I am Audrey.

So it was a weekend of Golden Globe winners and Academy Award nominees and my verdict? 2011 was a year of slim pickings. Let's start with the movie that most people will probably watch: The Descendants. I'm not a Clooney fan and honestly don't see the appeal. While The Descendants was in no way a bad movie and if you're looking for a movie to watch, please do but I honestly don't really see it as ground-breaking Oscar material (then again, Chicago won Best Movie so what do I know!) -- it's basically a less depressing, more well told and better acted version of John Cusack's Grace Is Gone, in a way. Father attempts to deal with his two daughters and life after the death of his (dying) wife. It does help that the movie is set in Hawaii and has a beautiful soundtrack the real stars of the show is not George Clooney. Every time there was a close up of Clooney, my head goes "Nespresso!" because it's the exact same look that Clooney has in his Nespresso ads! The real stars are the kids -- Shailene Woodley who plays Clooney's rebellious, straight-shooting 17-year-old daughter Alex and Nick Krause as Sid, Alex's poster surfer boy friend (yes, boy friend); but Amara Miller who plays 10-year-old Scottie stole the show. If you remember being 10, you'll remember how confusing it was to be at that age -- not old enough to wear training bras but too old for sparkly clothes and toys, stuck in between being treated a child, but expected to be responsible for your actions and understand the consequences. And Miller played that to a tee, and more in The Descendants. Helped that she's cute as a button too. Step aside, Little Miss Sunshine. One of my favorite scenes from the movie though was an unexpected, quiet one. One that I felt would have easily been left on the editing room floor but I'm really glad it made the final cut. You'd think that Sid was written in as Alex's love interest but nope, his role helps balances everyone else's nicely. There's a scene where Clooney's character Matt King checks on Sid, who's sleeping on the couch in the living room (obviously to check that Sid wasn't with Alex) and in that short conversation between the both of them, Payne beautifully turns Sid's character from useless surfer boy to one of the family. So yes, check out The Descendants for an easy watch and something to warm the heart. If anything, it made me laugh and cry and cry some more.

The Artist, on the hand, is not a movie for everyone. I really liked that it gave me a completely different movie-watching experience -- one that made me rethink the way we watch movies today and the expectations we have when we step into the cinema. Although, it would have been cool to have a real orchestra in the cinema playing the soundtrack to accompany to movie -- you'll know what I mean after you watch the first five minutes of The Artist. Throughout the movie, one of my biggest struggles was the lack of dialogue and I found myself hungry for lines on the screen or strained to read the actors' lips -- only to consciously tell myself to be patient and ask myself why dialogue was so important to me. Why not pay attention to what's on screen? And I think that beyond it being a love story, The Artist wanted to do just that -- pace us. Why do we crave noise, speed, action, dramatic soundtracks? Do we really need all that jazz to make it a movie? The Artist calmed me, something that I needed and craved since returning from the South Islands, New Zealand a week ago. Watch it, and if you have to choose -- buy a ticket for The Artist, at least to support a movie to dares to be so different from everything that's out there today. For once, I'm really glad that The Artist won Best Motion Picture and Best Actor (for Jean Dujardin who played the lead George Valentine) at The Golden Globes and that it's nominated for 12 Oscars. At least this way, this movie's getting the kind of exposure it deserves.

To a child soldier in the Congo, this could mean living another day.

You see, the dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun. And the realists, well without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground."

- Modern Family, S03E09

Movie-watching should be a sensorial experience, right? And no, I'm not talking about the popcorn muching, the nacho crunching or the smelly guy sitting behind you who desperately needs a bathe.

When we talk about our favorite movies, we typically have a favorite scene, favorite line and we always remember how it made us feel, and at times, even who we saw it with and where. And technically, we should also remember how it smelled -- yup, you read right. We know that certain smells trigger certain memories. For e.g. a sniff of freshly cooked fluffy rice makes me think of my grandma because growing up, lunch time was usually rice and dishes. So here's my theory, a truly sensorial movie would have a smell -- and Zhuang and I took it this theory for a drive. 

We decided to go down our list of some of favorite movies to see what kind of smells were associated with it. Question, if you watched the same movie with the same person at the same time, does he/she smell it differently? Sounds like we're going down Twilight Zone territory now, but read on and tell me what your favorite movies smell like!

MOULIN ROUGE - We both love this film, and have seen it countless times. To Zhuang, it smells like a theatre, complete with red cushions with a hint of musk. To me, it smells of heady French perfume, sweet, strong but never cheap.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER - This one's a favorite of mine. I secretly want to be Zooey Deschanel, and no, it''s not because JGL is completely head over heels in love with her in the movie and there's absolutely no way I can pull of a name like Summer. Unsurprisingly, this movie reminded me of the smell of spring, more specifically, of when I open my door in San Francisco in the morning and it's the scent of freshly cut grass and that first whiff that's a mix of morning dew and yesterday night's fog.  

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND - This reminded Zhuang of how winter smells like, the snow, the dry air. It did the same for me, but it also made of think of the familiar, comforting smell of a favorite knitted scarf, one that you've worn throughout winter and just never got down to washing it. And no, it does not stink. The smell is one of warmth meets dry winter. 

ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD - This is one of both our top favorites and honesty, one of the mos underrated movies ever. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. Beautifully written, shot and completely mesmerizing. This smelled of dust and yes, think the stereotypically tumbleweek rolling across the sandy ground. And of very worn, brown leather. 

BLACK SNAKE MOAN - This was actually the movie the spurred us into the conversation of what movies smell like. It's at the bottom of the list because I'm not of a fan of the movie but Zhuang loves it. I'm not denying that it's a well-made piece, it's just not my cup of coffee - so not a blues woman, Samuel L. - not my thing at all! To Zhuang, this smells of rain, grimy mud and lots and lots of sweeat. Gross. Here's trivia: Did you remember Justin Timberlake in this?

Interestingly, we both couldn't figure out what our INCEPTION or THE DARK KNIGHT smelled like and we chalked it up to the fact that Nolan's movies were more cerebral than emotional, and that was why we couldn't associate a smell with it. 

Testing out an iPhone app, let's see if this works.

I heard about Terra Nova because Steven Spielberg was one of the producers on the show. You would think that the man responsible for Jurassic Park would at least offer a semi-decent dinosaur movie on a TV budget, right? Erm, Terra Nova -- not the case. Here's the plot: It's set sometime in the bleak future where Earth is an utter blah and there's a new colony called Terra Nova that everybody seems to want to move to. A family, whose dad can totally pass for Will Shuster's twin brother, moves there and starts a new life. The colony's run by a military regime led by the military dude from Avatar, who probably only plays military roles coz I've never seen him in anything else. There's a rebel group and oh, dinosaurs roaming the backyard.

The actors are super average, completely unmemorable and coupled with sleep-inducing action sequences, I'll be surprised if the show gets renewed for a second season. It's like one of those shows that I used to watch on TV on a lazy Sunday morning back home in Penang when I was 9. Here's my thing with shows and movies featuring dinosaurs: They don't work. Jurassic Park was insanely amazing when it came out 1993 because there was nothing like it before it hit the screens. Everybody wanted to catch it. It was a must-do. I still remember standing in line with my parents, buying tickets for the movie. And honestly, growing up, Jurassic Park's the only movie I remember my parents ever bringing us to watch in the cinema.

If you liked the series, do enlighten me because it's a complete snooze fest to me. Next!

Seriously?!