One of the best hours of my life: picnicking by the lake with my husband.

Man I love Evanston in the summer and all the naysayers are in denial.

OK now I'm gonna blog about a big pet peeve I have when watching movies! It is when the young and old versions of characters don't look anything alike! This drives me nuts!

1st case in point:

Jack's son from Will & Grace and Tobey Maguire in "Seabiscuit"

I was pretty offended that the casting people thought the audience would accept this pairing as young/old versions. And what age difference are they supposed to play? Tobey Maguire has such a baby face he looks only 5 yrs older, in which case the change in appearance would be way too great.

2nd case in point:
Edison/Andy Lau, Yue Man Lok/ Tony Leung in "Infernal Affairs"

There are some similarities, but I am against the use of different actors for full-grown adults who are supposed to have a mere 10 year age difference. I know, I know, the two younger ones were at least partially used to attract the some screaming girls into the theaters, but still.

3rd case in point:
Wentworth Miller and Anthony Hopkins in "The Human Stain"

Um. People have issues with the casting choice for this movie because this character plays a pale black person, and people think it's impossible to think of Hopkins as black. Well... I think the young/old casting choice is even harder to believe.

4th case in point:

That kid and Christian Bale in "Batman Begins"

They may have cast this kid purely because he's got that traumatized look.

EXAMPLES OF GOOD YOUNG/OLD VERSIONS:

That awesome kid and Audrey in "Amelie"

That kid and Ethan Hawke in "Great Expectations"

That kid and Matt Damon in "The Departed"

EDITED TO ADD: another pairing I think is great is that kid and Collin Farrell in "Alexander."

Gonna lie down and die a little

Short version: I totally bombed an audition and now I feel like crap.

Long version:

I know it's trivial in the "bigger scheme of things," like one simple, not very important audition's not gonna kill me or anyone else. In fact, I should probably say What doesn't kill me will only make me stronger. I shouldn't be super pissed and dwell upon it and replay it in my head 100 times. However, this is a huge deal to me. 1) I normally sing this song very well. I'm pissed that I am such a nervous wreck I can't keep it together for 10 minutes. 2) My teacher said I will do great. It's bad enough to let yourself down, but to let ur teacher down... 3) My nerves are not improving, does not bode well for anything in the future.

So anyway, I'm not over it.

I need to chill

I leed to cheew

Or heart failure is imminent

Got out of bed because officially can't sleep at 5:30AM.

A few days ago I came across the magazine that has my stuff in it in the supermarket. Here are the scans.

I ended up borrowing Cloud Atlas and returned Nausea, as it was unenjoyable.

However, I first read The Complete Professional Audition. Only half of it (the part about singing) is partially relevant for me, because half of it talks about monologues, which I also read through and found interesting.

Currently reading A Soprano on Her Head, which, in short, is about movement in music. I initially thought the writer sounded a bit too aging-hippy, but quickly found it very intersting. The class she teaches musicians is to dance to a piece of music that you have to perform, and the emotions will come out in one's music performance. To not think, just feel. Well, at least it made sense when I read it.

Got back to cross-stitching today after not being able to for about 2 weeks. Is looking good, yay!

Ninja Cat with built-in night vision