Bless you, Mr. Scorsese

Best Director:

While many would have chosen Clint Eastwood for this award, I was confident that the once seminarian, Martin Scorsese, would finally win “Best Director.” Scorsese crafted a masterpiece in “The Departed” that captured the audience both visually and emotionally. Every shot, angle, and line spoken was filmed with a vision that only the eye of a legend such as Scorsese could create. Finally, the curse has been lifted.

Best Picture:

I was more than fulfilled to watch as Mr. Scorsese’s “The Departed” also won the Oscar for “Best Picture.” Perhaps one of the best films of the decade, “The Departed” has become an American classic. With astonishing cinematography and an outstanding cast, the film was indeed insurmountable by any of the other nominees as it truly met the Academy’s “Gold Standard.” It is because of motion pictures such as “The Departed” that I beg you, Mr. Scorsese, please continue making movies.

More Than Expected

Best Actress:

It certainly came as no surprise as 2006 Best Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman called out the name of the beautiful and elegant, Helen Mirren. Her role in “The Queen” could be surpassed by none, and thus as she walked the stage carrying the Oscar, she truly looked of royalty. Now the only question left for Mirren is that of what the living English monarch herself thought.

Best Actor:

Who would have believed that a young man from south-central Los Angeles, who grew up seeing drive-in movies from the back seat of his family car, would one day win an Oscar for “Best Actor.” Forest Whitaker was the only natural pick for the award. His charisma and drive to fulfill the role of his character, Idi Amin, within “The Last King of Scotland,” has allowed him to become an actor amongst the best in Hollywood. Thus, his winning came as no shock to me.

Best Supporting Actress? They're joking, right?

Best Supporting Actress:

This is an utter travesty. As I said before, the award for this category should not be handed to a former American Idol. While Jennifer Hudson has a voicebox any aspiring-diva would die for, a beautiful voice is in no way deserving of an Oscar, as both Cate Blanchett and Abigail Breslin were both incessantly more deserving. The bar was just lowered for future winners of “Best Supporting Actress” as it simply goes to show, one does not have to be an accomplished actress to meet the Academy’s golden expectations.

Best Cinematography:

Winning also “Best Art Direction” and “Achievement in Make-up,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” was indeed the most deserving film of this award. Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro’s ability to fashion a film from the dreams of director Guillermo del Toro was masterful. Both “The Black Dahlia” and “Children of Men” were worthy contenders, yet Navarro’s filming was certainly a work of art.

Best Supporting Actor

I must say that I am utterly surprised at the result of the winner of this category. Alan Arkin gave an outstanding performance as a grandfather wishing only for his young, uniquely awkward granddaughter’s win of a California beauty pageant. But for the Academy to pass both Mark Wahlberg and Eddie Murphy was absurd. Arkin’s role required no added talent, and while one can not compare the Golden Globe and Screen Actor’s Guild awards, Murphy should have received this award.

Kate Winslett'S mint colored asymmetrical gown is beautifully made with overlapping material at the bust, however, the color seems to remind me of mint sherbert.

Host Ellen DeGeneres, while naturally beautiful, witty, and charming, looks a bit like a loan shark in her maroon velvet with satin trim tailored suit and white boots.

Helen Mirren, nominated for best actress for her role in The Queen embodies elegance and class in her champagne 3/4 sleeve Chiristian LaCroix gown.

Cate Blanchett is wearing a stunning Armani asymmetrical, shimmering gun metal colored gown.

Abigail Breslin steals the show with her adorable pink gown with satin flowers and intricate latice work.

The first wave of fashion

Nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Dreamgirls, Jennifer Hudson's light brown Oscar de la Renta gown, metallic caplett, and matching jeweled Manolo Blahnik sandals are nothing to be too excited about.


Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts can be seen walking arm in arm down the red carpet, Nicole a head taller than Naomi. As best friends and fellow actresses, these two women demonstrate impeccable style. Nicole reels in a form fitting red halter, with a bow at the neck. Naomi looks stunning in a lemon colored strapless gown, with a black tie at the waist.

Best Actress nominee, Penelope Cruz, is as beautiful in her Beige strapless ruffled gown as the art direction is in her latest movie Volver.

The Academy Awards of Fashion

As the most anticipated and prestigous award ceremony in the nation, the Oscar awards are loved not only for the celebrities that they showcase, but also serve as a Who's Who of the Couture world. Let's face it, half the fun of the Oscars is watching to determine the hits and misses of celebrities' fashion sense.

