With the Academy Awards just a few hours from now, I’ll make some last-minute predictions. Having seen all movies nominated for the “Best Picture” award I have to say that 2009 brought some very good movies! Anyway, here’s my list (it’s a list of who I think will win, not whom I would vote for):

• Best Picture: Avatar – I don’t think Avatar deserves the best pictures award, but it will most likely win it. Beating the long-time “Titanic” Box Office revenues (both domestically and internationally), investing huge money and unprecedented 3D effects are reasons for which I think it will win the Best Picture award. Unfortunately, with 9 other movies nominated in this category I don’t think Avatar deserves the Oscar, which, in my opinion, should go to “The Hurt Locker”
• Actor: Jeremy Renner (“The Hurt Locker”) – he did a great job in the movie and George Clooney and Morgan Freeman already received the statue (Freeman for “Million Dollar Baby” and Clooney for “Syriana”).
• Actress: Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”) – in my opinion this will be a political decision, but, as it rarely happens, a very decent one. Bullock did a fantastic job in “The Blind Side”. Why I’m saying it’s political is because Bullock was (well… is) America’s sweetheart but she never had the opportunity to play in a movie the Academy would consider worthy of the Award. This time she had her opportunity and most definitely did not blow it!
• Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) – I’m not so sure about this one, but, wow, didn’t he do a great job in this movie? I remember everyone being excited about Waltz’s performance and he might just get the Oscar for that.
• Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique (“Precious”) – very good acting and the Academy actually likes to award first-time or second-time roles in the supporting actor / actress categories.
• Director: Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”) – why? Because Avatar is taking the Best Picture award. And because I really Avatar won’t take it.
• Animated Feature: Up – nah, come on. That was easy.
• Original Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds
• Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air
• And most of the technical ones go to “Avatar”… Yeah, that was easy as well.

Now… Let’s wait a few hours and see how much I got right . Enjoy watching the Academy Awards!

A friend of mine gave me a link to this amazing blog about a train trip from Vienna to Pyongyang. No, you are not mistaken – we’re talking North Korea! Going on a trip to North Korea is difficult in itself (you can only take part in guided tourist trips and your every move is closely watched), but what these guys did was pretty extreme… North Korea borders three countries – South Korea, China and Russia. It’s Russian border is just a couple of kilometers wide and has not been accessed by tourists for many years.

Yet, these two creative fellows (an Austrian and a Swiss) decided to get all the paperwork and then, instead of following the normal procedure, they took the Transsiberian train and got to the Russian-North Korean border. They managed to pass and for about 36 hours had absolute “freedom” – they were in North Korea without an official guide! It’s a great read and the pictures are truly eye opening.

You can learn more here: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ or you can go directly to the TRAVELOGUE, which in detail covers their whole adventure.

Since I went to the Batman premiere a minute after midnight on the 18th of July I’ve been struggling with a thought of writing a post about the movie. I would definitely write a positive review. And since I’m not good at writing reviews and most of “The Dark Knight”‘s reviews are concluding that the movie is fantastic, why would I bother? So I came up with a different idea! I decided to predict how much money will the new movie earn.
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So… As many of you know I became a fan of running – quite recently to be honest. I’m usually running with the Nike+ system, which I found incredibly motivating. Recently, Nike came up with an idea of gathering one million people around the world for a global race. They called the “Nike+ Human Race” and it’s held in 25 countries around the globe – including Warsaw, New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Vancouver and more.
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