2015 Oscar Nominations

Best Picture

• American Sniper – Clint Eastwood, Robert Lorenz, Andrew Lazar, Bradley Cooper, and Peter Morgan
• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher, and James W. Skotchdopole
• Boyhood – Richard Linklater and Cathleen Sutherland
• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson, Scoot Rudin, Steven Rales, and Jeremy Dawson
• The Imitation Game – Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky, and Teddy Schwarzman
• Selma – Christian Colson, Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner, and Jeremy Kleiner
• The Theory of Everything – Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, and Anthony McCarten
• Whiplash – Jason Blum, Helen Estabrook, and David Lancaster

Want to Win: Theory of Everything, because it was my absolute favorite of those movies.  Imitation Game being a close second.

Will Probably Win: I’m slightly leaning towards Birdman, with Boyhood being the obvious second. Odds are one of the two of them will get it.  I think Imitation Game is the dark horse that if there was a surprise, that would be it.

Actual Winner: Birdman

Actor in a Leading Role

• Steve Carell in “Foxcatcher”
• Bradley Cooper in “American Sniper”
• Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Imitation Game“
• Michael Keaton in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)“
• Eddie Redmayne in “Theory of Everything“

Want to Win: Eddie Redmayne

Will Probably Win: Eddie Redmayne

Actual Winner: Eddie Redmayne

Actress in a Leading Role

• Marion Cotillard in “Two Days, One Night”
• Felicity Jones in “The Theory of Everything“
• Julianne Moore in “Still Alice”
• Rosamund Pike in “Gone Girl”
• Reese Witherspoon in “Wild”

Want to Win: I don’t have any strong feelings in this category, but I did very much enjoy Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl.  So we’ll go with that.

Will Probably Win: Julianne Moore

Actual Winner: Julianne Moore

Actor in a Supporting Role

• Robert Duvall in “The Judge”
• Ethan Hawke in “Boyhood“
• Edward Norton in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)“
• Mark Ruffalo in “Foxcatcher”
• J.K. Simmons in “Whiplash”

Want to Win: Edward Norton

Will Probably Win: Probably J.K. Simmons with Edward Norton being a close second.

Actual Winner: J. K. Simmons

Actress in a Supporting Role

• Patricia Arquette in “Boyhood“
• Laura Dern in “Wild”
• Keira Knightley in “The Imitation Game“
• Emma Stone in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)“
• Meryl Streep in “Into the Woods”

Want to Win: Emma Stone was awesome in Birdman, and I would choose her if it wasn’t for Patricia Arquette who should win this and would absolutely deserve it.

Will Probably Win: Patricia Arquette

Actual Winner: Patricia Arquette

Animated Feature Film

• Big Hero 6 – Don Hall, Chris Williams, and Roy Conli
• The Boxtrolls – Anthony Stacchi, Graham Annable, and Travis Knight
• How to Train Your Dragon 2 – Dean DeBlois and Bonnie Arnold
• Song of the Sea – Tomm Moore and Paul Young
• The Tale of Princess Kaguya – Isao Takahata and Yoshiaki Nishimura

Want to Win: It doesn’t have a chance, but I’d love it if Boxtrolls won.  I loved going back to the claymation styling, and thus would love it if it won so that we’d maybe see more of these types of movies start to come back again.

Will Probably Win: How To Train Your Dragon 2 (which I thought was great, so I have no issues with it winning, either).

Actual Winner: Big Hero 6 (not going to lie, I was surprised, everything seemed to point at HTTYD2).

Cinematography

• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – Emmanuel Lubezki
• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Robert Yeoman
• Ida – Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski
• Mr. Turner – Dick Pope
• Unbroken – Roger Deakins

Want to Win: Birdman – I think the cinematography is part of the reason the movie was so cool to watch, so I think it should get it, but I also admit I haven’t seen the last three movies in the category.

Will Probably Win: Birdman

Actual Winner: Birdman

Costume Design

• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Milena Canonero
• Inherent Vice – Mark Bridges
• Into the Woods – Colleen Atwood
• Maleficent – Anna B. Sheppard
• Mr. Turner – Jacqueline Durran

Want to Win: Lolz Maleficent just to watch people be confused as to what the hell happened.

