Words Have Been Flowing Out For 1 Year!!

The following post was reblogged from acrosstheuniversepodcast.wordpress.com - thank you for 12 great months, Nik and Sofia.  It's been a great adventure so far and I will never get tired of explaining people what a podcast is or that you are not people I met through online dating (who ever thinks of this stuff?). I hope we will have the possibility to meet some time although it probably won't be in the next year. Here's to another 12 months of discussing Mads Mikkelsen (how to pronounce his name, I mean)!

Welcome to the Across the Universe Podcast blog! 

Exactly one year ago today, we Chicks with Accents published our very first podcast episode. Celebrating this milestone, we redesigned the podcast's image and came up with new ways to spread our work and improve it, in order to serve you better. So here are some of the news:

• First and foremost, you can now stay tuned with everything Across the Universe related through our Wordpress Blog. 
• From now on, all our episodes will be available for you to listen online or download, completely free.
• New episodes will be structurally optimised, along with a few more surprises...!
• The podcast now has a Youtube channel, where episode trailers will be uploaded.
• We've made a new podcast trailer:

As always we encourage your feedback, so leave us a comment below or get in touch through our facebook page. Contact us via email: acrosstheuniversepodcast [@gmail.com]

The Chicks: Mette M. Kowalski -- Blog | Facebook | Twitter -- Germany
Nikhat Zahra -- Blog | Facebook | Twitter -- India
Sofia da Costa -- Blog | Facebook | Twitter -- Portugal

On our next episode we'll discuss Monster Movies! Join the conversation on Friday, the 16th.

What I Loved About My Third Oscar Night

Keeping myself awake with a bottle of coke and some cake, I stayed up the second half of the German night to watch some "millionaires giving each other golden statues", as Billy Crystal put it (I think that's what he said). Interestingly, it gets easier each year.

With a huge lot of Oscar-comments coming up (or already published), there's little chance that anybody actually happens to be reading my modest little post - but if you are, I promise you won't get any negative vibes from me. 

We already know what went wrong, which films didn't get nominated or didn't win what they deserved, still my overall impression of this years' awards remains very good.

Because of that, I have decided to put of a list of...

All the things I loved about the 84th Annual Academy Awards:

1. Watching clips from the few films that I have already been able to see, and being reminded of the wonderful cinematic experiences that last year presented to us.

And how cool was Best Original Script for Midnight in Paris?!

2. The old-school-ness: decoration, hosting, winners - even many of the dresses!

Billy Crystal was wonderful too, even though I don't know him very well.

3. The five seconds' glimpse I caught of squeak-Rahman-squeak. Why did there have to be ads right after that?

4. Jason Segel on the red carpet: extremely sympathetic and incredibly sweet.

(Sorry, had to make fun of that film title - confused it with a review-title when I first read it).

5. Getting excited for the wonderful 2011 films that I haven't seen yet - most famously The Artist, which I will be able to see in two weeks.

6. Jessica Chastain's look after they played her nomination video - so very charming.

7. Rango actually won - what a welcome surprise!

8. The "Man or Muppet"-clip made me want to watch the movie badly.

9. Its celebration of the thing we all love so dearly - makes me feel sentimental every time.

What did you love about this year's Oscars?

PS: I would appreciate it very much if you would take the time to give your feedback on this blog, to help improve it - just a tiny comment would be enough.

A little thank-you note

Many wonderful things have happened since new year, and that's why I would like to thank everyone who made these things possible today. So I wrote this little thank you note:

Most of you already know that I am officially a freelance writer for the ISHQ-magazine, but I want to thank Vera and the others once more for making this possible.

Also many thanks to all my readers - you have climbed a new top in January with more pageviews than ever before!

The peak to the right side is January.

There were also some new followers and commenters, which I want to welcome at this point. 

Also, just today I got an email saying that paperblog selected me as the Blogger of the Day on Friday - something I would have never expected. Thank you so much!

I feel very bigheaded, writing all this stuff, which is why I keep thanking all of you in every second sentence. 

Sometimes I think of the day when I started this blog out of holiday-boredom and curiosity, and I can't believe what happened to the project. Even though, sometimes you have to do what is called "cut your darlings"; my weekly feature about new Indian and other releases will finally be shut down, because I don't feel it's very interesting or unusual. Well, it's all for the greater good, every ending is another beginning.

