Monday 25 February 2013

My night with the stars!!!



Me getting some much-needed kip


Note: I am a weekend presenter on www.radiox.eu in Belgium and last night I was tweeting live from the Oscars!!!


At the time of writing this, to be honest I couldn’t tell you what time it is as I haven’t slept since Saturday night, so in a way the power cut that took Radio X off air on Sunday was a bit of a blessing as I could cat nap during what should have been my show!

If the show had gone ahead – you would have listened to my Oscar predictions and I’m proud to say, apart from one, I was spot on with all my predictions. The only one I got wrong was saying that Steven Spielberg would get best director, when in fact; it went to Ang Lee for ‘Life of Pi’

I have always been a fan of the Oscars – I love movies. I love going to the movies, I get obsessed by some movies and I love to read about the movie stars, so being Radio X’s ‘reporter on the spot’ for the night and tweeting the goings-on made me feel even more of a part of it.

OK, I wasn’t on the red carpet (ours is a sort of mucky brown) but sharing the action with you all was a thrill for me. I even had a tweet after the show from a Radio X listener in LA who said that they hadn’t got a TV and couldn’t watch what was going on, so was thrilled with my updates!

If I had to sum up the 85th Academy Awards in one word, it would be ‘slick’ – everything seemed to go according to plan (apart from poor Jennifer Lawrence who went splat as she climbed the stairs to collect her best actress Oscar) but that aside, I thought the night was a jolly good show.

Seth McFarlane as host was a bit of an unknown quantity for me. I know he’s the man behind ‘Family Guy’ and the film ‘Ted’ but that was it. He was a good-ish host, some of his jokes got a few groans of disbelief from the audience, but his interaction with Captain Kirk from the future and a song about ‘boobs’ seemed to go down well with the star-studded crowd.

It was a night to feel proud to be British as well. Some Brits who took an active role in the show included Daniel Radcliffe doing a song and dance number, Samantha Barks (the lass from the Isle of Man who played Eponine in Les Mis) who took part in the Les Mis number, Adele, who won the Oscar for best original song for ‘Skyfall’ or ‘Skeeeefaaaawl’ as I sing it and the best Brit proud moment of the night was seeing Dame Shirley Bassey getting a standing ovation for singing ‘Goldfinger’ as part of the tribute to the Bond films.

Before the show, I was tweeting about the various outfits that the ladies were wearing and it was the long gown worn by Jennifer Lawrence that resulted in her tripping up the stairs. As an eagle-eyed viewer, I spotted the lovely and extremely talented Hugh Jackman, run from his seat to offer her assistance, but she managed to get to her feet before he got to her (what a guy).

The main Oscar winners went the way I predicted: Best Film was Argo, Best original screenplay was for Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Actress in a supporting role went to Anne Hathaway for Les Mis (I was really thrilled as she was superb and I’ve seen the film 4 times now) Christoph Waltz picked up his second Oscar for actor in a supporting role in Django Unchained, Ang Lee won Best Director, Jennifer Lawrence was best actress for ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ and of course, the one that definitely was the most predicted Oscar win of all time, was for Daniel Day-Lewis for his excellent portrayal as President Lincoln in the Spielberg film ‘Lincoln’ – it was for a pop at Lincoln that Seth McFarlane got a bit of a jeer from the crowd when he said Daniel Day-Lewis wasn’t the first person to get inside the head of President Lincoln – John Wilkes Booth got there first !!

There were treats galore when it came to musical numbers, Adele gave a live performance of Skyfall, Catherine Zeta-Jones recreated her role from Chicago and did the song ‘All That Jazz’, there was, of course, the Les Mis cast doing a mash-up of Les Mis songs (I thought it was a tad ropey in places) but none the less an excellent show of talent – even Russell Crowe stepped up to the mark and held his notes!! – Charlize Theron amazed everyone with her dance routine, Jennifer Hudson sang a song from Dreamgirls (it was ok, but she wailed a bit too much and scared my cats away with the high notes) but apart from Dame Shirley, the other musical high spot of the night was seeing Barbra Streisand sing ‘The Way We Were’ as a tribute to composer Marvin Hamlisch who has died and was featured in the ‘In Memorium’ bit, which always brings a tear to my eye.

On the whole, I thought the night was excellent and what made it even better was that there was not one film that dominated – there was a good spread of Oscar love on the night with all the main films getting at least one award – the biggest winner was Life of Pi with four Oscars.

I really enjoyed ‘being there for you’ last night and am flagging a little bit so I definitely think I’ll sleep tonight.
Oscar didn’t disappoint and now I really feel I should catch the films I didn’t get the chance to see before the big night, like best picture in a foreign language, ‘Amour’ and I haven’t yet seen ‘Lincoln’ as I have heard mixed reviews and at three and a half hours (including the ridiculous amount of ads before the film) it’s a tad too long for me without a tune to hum or a barricade to cling to.

Thanks for your company if you did follow my Tweets last night. I think I should at least try and get a bit of shut eye and I will no doubt mention the Oscars on my shows at the weekend (that’s if I don’t get my power cut off again!) 

Oh, by the way. If you’re wondering why I didn’t include Daniel Day-Lewis in the line-up of successful Brits, it is because he prefers to be known as an ‘Irish’ actor – but we’re still proud of you, Daniel!

Bye for now.

Ali B

Tuesday 22 January 2013

And your point is?


There are some days when I feel like this and when I saw this image on the web, I just had to share it. The expression on the cat's face says it all, he looks totally and utterly peed off and someone is obviously bothering him.

Long time no write

It has been quite a while since I last wrote something and that's because I have been quite busy. Since I last wrote at length, I am now self-employed and although the work is not as regular as I had hoped, it does give me the freedom to pick and choose projects to work on.

I really needed a break from the norm and it was a big leap of faith for me to go it alone. I've not been working for an organisation now for over a year and although I am making a living, I do miss being around people, so I may opt to go back to work again but the right thing needs to pop up to get me interested - I'm way to young to retire and I've got such a lot more that I want to do before I shuffle off this mortal coil!

As you can see from the picture of our garden, we've had some snow. Today was the first time I had ventured out of the house since Saturday and I had to dig my car out of the drive in order to go out this morning to go to the docs to collect my prescription. The roads were very icy and I'm not the most confident of drivers, so I took it easy and was very cautious.

I went to the chemist and because of the snow, I couldn't see the parking bays and ended up guessing where they were by just lining up alongside the cars already parked- how was I to know that I'd parked on the path! Oh well.

I did several other chores before I noticed that the temperature had started to dip and so I decided to go back into the warm and there is where I stayed and will continue to stay until the snow goes. In short, I'm just a wimp. In fact, I really should be in hibernation.

Tomorrow, I'm going to be updating my CV and because of the amount of time I have spent in the house these past few days, I can now add another skill to my attributes - I have a lot of pointless knowledge in my head - Thanks to the show of the same name, I have realised that I have a lot of obscure knowledge that could come in useful when used in the right circumstances.

Onwards and upwards.