A Beginning to a Year's Pefect Ending

Culminated into a period of hours is a year’s worth of artistic brilliance. The most superb films of every genre are reviewed for their masterful technique and awarded for their ability to instill genuine emotion within their audience. Tears, laughter, shock, and heart-wrenching suspense: the best films of the year have the ability to transfigure our reality to dreams and our dreams to reality. Who will win the “Gold Standard?” Tonight, the Academy will decide.

Perfect '10- Cristine

So Valentine’s Day may have been over a week ago, but the effects of this depressing holiday are far from over. It seems like every spring, ooey-gooey couples are making out everywhere. I mean seriously, I never believed anyone who said Texas A&M is a breeding ground for couples. But now, oh, I know it’s true. If you think about it, a lot of our traditions do have to do with making out. I mean, we “mug down” before football games only to “score when the Ags score” at the actual game. Now, that’s just asking for some relationships there. Every week during football season, it basically gives any guy a reason to ask a girl out on Friday. And who can forget the Century Tree; a fun thing to do is to hang out near the Academic Plaza — Bolton Hall is my favorite as a typical communication major — and watch people start to walk under the tree and then freak out and turn back around to make sure they walk completely around it. I can make fun of this only because I have totally committed this act, on multiple occasions. But the point is it’s the springtime, so that combined with the “couple spirit” in the air here is sure to provide for plenty of infant couples in the upcoming weeks. Not that I’m complaining or bitter in any way; single life is great at A&M. I mean seriously, we pretty much have the best-looking Texas boys … and I’m probably going to regret saying that.

Perfect '10- Stephanie

Even though it’s still semi-cold outside, and February isn’t even over yet, the thing that seems to be on all college students’ minds is their summer plans. Being a freshman, I was totally unaware of the vast opportunities available to students during the summer. I was just planning on taking a few classes, working a little and spending most of my summer in Spain. I hadn’t even thought about doing anything else. I sometimes overheard my friends talking about applying for camps and other things for the summer, but I didn’t pay much attention because I’ve had my plans made ever since I got back from Spain last summer.
However, I got a terrible phone call the other day. The girl I was planning on going to Spain with this summer called to tell me that the missionaries we were planning on staying with wouldn’t be in Spain during July, which is the only time we could go. I had no idea what to do. There was no way I was staying home all summer, and thinking about not being able to go back to Spain on a mission trip this summer completely depressed me.
The next day, I was walking through the Memorial Student Center for a Fish Camp interview, and the whole MSC was full of booths with tons of information on summer camps. The Flag Room was lined with students holding colorful sheets of paper, wandering from booth to booth. I normally would have ignored the crowd, especially since I had my summer planned out, but due to my heartbreaking phone call the night before, I was pretty desperate for some summer plans. I was so overwhelmed; I didn’t know what to do. I prayed that something would just fall in my lap, because I was too stressed to look through every booth trying to find the perfect camp to apply for. I saw a SeaWorld booth, and the 5-year-old ‘I-love-dolphins’ feeling came back, but after finding out that it would be all summer and feeding animals was included, I slipped away from the booth. But as I was leaving, someone grabbed me and asked if I had heard of their camp. I was pretty surprised, because I had heard a lot about it. Three of my friends had jobs there for this summer, and they were absolutely obsessed with it. They interviewed me, and I fell in love with it. They also told me that they had just hired my roommate that morning for next year.
I’m still waiting to hear back from the camp, but I just thought it was so amazing how I went from total disappointment about not being able to go to Spain, to a new excitement in working with a completely different situation: a camp in Van, Texas. It just made me realize that God works in really weird ways, but somehow, it always works out.