Will Probably Win: Grand Budapest Hotel, but equally as likely as Into the Woods.  I just think Into the Woods has so much inspiration from the stage show already, and there aren’t many costume changes between the main characters, that meh.  I don’t care for it to win.

Actual Winner: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Directing

• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – Alejandro G. Iñárritu
• Boyhood – Robert Linklater
• Foxcatcher – Bennett Miller
• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson
• The Imitation Game – Morten Tyldum

Want to Win: Boyhood

Will Probably Win: Boyhood

Actual Winner: Birdman (again, the other one I was surprised with, obviously)

Documentary Feature

• CitizenFour – Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, and Dirk Wilutzky
• Finding Vivian Maier – John Maloof and Charlie Siskel
• Last Days in Vietnam – Rory Kennedy and Keven McAlester
• The Salt of the Earth – Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiero Salgado, and David Rosier
• Virunga – Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara

I haven’t seen any of these :(.  I fail.

Actual Winner: CitizenFour

Documentary Short Subject

• Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 – Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry
• Joanna – Aneta Kopacz
• Our Curse – Tomasz Śliwiński and Maciej Ślesicki
• The Reaper (La Parka) – Gabriel Serra Arguello
• White Earth – J. Christian Jensen

I haven’t seen any of these either, I fail again!

Actual Winner: Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1

Film Editing

• American Sniper – Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach
• Boyhood – Sandra Adair
• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Barney Pilling
• The Imitation Game – William Goldenberg
• Whiplash – Tom Cross

Want to Win: No strong feelings on what I want to win here.  I think Boyhood is kind of a cop out because they had *so* long to work on it.  Yes, that doesn’t mean that their work wasn’t great, just you had 12 years to edit your movie when others had one or two.

Will Probably Win: Boyhood

Actual Winner: Whiplash

Foreign Language Film

• Ida – Poland, Pawel Pawlikowski
• Leviathan – Russia, Andrey Zvyagintsev
• Tangerines – Estonia, Zaza Urushadze
• Timbuktu – Mauritania, Abderrahmane Sissako
• Wild Tales – Damián Szifron

The only one I’ve seen is Ida, so I can’t make a very good decision on this category.

Actual Winner: Ida

Makeup and Hairstyling

• Foxcatcher – Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard
• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier
• Guardians of the Galaxy – Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou and David White

Want to Win: Guardians of the Galaxy.  Because aliens.

Will Probably Win: Not sure, so I’ll just stick with Guardians of the Galaxy.

Actual Winner: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Music – Original Score

• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Alexandre Desplat
• The Imitation Game – Alexandre Desplat
• Interstellar – Hans Zimmer
• Mr. Turner – Gary Yershon
• The Theory of Everything – Jóhann Jóhannsson

Want to Win: One of the few categories I’ve seen the majority of the movies!  The only one I remember “diskling” the music was Interstellar, just becuase it was so obvious normal Hans Zimmer stuff that it actually distracted me from the movie.  I just saw Imitation Game, and thought the music was great at times.  I also remember the music in Grand Budapest Hotel standing out to me in a positive way.  So basically, I just want one of Alexandre Desplat’s to win.

Will Probably Win: I don’t know.  Grand Budapest Hotel? Let’s go with it.

Actual Winner: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Music – Original Song

• “Everything Is Awesome” from The Lego Movie – Shawn Patterson
• “Glory” from Selma – John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn
• “Grateful” from Beyond the Lights – Diane Warren
• “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from Glen Campbell… I’ll be me – Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond
• “Lost Stars” from Begin Again – Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois

Want to Win: EEEVERYTHING IS AWESOMEEEEEEEE EVERYING IS COOOL WHEN YOU’RE PART OF A TEEEAMMMMMM

Will Probably Win: I have legitimately no idea.  Let’s give our prediction to “Glory” from Selma, since they have to let it win something.

