The Stage is Set
The stage is set.
One one side, you have the Seattle Seahawks versus the New England Patriots. Whoop-di-doo. Hey, America, the midwestern underdogs either put up a valiant effort in the NFC championship only to lose in over time following an interception and two unlikely touchdowns in the fourth quarter, or they flat out lost the AFC championship after slipping in the snow, not making touchdown passes and not putting any real defense up against the team that may or may not have deflated their ball specifically for better catching. The two teams I wanted to see make it to the Big Game, the Packers and the Colts, didn't. This set up a Big Game match up of the team that just won last year and, your welcome, America, gave us three of the most boring highest rating hours of viewing by steamrolling the poor Denver Broncos (Richard Sherman's back. And they have Marshawn Lynch, who gets paid to eat Skittles in front of the media); and the New England Patriots, who seem to go to the Superbowl every three years at least. They won it in 2005, I know for sure. So we have two exceedingly ego-driven teams, neither of which do I want to see win in a blow-out, but nor do I really care if it's a close game, because let's face it, there's no real underdog this time around.
On the other side, you have yourself a race. Boyhood, Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and American Sniper are suddenly head to head to head for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Let's not count out The Imitation Game, one of my favorite films ever made; or The Theory of Everything, Selma, The Grand Budapest Hotel, or Whiplash. It's a close race where would be front runners suddenly lose, and would be also rans find themselves stumbling to the podium with narry a speech prepared to be found.
You know what? I'm not even going to bother this year with the metaphor where I talk about the Academy Awards as the event of the year with the preamble being a big two paragraph speech about the quarterbacks for the respective teams in the Superbowl.
I. Don't. Care. About. The. Superbowl.
I'm working at Arc that night anyways. I wonder if I'll even watch any of it.
For me it's no contest. The Oscars are the Big Game of 2015 (film year 2014). I have way more interest in how that all pans out, and I haven't seen more than a quarter of the movies nominated for Best Picture.
Here are my top five movies of 2014, and how they've panned out in this year's Oscar race.
My favorite movie of 2014 is The Imitation Game. (Poster courtesy of The Weinstein Company.)
It is nominated for Eight Academy Awards, including
Best Picture (Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky and Teddy Schwarzman, producers)
Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch)
Best Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley)
Best Director (Morten Tyldum)
Film Editing (William Goldenberg)
Original Score (Alexandre Desplat)
Production Design (Maria Djurkovic, Tatiana Macdonald)
Adapted Screenplay (Graham Moore)
It was also nominated for Five Golden Globes, including
Best Picture (Drama)
Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama (Benedict Cumberbatch)
Best Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley)
Best Screenplay (Graham Moore)
Best Original Score (Alexandre Desplat)
It was also nominated for Three Screen Actors Guild Awards, including
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (Benedict Cumberbatch)
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Keira Knightley)
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (Matthew Beard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Charles Dance, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Keira Knightley, Allen Leech, and Mark Strong)
Benedict Cumberbatch was mesmerizing. I've loved watching him in performances ranging from the pediophilic urchin in Atonement to the villainous Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness. Here, he played a character we could root for. It was very interesting to see his intensity, eccentricity, and temperament molded to fit a character we cared about and wanted to see succeed. As Alan Turing, he is demanding that all of his fellow mathematicians follow protocol as they work with their pre-computer machine which interprets data intercepted from the German Intelligence, hoping to figure out what kind of secret code the NAZIs are using to transmit orders. Much of the movie is the frustration of not getting a damn word out of the numbers and letters that the Germans use. The computer strains to find rhyme or reason in it all. And then there's the machine. (Haha, get it, I made a pun that Alan Turing behaves like a computer for much of the movie.) He names his machine Christopher, after the male classmate who helped him realize he was homosexual, and made him okay with that fact as a confused sixteen year old boy in boarding school. We learn that though he is very left-brained, Alan is capable of love. He loved Christopher, and Christopher loved him. And that love for Christopher is at least metaphorically visible in the amount of investment he puts of himself into that machine. (Not an innuendo.) Keira Knightley is great as the counterpart who can keep up with him intellectually, and he cares about enough to at very least fake a romance, due to his caring about her that much that he'll submit to a straight romance for their respective well-beings. If The Imitation Game wins Best Picture, it may become the most exciting Oscars for me in history. If it wins anything, it's up there with 1993, 1994, 2002, 2007, and 2012.
