The Sunshine Award

Summer has been over for a long time, which also means that I'm very late responding to Chris' awesome gesture of passing over the Sunshine Award to me. Anyhow, I hope it'll bring a little sunshine back here.

The Rules

1. Include the award’s logo in a post or on your blog.

2. Link to the person who nominated you.

3. Answer 10 questions about yourself (use these or come up with your own).

4. Nominate 10 bloggers.

5. Link your nominees to the post and comment on their blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

1. Favorite actor/actress (who's not a household name yet)? 

I feel like Abbie Cornish doesn't get the recognition/ the roles she deserves yet. She was even good in Sucker Punch, which I don't think any actress would've been able to pull off. I've also been a fan of Kat Dennings ever since I first saw her in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. It seems like 2 Broke Girls is going well but I've never dared watching it since the premise sounds sort of stupid. Lizzy Caplan should've been a star after Mean Girls - but it also looks like she's on her way now. It's weird that I can't think of any men... it would be great to see Michael Pitt in more movies though and I'm a big fan of Eddie Redmayne for some reason.

2. Favorite animal?

I love cats but we've had to so far and it never went well. Dogs are lovely too though. And of course - thank you, J. K. Rowling - I would love to have an owl for a pet.

3. Favourite non-alcoholic drink?

This may sounds weird, but I really enjoy drinking water. Otherwise, I like Vanilla Coke, Ginger Ale, Club Mate and all kinds of juice.

4. Favorite music?

I listen to all kinds of music, really. Mainly I like a few songs from each artist. Right now I listen to Blink-182 a lot, as well as Cocteau Twins' Pearly Dewdrop's Drop.

5. Favorite tv-show?

My all time favorite is a German show called Türkisch für Anfänger (Turkish for Beginners). It's so perfect it hurts and I've seen it about 394 times. Haven't been able to convince any other people in the blogosphere to watch it though. Another undying love of mine is of course the new Doctor Who. And Sherlock is great.

6. Favorite sport?

Any kind of dance, but most of all ballet, which is what I do myself. I like how much effort it takes to make everything look effortless, and how the goal is aesthetic perfection - not running after some ball.

7. Movie most people love that I dislike?

Trois Couleurs: Bleu. Watched it twice for French class and still hate it. It's just so f***ing depressing.

8. Favorite short film?

L'homme qui plantait des arbres and La Jetée. Jess Archer vs. the Ex is a great recent one. And anything Pixar ever made.

9. My passion?

Stories.

10. Favorite soundtrack from 2013?

This Is the End.

Winners

It's been such a long time since this award was around, so I have no idea who has already received this award. These are 10 great blogs at any rate:

Sofia from Film Flare

Nikhat from Being Norma Jeane

Niels from The Blog of Big Ideas

Josh from The Cinematic Spectacle

Bondo from The Movie Review Warehouse

Vern from The Vern's Videovangaurd

Bubbawheat from Flights, Tights and Movie Nights

SDG from U, Me and Films

Veracious from ..so they dance!

Dolce Namak from Dolce Namak

But really, I could've chosen anyone from my blog roll because you are all amazing!

7x7 Blog Award

One month after the ending of the official award season, a tiny little picture sneaks its way into our movie blogging community...

It's a new blogging award - hurrah! 

As a matter of fact, three of my most favorite fellow (female) movie bloggers passed this award on to me - thank you so much Nikhat, Stevee and Ruth.

Instead of a thank you speech, I'm supposed to tell you something that nobody knows about... Which is impossible, because there's nothing I'd share with you that my best friend doesn't know about - so it's going to be something you didn't know. 

So, let's get it done quickly: I love Hannah Montana and Zac & Cody. Well, the older seasons of course, the ones I grew up with, the classic ones. 

Now to the more grown-up things; links to my favorite posts that fit certain categories:

Most beautiful piece... 
I don't consider many of my pieces beautiful. They might be funny, interesting or entertaining, but beautiful is a big word. Anyway, if there's one post I'd have to select, it would be the one about my Song of this summer, 2011, because it perfectly and perhaps beautifully describes my feelings for the song.

Most helpful piece... 
Two short posts about two films (Koyla and Karan Arjun) that I felt weren't worth watching - I can't believe they're the 2nd and 5th most read posts of this blog! 

Most popular piece...
Probably also due to image searches, the most read post of this blog is my Cinematic Alphabet - Indian Edition, and the one with most comments is Why is Dil Se my favorite movie? or All the things I love about Dil Se...

Most controversial piece...
Having more or less negative thoughts about a family of actors is not a bad thing. Writing a post about that and submitting it for a celebration-blogathon? I don't know if it was a good idea - nobody was mad though. By all means, it must have been controversial. - Me, Myself and the Deols

Most surprisingly succesful piece...
My comparatively short piece on Rain according to Bollywood definitely got more page views than I had expected. The other one I would like to mention is My favorite movie holidays.
Both posts were inspired by my real-life "events" and in my opinion are quite unstructured and a little shallow. But maybe that's what people like.

Most underrated piece...
My review on the short film Feed the Kitty that I worked hard on, and that got absolutely no comments. It broke my heart. 

Most pride-worthy piece...

Again there's two posts I would like to mention: firstly, in my opinion the best review I have written - The Tree of Life was inspiring enough to spend hours writing about it.
The other one, and this is by far my biggest pride writing-wise, is Why is Dil Se my favorite movie? or All the things I love about Dil Se... I never thought I would be able to finish it, or write about this film at all.

The seven bloggers I pass this award onto, are the following:

(I've tried not to select anyone that has already received an award)
(no particular order)
Dolce and Namak - Dolce and Namak Talk Indian Movies
Maria Sofia - FilmFlare
Three Bollywood Queens - Bollywood Queens
Wilde.Dash - Love and Squalor
Gaja Gamini - Bollywood-ish Blog
Dan - Dan The Man's Movie Reviews
The people from... Cinema Chaat

Please don't feel sad if I didn't select you, I hate doing this.

