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Tagline: Be Italian.

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren, Stacy Ferguson

Summary: Famous film director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) struggles to find inspiration for his latest movie project while juggling dramatic relationships with his wife (Marion Cotillard), mistress (Penelope Cruz), muse (Nicole Kidman), agent (Judi Dench), and mother (Sophia Loren)

5 Words/Phrases: Visually stunning; beautiful song and dance numbers; stunning, scene-stealing performance by Marion Cotillard as Luisa Contini; somewhat disjointed between scenes; some of the female roles were underused/did not mesh well with the rest of the story

Most Impressed By: Marion Cotillard was by far and away the greatest thing in the movie – her performance was powerful yet understated

Least Impressed By: How ill-fitting Guido’s muse Claudia (Nicole Kidman) and the American reporter Stephanie (Kate Hudson) were with the overall dynamics of the cast

Comments: I really loved the soundtrack of this film

Overall Rating: 7.5/10

In my immediate circle of friends, there is one person that has a tendency to invite herself to whatever events/happenings we have planned. In a group of friends as big as mine, there is a natural tendency for factions of the group to plan smaller things (dinner, shopping, etc) for those who they are closest with in the group rather than for all the friends. Everyone knows that the bigger the group is the more difficult it is to plan something that everyone wants to do, so we hang out in our smaller “factions” for the most part. This person, however, just doesn’t quite get that and tends to show up at any given time unannounced, unexpected, and sometimes unwanted.

In terms of family, I have an extended family member who has a habit of inviting himself to outings my immediate family plans, such as going out to the movies or dinner. It doesn’t even have to be a formally planned outing; he’s often come over just to hang out and watch TV or eat a home-cooked meal (my mother is a great cook). I know he’s family, but I still find it a little weird that he’ll just invite himself to come over, particularly if there’s nothing planned. It’s not like my family is an exciting host as more often than not each of us are preoccupied with our own agendas and can’t afford to divert attention to guests!

I’ve always been particularly cautious of inviting myself to events/places because I know I’m not always happy to see others who have invited themselves. It places everyone in an awkward situation: the people who didn’t invite the person, and the person who might not be welcome but still showed up anyway. And even though I’ve had somewhat uncomfortable encounters with people who just show up and assume I will be flattered with their presence, I still have yet to find a strategy to handle that type of situation. I’ve no issue on calling out people on misjudgments, but I know the people I am with do have problems with doing that so a much subtler, more low-key way of handling it is needed.

Question of the Week: How do you handle people that have invited themselves to an event? Do you think that it is appropriate for one to do so, or does it make you feel uncomfortable?

In high school, I never really bothered doing any of the extra credit my teachers sometimes offered. My grades were always excellent and most of the time, I just couldn’t really be bothered to do it. However, in college, that has changed dramatically.

If my professors offer an extra credit option, I do it. If my professors allow students to edit/revise work and hand in an updated version of the original assignment for an improved grade, I do it. If my professors provide an option that involves anything with boosting a grade, I do it. (This might sound like there are a lot of extra credit options in my classes, but there actually are very few extra credit opportunities. When they do happen, they come in all different shapes and sizes!)

It’s not that my grades are worse in college than they were in high school. On the contrary, my college GPA is higher than my high school GPA. It’s just the fact that there aren’t as many overall points that make up a course grade in college, particularly as classes are run on a semester-based system rather than a year-long one. If, over the course of 15 weeks, a class only has three 60-point tests that comprise your overall grade (so, 180 points total for a college class compared to the hundreds of points for a high school class), extra credit does wonders if one of those three tests has a poor result.

Take what happened in one of my classes today, for example. We received our midterm exams back, and the overall class results were all over the grading scale. There were several 100’s but there were also a handful of failing grades (the lowest score was 25%!). However, my professor had offered an extra-credit option of writing a short essay over break, which I completed. Thank goodness that I did, as the extra credit points saved my current overall class grade from getting walloped by the midterm exam!¹

For the tl;dr crowd: always do the extra credit. It never hurts and it just might save your grade!

1. I did not do poorly on the exam, but my exam grade was lower than my current grade in the class, so the extra credit saved my class grade from dropping any further. [↩]