My 2nd favorite movie of 2014 was The Giver. (Poster courtesy of The Weinstein Company.)
The Giver was not nominated for any major awards this season. Which is too bad. It was nominated for a People's Choice Award for Favorite Dramatic Movie.
Following the plight of Jonas, a boy who is capable of seeing the shades of color in the world that other people can't, we see him come to realize that the human race can make wrong decisions if they're given the freedom to. As a consequence of being given the job of Keeper of Memories, he now feels like it's his obligation to let the rest of his sheltered society know that they have the right to demand freedom. (From this strain, books like The Hunger Games and Divergent sprung. Hey, you can find them elsewhere in my top ten list!) I loved watching Jonas meekly develop feelings for his friend, Fiona, and grapple with his best friend, Asher, over whether or not he should be allowed to leave with the baby his father has brought home from the nursing center, presumably to put down. This movie made me think and reflect a lot about my own life, and my two nieces and nephew, beautiful children, not a one of them planned.
My 3rd favorite movie of 2014 was X-Men: Days of Future Past. (Poster courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel.)
X-Men: DOFP has been nominated for One Academy Award, for Visual Effects.
It was nominated for a Screen Actor's Guild Award for Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble.
For the record, it took People's Choice Award nominations for Favorite Movie, Favorite Action Movie, Favorite Actor (Hugh Jackman), Favorite Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Favorite Action Movie Actor (Hugh Jackman) and Favorite Action Movie Actress (Jennifer Lawrence).
This movie dealt with the heaviness that all of the other X-Men films have. X-MEN are a metaphor for segregation, bigotry, and hatred of that which is different and doesn't look like us. Mutants were like the minority group that the government makes laws against to suppress. And it gets to the point that the government sends Sentinels out to kill mutants, so in a very distopian future, almost none of them remain. So it's up to Wolverine to mind meld back to himself circa 1973 to catch the elusive Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence, ooh la la) and talk sense into her before she assassinates Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage). If she goes through with the killing, the public outcry against mutants will result in her getting arrested and tortured. If she doesn't go through with it, though, Bolivar Trask will operate in his free will to end all mutants. So of course Magneto (Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen) will only be helpful up to a point. Yeah, they'll help try to catch Mystique before she gets loose and pulls a gun on Trask at the unveiling of the sentinels, but are they just going to sit back and watch him be power hungry even after helping Professor Xavier (James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart)? Or will they pick up a giant baseball stadium and set it down smack around the evil masterminds who represent the George Wallaces and Ross Barnetts of the X-Men universe? This was a really good summer movie.
My 4th Favorite movie of 2014 was The Fault In Our Stars. (Poster courtesy of 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures)
This was nominated for no Academy Awards, no Golden Globes, and no Screen Actors Guild awards. It was entertaining for a young audience. But a little too hipster for the sextagenarian Academy.
It took People's Choice Award nominations for Best Duo (Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort), Favorite Dramatic Movie, and Favorite Dramatic Movie Actress (Shailene Woodley). But that's good. Shailene Woodley made a film about a young woman suffering from Stage 4 Thyroid Cancer a lot easier to swallow than the medication she was forced to take. She had suffered from lethargy, depression, and underfunctioning lungs for her entire teenage life. So she's not really enthusiastic about going out and having a life beyond watching America's Next Top Model on television at her home in Indianapolis when she meets Augustus Waters at a cancer support meeting. The fact that Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort had just previously played brother and sister in Divergent was not a distraction in the least. They had such good chemistry as they playfully defied the limitations of their respective cancer diagnoses and went on a transcontinental flight to Europe to meet the author of her favorite book and visit the home where Anne Frank had hid from the NAZI's. This was a story about living with cancer, and living period. I'm sorry it got short-changed.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is my 5th favorite movie of 2014. (Movie poster courtesy of Lionsgate Films.)
It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, "Yellow Flicker Beat" by Lorde.
For the record, it is up for People's Choice Awards for Favorite Movie Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) and Favorite Action Movie Actress (Jennifer Lawrence). Though it's fair to say it shares those nominations with X-Men: Days of Future Past.