Actual Winner: “Glory” from Selma

Production Design

• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Adam Stockhausen (Production Design); Anna Pinnock (Set Decoration)
• The Imitation Game – Maria Djurkovic (Production Design); Tatiana Macdonald (Set Decoration)
• Interstellar – Nathan Crowley (Production Design); Gary Fettis (Set Decoration)
• Into the Woods – Dennis Gassner (Production Design); Anna Pinnock (Set Decoration)
• Mr. Turner – Suzie Davies (Production Design); Charlotte Watts (Set Decoration)

Want to Win: I watched a feature on the set design of Grand Budapest, so I’m slightly biased towards it.  However, I love how realistic the world of the Imitation Game felt.  Into the Woods I still always felt like I was on a “stage”, and I didn’t really like that.  So not that one.

Will Probably Win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Actual Winner: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Short Film – Animated

• The Bigger Picture – Daisy Jacons and Christopher Hees
• The Dam Keeper – Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi
• Feast – Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed
• Me and My Moulton – Torill Kove
• A Single Life – Joris Oprins

Guess which category I failed at?

Actual Winner: Feast

Short Film – Live Action

• Aya – Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis
• Boogaloo and Graham – Michael Lennox and Ronan Blaney
• Butter Lamp (La Lampe au Buerre de Yak) – Hu Wei and Julien Féret
• Parvaneh – Talkhon Hamzavi and Stefan Eichenberger
• The Phone Call – Mat Kirkby and James Lucas

Oh hey this is the last one I suck at, I swear.

Actual Winner: The Phone Call

Sound Editing

• American Sniper – Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman
• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – Martin Hernández and Aaron Glascock
• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – Brent Burge and Jason Canovas
• Interstellar – Richard King
• Unbroken – Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro

Want to Win: Interstellar, because I feel like a lot of the space sounds you have to really work at creating and figuring out what kind of sounds you need, that might not already be “out there”.  Like the Hobbit, we have cool battles, but we’ve had cool orc battles for 5 other movies.  With American Sniper, there have been countless war movies.

Will Probably Win: I’m not sure, honestly. I’ll stick with Interstellar, because I don’t have a better reason why one of the others should win.

Actual Winner: American Sniper

Sound Mixing

• American Sniper – John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff and Walt Martin
• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and Thomas Varga
• Interstellar – Gary A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker and Mark Weingarten
• Unbroken – Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and David Lee
• Whiplash – Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley

Want to Win: Whiplash

Will Probably Win: Whiplash

Actual Winner: Whiplash

Visual Effects

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Bryan Grill and Dan Sudick
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barrett and Erik Winquist
• Guardians of the Galaxy – Stephane Ceretti, Nicolas Aithadi, Jonathan Fawkner and Paul Corbould
• Interstellar – Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher
• X-Men: Days of Future Past – Richard Stammers, Lou Pecora, Tim Crosbie and Cameron Waldbauer

Want to Win: X-Men, because I’m an X-Men whore and will always pick X-Men for anything.

Will Probably Win: Interstellar

Actual Winner: Interstellar

Writing – Adapted Screenplay

• American Sniper – Jason Hall
• The Imitation Game – Graham Moore
• Inherent Vice – Paul Thomas Anderson
• The Theory of Everything – Anthony McCarten
• Whiplash – Damien Chazelle

Want to Win: The Theory of Everything or The Imitation Game

Will Probably Win: The Imitation Game

Actual Winner: The Imitation Game

Writing – Original Screenplay

• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. and Armando Bo
• Boyhood – Richard Linklater
• Foxcatcher – E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness
• Nightcrawler – Dan Gilroy

Want to Win:  Here’s where, despite the fact that I didn’t much care for Birdman, I think it’s the most deserving to win in this category.  So I’m choosing it, over Boyhood, which they had 12+ years to write/rewrite/rework, etc.  So no fair to them.

Will Probably Win: Birdman or Boyhood.

Actual Winner: Birdman

Maria’s 2014 Oscar Picks

These are my 2014 Oscar picks.  I’ve noted who I WANT to win and who I THINK will win.  Sometimes they’re the same, sometimes they’re not.  This is mostly for my own amusement, more than anything.  Also noted, if I have a review for the mentioned movie, the link will take you to my review of it.