So again, thank you, all of you, I'm looking forward to the future while being one of the happiest persons on the planet today.

Post #100: My Top 5 Horror Films

Watching one of the most praised horror films ever, Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING, for the first time, I started wondering why some people, including me, just can't get enough of this genre. As a die-hard fan of the filmic horror genre, I've eventually come to see some of the trashiest films on earth, and also some of the better ones - mostly the latter though, which leads me to believe that making a good horror film is a hard thing to do.
Most directors and actors have had something to do with comedies at least once in their career, and they will very often tell you (in those propaganda-esque, short making of features that you often see on TV) that making people laugh is "like the hardest thing in film business" and "so much harder than making people cry" bla, bla. Professional writers tend to come up with something similar in interviews.
However, in my opinion, it is so much harder to scare an audience in a way that is actually physically exhausting, to make them shed tears of fear, not joy or amusement. If you don't believe me, you should try and watch SPLINTER. Hilarious - but not in the slightest scary.

If I watch a bunch of "comedies" - the term doesn't always prove to be fitting - years of practical research tell me that I will like at least 50% of them; most comedies get a rating around 6.0 from me, and a rating above 5.5 means I at least like parts of a film. Now, if I watch a bunch of "horror films" - producers are not being very canny with this term either - I reckon I'll like, say 20% of them, and maybe another 9% of them I will consider to be decent comedies.
So what makes me - and I believe I'm not the only one - sit through these hours of boredom?

Happy First Anniversary!

These cupcakes look so good!

Wow, it's really been one year now... We've had both ups and downs, though mainly ups since the beginning of the year, and I know this sounds like a bad Oscars speech - but it's been an amazing journey.
At first this blog had a very complicated name, a German mirror blog and was about all kinds of films. Later on, it still had the complicated name, but no German mirror blog anymore - and it was about Bollywood films only. I had noticed that no one ever commented on my posts on cinema beyond Bollywood, so I thought that it was impossible to maintain followers while writing about no specific part of the extremely broad cinematic landscape. Luckily, I found out there was a thing called the "Large Association of Movie Bloggers", which I became a member of, causing me to broaden my horizon concerning film blogging.
Slowly this blog evolved and became better with the time. It's not perfect yet, not at all, and of course I'd like to have some more followers and commenters, but I'm happy about the things I've achieved until now, and even though it can be hard at times, I love this, I love all of you who are reading this, and I want to maintain this blog until I'm a quirky old granny trying to make my grandchildren love films just as much as I do. Maybe I'll have seen the famous 1001(+) movies by then. Who knows.
Well, for now on, I just hope next year's going to be just as great as this one - or maybe even better!

And just like those fortunate ones who have won the famous golden fella, I'd like to thank a bunch of people who have supported and inspired me - without them, who knows if I'd given up on blogging very soon.

Mansi from Eat Pray Love Movies, who was the first one to comment on this blog. Thank you so much for that, Mansi! Her blog is about both Bollywood and Hollywood films and she always writes short but spot on reviews and articles.

Leslya from Eternity of a Dream, who became the 31st member of Lime Reviews just yesterday. Well, that was a coincidence of course, but still - thank you! I've only become a member of her blog yesterday, too, so I can't say much about it yet. It looks very promising though.

Jack L. from Jack L. Film Reviews, who was the first follower and commenter here that knew nothing about Hindi film, and had never seen one. Jack has an extraordinary taste of films, and we don't always agree on films, but he has been one of the greatest supporters to me, and his blog is very informative and well-written. I hope he achieves his goal of becoming a director one day, I will definitely watch all of his films.

Bollywooddeewana from Bollywooddeewana, one of my first followers and supporters. His blog is mostly about Hindi oldies and classics, which is very inspiring for someone like me who wants to but doesn't watch many films from before 1990.

Stevee from Cinematic Paradox, a wonderful blogger my age who just celebrated her blogs second birthday yesterday. She's so fortunate to have a father owning a DVD rental store, so she can watch all the latest releases and work at a place full of the thing we all love... films! I wish I had a chance to do the same. Or even just have a part-time job... Her blog is one of my favorites, and I look up to the things she's already achieved (like winning a LAMMY).