I have breathlessly watched Katniss Everdeen narrowly avoid death again and again and again through The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. How many times did the cannon almost go off for her? I have also watched her risk. life. and. limb. to save Peeta Mellark. Time after time she goes out in the open to hold him in her arms and half-drag, half-carry him to a cave, run to the cornucopia to get medicine for his leg, pull him up on top of the cornucopia to rescue him from the muttations, tend to his wounds, flesh irritation, and his cardiac arrest... and then after ALL OF THAT WORK he gets left behind at the end of Catching Fire. She's too involved now. She has to get him out of the Capitol. The nightmares she has from The Hunger Games are the nightmares he has, and it is like having part of herself imprisoned in the Capitol at that point. She is obsessed with getting into the Capitol and releasing him from the prison where she knows he's facing unspeakable tortures. We'll learn more about them in the next movie. But in the mean time, we have this splendid piece about political maneuvering, where she goes head to head with Haymitch, District 13's President Coin, and Capitol Double Agent Plutarch Heavensbee to come up with some plan to broker his release. Getting an Academy Award nomination for any of The Hunger Games movies would be such a Cubs winning the World Series level victory for me, but the film stands on its own two legs and speaks for itself in terms of its quality even if it walks away with nil.
Here is how the rest of my top ten rounds out:
6. Divergent (People's Choice Award nominations for Favorite Action Movie Actress, Action Movie Actor, Movie Duo)
7. Life Itself (No Academy Award nomination. It got a Gotham Independent Film Award nomination for Documentary Feature)
8. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (People's Choice Award nomination for Favorite Movie, Favorite Action Movie, Favorite Action Movie Actor, Action Movie Actress, Favorite Movie Duo)
9. Big Hero 6 (Academy Award nomination for Animated Feature)
10. If I Stay (People's Choice Award nominations for Favorite Drama, Favorite Dramatic movie actress, Chloë Grace Moretz)
Honorable Mentions for the year:
11. Maleficent
12. Rio 2
13. The Monuments Men
14. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
15. Birdman
16. The Maze Runner
17. The Lego Movie
18. The Nut Job
Didn't care for:
Neighbors
Dumb and Dumber To
Haven't finished but probably won't care for:
Transformers Age of Extinction
So does anyone have any predictions for the Super Bowl? I'll maybe have Phil Kopp record it on DVR and watch it on Monday.
One one side, you have the Seattle Seahawks versus the New England Patriots. Whoop-di-doo. Hey, America, the midwestern underdogs either put up a valiant effort in the NFC championship only to lose in over time following an interception and two unlikely touchdowns in the fourth quarter, or they flat out lost the AFC championship after slipping in the snow, not making touchdown passes and not putting any real defense up against the team that may or may not have deflated their ball specifically for better catching. The two teams I wanted to see make it to the Big Game, the Packers and the Colts, didn't. This set up a Big Game match up of the team that just won last year and, your welcome, America, gave us three of the most boring highest rating hours of viewing by steamrolling the poor Denver Broncos (Richard Sherman's back. And they have Marshawn Lynch, who gets paid to eat Skittles in front of the media); and the New England Patriots, who seem to go to the Superbowl every three years at least. They won it in 2005, I know for sure. So we have two exceedingly ego-driven teams, neither of which do I want to see win in a blow-out, but nor do I really care if it's a close game, because let's face it, there's no real underdog this time around.
On the other side, you have yourself a race. Boyhood, Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and American Sniper are suddenly head to head to head for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Let's not count out The Imitation Game, one of my favorite films ever made; or The Theory of Everything, Selma, The Grand Budapest Hotel, or Whiplash. It's a close race where would be front runners suddenly lose, and would be also rans find themselves stumbling to the podium with narry a speech prepared to be found.
You know what? I'm not even going to bother this year with the metaphor where I talk about the Academy Awards as the event of the year with the preamble being a big two paragraph speech about the quarterbacks for the respective teams in the Superbowl.
I. Don't. Care. About. The. Superbowl.
I'm working at Arc that night anyways. I wonder if I'll even watch any of it.
For me it's no contest. The Oscars are the Big Game of 2015 (film year 2014). I have way more interest in how that all pans out, and I haven't seen more than a quarter of the movies nominated for Best Picture.
Here are my top five movies of 2014, and how they've panned out in this year's Oscar race.
My favorite movie of 2014 is The Imitation Game. (Poster courtesy of The Weinstein Company.)
