"Hello, Oompa Loompas of science!"

One good thing about not having an sort of internet (Twitter on my phone does not count, okay?) is that I've been reading quite a lot lately, a pleasure that had been lost between checking e-mails a billion times of day and saving any sort of Sherlock Holmes graphics and Star Trek gifs I can find on Tumblr. Ewan McEwan, I love how you make me drool over your words and Chuck Palahniuk, your brain is a scary yet wonderful place!

Power of concentration, I'm doing it wrong.

I've also managed to run through all the Oscar movies of the year (minus A Single Man because the gods don't want me to bask in the awesomeness that is a Tom Ford/Colin - I love you Mister Darcy - Firth masterpiece) and all the seasons of The Big Bang Theory (Sheldon Cooper, you are insane but I love you).

Surprisingly, my sleeping hours have been slightly chaotic. It's not my fault books get interesting right before bedtime. And it's not my fault they're running Star Trek: The Original Series only at night on tv, I do not have the will to say no to Spock.

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Spare time makes the mind go geekier and geekier apparently and makes me also want to screencap every movie I own. And this post is brought to you just by that!

I watched Nine some time ago and liked it. I didn't love it because it disappointed in certain departments (it lacked cohesiveness and focus, the songs weren't as strong as I was expecting, the characters weren't very into character), because maybe I loved Fellini's 8 1/2 Weeks too much and this "adaptation" just grazed the surface.

But. I am sucker for beautiful images and, like a magpie loves shiny things for their shiny and not their total worth, I fell in love with the visuals of this film. Give me anything resembling Broadway and I melt like a chocolate ice cream in the sun.


Enjoy the beautiful photos and hopefully next time I'll be posting here from my own (my preciousssss....) internet connection and stop stealing it from where I can. Fingers crossed!

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Overture Delle Donne



"Kiss your fevered little brow, Pinch your cheeks till you say ow"
A Call from the Vatican (Penelope Cruz)



"So you little Italian devils, You want to know about love? Saraghina will tell you.
If you want to make a woman happy, you lie on what you’re born with"
Be Italian (Fergie)



"I love the dark handsome guys with their skinny little ties dressing mod looking out of sight
I love to watch them as they cruise with their pointy leather shoes wearing shades in the middle of the nights"
Cinema Italiano (Kate Hudson)



"Now take it right between your thighs, you grabbed for everything, my friend,
but don't you see that in the end there will be nothing left of me?"
Take It All (Marion Cotillard)




Finale

screencaps by me

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Song of the Day:
Florence and the Machine & Dizzy Rascal - You've Got the Love

"But in the years that passed since I saw you last you haven't moved an inch "

No I am not dead. Just internetless for about 3 weeks now, which feels a bit like dead but not quite. It's painful and slightly nerve wrecking but, fingers and toes and whatever-can-be-crossed crossed, this place will be up and running soon (if not by next week, I'm sure I can find some sacrificial goats somewhere around here).

(Also, whoever said letting go - albeit forcefully - of any sort of addiction gets easier as time passes is a big fat liar who needs to be hit over the head with a pillow stuffed with bricks!)

(Did get a lot of reading done. That is a little sort of soothing victory.)

(Still need internet like air though.)

"I've got that lefty curse, where everything is flipped and awkwardly reversed"

In my tiny little world, exam sessions mean: drinking the very first of many coffee cups when the sun is not up yet, considering chocolate and pizza to be highly nutritional options for breakfast and/or lunch and/or diner, improvised dance-a-thons in my sweatpants in front of the mirror to crappy pop music caused by excessive caffeine intake, a drab of despair and a spoonful sleep-deprivation topped up with a semi-marathon of Grey's Anatomy episodes and did I mention the way-too-high-to-be-healthy-but-hey-you-do-as-your-doctor-tells-you-and-not-what-(s)he-does number of coffee cups a day?

So of course it is always a pleasant surprise when there's something out of the ( completely unordinarily) ordinary. That surprise came in the form of an e-mail from the lovely Shira at WOMWorld/Nokia asking me if I wanted to play around with the Nokia N97 for a couple of weeks. As I am a tech geek wrapped up in the layers of fashion fiend, I could not say no!

I love trying out and playing with new gadgets and when I got this little creature (which I have named JouJou Bon) in my possession the first thing I loved about it was the fact that not only does it promise to be perfectly capable to do everything one needs tech-wise, it also cute to boot! Call me superficial but I love when style meets function, it's like having a chocolate center bom-bom all in a pretty wrapper - eye-candy and perfect palate pleaser in one :)

I admit it took me a little time to get used to the menu after coming from my iPhone and the touchscreen responds to pressure and not just a little tap (scrolling through the menu was one of the things that I personally found a bit hard to do without accidentally opening an application) but as soon as I got the hang of it, it felt quite okay. I've always had a soft spot for QWERTY keyboards and I thought it was much easier to use than a normal touchscreen one the grammar mistakes in my text messages seemed to decrease slightly.