Perfect '10- Stephanie

It seems like the first thing that students hear from the minute they set foot on Texas A&M’s campus is “get involved.” Hopefully, it’s something that students actually want to do instead of a forceful duty, causing them to apply for as many organizations as they can find due to fear of being the one uninvolved student on campus. But from day one it’s: “come to MSC Open House,” “rush a sorority,” “join a FLO,” “find a church,” “do intramurals,” “apply for an academic club,” etc. I took this advice, and I am now experiencing, yet still completely loving, the phenomenon known to several students as “over-involvement.”
Don’t get me wrong; I love every single organization I’m a part of. I love having a busy schedule, but I just find it a little funny. I had just gotten back from a hectic weekend involving a wedding shower, formal dress shopping, nephew babysitting and a long talk about finances with my parents. Yeah, that’s basically everything you can pack into a weekend at home. So I get back to my dorm room around 3 p.m. I dig through my bag for my keys, trying not to drop my overstuffed bag of Valentine’s Day gifts and avoiding dragging my new, precious formal dress along the floor.
The list of things to do runs through my head. It was my friend’s birthday, so I had to get him a gift. A guy from my high school plays on A&M’s lacrosse team, and he scored a goal during his game on Saturday, so my friend and I decided we’d have to make him cookies. My laundry bag was overflowing, and I was running out of clothes; a trip to the laundry room was much-needed. I had two tests the next day, both of which I hadn’t started studying for due to the chaotic weekend. Aggie Wrangler lessons were at 5:30 p.m., and I had already skipped one meeting that day. I had to do all of this before going to bed at a decent time due to the fact that I had to wake up at 8 a.m. to go and see if I got an interview with another organization.
I was watching a movie on advertising for my persuasion test, flipping through my Spanish book, making runs down to the laundry room, assembling my valentine bags for my friends, figuring out what to buy for my friend’s birthday, nervous about getting an interview, making cookies in my dorm’s makeshift kitchen, attempting to two-step during my Aggie Wrangler lessons and getting my forms filled out for my sorority. What can I say? I’m a pro multi-tasker.

Perfect '10- Cristine

OK so, something I have to admit is that I’m what most would call a “commit-aholic.” I like to commit myself to anything and everything that remotely has a purpose. Now, what you have to understand is that this is OK for the sole reason that I work well under pressure and a small amount of time. Having one to three meetings every night of the week just means I have to schedule my time in the most effective way possible. Otherwise, I’d probably sit around watching “One Tree Hill” all the time. Well, that or waste time playing “find the A&M athlete” through the windows in the class center. But that’s not the point — the point is, being involved has become almost an addiction; I can’t stop. Maybe it’s because I’m so obsessed with A&M. I just want to do everything possible there is at this school. Of course, then there are “those weeks.” And by those weeks I mean this past Monday. You know that day when you forget your checkbook, get a ticket, forget to print something out, take a communication test and have a hard time with it, feel sick, have to make 150 copies of a four-page newsletter in an hour, almost miss two meetings AND get stressed out about a grab-a-date? Yeah, it was one of those. Not going home from about 8:50 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. is just stressful in itself and kind of hard to do when you live right next to the Commons. “Commitmenticism” is a troubling part of my life I’m attempting to overcome. With help from my friends and a few more clubs, I’m sure I’ll be as good as new.

Perfect '10- Stephanie

I’ve been sick for the past few days. It hasn’t been too bad, just the typical coughing-like-a-hardcore-smoker deal that comes every time the weather changes. What made it worse, though, was the fact that I went to the Randy Rogers concert on Wednesday, and I can’t really hear out of my right ear anymore. Because I couldn’t stop coughing and every time someone talked to me I had to nod and act like I heard them, I decided to take a trip to the mall to cheer myself up. I promised myself I wouldn’t buy anything, because I only had $13.27 in my bank account, and I needed it in case of an emergency. I don’t know what kind of an emergency would require $13.27 — maybe some jewelry from Charming Charlie for girl’s night — but anyway, I needed to save it.
So I start walking around. I’m not even tempted to buy anything because all I see is Spencer’s — definitely not my type of store — and The Cookie Factory, which I easily avoided by remembering that I was giving up sugar until the Austin Half Marathon (I broke that this morning, though). Then, I went to the Puppy Store because, hello, who goes to the mall without going to go see the puppies? After that, I made my way to the food court, because I was craving sweet tea. OK, I said I wouldn’t spend anything, but it’s sweet tea; $1.07 was hardly anything to ask. So I get my tea and start walking toward Journey’s. I was just going to browse, of course.
As I walk out of Journey’s, I see Wet Seal out of the corner of my eye. Normally, Wet Seal doesn’t even really interest me, but today was different. Their new spring collection was out. The store was covered in bright yellows and greens, cheap tank tops and those dresses you wear with leggings. I was screwed. How on earth was I going to leave this store without making at least one purchase? I would leave the mall knowing that had I pushed out just a little cash, I would be a much happier, not to mention, cuter girl. I looked through the racks, trying to convince myself that everything was hideous and buying any of it would be a total and complete waste of my dwindling cash, but to no avail. $12 later, I walked out with my blue Wet Seal bag and a smile on my face. I guess you could say it was my Friday gift to myself. After all, I was sick.

