Dido Questions & Answers: Oscar??

Here is what Dido had to say on her official site:

"....Following this week's amazing news that If I Rise has been nominated for the Best Song Oscar, we gave Dido a shout to find out a bit more about collaborating with A.R. Rahman, being on the 127 Hours soundtrack and plans for album #4.

Hi Dido, congratulations on the Oscar nomination. Where were you when you found out about it?
I was in a restaurant and a friend texted me. I nearly fell off my chair.

Presumably you're pretty pleased?
I'm so pleased. It's a proper honour and getting to work with someone as brilliant as A.R. Rahman on a Danny Boyle movie is a bit of a dream come true anyway. Way back when, the 'Trainspotting' soundtrack was probably one of the musical moments that influenced me the most. I actually wrote 'Here With Me' which was my first song over a track on there. Danny Boyle has always done incredible music in his films I think, and I'm a huge A.R. Rahman fan anyway. A.R. Rahman’s whole soundtrack to this film is beautiful and I’m properly proud to be a part of it.

Have you spoken to A.R. Rahman since the nomination was announced?
I have, I spoke to him yesterday. What a lovely guy. Very inspiring.

Of course, this is just one of six awards that 127 Hours is up for. Did you expect it to do so well when you became involved? 
To be honest I'd only read the book when I first got involved. I was working with A.R on something else anyway and he mentioned that he was working on a soundtrack. He told me the story of the film and I realised I actually already had Aron Ralston's book at home because it had interested me. I went home, read the book properly which was very moving and very inspiring, and then went back in and did the track. A.R. explained where in the film the track would be and it felt like the 'no lyrics' lyrics in the verses were the right thing to do as it wouldn't interfere with what was going on in the scene too much. I didn't think too much more of it other than that it was a great experience to work with A.R. and a beautiful piece of music. I didn't actually see the film for the first time until recently when everything was finished.

And what did you think of the film?
I was blown away by it. As I'd read the book I was pretty intrigued as to how Danny Boyle was going to get round the fact that it's one guy stuck in a rock for the whole film. He did it absolutely brilliantly. I was so drawn in from the word go, really moved and riveted and actually found it pretty exhilarating and inspiring by the end. The way it was shot just draws you right in and I felt a bit like I was cutting my own arm off at the pivotal scene. I hope I'd be able to have the human strength to do the same thing in the same situation! My hiking holiday in Utah wasn't nearly as exciting though...

This is a great start to 2011 for you. Is it looking like you'll finish the new album this year too?
The new album should be finished soon. Very excited about it. We've had a lot of fun doing it. I've done a lot of stuff with Rollo here in the UK and then I spent some time in California over the summer and wrote a load of songs there with a different flavour that I love. Driving round California is about the most inspiring thing for me I think. I got to work with some great people there too - Jeff Bhasker, Greg Kurstin, Rick Nowels again. Happy days.

Would you like to work with A.R. Rahman again?
I'd absolutely love to. We have done another track and I just need to finish the lyrics on that and we'll get that finished and I'd love to do more with him. He's an amazing human being to be around and incredibly talented and I learnt a lot from the short time we already spent together. His melodies are absolutely beautiful. I realised I'd never actually sung another person's melody as one of my songs and he writes melodies I could never write but I just love singing. Especially when you get more of the Indian scale in there. It's not dissimilar to Irish music and so it really resonates with me and moves me.

Do you have any other collaborations lined up?
I certainly do. Too early to say for sure as I don't want to jinx things but there are things going on hopefully!

Finally, if you win, where do you think you'd put the statuette?
Where everyone can see it. :-) It would be pretty unbelievable to win an Oscar..."

So Many Articles Based On Dido:

There are so many articles that I have read on the newspaper this month and believe it or not, they're all about Dido and A.R.Rahman. Here are a few articles that I have read so far:

A.R. Rahman to launch music video with Dido?

Oscar-winning music composer A.R. Rahman has revealed that he's coming out with a music video.