It fed my need to stay online 24/7, fast internet browsing and twitter (once I installed my twitter client of choice) at my fingertips. I was also extremely pleased to have PDF reader installed! Magazines were a bit hard to browse (too many photos slowed it down, I think) but I enjoyed quite a couple of good books during study breaks.

And, lest we forget what it was actually suppose to be in the first place, it is a really great, easy to use phone!

Its size compared to my iPhone. It's small but not too small that you can't type. Although I have to admit that most of the guys I showed it too where a bit annoyed at the little buttons. I just think the problem was their big thumbs and not the tiny buttons :))

Photos via phone. Stupid expressions via me.

All in all, I love the N97 mini. It's stylish and lived up to my expectations, even if it did stumble around in certain areas. I'm not sure I'd give up my current phone for it but if in the future I was offered one, I would certainly not pass that opportunity.

Thanks Shira for the opportunity to play around with this little creature. Check out the other reviews from District of Chic, C'est Girl so Chic and the incredibly adorable La Couturier.

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January 21st:
The day I realized that pathology would be, quite ironically, the death of me. Also, the day after I died my hair, making my head proudly representative of the entire spectrum of reds and oranges.

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January 22nd:
The celebration of the very first exam this season took place outside the university, between mountains of snow. I was viciously attacked two to one and could not get away! I blame the hair that makes it impossible for me to hide in this goddamn white scenery. Thankfully, I will always be found if ever caught in an avalanche.


Redheaded orange-head?




Andy looked like a frozen polar bear so she was spared the snowing. Maria and Irina snowball fighting before realizing they'd rather team up and attack me.



Like I said, those two girls are evil, utterly evil I tell you ;)

dress: Kotton, sweater: Mango, tights: Accessorize, belt: Zara, boots: Nine West, coat: Mango.

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Song of the Day: Nelly Furtado & Chris Martin - All Good Things

"Does your depravity know no bounds?"

I am a huge movie freak as you might have noticed from my incessant babble about movies and actors and whatnot. I blame my family for letting me spend countless of hours superglued to the tv screen when I was a kid watching too many cartoons which resulted in a) a sharp sense of sarcasm and b) an understanding of the English language from a very fragile age.

This lead to a new way of annoying said family (screaming random words in English, like mistletoe or dumplings or pumpernickel while running around them in circles was a favorite past time) and the chance to enjoy movies at a fragile age without subtitles being a problem anymore.


There is honestly nothing better than a night at the cinema with a huge bag of popcorn or an evening cuddling up on the bed and pressing play. And of course I did just that last year!
I think I watched so many movies, from the good to the bad, from the amazing to the ones I refuse to admit I ever watched (cough Bruno cough), from the ones I watched countless of times to the ones that started full blown obsessions.

And as always, there are the ones that stood out like chest wound in an emergency room (medical humor, haha. Yeah, funny for just a smidgen of the population, I know) and these are it. I know it's almost February and all of the end of year lists are usually done, well, at the end of the year but I could not let my favorite movies pass unnoticed.

And also, I am the kind of girl that would be late to her very own funeral so this is just typical :))

Without further adieu, in no order whatsoever, my favorite movies of the past year:

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(click all photos for bigger)

The ones that will be watched a couple more (tens of) times:

Inglourious Basterds
Imdb here. Trailer here.

It's a Quentin Tarantino film so of course it had to be in my top ten. I love QT even if he always creeps me out a little and this movie had it all for me: an amazing cast (rounded up by Christoph Waltz who waltzed - haha, get it? - his way right into my heart with one of the best roles of the year!), that typical Tarantino violence that always seems to tiptoe the line between gruesome and cartoonish, a soundtrack so weird that it fit the movie just right (David Bowie anyone?), the equivalent of language eye-candy for the ears, and history as you've never seen it before. And Eli Roth manhandling Nazis with a baseball bat. Perfection!





The Hangover
Imdb here. Trailer here.

Okay, I admit it, I refused to watch this movie at first because I was more than convinced it was going to be another one of those atrocious movie that sell themselves as comedies but which are anything but. And boy, was I wrong! It's a truly funny comedy that makes you wince with laughter and makes you wipe happy tears from your eyes at the end and thank god that, even though you've had your fair share of drunken nights, at least you did not wake up with a missing tooth, a baby and Mike Tyson's tiger in the morning!




Where the Wild Things Are
Imdb here. Trailer here.

I remember reading the book as a kid and loving it. And even though I was skeptical at first, this really did turn out to be a beautiful portrayal of childhood and of just where a child's imagination and thirst for knowing "what is right?" can take him. And even if the movie did not hit it with you, the soundtrack is really just as quirky as the images themselves.




(500) Days of Summer
Imdb here. Trailer here.

