bogota and Cordoba, Argentina (all places where I've spent New Year's Eves in the past 10 years), it was ridiculously easy to get a taxi. [...]

It's New Year's Eve in Bangkok, and I can still remember the last one, in Buenos Aires, like it was yesterday. In a way, I can't believe that it wasn't. Each year seems to go by more swiftly than the one before it! Last New Year's Eve's celebration began with a small get-together at the apartment of my friend Cara and ended with the last guy of note that I can remember meeting in Buenos Aires. I woke up on January 1 thinking that although, this would not be the beginning of [...]

1. She taught me that you can't fight the feelings. And you can't run from love either. In 1993's Three Colors: Blue , my favorite movie of all-time, after the death of her husband and young daughter in a horrific car accident, Binoche's character Julie retreats from from life. Love, she decides, is a trap. The only way to survive is to not feeling anything. Try as she might -- and she does make a valiant effort -- she finds that something, or someone, keeps pulling her back to life. Ultimately, she realizes that life without [...]

The mark of a truly great movie is that it stays with you long after the final credits roll. And no 2011 film that I've seen so far has had such a tight grip on me for so long after the fact as Melancholia , which I hold in even higher regard now than I did while I was watching it. At this rate, it just might end up being my favorite movie of the year, and not just because Wagner, my favorite composer, figures so prominently on the soundtrack. In an interesting twist, The [...]

I recently had an interesting conversation with Keith, a young man from Melbourne who ran a bold idea by me: People who travel, he declared, are usually running away from something, whether they know it or not. I carefully considered his words. They sounded so familiar. A couple of weeks ago, my friends Nicholle and Noelle were visiting me in Bangkok, and Noelle told me about a conversation the sisters had had on the flight from Koh Samui to Bangkok. "Why does Jeremy travel so much?" Noelle asked Nicholle, who replied, "I think that [...]

1. Here we go again! Yet another movie touching on how parenting techniques might influence children to do terrible things, and how difficult it is for parents to really know their kids and what they are capable of doing. Fortunately, unlike in Beautiful Boy and We Need to Talk About Kevin , no lives are lost in Carnage , just a couple of teeth. It does, however, make me feel a little relieved to be childless and unlikely to be held responsible for anyone's actions but my own. 2. I wish [...]