Perfect '10- Cristine

Switching majors is not easy. In fact, switching majors is incredibly confusing and hard to do…if you don’t know what you want to do, which is precisely my problem. Now going from the liberal arts school to the business school is really not too big of a deal; take a few economics classes here, a few communication classes there, and you’re good to go. But then Christmas break happens, and people sign up for classes, and then your options are limited. Realizing halfway through break I may actually decide to switch to business, I figured I should drop the extra English I wouldn’t need and take a more versatile class. Being someone who would rather get all the gross, core classes out of the way early and not waste time, I figured this would be smart. So open registration begins, and I begin the hunt for a new class. I spent days hunting for the perfect replacement, and two days later the answer came to me: a History 106 class that was offered at the same time as my English class and still had spots open. Perfect! I drop my English class, and go back to the page only to find out that great, the History class is honors. SUPER! So now I’m only at 13 hours and life just sucks. So I decide to take another economics class, at eight in the freakin’ morning — something I swore I would never do to myself again, as long as I lived. I begrudgingly signed up and then something amazing happened. I was browsing through classes in utter desperation when I realized that I didn’t have to take History 106, and believe me, military history at 2:20 p.m. never looked any better. So I signed up, knowing that the grief given by my friends accusing me of being a so-called “boot chaser” (which I actually am not) would be never-ending. The first day of class surprised me; I realized this history class was way more interesting than U.S. history, and totally met my expectations — the class was 90 percent male.

Perfect '10- Cristine

So the first part of my freshman year went fairly well. Made some new friends, joined a club here or there. But for some reason, I just felt like there was something missing in my college experience. This weekend filled that void completely. I was told to go on the Freshman Leadership Development Retreat by a Fish Camp counselor and good friend, so I figured I might as well give it a try; it’s always nice to get away for the weekend. Little did I know that I was going to have one of my best weekends I’ve had this entire school year. I finally met those “random” friends that I just clicked with. We did karaoke and had dance parties that would put anything else to shame. And then Bobby Tucker spoke. Now, if you’ve ever met Bobby Tucker, or even heard of Bobby Tucker, you know what I’m talking about when I say it was life-changing. Never before did I feel so proud to be an Aggie, and never more than that night did I realize my true duty to uphold the Aggie spirit and traditions. All the games of Catch Phrase, pajama parties and inside jokes took a turn on the backburner of my brain and all that I could think of was how special this place really is; I think that’s something we let slip out of our minds sometimes. But we really shouldn’t. There is no other school like Texas A&M. And I, for one, am proud to call myself an Aggie, and I will do whatever I can to serve this school for everything it has, and will do for me.

Perfect '10- Stephanie

Last semester, all of my classes were within five minutes from my dorm on Northside. The Academic Building was the longest trek I would make each week. So this semester, when buildings like Zachry and O&M showed up on my schedule, I was a little overwhelmed. I was basically late to every class the first week because I would be walking through areas I had never seen before. Up until the end of last semester, I didn’t even know where Sterling C. Evans Library was. Come on, I can study at Sweet Eugene’s. Why would I want to go to the library? It wasn’t until I had to write a paper with actual book sources that I ventured out to Evans.
So now I pass Evans almost all the time, and I find new things on campus every day when I walk to class that I had missed out on all last semester. For example, there is an amazingly cute coffee place right next to the library and a tiny, screened-in building with vending machines next to the Annex. I finally figured out where the Student Computing Center was. I had almost convinced myself that it didn’t exist until last week when I passed it trying to find my class. There’s also this really nice field — perfect for Ultimate Frisbee — right across from the O&M building. It’s crazy; I’ve been missing out on M&M’s between classes, iced lattes and Frisbee fields this whole time.
I’ve also found out a lot more about organizations at A&M this semester. My roommate and I went to MSC Open House last week to just look around, and I was overwhelmed. It made me realize that you actually have to try extremely hard to not be involved in anything at A&M. There are clubs for readers, engineers, divas, wizards, really smart kids, hicks, jocks, artists and anything you could possibly imagine. It made me want to join everything. I considered putting my name on the petroleum engineering club’s email list, but then I reminded myself that just because the guy behind the booth gave my roommate and me candy, didn’t mean that Petroleum Engineering Club was for me. After all, I am a communications major who barely made it through high school physics.
But being there was so much fun, because it showed me how diverse A&M is, and that everyone has the opportunity to get involved.