• IANS

• Published: 00:02 January 6, 2011

• 

• A.R. Rahman

• Image Credit: Rex Features

Oscar-winning music composer A.R. Rahman has revealed that he's coming out with a music video. Speculation is rife that it's the visual representation of his recent collaboration with English sensation Dido which features in Danny Boyle's 127 Hours.

"Hey Guys, watch out for the world premiere of my new music video… coming soon," he tweeted.

Rahman also linked a picture with the comment, that shows him wearing a suede jacket near a helicopter, leaving his fans assuming that it is the video of the popular song If I Rise.

Next Article:

"...The Meditative One

American audiences saw a glimpse of A. R. Rahman's talents with Slumdog Millionaire's Jai Ho, a festive and rousing Bollywood number. Working with director Danny Boyle once more for 127 Hours, the Indian film composer, record producer, musician and singer was again called upon to create magic. Although his If I Rise, a collaboration with English pop artist Dido, strikes a more meditative tone this time. As a character on the verge of falling victim to the elements, James Franco's Aron Ralston summons a final burst of courage, turning recent memories of new acquaintances into dreams of better days to come. "Somebody was offering him something of a future," Rahman says. "That gave him hope and the energy to liberate himself." Light and ambient, If I Rise builds delicately, with Dido's soft voice lending an angelic presence. With layer upon layer of guitar, the song has a magical feel, as it's grounded in real instrumentation (but not exactly organic). Boyle, says Rahman, had one request.

"Danny said, ‘I want your voice too," says Rahman. "I initially wanted it to be just Dido, but the main character is a male voice. It's a very simple tune, very innocent, and very much from the heart."..."

That's all for now :)

New Banner Idea:

Banner A

I was thinking of making a new banner for my blog because as of the 1st of February 2011, I will be changing my banner because I have received some complaints from certain users and they have said that my banner looks bad, so I'm going to change it.  It's just a picture of a Japanese Cherry Blossom Tree that I photoshopped using the Cut-Out option in the filters gallery. So because of that I cannot decided on which banner I should put up. So here are 2 Banners that I might be adding. The first banner is on top of this paragraph (Banner A) and the second one is under this paragraph (Banner B)

Banner B

Please Note: That these images are going to be shrunk into the typical banner size. 

2 New Fan Remixes of Dido's Music:

Here are some remixes to dance to if you want. I think the Carlos Puentes Extended Remix is great for having at parties, you know like around 3:30pm, while everyone is chilling to the groove :) and as for the GBM Dubstep Remix, that's good for a Karaoke party :P
lol, you don't always have to take my recommendations seriously :)

Dido - Sand In My Shoes (Carlos Puentes Extended Remix)






Dido - Thank You (GBM Dubstep Remix)

First Remix of Dido's New Song "If I Rise":

I was just browsing the internet, when I came across this remix of Dido's new song "If I Rise". It's not an official remix but it's a good attempt for someone to make a remix of it :)

127 Hours Review:

I had finally gotten a chance to watch this movie "127 Hours". Believe it or not, I was actually surprised, when I read on the newspaper. They had mentioned that during the DIFF (Dubai International Film Festival), they will be showing a couple of movies almost every single day. However, they had a couple of movies that they were willing to show only once or twice through out the entire time. So this movie was only shown once, but now due to the high number of people wanting to watch it, they have agreed to put it in the cinemas at Mall Of The Emirates. It's located in the Cinestar Cinemas, but there is a catch to it, you will have to stand in a long line for about a couple of hours (between 45 mins and 2 hours), because the tickets are sold out, but they do have some Stand-By Tickets left. It costs 10 Dirhams for University Students and 25 Dirhams for Adults. Children are Not welcome to watch this movie as this movie is rated 18 and above.