Courtney from Big Thoughts From a Small Mind. He was the first one to feature a post from here in a link-up-post (or whatever these posts are called). His posts are always interesting to read, and he also proves that a great blog doesn't need a great design (with all respect).

Dolce and Namak from Dolce and Namak Talk Indian Movies, a split-personality blogger who writes the funniest long reviews on indie and mainstream Indian cinema. She makes me want to watch some more regional Indian films... some time.

Bonjour Tristesse from Bonjour Tristesse, an extremely cool and huge blog that features films from all over the world (something I'd like to be able saying about Lime Reviews one day). It's amazing that she (or he... wait a minute - are you a male or a female...?) still finds the time to read my entries and comment on them - awesome!

Beth from Beth Loves Bollywood, one of the biggest Bollywood blogs around here (counting from the visitors). She doesn't blog that often anymore, but I always find it a pleasure to read her humorous reviews.

Filmi Girl from Filmi Girl!, my #1 source for Bollywood gossip. I also like that she's not ashamed of loving Tashan, while everyone else is trashing it (I mean, all the critics). Her blog is, just as Beths, very popular, and funny to read, too.

Cherokee from Feminising Film. Her blog was founded just recently, some months ago, and focuses on female presence in film. To be more precise: female power! She also often leaves nice comments here.

Ness from Shahrukh Is Love, who claims she's never ever written a review on a Shahrukh film. She's very skilled at trashing a film and wanting you to never ever watch it (I threw my Khatta Meetha DVD into the garbage after reading her review), but she's also a fan of the films she describes as "crackatastic" - and a huge fan of Bollywoods teddy-bear, Govinda.

Chris from Movies and Songs 365, a Dane just like me (yeah, almost... I'm almost a Dane...), whose blog is about... well, movies and songs. We've been e-mail pen-pals for some months now, and I must say that Chris is a very intelligent and sympathetic person. Hilsen!

Maria Sofia from FilmFlare, famous for her fantastic layout. She also comments a lot here, and writes some cool reviews and other stuff. And she inspired me to join Goodreads (don't think she knows this, hehe).

The 3 Bollywood Queens from Bollywood Queens - lovely people, lovely blog.

Filmi Geek from Filmi Geek,  who writes the most informative, analyzing reviews on Hindi films.

Wilde.Dash from Love and Squalor, a blog with a lovely, psychedelic layout and wonderful posts on films I haven't seen because of the same reasons she didn't want to see them at first, but still did.

Louella from Masala w Bigosie - she's not very active anymore, as she says she suffers from a chronic writer's block, but I always like reading her reviews on Tamil and Telugu films. Makes me feel like I've watched more of them than the three I've actually seen.

The person behind The Bolly 'Hood, a small blog with small articles on Bollywood that are truly worth a read.

Larry from The Movie Snob, another huge blog with a simple design ;). He writes nice reviews on both cult-classics and newer cinema, and I love his weekly thoughts feature (I believe it's weekly...?).

The person behind Totally Filmi! - I love this blog, but I feel I'm repeating myself now. Check it out, however.

Last but not least Ryan from A Life in Equinox. Huge blog. And really, really good.

Phew, this is a loooong list, and yet I feel I haven't thanked everyone - so thank you, EVERYONE! Followers, commenters, anonymous readers - thank you!
Please don't feel hurt or something if I follow you, or you're on my surfboard and I haven't mentioned you - I follow a lot of blogs and it would be impossible to mention each one of them.

So what are my wishes and plans for the future? Well, I'd like the above curve to go upward again, of course, but I know that's not going to happen without me doing something. I'd like to write great, interesting, wonderful posts and inspire people and have fun and... make the world a better place. Yeah, that's impossible. But I'll give it a try.
I'm also planning on creating a top 100 movies list until december... and well, I don't know if I should keep the weekly post on new releases. I mean, it's not very original... but we'll see.

Now, just tell me what you think. Do you have any ideas, things you love or hate - spit it out.
(Of course, you can also just wish us a happy anniversary...).

...No, really. THANK YOU!!!