Does The X Factor have the X factor?

That's a pretty bold statement, TV3. I'm not sure if we do...

New Zealand has a pretty poor track record when it comes to televised talent shows. NZ Idol, New Zealand's Got Talent, New Zealand's Next Top Model... what have the contestants from these shows ever amounted to? But of course, we're trying again with The X Factor, because that's the current big hit in the reality show world, despite our shoddy history with these shows and decidedly limited pool of talent. I watched tonight's premiere with the usual amount of cynicism and low expectations, and came out kind of mildly surprised. It... wasn't horrible. Sure, it was piss-poor compared to America's, or even Australia's versions of The X Factor, but I really don't have a lot to say. It boils down to three things for me:

Worst. Episode. Ever.

Note: The following post contains spoilers about the most recent episode of Glee, airing in New Zealand this Wednesday on FOUR at 7:30pm. I won’t say anything about it for a until the end of the post, so click through and read the first part of the post anyway if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to know what happens.

Glee is a polarizing show. A lot of people love it. A lot more people love to hate it. I count myself in the latter category. I have been religiously hate-watching Glee for the past 3 years, but never have I thought an episode was a tasteless as this week’s episode, the 18th episode of the fourth season, “Shooting Star”.

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22...

Who wore it better?

So, it's that time again. I am another year older. And, for the first time in a while, I do feel like I've grown up somewhat in the past year. A lot has changed in my life over the past twelve months.

What Really Grinds My Gears

Arrgh! So I've managed to neglect the blog again. I'm just always so tired when I get home from work, and busy on the weekends. Anyway, enough excuses. I need to rant. Here's some things I hate:

Vital Information For Your Everyday Life

Sometimes I sit alone in my room pretending I'm cool enough to be a hipster...

I don't actually have all that much to say that I didn't say in yesterday's post. But there are a few things I want to address:

Time For a Makeover Montage!

I fucking love pre-makeover Mia.

I decided it was time to take my blog from frumpy, bespectacled outsider to the hottest piece of ass at school. So you may notice:

• I changed around the display. As much as I loved the theme I used to have, blogger changed around it's settings ages ago and rolled out new theme styles, leaving mine behind in the dust. That meant I was pretty limited if I wanted to change anything minor in the layout. So in order to get what I wanted, I caved and switched over to the new theme style. I do like this cleaner layout, but I may change it again later after playing around with it a bit.
• I purchased a URL! blue-and-chrome.blogspot.co.nz still redirects here, but the new url is samandcheese.com (get it?). About halfway through last year I decided I wanted one, but it took me until September to come up with one I liked (how sad is it that it took me a good couple of months to think of "sam and cheese" of all things?) But alas, it was taken! But it wasn't being used, it was just sitting there. I did my homework and found out it was expiring at some point in October, so I marked my calendar and waited it out. But the bastard renewed it a couple of days early, and they still weren't using it. I decided it just wasn't meant to be, and kind of forgot about it. But then this week, I thought about it again, and decided to look it up and see if it was still taken. And what do you know it was available! Yay!
• On a related note, I updated my Facebook fanpage a bit. If you haven't already, like it - I post the links to all my posts over there.

And since I've been a super slack blogger recently, here's some general updates about things I probably would have blogged about had I been onto it:

85th Academy Awards Predictions

So, I've been very slack on the blogging front of late. I never got around to writing a final wrap-up of the films I watched in 2012, and I haven't written about January 2013 either. Or anything else in my life that would ordinarily make me think "I should write about this on my blog". But I digress, I shall try to get back into the swing of blogging soon.

Anyway, Oscars tomorrow! Whoo!!!

Image/cropped from Olly Moss' poster, which is ah-mah-zing.

I had my heart set on seeing all the Best Picture nominees come ceremony time, but then I ended up working a lot, and deciding I needed to save money, and thus I only ended up seeing four of the nine. I did see a few of the other nominated films as well, but nowhere near enough of them to be able to give a valid opinion on what deserves to win. So this will just be a quick rundown of what I think will win. Disclaimer: I'm totally oblivious when it comes to the documentaries and the live action shorts, so I'm just gonna take an educated guess that’s not all that well educated. But the rest of them, I feel like I have a fair idea of what's happening there.

Unfortunately, I start my new job tomorrow so I won't be able to watch the ceremony live (if I were still at New World I totally would have called in sick…) I'm aprehensive about Seth MacFarlane hosting, since I haven't really enjoyed any of his work since I was 14. I'm also interested to see if they play up the "America: Fuck Yeah!" thing at the ceremony, since last year was all about celebrating movies because of Hugo and The Artist. This year's nominees show a definite trend towards 'murica: Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty and Argo. Who know what the coming year will bring us in terms of theme? Anyway, on with my predictions.