Happy Birthdays

It won't be all birthday posts as I hopefully continue this, but today is the birthday of not one, not two but at least four prominent people that I absolutely want to take the opportunity to mention, congratulate and write down some thoughts about.

Usually, it's ladies first, but today I'll go gents first, if only because it allows me to save the best for the last spot IMHO. I could also apply a saying we have in Germany, "Alter vor Schönheit", which translates to "age before beauty".

Here we go:

Dennis Quaid (60)

Sixty is a big birthday for sure. It also means he has a big career behind him, and hopefully also some ahead of him. But I won't discuss his whole filmography now, nor will I say anything about his marriage to Meg Ryan in the 90's, or remind anyone how it ended... I won't even state which of his performances is the best. I will only say for which role I will always remember him most, and I may be alone here. This clip is the closest I could find in a rather short time to my favorite quote from the 1989 movie "Great Balls of Fire":

By the way, Dennis Quaid was 35 when he played that role, but Jerry Lee Lewis is actually "only" 21 throughout most of the movie, as that is the age he was when he married Myra. Not that this makes it okay...

Happy Birthday, Russell Crowe

Today is the 50th birthday of Academy Award winning actor Russell Crowe. I have only ever seen him in two movies, actually, Í checked using IMDb, namely "L.A. Confidential" and "Gladiator". I thought he was smart casting in "L.A. Confidential", playing the main character as a then virtually unknown, but his character annoyed me. When he - warning: minor spoiler ahead - slaps Kim Basinger near the end, it was relief to me, I like screamed out: Ha, I knew it, you are just a hypocrite. Everyone with such a big mouth has to be!
Gladiator was good, not great, everything about it, but I remember thinking of Joaquin Phoenix's dark, over-the-top villain as the highlight.

Long story short, I have nothing against him, but I'm hardly a big fan. Still, the occasion of the Big Five-O is too great not to take it as an excuse to post something. A few weeks ago, another blog I follow for quite some time now, "SeriousFilm", posted this: http://seriousfilm.blogspot.de/2014/03/youtube-tuesday-fightin-round-world.html, and it made me want to search for something funny and short out of that particular South Park episode. Including the theme song, and "Russell"'s own singing.

So, way to celebrate a man's birthday, making fun of him, I know, but it's just too funny, I could watch it over and over again. Enjoy, in Russell Crowe's honor:

Belated birthday post for Alyson Hannigan

I actually wanted to post this a lot earlier, but didn't manage to come along. Still the occasion is too great to just skip it. Alyson Hannigan, pictured below, not exactly an unknown, but not really a big star either, who more and more became one of my favorite actresses during the last years, celebrated her 40th birthday on March 24th. If I had posted it on the big day itself, I would have titled the post "To Alyson on her 40th birthday", alluding to a 90's movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer that I have actually never seen, but almost two weeks later this seems ridiculous.

In Memoriam Kurt Cobain 5.4.1994-5.4.2014

20 years ago today, Kurt Cobain died from a self-inflicted gunshot (all conspiracy theories aside) at the age of 27. I should have been a fan back in the day, but unlike my peers I actually didn't even know Nirvana. I was a strange kid. I made up for that in my early twenties, when me and a friend got T-shirts made quoting him with "I hate myself and I want to die". Also stupid. Anyway, to honor Kurt Cobain's legacy on this special day, here is a clip of Nirvana performing one of my favorite songs by them for MTV:

Oscars 2014

I've been thinking about starting to blog for a long time now. As an Oscar fanatic, this year's Oscars are like a now-or-never chance for me to start. So here are my thoughts on this year's show, chronologically (not everything, just "highlights"):

• Anne Hathaway presents Best Supporting Actor. Everyone knows it's gonna be Leto, so let's get him out of the way. AnnE acts weird. Jared Leto seems as though he is on some kind of drugs. His eyes... and it takes him weirdly long to perform whole sentences... He's not just on some harmless drug, and he has not taken just a little bit of it, if you ask me...
• A few awards later, Indiana Jones himself introduces three of the nine Best Picture nominees. He is so bored by all of that...
• An undistinguishable dude that I learned was Channing Tatum introduces... what was that? As far as I understood... winners of some sort of talent competition... whatever!
• The botox victim Kim Novak and Texas T-Rex (thank you to the hilarious posters on www.crazydaysandnights.net for his nickname!) present Best Animated Short and Best Animated Feature.
• Sally Field presents "ordinary heroes", and she is one of them. I don't really dig it. Nice to see Sally, though.
• JGL + Hermione Granger present Best Achievement in Visual Effects. I love Emma, but honestly, she doesn't look too excited the whole night.
• Kate Hudson + Jason Sudeikis present Best Live Action Short + Best Documentary Short. I wouldn't have recognized either of them. A tweet by a semi-famous person I won't name just now, whom I like very much, and who's a hilarious tweeter in general, mislead me to mistake Jason Sudeikis for Ezra Miller...
• Kevin Spacey presents the Governor's Awards.