It is nominated for Eight Academy Awards, including
Best Picture (Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky and Teddy Schwarzman, producers)
Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch)
Best Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley)
Best Director (Morten Tyldum)
Film Editing (William Goldenberg)
Original Score (Alexandre Desplat)
Production Design (Maria Djurkovic, Tatiana Macdonald)
Adapted Screenplay (Graham Moore)
It was also nominated for Five Golden Globes, including
Best Picture (Drama)
Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama (Benedict Cumberbatch)
Best Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley)
Best Screenplay (Graham Moore)
Best Original Score (Alexandre Desplat)
It was also nominated for Three Screen Actors Guild Awards, including
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (Benedict Cumberbatch)
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Keira Knightley)
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (Matthew Beard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Charles Dance, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Keira Knightley, Allen Leech, and Mark Strong)
Benedict Cumberbatch was mesmerizing. I've loved watching him in performances ranging from the pediophilic urchin in Atonement to the villainous Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness. Here, he played a character we could root for. It was very interesting to see his intensity, eccentricity, and temperament molded to fit a character we cared about and wanted to see succeed. As Alan Turing, he is demanding that all of his fellow mathematicians follow protocol as they work with their pre-computer machine which interprets data intercepted from the German Intelligence, hoping to figure out what kind of secret code the NAZIs are using to transmit orders. Much of the movie is the frustration of not getting a damn word out of the numbers and letters that the Germans use. The computer strains to find rhyme or reason in it all. And then there's the machine. (Haha, get it, I made a pun that Alan Turing behaves like a computer for much of the movie.) He names his machine Christopher, after the male classmate who helped him realize he was homosexual, and made him okay with that fact as a confused sixteen year old boy in boarding school. We learn that though he is very left-brained, Alan is capable of love. He loved Christopher, and Christopher loved him. And that love for Christopher is at least metaphorically visible in the amount of investment he puts of himself into that machine. (Not an innuendo.) Keira Knightley is great as the counterpart who can keep up with him intellectually, and he cares about enough to at very least fake a romance, due to his caring about her that much that he'll submit to a straight romance for their respective well-beings. If The Imitation Game wins Best Picture, it may become the most exciting Oscars for me in history. If it wins anything, it's up there with 1993, 1994, 2002, 2007, and 2012.
My 2nd favorite movie of 2014 was The Giver. (Poster courtesy of The Weinstein Company.)
The Giver was not nominated for any major awards this season. Which is too bad. It was nominated for a People's Choice Award for Favorite Dramatic Movie.
Following the plight of Jonas, a boy who is capable of seeing the shades of color in the world that other people can't, we see him come to realize that the human race can make wrong decisions if they're given the freedom to. As a consequence of being given the job of Keeper of Memories, he now feels like it's his obligation to let the rest of his sheltered society know that they have the right to demand freedom. (From this strain, books like The Hunger Games and Divergent sprung. Hey, you can find them elsewhere in my top ten list!) I loved watching Jonas meekly develop feelings for his friend, Fiona, and grapple with his best friend, Asher, over whether or not he should be allowed to leave with the baby his father has brought home from the nursing center, presumably to put down. This movie made me think and reflect a lot about my own life, and my two nieces and nephew, beautiful children, not a one of them planned.
My 3rd favorite movie of 2014 was X-Men: Days of Future Past. (Poster courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel.)
X-Men: DOFP has been nominated for One Academy Award, for Visual Effects.
It was nominated for a Screen Actor's Guild Award for Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble.
For the record, it took People's Choice Award nominations for Favorite Movie, Favorite Action Movie, Favorite Actor (Hugh Jackman), Favorite Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Favorite Action Movie Actor (Hugh Jackman) and Favorite Action Movie Actress (Jennifer Lawrence).
This movie dealt with the heaviness that all of the other X-Men films have. X-MEN are a metaphor for segregation, bigotry, and hatred of that which is different and doesn't look like us. Mutants were like the minority group that the government makes laws against to suppress. And it gets to the point that the government sends Sentinels out to kill mutants, so in a very distopian future, almost none of them remain. So it's up to Wolverine to mind meld back to himself circa 1973 to catch the elusive Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence, ooh la la) and talk sense into her before she assassinates Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage). If she goes through with the killing, the public outcry against mutants will result in her getting arrested and tortured. If she doesn't go through with it, though, Bolivar Trask will operate in his free will to end all mutants. So of course Magneto (Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen) will only be helpful up to a point. Yeah, they'll help try to catch Mystique before she gets loose and pulls a gun on Trask at the unveiling of the sentinels, but are they just going to sit back and watch him be power hungry even after helping Professor Xavier (James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart)? Or will they pick up a giant baseball stadium and set it down smack around the evil masterminds who represent the George Wallaces and Ross Barnetts of the X-Men universe? This was a really good summer movie.