*Edit* The actual winners are now noted.

Actor in a Leading Role

• Christian Bale in “American Hustle”
• Bruce Dern in “Nebraska”
• Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street” – Will they ever give him an Oscar? We can keep dreaming… I’d like him to get one but not in this category this year.
• Chiwetel Ejiofor in “12 Years a Slave” – WANT to win and probably WILL win
• WINNER – Matthew McConaughey in “Dallas Buyers Club” – If Ejiofor doesn’t win it, I think McConaughey will.

Actor in a Supporting Role

• Barkhad Abdi in “Captain Phillips” – haven’t seen it but heard he was great, so I’d be ok if he won.
• Bradley Cooper in “American Hustle” – honestly surprised he was nominated….
• Michael Fassbender in “12 Years a Slave”
• Jonah Hill in “The Wolf of Wall Street” – He was surprising in this, I’ll give him that.  But I think other performances by people in this category were better.
• WINNER – Jared Leto in “Dallas Buyers Club” – WANT to win and strong chance that he WILL win.

Actress in a Leading Role

• Amy Adams in “American Hustle”
• WINNER – Cate Blanchett in “Blue Jasmine” – WILL win, if the other award shows are anything to go off of.
• Sandra Bullock in “Gravity”
• Judi Dench in “Philomena”
• Meryl Streep in “August: Osage County”

Actress in a Supporting Role

• Sally Hawkins in “Blue Jasmine”
• Jennifer Lawrence in “American Hustle” – If it doesn’t go to Nyong’o, I want it to go to JL.
• WINNER – Lupita Nyong’o in “12 Years a Slave” – WANT to win and I hope to god she WILL win. I think she has a good chance.
• Julia Roberts in “August: Osage County”
• June Squibb in “Nebraska”

Animated Feature Film

• “The Croods” Chris Sanders, Kirk DeMicco and Kristine Belson
• “Despicable Me 2” Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin and Chris Meledandri
• “Ernest & Celestine” Benjamin Renner and Didier Brunner
• WINNER – “Frozen” Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee and Peter Del Vecho – Is there even really a debate in this category? WANT to win and WILL win.  If it doesn’t, people will freak out.
• “The Wind Rises” Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki

Cinematography

• “The Grandmaster” Philippe Le Sourd
• WINNER – “Gravity” Emmanuel Lubezki – Probably will win… which I don’t think it’s fair since so much of this movie is CGI.
• “Inside Llewyn Davis” Bruno Delbonnel
• “Nebraska” Phedon Papamichael
• “Prisoners” Roger A. Deakins – WANT to win – I thought this movie was gorgeously shot.

Costume Design

• “American Hustle” Michael Wilkinson – WILL probably win, though both this and Great Gatsby I think had the same amount of “wow” in costume design.
• “The Grandmaster” William Chang Suk Ping
• WINNER – “The Great Gatsby” Catherine Martin – see above.  Want to win equally with American Hustle.
• “The Invisible Woman” Michael O’Connor
• “12 Years a Slave” Patricia Norris

Directing

• “American Hustle” David O. Russell
• WINNER – “Gravity” Alfonso Cuarón – WILL probably win.
• “Nebraska” Alexander Payne
• “12 Years a Slave” Steve McQueen – WANT to win since I thought this movie was incredible and the directing was fantastic.
• “The Wolf of Wall Street” Martin Scorsese

Documentary Feature

I haven’t seen any of them.

• “The Act of Killing”Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen
• “Cutie and the Boxer” Zachary Heinzerling and Lydia Dean Pilcher
• “Dirty Wars” Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill
• “The Square” Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer
• WINNER – “20 Feet from Stardom” Morgan Neville, Gil Friesen and Caitrin Rogers

Documentary Short Subject

I haven’t seen any of them.