You can find hundreds of other great blogs in the link list above.

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.

"Liebster" Blog Award

One of my fellow film bloggers Maria Sofia from FILMflare nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award, and Maria I want to thank you so much! It's wonderful how nice and kind everyone in the blogosphere is, this being my second blogger award already. So once again: thank you (or: Vielen Dank, as the name of the award is German, and I'm German too).

The rules of this award are: you have to link back the person who nominated you and thank her/him as much as you can. After that, you nominate 3-5 of your favorite blogs, who must have less than 300 followers (which isn't hard to find). Just like Maria Sofia, I want to tell you that if you've been nominated by me, you don't have to do a post like this and give the award on to other blogs.

Stylish Blogger Award

Only (really) blogging for about 4 months now, I'm feel very proud and honoured by receiving this special award, which Jack L. passed to me. Once more: thank you so much, Jack.

The special thing about this award is, that the receiver must name 7 facts about him-/herself, and then pass it of to seven bloggers, that he/she admires (seems like 7 is a really special number - thinking about "7 Khoon Maaf", for example). At least that's what it says in Jack's post (I hadn't heard about the award before, and I don't even know, where it "came" from).

To start with, 7 facts about myself:

1. I have only two real movie pictures in my rooms. At my father's, it's a poster of Band Baaja Baaraat (which I haven't seen yet, by the way), and also a picture of Marilyn Monroe in that white dress, but I don't think that counts. At my mother's, there's a tiny postcard with the movie poster of Rebel Without a Cause, which I think I've seen when I was little... Oh, and then there's the big black/white pop art poster with pictures of different actors from the late Hollywood era.
2. I'm not only a film buff, but also crazy about books. Well, not only books, but everything readable. If there's nothing to read but a bad-looking book or magazine, I'll read it. I can't go from a flee market without buying a book (or a movie, for that matter), at least most of the time. There are about 16 unread books on my book shelves, because I just need to buy them when I'm in an Antic shop or something similar. And I don't want to count the rags of magazines that are laying around in the cupboards. Some of my books don't even stand on shelves, they're just stacked in some corners.
3.  My favorite TV shows are Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother and the fabulous, award-winning Türkisch für Anfänger ("Turkish for Beginners", read more). I don't watch them on television, though, except for DH... And the only one I've seen all episodes of is the last one, which I have on DVD - all three seasons. Sadly, it's ended now, but I can re-watch it a 1000 times with my sister and/or best-friend: It's GENIOUS.
4. I don't know what I want to be, or where I want to be, after I finish High-School in 3 1/2 years. I know that I'm going to study, and I know that I'm going to be in a large city, but where and what... I don't know. Some of my child/teenage job dreams include: marine biologist, astronaut, dancer, actress, director, fashion journalist, journalist, lawyer, dentist, designer, language-something and more.
5. Not that I want to bullshit or something, it's just that this might interest you or whatever: I've always been the best in my class. I was being offered to skip one class two times, also last year. I decided to stay with my class and friends though, but I think they're a little jealous and maybe "sad", whenever we get a test or our grades. My favorite subjects are German, History, Geography and English, but I'm really into politics, and it's sad we don't have a subject like that yet. 
6. Just as with movies, I don't prefer any certain genres in music... Well, apart from Soundtracks: There are so many different songs and genres in Soundtracks, and often songs are not composed for the films itself... I just love how music and picture is combined so beautifully in many films. That's why there is a lot of film music on my iPod (the nano 5g, red). Only thing I absolutely hate regarding music is this sleek, auto-tuned disco-pop, which is the most frequent played on our radio stations here. Most played songs on iTunes: Suno Aisha (movie "Aisha), Wouldn't it be Nice (The Beach Boys, but also featured in "50 First Dates"), Selfmachine and Spirit Golden (I Blame Coco), 80 Years (Dúné), Khwaja Mere Khwaja (movie "Jodhaa-Akbar"), Never Hear Surf Music Again (127 Hours) and that's it for you folks. I won't reveal more... Oh, other than my newest obsession: Opera, namely since I watched Match Point. I fell in love with the song "Mi Par D'Udir Ancora"... And this: though I dance Ballet, I do like classic music, but it's not my favorite or something.
7. Parties are up and coming within my social environment, now that we all turned 16 and so on... I think it can be fun, really, with good friends, just dancing (even though the music is not the best, obviously), but it's nothing I want to do every weekend. Also, alcohol is fine with me, though I don't really like it, but I think many people my age (also friends of mine) cross the line sometimes. They just want to be mature and prove they're old enough to make own decisions and stuff. It's the same with sex. I'd never planned on writing about sex on this blog, but why not - someone needs to say this: It's too early for many of them, and they don't prove anything by doing it. But they'll never realize, I just hope that not everyone is that stupid...

So, that was a lot about myself, but nothing that I wouldn't say in public, nothing that I would hide from anyone, and that's why I'm not scared of saying it online.

And finally, these are the bloggers that I hand this award out to:
Amaluu - http://bollystalgia.blogspot.com/
Beth - http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/
Dolce and Namak (split personality) - http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/
Gaja Gamini - http://bollywood-ish.blogspot.com/
Louella - http://masalawbigosie.blogspot.com/
Ness - http://shahrukhislove.blogspot.com/
The Movie Snob - http://www.themoviesnob.net/

I know there are many other talented writers out there, I follow many of them, but these are the ones I think deserve this award the most. I'm aware of the fact that six of them are Bollywood blogs, but I think this part of the film blogger community needs something like this, and these are really good blogs.

Congratulations to all of you.

Mette M. K.