My 4th Favorite movie of 2014 was The Fault In Our Stars. (Poster courtesy of 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures)
This was nominated for no Academy Awards, no Golden Globes, and no Screen Actors Guild awards. It was entertaining for a young audience. But a little too hipster for the sextagenarian Academy.
It took People's Choice Award nominations for Best Duo (Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort), Favorite Dramatic Movie, and Favorite Dramatic Movie Actress (Shailene Woodley). But that's good. Shailene Woodley made a film about a young woman suffering from Stage 4 Thyroid Cancer a lot easier to swallow than the medication she was forced to take. She had suffered from lethargy, depression, and underfunctioning lungs for her entire teenage life. So she's not really enthusiastic about going out and having a life beyond watching America's Next Top Model on television at her home in Indianapolis when she meets Augustus Waters at a cancer support meeting. The fact that Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort had just previously played brother and sister in Divergent was not a distraction in the least. They had such good chemistry as they playfully defied the limitations of their respective cancer diagnoses and went on a transcontinental flight to Europe to meet the author of her favorite book and visit the home where Anne Frank had hid from the NAZI's. This was a story about living with cancer, and living period. I'm sorry it got short-changed.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is my 5th favorite movie of 2014. (Movie poster courtesy of Lionsgate Films.)
It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, "Yellow Flicker Beat" by Lorde.
For the record, it is up for People's Choice Awards for Favorite Movie Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) and Favorite Action Movie Actress (Jennifer Lawrence). Though it's fair to say it shares those nominations with X-Men: Days of Future Past.
I have breathlessly watched Katniss Everdeen narrowly avoid death again and again and again through The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. How many times did the cannon almost go off for her? I have also watched her risk. life. and. limb. to save Peeta Mellark. Time after time she goes out in the open to hold him in her arms and half-drag, half-carry him to a cave, run to the cornucopia to get medicine for his leg, pull him up on top of the cornucopia to rescue him from the muttations, tend to his wounds, flesh irritation, and his cardiac arrest... and then after ALL OF THAT WORK he gets left behind at the end of Catching Fire. She's too involved now. She has to get him out of the Capitol. The nightmares she has from The Hunger Games are the nightmares he has, and it is like having part of herself imprisoned in the Capitol at that point. She is obsessed with getting into the Capitol and releasing him from the prison where she knows he's facing unspeakable tortures. We'll learn more about them in the next movie. But in the mean time, we have this splendid piece about political maneuvering, where she goes head to head with Haymitch, District 13's President Coin, and Capitol Double Agent Plutarch Heavensbee to come up with some plan to broker his release. Getting an Academy Award nomination for any of The Hunger Games movies would be such a Cubs winning the World Series level victory for me, but the film stands on its own two legs and speaks for itself in terms of its quality even if it walks away with nil.
Here is how the rest of my top ten rounds out:
6. Divergent (People's Choice Award nominations for Favorite Action Movie Actress, Action Movie Actor, Movie Duo)
7. Life Itself (No Academy Award nomination. It got a Gotham Independent Film Award nomination for Documentary Feature)
8. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (People's Choice Award nomination for Favorite Movie, Favorite Action Movie, Favorite Action Movie Actor, Action Movie Actress, Favorite Movie Duo)
9. Big Hero 6 (Academy Award nomination for Animated Feature)
10. If I Stay (People's Choice Award nominations for Favorite Drama, Favorite Dramatic movie actress, Chloë Grace Moretz)
Honorable Mentions for the year:
11. Maleficent
12. Rio 2
13. The Monuments Men
14. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
15. Birdman
16. The Maze Runner
17. The Lego Movie
18. The Nut Job
Didn't care for:
Neighbors
Dumb and Dumber To
Haven't finished but probably won't care for:
Transformers Age of Extinction
So does anyone have any predictions for the Super Bowl? I'll maybe have Phil Kopp record it on DVR and watch it on Monday.