• “CaveDigger” Jeffrey Karoff
• “Facing Fear” Jason Cohen
• “Karama Has No Walls” Sara Ishaq
• WINNER – “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life” Malcolm Clarke and Nicholas Reed
• “Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall” Edgar Barens

Film Editing

• “American Hustle” Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten – want (ish) to win.  Not a fan of the movie, but the editing style of this movie was interesting, so I’d be ok if it won.
• “Captain Phillips” Christopher Rouse
• “Dallas Buyers Club” John Mac McMurphy and Martin Pensa
• WINNER – “Gravity” Alfonso Cuarón and Mark Sanger – Will probably win
• “12 Years a Slave” Joe Walker – Of course I’m biased and would rather have this win over anything… because again, best movie.

Foreign Language Film

I haven’t seen any of them, though have heard great things about “Omar”.

• “The Broken Circle Breakdown” Belgium
• WINNER – “The Great Beauty” Italy
• “The Hunt” Denmark
• “The Missing Picture” Cambodia
• “Omar” Palestine

Makeup and Hairstyling

• WINNER – “Dallas Buyers Club” Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews – WANT to win and WILL win.
• “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa” Stephen Prouty
• “The Lone Ranger” Joel Harlow and Gloria Pasqua-Casny

Music (Original Score)

Having only seen Gravity, which didn’t have memorable music to me, I don’t feel I can accurately judge this category.  I’m sure The Book Thief score is great since it is John Williams, but I’ve not heard any so can’t judge.

• “The Book Thief” John Williams
• WINNER – “Gravity” Steven Price
• “Her” William Butler and Owen Pallett
• “Philomena” Alexandre Desplat
• “Saving Mr. Banks” Thomas Newman

Music (Original Song)

• “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2”
  Music and Lyric by Pharrell Williams
• WINNER – “Let It Go” from “Frozen” – WANT to win, because like most people, I’m addicted to this song.  And probably WILL win.
  Music and Lyric by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
• “The Moon Song” from “Her”
  Music by Karen O; Lyric by Karen O and Spike Jonze
• “Ordinary Love” from “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”
  Music by Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen; Lyric by Paul Hewson

Best Picture

• “American Hustle” Charles Roven, Richard Suckle, Megan Ellison and Jonathan Gordon, Producers
• “Captain Phillips” Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca, Producers
• “Dallas Buyers Club” Robbie Brenner and Rachel Winter, Producers
• “Gravity” Alfonso Cuarón and David Heyman, Producers – If ’12 years a slave’ doesn’t win, this one will.  Which I honestly don’t get…. but meh. I’d rather DBC or Wolf of Wall Street get it than this.
• “Her” Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze and Vincent Landay, Producers
• “Nebraska” Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, Producers
• “Philomena” Gabrielle Tana, Steve Coogan and Tracey Seaward, Producers
• WINNER – “12 Years a Slave” Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen and Anthony Katagas, Producers – WANT to win, so much.  It has a good chance of winning after seeing all the pre-Oscars award circuits.
• “The Wolf of Wall Street” Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joey McFarland and Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Producers

Production Design

• “American Hustle” Production Design: Judy Becker; Set Decoration: Heather Loeffler
• “Gravity” Production Design: Andy Nicholson; Set Decoration: Rosie Goodwin and Joanne Woollard – Probably WILL win, which I would be ok with for this one. The interiors of the ships were amazing.
• WINNER – “The Great Gatsby” Production Design: Catherine Martin; Set Decoration: Beverley Dunn – WANT to win, since the sets for this were super cool.
• “Her” Production Design: K.K. Barrett; Set Decoration: Gene Serdena
• “12 Years a Slave” Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Alice Baker

Short Film (Animated)

I haven’t seen any of them.

• “Feral” Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden
• “Get a Horse!” Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim
• WINNER – “Mr. Hublot” Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares
• “Possessions” Shuhei Morita
• “Room on the Broom” Max Lang and Jan Lachauer

Short Film (Live Action)

I haven’t seen any of them.

• “Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me)” Esteban Crespo
• “Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just before Losing Everything)” Xavier Legrand and Alexandre Gavras
• WINNER – “Helium” Anders Walter and Kim Magnusson
• “Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?)” Selma Vilhunen and Kirsikka Saari
• “The Voorman Problem” Mark Gill and Baldwin Li

Sound Editing

I had to look this up. The best description I found is that sound editing is the creation of NEW sounds while sound mixing, below, is the mixing/layering of all the sounds.

