Monday Links and Other Stuff #45 + Awards and Important Announcement

I'm not watching anything tonight...but here's my important announcement:

Tomorrow morning I will be jetting off to Japan for 11 days, so naturally, I won't be around. I am going to Nagoya for seven days, as we are going to our sister school over there, and then we will be going to Tokyo for three days for free time. Very exciting stuff! While I'm away I will miss three big awards season things: the Golden Globes, the BAFTA nominations and of course, the Oscar nominations which decided they'd be very early for some stupid reason. I won't be back until the 19th, so the Oscars will be old news by then, but I will be posting my thoughts. I won't be covering the Golden Globes, and I may cover the BAFTA noms (even though they have zilch power now, they may still be interesting). Hopefully y'all will still be around by then!

Another important announcement:
I passed 500,000 hits today, so yay!

Video of the week:

Because this is hilarious - I want the rapping part to be my ringtone.

Awards...

Around the past couple of weeks, there have been a couple of awards going around. Since you've already seen them around, I won't bother with passing it on, as everyone has one now. If you're in my links list below, and you haven't been nominated, say that I gave you one. Here's the rules to the 'Blog of the Year Award' that I received from The Cinematic Spectacle and Defiant Success:

• Select the blog(s) you think deserve the "Blog of the Year 2012" Award.
• Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen - there's no minimum or maximum number of blogs required - and "present" them with their award.
• Please include a link back to this page and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)
• Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the "rules" with them You can now also join our Facebook group – click "like" on this page "Blog of the Year 2012" Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience
• As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars.

Second is the Versatile Blogger award which I received from The Cinematic Spectacle, Defiant Success, Let's Be Splendid About This, Aziza's Picks, and the Very Inspiring Blogger award I received from Film Sloth. For each of them, I have to post seven facts about myself:

• I cannot stop listening to Lana Del Rey's album Born to Die: The Paradise Edition.
• Hopefully on the 25th of January I'm going to see Django Unchained with my friends - going to a movie on this day has become a bit of a tradition, as in 2011 we saw The King's Speech on this day, and last year we saw War Horse. 
• I once did the make-up for the town's production of Les Miserables, so this musical is very familiar to me. 
• I'm super excited to go on the plane tomorrow - like it is pretty much the thing I'm the most excited for.
• I am making my calendar this year myself. This month, I made a page dedicated to Jessica Chastain, next month's one is Oscar themed. I haven't done the rest, though.
• I really wanna go to India to do some volunteer work, since that it is where my Grandma used to live, and because I like helping people.
• Since I'll probably be buying an iPhone while I'm away, I'm selling my iPod to my friend for an easy price: Looper on Blu-Ray. I'm fairly sure that movies make me happier than actual money.

Blog of the Month...

With a new month comes a new blog on the sidebar, and this month, the honour goes to Josh at The Cinematic Spectacle. For some good Oscar coverage, and also plenty of going 'back in the day', this is the site where you wanna be. There's so much variety!

Links...

Alex does a retrospective on the brilliant career of Quentin Tarantino - and it would seem that Alex has a lot of love for the guy. 

Andrew tries to navigate the immensely difficult Best Supporting Actor race this year, and puts in a vote for Ewan McGregor for The Impossible. Anything could happen in that category, I tell ya.

One movie which I think is immensely underrated is Vamps, which is actually quite a sweet little comedy (plus it has Dan Stevens being cute). Alex (Film Forager) quite liked it too. 

Our blog of the month has a brilliant list of the 10 things we need to know before the Oscar noms. Seems like we have another awesome year on our hands. 

Dan Heaton checks out Black Swan, which gave me a bit of nostalgia since I was all crazy over it this time two years ago. 

SDG has listed his 20 favourite 'new-to-me' movies of the year - and his number one is awesomely awesome.

At the end of last year (haha, I love saying that), Ryan listed his favourite shots from 2012. We were blessed with cinematic beauty this year. 

Everyone has been unveiling their top films of 2012, but I must point out Tyler's list, which has a great, eclectic mix. Plus, Detachment was an amazing film. 

And in the new year we got a couple of new mega-sites: Your Face and Movie Mezzanine. Check 'em out!

Final word:
Who would you most like to see in the Best Supporting Actor race this year?