This morning I went to church. The title of the service was, Our Favorite Things. As expected the choir did sing the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic song from the musical, The Sound of Music. The song, My Favorite Things, is one of my all time favourite Christmas songs. I do not not know how it is that the song has been associated with Christmas. The lyrics in the song make no mention of a holiday.

Anyway, I have three versions of it on my iPod. Since it is the holiday season I recently loaded up my iPod with a lot of Christmas/Yule/Hanukkah music. Ok, I admit on the Hanukkah side I just have Adam Sandler and music two songs (Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel and Lonely Jew on Christmas) off the South Park Mr. Hankeys Christmas Classics cd. The three versions of My Favorite Things that I have on my iPod are Julie Andrews, Barbara Streisand, and Diana Ross. My favourite version out of all of them is the swing jazz sound that Diana Ross gives it on The Motown Christmas album from the late sixties.

, originally uploaded by willisgirl.

THE OSCAR BUZZ MOVIE OF THE WEEK

After church I headed up to Towson to holiday shop and see a movie. Since it is the end of year I am continuing on with my quest to see as many movies as I can that are getting a lot of Oscar buzz.

The movie I saw this evening was Syriana. I wanted to see it not only because of its Oscar buzz but because I have heard a lot of good things about it on NPR. Also I hear that George Clooney is good in it. I understand that he might be a contender for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. A couple of weeks ago I saw Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck. I have to say that his performance in this movie was much stronger than in Good Bye and Good Luck. Clooney rocks in this movie!! I will be shocked if he garners no acting nomination for this movie.

Overall, the movie was pretty good. Not the best darn movie I ever did see. But overall it was pretty good. Matt Damon was ok in the movie as an economist. I also liked that guy who used to be on Star Trek, Alexander Siddig. He played a prince in the movie. I kept looking at him throughout the film thinking, What the heck is Bashir doing in this movie? Apparently, he was doing a pretty darn good job!

The story of Syriana focuses on the CIA, telling the story of how the spy group lost funding and failed to keep an adequate eye on the Middle East after the Cold War. Specifiacally, agent Robert Baer , upon whose memoir this film is based, is the central figure played by Clooney.