• “All Is Lost” Steve Boeddeker and Richard Hymns
• “Captain Phillips” Oliver Tarney
• WINNER – “Gravity” Glenn Freemantle – Equal chance to WILL win with Hobbit.
• “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Brent Burge and Chris Ward – Equal chance to WILL win with Gravity, but this is my WANT to win.
• “Lone Survivor” Wylie Stateman

Sound Mixing

I had to look this up. The best description I found is that sound editing, above, is the creation of new sounds while sound mixing is the mixing/layering of all the sounds.

• “Captain Phillips” Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor, Mike Prestwood Smith and Chris Munro
• WINNER – “Gravity” Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead and Chris Munro
• “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Christopher Boyes, Michael Hedges, Michael Semanick and Tony Johnson – I kind of want this to win since there is just SO many different things.
• “Inside Llewyn Davis” Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland
• “Lone Survivor” Andy Koyama, Beau Borders and David Brownlow – I also kind of want this to win, I’m conflicted though.  I think this one would be super hard to get the mixing of shots, dialogue, and music right.

Visual Effects

• WINNER – “Gravity” Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, David Shirk and Neil Corbould – Probably will win.
• “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and Eric Reynolds – I also think has a decent chance to win.
• “Iron Man 3” Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Erik Nash and Dan Sudick
• “The Lone Ranger” Tim Alexander, Gary Brozenich, Edson Williams and John Frazier
• “Star Trek Into Darkness” Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Ben Grossmann and Burt Dalton – I’d love for this to win, it’s my strong WANT to win, but I doubt it will.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

• “Before Midnight” Written by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
• “Captain Phillips” Screenplay by Billy Ray
• “Philomena” Screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope
• WINNER – “12 Years a Slave” Screenplay by John Ridley – WANT to win. Probably WILL win.
• “The Wolf of Wall Street” Screenplay by Terence Winter

Writing (Original Screenplay)

• “American Hustle” Written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell
• “Blue Jasmine” Written by Woody Allen
• “Dallas Buyers Club” Written by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack – WANT to win.
• WINNER – “Her” Written by Spike Jonze – probably WILL win, which I am ok with.
• “Nebraska” Written by Bob Nelson

Review – Thor: The Dark World

Movie Title: Thor: The Dark World

Director: Alan Taylor

Date Released: November 8th, 2013

Date Seen: November 9th, 2013

Seen with: Dad

Seen in: IMAX

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

This movie takes place after the first Thor movie, and after the Avengers, and we are introduced to a new villain – Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) – who wants to return the entire universe to an age of darkness.

Remark, before we start actually discussing the movie – I know nothing about Thor comics, nor have I even looked into anything about how this movie relates to them.  I’m going off a purely “Hey, I like Marvel movies, but not a comic person” standpoint.

‘Thor: The Dark World’ was a significantly better movie than the first Thor.  The first Thor just felt so ridiculous and over the top cheesy – that it didn’t really feel like it fit in this Marvel universe that was created.  This movie felt in line with the others in this Marvel universe – darker, but still kind of funny, and now of course we are having references of the Avengers and other superheroes.  Loki is back in a still significant role, despite the fact that he is locked up half the movie.  A dormant race of Dark Elves, led by Malekith are awakened, and Thor must stop them from returning the universe to an age of darkness.  Of course, his precious Jane Foster, again played by Natalie Portman, is in danger, and of course Earth is going to be the battle grounds for part of the movie.  Thor needs Loki’s help, however, and thus we get a nice element of “Can you really trust him?” added into the movie.

A lot of this movie takes place in Asgard, which was stunning to look at.  We got small glimpses of it in the first movie, but a large portion of scenes take place in the Asgard palace (is that what it’s called?) or flying around outside the palace and in Asgard in general.  A couple of scenes felt like I was watching Star Trek – with people fighting on ships, or space ships flying around strange planets, etc.  I loved it.  What’s better than superheroes and star ships? Not much.  Also while in Asgard we get a lot more of the Asgardians – the best being Frigga, Thor’s mom, played by Rene Russo.  She gets a chance to be a complete bad ass and that scene was awesome.

