By Ellen Pham, Chamberlain High

From Jennifer Lawrence tripping on her gown to Kristen Stewart hobbling to present an award with Daniel Radcliffe to Seth MacFarlane dropping a clunker John Wilkes Booth reference, this year’s Oscars ceremony was packed with memorable moments. But the buzz about glamorous dresses and tasteless host jokes sometimes make it easy to forget what the Oscars is about: celebrating movies and all the dedicated people who make films come alive. Here are some observations about the big category winners:

Best Picture: Argo
Ben Affleck has certainly come a long way since his days in Gigli, but honestly, all of the films in this category deserved to be there. It’s too bad the Academy didn’t pull a Mean Girls stunt and break the award up so everyone could have a piece. Lincoln was incredible so I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had won. I would’ve been surprised if Silver Linings Playbook had, though. I agree that the cast worked well together, but compared to the other nominees, it lacked the intense drama and grandeur.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
I completely agree with this choice. Daniel Day-Lewis was fantastic in his interpretation of Lincoln, stern but gentle, wise and childish, vulnerable yet strong. He really brought the 16th president to life and was a steady rock. But it was close. My second choice for Best Actor would’ve been Hugh Jackman for his splendid performance in Les Miserables.

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence
So excited that she won! She made Silver Linings Playbook so entertaining. Lawrence has a talent for playing tough, independent females. She was perfectly brash in The Hunger Games and Playbook. Let’s face it. Lawrence had a great year. In the future, I’d love for her to step outside her comfort zone a bit and take on some submissive roles.

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz
Waltz won for his incredible turn in Django Unchained, but Tommy Lee Jones’ stellar performance in Lincoln brought humor to a rather unhumorous movie. It was also refreshing to see Robert DeNiro get back in the game.

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway
No need for an explanation.

Harlem shake-up
We know everybody’s doing one: Videos of perfectly otherwise normal people breaking into wild, flailing moves after someone, usually wearing a mask, starts dancing to a song by Brooklyn trap-music DJ Baauer. High schools all over Tampa Bay have recorded their versions of the 31-second freak-out meme, including Tampa Bay Tech, Wharton, Freedom, Jefferson, Palm Harbor University and Lakewood (shown at right), in which one student strips off his shirt and another worms across the floor in what appears to be his underwear. Another popular interpretation shows a guy throwing a chunk of concrete into a spinning washing machine, which then disintegrates in dramatic freak-out fashion.

No offense, but most of the thousands of Harlem Shake videos posted online do not depict the actual Harlem Shake. The Tampa Bay Times spoke to hip-hop dance instructor Alesia Scott-Warren at the Patel Conservatory in Tampa, who said all this Internet air-humping is good fun, but it’s not the “fly dance” of body isolations and contractions she knows from the early 2000s, rising in popularity with artists P. Diddy and G. Dep. —TB-TWO*  STAFF                                                                       

SEND US YOUR HARLEM SHAKE VIDEO LINKS.
If your school or you and a group of friends have made a Shake video, proper Harlem moves or no, send the link to tbtwostaff@gmail.com, or tweet it with the tag @tbtwo. We’ll compile and post on this site.

New GPA formula
News in the alphabet soup of college admissions: Pinellas County is considering a change to the way honors classes are weighted for public high school students, dropping the weight for honors classes to rank them a half-point below AP, IB and dual enrollment classes to reflect a course’s level of difficulty. Currently, an A in a regular class is worth 4.0 but worth 5.0 in the other four categories. Superintendent Michael Grego this week floated the idea of making an honors A worth 4.5, and the issue is likely to be taken up by the School Board. Hillsborough County already differentiates between honors and the other categories, awarding twice as many “bonus points” toward GPAs for AP, IB and dual enrollment courses. — TAMPA BAY TIMES