 Below here are a bunch of SPOILERS:

As you all know, this movie is based on a true story. So let me just summarize the story really quick. This movie is all about this Daredevil that went to do some stunts in a canyon somewhere in the U.S. He first did some tricks to impress a couple of beautiful girls that he bumped into in the deserted canyons. So after he met with them, this daredevil decided to go and explore on of the caves in the canyon, so as he was going down in some sort of ditch, he slipped on some rocks and fell down into the ditch. But get this, he did NOT fall all the way down, he fell half way down. The reason is because a large boulder fell right beside him, crushing his arm completely. He couldn't move at all. Hell, he didn't really know what to do, because all what he had were the following things: A 500ml bottle of water, a digital camera, a camcorder, a rope for climbing and a normal rope,  a Swiss - Army Pocket knife that was made in China, a Cap with a Light, 4 batteries for the light and a backpack. Now he didn't have a mobile phone with him and of course, he tried screaming like a billion times but of course no one was there to help him. I forgot to mention that this guy was a little selfish, he never really told anyone where he was going and wouldn't even call them back. He never even bothered talking to his own mother, and he never told her, where he was going.
 So, he then tried to chisel the big huge boulder by using the pocket knife, he thought he could like break a part of the boulder but of course that kept making it worse. It was obvious that the pocket knife wouldn't help, because he had decided that he was going to cut his arm off with the pocket knife, but unfortunately it didn't help him because the pocket knife wasn't sharp enough, so it couldn't even cut an apple in half (yes, it was that cheap :P ) and also the bone and the cartilage was in the way.
As the sun was setting on day number 3, he had decided to go to sleep pretty early. So when he went to sleep, he had a dream that night about some crazy weather. He dreamed that it was raining a lot to the extent that a branch had fallen off a tree and that it managed to fall straight into the ditch, where he was and he used that branch to let himself out. After that he swam out and went straight to his car and he drove to his sister's house.
When he reached there, he was trying to apologize to her about something about a wedding, not sure what it was exactly and after that he waited for her to respond but as she was talking, there were no words coming out of her mouth. It was as if she was mute. But in the end he woke up and he realized that was all a dream. A crazy dream, I might say :P
The next day, Day number 4, he took the dream as a sign of some sort of escape plan and he woke up the next day also feeling very thirsty, his water bottle was almost finished, there was about 140ml of water left. He tried using a rope he had and thought he could lift the boulder, but unfortunately that didn't help him that much.  He was actually running out of ideas on how to get rid of that boulder. He tried screaming again but that also didn't help. After he screamed there was a couple minutes of silence in the movie and Dido sang the Acoustic Version of her song "If I Rise". This time A.R. Rahman wasn't singing in that part, Dido was doing a Solo (XTR, remember what Bubbles from Rush Hour 3, "Time for My Solo", LOL :P )

On The 5th Day (The Final Day), he was like that's it, if after all those attempts to remove the boulder didn't help, then there is only 1 solution and since he didn't move his crushed arm in 5 days (127 hours, yes like the name of the movie :P ), he had decided to get rid of his crushed arm.

Note: The Next Line Actually ruins the ENTIRE Movie for you. So, if curiosity is killing the cat, then read on but if you want to wait and watch the move yourself be my guest, you'll love it anyways :)











So he had decided to go ahead and attempt to cut his crushed arm off again, but remember what I said when that didn't help at all. Well what he did was he had to put some pressure on that crushed arm by tying a rope extremely tight around his shoulder (the one closer to the injured arm), then after that, he then tried to break the bone of the broken arm even more, of course that had to hurt like anything. After he broke the bone, the cartilage also broke off and then he took the pocketknife and tried to cut it off again.
Once he made the incision, a lot of blood came out and he was bleeding like anything and also screaming in pain (Who wouldn't be in pain? I might add), after the incision, he even had to cut the nerves from his crushed arm and by then there was so much blood gushing out everywhere. The poor guy was crying with a lot of pain and blood....
Then after he cut off all the nerves, he actually fell down to the ground, so he wrapped his elbow or was it the shoulder with a shirt and he grabbed all the things he had with his 1 arm left and ran outside. Once he was outside, he reached a pond of water and he just sat there and drank it. Even though the pond wasn't really clean, it was filled with dirt.
Finally he went and he had decided to go search and see if there was anyone there to help him. So he kept running and running for a couple of hours and by then he found a family and that family had helped him. They gave him some water because he was thirsty and of course they were extremely shocked to see his state, so they called the other people that were with the family in the group and then they had used the radioed in the Emergency Team and then a helicopter had arrived and took the injured guy in a stretcher and took him to the hospital.
A couple of months later he was released from the hospital and he was known as the greatest person who survived for 5 days without anything. They showed him swimming in a pool but of course there were so many movie mistakes and you could easily see both his arms in the water. They had failed to make it look like he was swimming with 1 arm. They also showed his family cheering for him while he was there swimming. And then he even saw his sister and he was telling her something again but I don't really know what they were talking about.
Then just before the credits, this guy continued doing some extreme sports but he had decided to take it easy and not go too extreme (like go rock climbing on mount everest with just 1 flimsy hook), no he went on a hiking expedition across the North Pole with a group of people. Oh and he now writes down messages and tells everyone where he's going :D
As soon as the credits appeared Dido was singing her song "If I Rise"