This is truly not a love story. This is a story about love, true as it really is, happy and painful and raw and real and not always with a perfect ending. Joseph-Gordon Levitt and Zooey Dechantel click perfectly in this movie that feels like a music video at times, sharp and still funny. It goes back and forth, and forth and back again, because when love breaks our hearts and we're asked to 'start from the beginning' do we ever do? No, we just tell it how it springs to mind. To me this has been the most sincere love story portrayed on film.




An Education
Imdb here. Trailer here.

And speaking of love story and romances... this is not one either. True, it's a story about a relationship between a 35 year old man and a 16 year old girl, but the true romance is between her and herself. At 16, when the whole world is lying on your feet and someone offers you Paris and freedom, you can't say no. I loved this movie because it felt so close to my heart and deem it a must watch for anyone!




Sherlock Holmes
Imdb here. Trailer here.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Honestly, need I say more? A Holmes like you've never seen him before and a Watson that is a true revelation in a movie that kicks ass and still holds (mostly) true to the original books. If you're a classic Holmes fan I am sure this will bug you because there are times when it feels more like a Die Hard than a British detective story but the characters are so charming and witty and engaging, and the relationship between them feels so genuine that you just cannot not fall in love.





The Boat that Rocked:
Imdb here. Trailer here.

Rock'n'Roll? Check. Cast featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighty, Nick Frost, Rhys Ifans and the cutie pie Tom Sturridge? Check. Feather hats and velvet blazers? Check. And did I meantion real, honest to god, lets-remember-the-good-old-times rock'n'roll when music was music and not Pepsi commercial contracts and haute couture wanna-be's? I dare you to watch this movie and not feel like shimmying around the house with a feather hat and David Bowie in the background. It's such a seriously fun feel-good movie that vibrates with music all around.




Avatar
Imdb here. Trailer here.

I think a good movie should be the kind of experience that sends shivers down your spine, making you gasp and tear up and smile until your face hurts; make you watch with wide eyes eyes glued to the screen and blows your mind to little bits, simply. Avatar is that kind of movie, a movie that will have you talking about it as the first of its kind, maybe just like the first Star Wars did so many years ago. It's really a visual and visceral experience, completely overwhelming, and entertainment (and isn't it the entertainment business after all?) at it's best.




Star Trek
Imdb here. Trailer here.

As a die hard Trekkie, I know I will always be subjective about this movie but it freaking rocked. As I mentioned before. A billion more viewings later, and I still lie impressed in my chair when McCoy warns people that "Dammit man, I'm a doctor not a ..." or when Spock drawls "Interesting." or Kirk gets his ass kicked by every character in the movie. It is an impressive feat to make the original movie proud, but this i just what this does.

By the way, anyone up for a Star Trek drinking game?




Up
Imdb here. Trailer here.

This was the kind of story that seriously tickled the kid in me. How many times have you not wished to take a bunch of balloons and fly away to places unknown? God knows I've spent too many days as a kid being the next great explorer in my mind. It also an adorable story about friendship (between a young, bouncy kid and a grumpy old man), about talking dogs, about dreams, about birds named Kevin. It made me tear up a couple of times, and laugh till my sides hurt most of the time. Go watch it and tell me you don't feel like buying balloons afterward!





Honorable Mentions:

The Soloist
(trailer here)
The performances are the things that got me here. Brilliant acting from both actors.


Inkheart
(trailer here)
I don't think I've ever really grown up. Why else would I be this attracted to any movie that plays with imagination and stories and magic?


I Love You Man
(trailer here)
I love funny comedies that are actually funny and they are a rarity these days (Meet the Spartans, anyone? Ugh!).


Easy Virtue
(trailer here)
I admit it, this one had me at the British accents, Colin Firth and Ben Barnes.


District 9
(trailer here)
I loved this, from the plot (best alien 'invasion' plot ever) to the main actor who was not even a real actor yet did a marvelous job!


Adventureland
(trailer here)
A small, cute, coming-of-age movie that I felt wasn't as full of teen flick cliche's as most of the movies out there. Really enjoyed it and the acting was absolutely great!



Other Honorable Mentions
(I was too lazy too screencap the trailers anymore but that does not mean I loved them any less!)






(Keep your eye open for a Doctor Parnassus post in the near future. Brilliant movie, it's a Terry Gilliam insane ride. It also proves that Heath's death was a big loss for movies out there because he shines in that role, blowing everyone out of the water!)

(all screen captures by me from Apple.com trailers. All posters from around the internet)

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Your turn!
Did you suffer through Bruno as much as me? Should Captain Fine - I mean Kirk follow Mr Shattner's lead and have his shirt ripped off more in the new Star Trek? Can Diane Kruger be any more awesome? Do you agree that Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are the most perfect pairing since sliced bread and toasters?

And oh yeah: What were your favorite movies of 2009?


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Video of the Day:
Sherlock Holmes music video set to Ke$a's Tik Tok
(A-MAZING :D)