Friday, June 24, 2016

Friday, June 24, 2016

What the Beck???

Welcome to the family Baby Hudson Scott!!
Great Nephew #7 

 Not too happy for Great Uncle Greg

 How darn cute is he??
So wide eyed and alert with Great Aunt Kim

 Here he is with my sister, Diane (his grandma)
and Uncle Matt and Aunt Heather

 He looks so grown up now!!
This is the beginning of Molly's photos.
She is an amazing photographer!!!!

 Hi Hudson

 He is so precious

 The teacher in Molly makes her use books
with Hudson at an early age!  I love it!

I am so blessed to have such a growing family filled with love 

Bucket List Update

Academy Award Nominated Movies

1969     Midnight Cowboy

starring: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro,              John McGiver

plot –  A Texas guy moves to the Big Apple to become a rich gigolo. It           doesn’t work out, but he befriends a conman whose health is
        rapidly going downhill. He tries to make the end of his life               better.

This movie won the Academy Award for the year. I really would have voted for Hello Dolly or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

1970     Five Easy Pieces

starring: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Sally Struthers, Susan Anspach,            Helena Kallianiotes

plot – A very young Nicholson plays a classical pianist who chooses to        work on an oil field until he is told that his father is ill. He              returns home to find out his Dad had two strokes. Nicholson has        to rethink his life choices.

At first, I didn’t like the film, but it eventually sucked me in to the problems and choices these two men were making. I was anxious to see if they solved their problems.

1972     Sounder

starring: Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks, Taj Mahal, Carmen             Matthews

plot – The Morgans are a close black family who are sharecroppers. The        father steals bread from a neighbor, and is discovered, and sent        to jail. The family, led by Tyson must pull together to keep their        home.

This was a GREAT movie. Tyson is wonderful as the strong woman who is forced to make family decision alone. She is inspiring!!!

1982     Missing

starring: Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea

plot – Based on a true story of the execution of an American Journalist        in the Santiago National Stadium on Sept. 18, 1973. The coup            was organized by the CIA and Chilean military. Charles Horman,        an American, was beaten, tortured, and gunned down. He was a        filmmaker and journalist.

This was a FABULOUS movie.  I don’t remember ever hearing about this, but it was awful. Lemmon and Spacek are excellent as wife and father of Horman. I learned so much from this movie.

1993     In the Name of the Father

starring: Daniel Day Lewis, Pete Postlethwaite, Emma Thompson, John            Lynch, Mark Sheppard, Saffron Burrows

plot – Lewis plays a thief in Belfast in the 1970s. He goes to England          and meets a friend. While they meet, a bomb is set off nearby.          The main character goes back to Belfast and is thought to have          set off the bomb. He goes to jail for 15 years and keeps trying to        clear his name.

This was an intense movie. It was hard to see someone innocent trying so hard to clear his name and continue to be persecuted.

A great movie.

2012     Amour

starring: Jean Louise Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert

plot – A foreign film with subtitles – oh yeah - yuck. This was the love         story of an elderly couple. Anne, the wife, suffers a stroke. She         hates hospitals, and makes George, the husband, promise to keep       her in her home. He takes care of her until he death. A shocking         twist near the end of the movie.

This was a wonderful love story. The twist shocked me.

2012     Beasts of the Southern Wild

starring: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly, Philip                   Lawrence, Gina Montana, Lowell Landes

plot – Wink and her Dad live in the Delta. Her Dad is ill and has been          preparing her for the end of the world. Ice caps melt, prehistoric        animals are out. Wink struggles to find family.

I could never live in a delta. I have grown up in a comfortable home with all of my needs met. Wink’s life is to unpredictable for this girl.

2014     The Imitation Game

starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goude, Rory          Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard.

plot – Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing who is with the British                  intelligence agency. He and a team break an “unbreakable”              German code. The team becomes famous. The authorities                find out Turing is gay, and they give him a choice: prison or            hormonal therapy to “fix” his homosexuality.

This was an issue at the time. Queen Elizabeth pardoned him later, but he committed suicide two years earlier. There were more than 47,000 homosexuals arrested in that time.

2014     The Theory of Everything

starring: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Tom Prior, Sophia Perry, Harry           Lloyd

plot – Set in the 1960’s, it is the story of Stephen Hawking and his wife        after they discover that he has a motor neuron disease, also            known as Lou Gerig’s disease. Stephen studies TIME and breaks        new ground in medicine and science.

This was a great movie. The world lost a brilliant man, and I think Lou Gerig’s disease is awful, and we truly need to find a cure.

2014     Whiplash

starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist, Austin           Stowell, Nate Long, Chris Mulkey

plot – A teen named Andrew Nieman wants to be a great drummer, so          he enrolls in a premier music academy. He is pushed to                  greatness by a brutal, explosive professor, played by J.K.                Simmons.

This was an intense movie!!! I was amazed and frustrated by the brutality by a teacher. Simmons was so verbally and physically abusive that I cringed at his explosions. He did, however, actually really care about Andrew’s ambitions. I love J.K. Simmons from his work on Law and Order SVU as a psychiastrist and The Closer as the Capt.. This was a major change in character type!!!

2014     Boyhood

starring: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Elijah Smith, Ethan Hawke,            Lorelei Linklater

plot – This movie follows a boy from childhood to college.

This was a good movie. It was so interesting to see the path this child took to adulthood.