Please note: That I have left about 8 paragraphs out because I want everyone to view this movie. There is just so many things I haven't explained yet, but this is the best I can do. Believe it or not, I had actually rewritten this post about several times, I had to make it perfect and I had to make it 8 paragraphs shorter. The rest is for you to watch it and rate it :D :D :D

Dido & A.R. Rahman Win The Critic Awards:

It's Official, just read this which was taken from the 16th Annual BFCA Critics Awards:

BEST SONG

Winner: "If I Rise" - performed by Dido and A.R. Rahman/music by A.R. Rahman/lyrics by Dido Armstrong and Rollo Armstrong - 127 Hours

Nominees:

• "I See the Light" - performed by Mandy Moore & Zachary Levi/written by Alan Menken & Glenn Slater - Tangled
• "If I Rise" - performed by Dido and A.R. Rahman/music by A.R. Rahman/lyrics by Dido Armstrong and Rollo Armstrong - 127 Hours
• "Shine" - performed and written by John Legend - Waiting for Superman
• "We Belong Together" - performed and written by Randy Newman - Toy Story 3
• "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me Yet" - performed by Cher/written by Diane Warren - Burlesque

 Dido Headquarters had this to say:

"Well, here's some exciting news - on Friday night, Dido and A. R. Rahman's new If I Rise track won the Best Song award at the 16th Annual BFCA Critics' Choice Movie Awards. 

The awards poll 200 film critics from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the largest film critics organisation in the U.S. and Canada. The ceremony took place at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. "

A Big Congratulations goes to Dido & A.R. Rahman On Winning this Award :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Blog Changes For 2011:

Since 2010 is over and 2011 has just started recently, I thought I would make a few changes for my blog. Now that Winter is almost done, and Springtime is just around the corner for the U.A.E, I decided to give my blog a complete new makeover. Now I have modified it's look and I'm going to be posting lots of new information about what's going on in my life and of course I will mention some of my interests.
However, I know many of you are awaiting the arrival of the review of the Movie "127 Hours", I'm sorry that it's taking too long, I haven't really updated, since my exams were over. I was too busy travelling to China and unfortunately China had blocked a million things (Facebook, Human interests, Politics and Blogspot), so there was no chance of me getting access to my blog; I wonder, how are the Chinese people going to view the changes that I've done so far to my blog?
Anyways, getting back to the topic, I will also be adding some pictures from my trip to China also on Blogspot and I will also be adding a couple of new recipes, unfortunately my 2010 summer recipes were not uploaded due to complications. But, I will be adding 3 or 4 recipes this coming season. I will be adding a new recipe for Desserts, so prepare to be amazed. Of course, I will be uploading everything extremely soon , probably by February, I will post 2 new recipes and by May, about 3 new recipes. On March and April, I won't really be blogging that much due to a couple of things going on. Let's see on February 28, 2 games will be released to the U.A.E: The Sims 3: Out Door Stuff Pack and Dark Spore, then on March: The Sims Medieval and then on April, I will be starting my final exams for the next semester and by May 7 2011, Updates would continue :)
On May 21, I will be doing a major update for my Birthday because I will finally be 21 years old on May 21, 2011 :D :D :D
There still a lot of time till my birthday and that's about it. Expect a couple more random updates through out the week :)

New Blog Updates Coming Soon:

Expect a couple of updates this coming week followed by a review of the movie 127 hours to be released on Friday the 14th of January 2011 :D