The 2013 Oscars

Truth be told, I hadn't thought much about what I was going to write my blog post on today, I even forgot it was due until just now. I was trying to figure out what to write it on when it hit me. I am currently sitting on my couch watching the Oscars, one of my favorite things to watch, so why not write about them.

The Oscars shine a brilliant light on all the fantastic films of the past year and gives recognition to everyone who helped make them. Seth Macfarlene, creator of Family Guy and director of Ted, is hosting this year's Oscars. He started out with lots of jokes and some slightly offensive songs. After that star after star came out to introduce nominee's and winners.

So far, they have given out only a couple awards. Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor. Brave won best feature length animated movie. Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi, won best cinematography. Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina, won best costume designer. Amour won best foreign language film. Paperman, by John Kahrs, won best short animated film and Inocente won best short documentary. The winner of best full length documentary went Searching for Sugarman.

In between a couple of nominations, there have been short skits and performances. To show great music from the past decade, Jennifer Hudson performed a song from Dream Girls, the Les Mis cast came out and sang snippets from their film, and All That Jazz was performed.

With much more excitement to come, the Oscars are just heating up and everyone should tune in!

30 Hour Famine

 Around one million people go hungry everyday. Around one billion children die every year due to hunger. Hunger is a huge issue and anyone can do little things to help.

Last weekend, I participated in a 30 hour famine with my church's youth group for the organization World Vision. From Friday, Feb. 1st 6pm to Sunday Feb. 3rd 12am, we didn't eat anything. We did this in order to raise awareness and sympathy for the millions of people, many being children, who go without food on a daily basis.

It was extremely hard to not eat for that long. It made us cranky, tired, confused, and our stomachs hurt. We live in a society where, unless we are below the poverty line, we can almost always get food. Even during the famine, we knew we could simply break our fast by walking into the kitchen and grabbing something to eat. We also knew, that after 30 hours, we could eat again. Many people and children, don't know when the next time they are going to eat will be.

We met up at our church at 5pm that Friday, and had our last feast together, we then stopped eating at 6pm and went home. The next day, we arrived back at our church at 3pm and stayed the night there. We had guest speakers who work to rid the world of hunger come and talk to us about their jobs. We played simulation games to see how hard it is for people to live, and most of all, we talked about what we felt.

Finally, at 12am Sunday morning, we broke our fast.

We raised money by going around our neighborhoods, and asking our relatives to donate $30 to World Vision. In total, I raised around $380 and my church raised over $1200. All this money will be dedicated to feeding hungry children.

People go without food for many different reasons, but it doesn't matter, because they are still hungry. By doing this famine I was able to truly understand what it was like to be hungry, but not to the extenet that many people feel everyday. Yet, there are lots of things we can do to help. Visit World Vision's website and donate $30, that can feed a starving child for a week. Little things can become big things, which can change the world.

Plan of Action

For our documentary projects everyone has a job. In my documentary, I am working with Stephanie Juliette, and Aidan. Our documentary is about the over-commercialization of holidays. For my role in the documentary process, I am writing the official script and getting some more B-roll footage.

I plan to have the script finished, with the help of my group mates, by the end of this week, Sunday at the very latest. I will also bring in the B-roll footage that I got of Valentines Day things while shopping with my mom. For the most part, the script should be fairly easy to finish because all we need to do is figure out where we want things ordered in our film, and the general things we want to be said. The B-roll will also be simple since I plan to film it on my phone and then later transfer it to the computers in the the TV studio where Stephanie can edit it into our film.

I am not exactly sure of what the dates for when things should be done are, but I plan to get the script and B-roll finished by Sunday at the latest. I also plan to look for music that we could possibly incorporate into our documentary in my spare time. Of course it will all be from creative commons or some other non-copyrighted website.

I must say, I had my doubts about this project but I am very excited to see these projects pulled together and I'm sure they will be great!

My Film About Silver Spring

My film is posted on Conor James blog. I worked with him and Isaiah and I was the cinematographer of the film. Conor has a really nice camera that films movement well which is how we were able to get the shots of the skateboard and the trampoline so nicely. He also has a really nice tripod so all of our footage came out great. He and Isaiah were the ones who edited it and did a great job so please go check it out http://conor2015.blogspot.com/ !!!!!

More Ice Dance

Meryl Davis and Charlie White

Michael and Rachel with Davis and White

As I wrote in my previous blog post, the Ice Dance National Championships were this week. Last night, the seniors were on TV so I watched some of them. It was especially neat because I was able to see many people I knew. I saw Michael Bramante and his new partner Isabella Cannuscio do a fantastic free dance. I was also able to see my friends, Danielle and Alex Gamellin, perform and take 9th place overall! Both these couples perform at the senior level and did extremely well considering Meryl Davis and Charlie White, Silver medalists from the 2010 Olympics, still compete. To nobodies surprise, Davis and White took first, followed by Maia and Alex Shibutani.

Lorraine Mcnamara and Quinn Carpenter

Competing on the Junior level were my friends Lorraine Mcnamara and Quinn Carpenter, Elliana Pogrebinsky and Ross Gudis, Whitney Miller and Kyle MacMillan, and Rachel and Michael Parsons. Lorraine and Quinn got third place overall and a small mention in The Washington Post. I don't know how the others did but I'm sure they were great with the fantastic training they get from WISA.

WISA, the Wheaton Ice Skating Academy, is coached by Elena Novak, Alexei Kiliakov, Dmitri Ilin, and Ramil Sarkulov. It is a very unique, yet elite program that isn't like any other in the nation. It starts out training kids from a very young age, around 5. Elena, Alexei, Dmitri, and Ramil are all fantastic coaches and choreographers. They have done extremely well and continue to make great skaters.

Ice Dance National Championships

One of my favorite things to do in the entire world, if not my very favorite, is ice dancing. As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, I have been ice dancing since I was 5 years old. The first time I skated, I actually hated it. I couldn't stay up and it was terrible. But, I eventually learned to love it and I started doing it around 6 times a week. Coming up are the Ice Dance National Championships and many of my friends are competing in them. This year the Championships are taking place in Omaha, Nebraska.

Many of my friends have competed over the years in Junior Grand Prix's, National Championships, and even the Junior Olympics. Many are even National Champions and have International medals. The Wheaton Ice Skating Academy that my friends and I skate for, is a Nationally recognized program and has some of the best, if not the best, coaches in the nation. We've been trained since we were young children in a very prestigious program and regime.

I enjoy skating more than anything else, however I've been off on back injury. I hope one day that I will be able to skate again after doing a lot of physical therapy. My back is on the mend and hopefully will get better soon.

Pumpkin Cookies

For New Years Eve, I made these delicious pumpkin cookies and decided to share the recipe with everyone. They have a really nice texture and are even better with nice cream cheese frosting on top.  So, please feel free to make these and enjoy them with your family!

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsps ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup softened butter (1 stick)
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 can pumpkin 
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 2 8oz boxes of cream cheese
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups of powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup butter (softened) 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Set aside.
2. In another bowl, preferably medium, cream the butter and sugar. Then add the pumpkin, egg, and vanilla. Continue you to beat until nice and creamy.
3. Mix the dry ingredients in to the butter mixture gradually. Then drop onto a greased cookie sheet.
4. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.
5. To make the Icing, cream butter and cream cheese together. then add vanilla and powdered sugar. (You can add more powdered sugar or less based on desired consistency).
6. Once the cookies are cool, put on the icing and enjoy!

When I made this recipe for our new years party, everybody who came said they were fantastic. So, I highly recommend you try baking these cookies. They are delicious!