Malekith, the Dark Elf trying to destroy the world as we know it, is played by Christopher Eccleston. All of the dark elves were pretty cool, with most of them wearing masks the entire time.  Apparently, Alan Taylor wanted them all to have a look about themselves, that they were better than everyone – and thus standing tall and sort of looking down on everyone. So all of the masks were made so that the eye holes were lower than where your actual eyes were. For the actors to see, they had to hold their heads slightly back.  Smart idea and it paid off.  I wanted to know more about the Dark Elves and their history – like the cursed thing that they can do to one of their own.  To me that means the movie did its job – I wanted to know more about something from the movie that will make me look, at the very least, into the comic book info online.  So the movie version got me interested in the original media – good job.

It’s still not a perfect movie, and the Thor part of the Marvel movies is still probably what I care the least about, but this movie did a good job at getting me re-interested in the Thor sides.  So good job.

 

Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review/Synopsis

There’s an alright synopsis/overview here.

 

Overall: 7.5/10

An interesting villain, a great set of worlds we got to see, lots of action, funny moments, great characters, and not nearly the same amount of cheesiness we had from the first Thor. Definitely go see this if a fan of the Marvel films, or just like action/fantasy type movies.

Review – Immortals

Movie Title: Immortals

Director: Tarsem Singh

Date Released: November 11th, 2011

Date Seen: January 1st, 2014

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

This movie has been sitting in my queue for lord knows how long, and Netflix just told me that it is going to be taken off in a few days, so I decided to watch it while I still had the chance.  I’m not a big Greek mythology person, so I don’t know how the story should have gone according to legend, and so I don’t even take that into account…. except when it got a bit ridiculous.

We follow the story of Theseus, who is (of course) the one and only human with the strength and abilities to save the world.  He meets an interesting cast of characters on his venture of saving the world, including a thief, virgin oracle, monk, and a few other randoms.  He is fighting against King Hyperion, who wants to unleash the Titans on Earth and rule men.

The acting is way over done and the colors are over saturated throughout the whole thing.  It’s a bit cheesy and ridiculous, but in an enjoyable way.  I liked watching the movie even though it was blatantly obvious what was going to happen. It makes sense that this movie was produced by a number of men who also produced 300.  You can see this in the fighting style, as well as the costuming and over abundance of chiseled abs.  In fact, a good portion of this movie takes place with at the very least Theseus (Henry Cavill) being shirtless.  A lot of times he is fighting people that are also shirtless.  They’ll have on boots, leg armor, and helmets, but no shirts.  That makes sense, doesn’t it?  But hey, I’m not complaining.  Any movie that combines sexy shirtless men and lots of fighting and blood and guts is my kind of thing. And there was a lot of all of those things.

The fighting scenes are all reminiscent of 300.  Again, probably due to the producers.  So if you liked that crazy, ridiculous, law-of-physics breaking, slow motion, with too much blood, style of fighting found in 300, well then you will enjoy the fighting in this movie!  This had a nice mix of smaller fights, with small groups, or person-on-person, and then a couple of huge battles.  It was a nice mix that I appreciated.

If you liked 300, give this a watch for the pure fighting, blood and guts ridiculousness of it.  But don’t expect a fantastic plot and well developed characters… just have some fun while watching it.

 

 

Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review

There’s a very rough synopsis here. It’ll give you an overview of what happened.

I like how the bow was “hidden” in some rocks… in the middle of the main room of a religious temple, in the only un-carved piece of rock.  No one ever though that was weird, that this one thing wouldn’t break free?  Or did it just appear when Thesus came looking for it? Sheesh.

I also find it hilarious that there is basically no discussion before the Oracle and Theseus decide to get it on. Like oh hey “save me from my visions pleaseee”.  Not “hey, I like you, lets wait until this war is over when my visions might be pretty useful and THEN lets get it on and ruin my vision power.”

For the first time, during the big fight in the tunnel, all the men have shirts on.  I feel cheated. I liked this movie for the sheer lack of shirts.  But, thankfully, the shirts are armor that come with premade abs and nipples, so I at least get some artificial abs to look at.

Stavros moves pretty quick for a dude with a bone sticking out of his leg.  I guess it’s adrenaline though, considering he just witness a race of loser gods get released from their prison, and he got the magical god bow.  So you know, adrenaline makes since in this case.  Also, around here is when I started to wonder why the gods never killed the Titans in the beginning.  Did they figure eternal suffering locked up was better than immortal death? Perhaps.  Just seems like if you were planning on killing them when they eventually got out of their cage, why not kill them early on, so that you’d never have to worry about it.

Now, I said above that I’m not a big Greek mythology person, however, I do recall that Hyperion was the king of the titans.  So they just kind of twisted it around a little bit and made him the mortal that released them? Odd.  Also, I don’t remember basically ALL the big gods dying.  Poseidon, Ares, Athena… you know.  I feel like that’s a big change in mythology.  Like, a huge one.  Also it seems to be that if an entire race of previously imprisoned Gods escaped, more than 5 people would go down to try and stop them.  It seems to be just Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, and two red shirts (ha), go down.  I’d take a couple more, it might be worth it.

 

Overall: 6/10

An over-acted, hilarious, and yet awesome ridiculous greek mythology movie, that is very reminiscent of ‘300’.

Review – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Movie Title: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Director: Peter Jackson

Date Released: December 13th, 2013

Date Seen: December 13th, 2013

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

A much better installment, although just as untrue to the book as the first Hobbit movie.  If you’ve never read the book, you’ll probably enjoy The Desolation of Smaug as it is much more action packed and less boring than An Unexpected Journey.  This change though also results in a real change in the overall feeling that book had, as I describe below.

The Desolation of Smaug takes out a lot of the cute, charming, or witty scenes from the Hobbit and either glosses over them in a quick short scene without the wit, or skips it altogether.  One of my favorite scenes in the Hobbit book is the entrance to Beorn’s house, but the movie takes the entire Beorn chapter and a half ish and makes it into a quick maybe 3-5 minute scene.  The movie does this continually until the group makes their way to Laketown, then we slow down x100.  This made the pace of the movie very awkward.  It felt like it was rushed for the first segment, then dragged on and on once they arrived at Laketown.  There were things that I liked that they did in Laketown, but it was a bit much.  One of the things I did like was that we got to see a lot more of Bard.  The group meets him sooner than in the book, but you get to know him better, which I enjoyed.  Things I did not like are sort of spoilery so I will mention them down below.  They do something very untrue to the book, that is mostly for the sole purpose of the romance they randomly decided to throw in the movie.

The unnecessary romance involves the addition of a unnecessary characters who doesn’t appear in the book – yes, I’m talking about the elves, Legolas and Tauriel.  Legolas at least sort of makes sense to be there, considering his father is the Elvenking (King of the Woodland Realm), but Tauriel is a completely made up character so that they can add in a romance. It’s unnecessary and due to this romance they also change the main plot line a bit, which annoyed me.

Another major change in the movie is the amount of action.  This movie felt action packed.  One scene that went from having no action to being action packed is the barrel scene, for example.  We also still have the whole pale orc story line which of course adds in tons and tons of action.  We follow Gandalf for a while as well, which adds in a nice amount of action as well.  I understand the addition of all the action, but I wasn’t a big fan, since I like the witty fun that the Hobbit has in it, and that’s why I read it – not for action.

All these changes just made it feel like Peter Jackson just decided to take the characters and framework of JRR Tolkiens story, then go his own way.  Now, that’s all fine and dandy for some people, but a big reason why I like book -> movie adaptations is to see the things I imagined come to life.  This was just little snippets of things thrown together with an otherwise different plot line to satisfy a wider audience.  To me, that was disappointing.  Changes do need to be made from book to movie, but not as many changes as were made.

There was one other thing I really liked – the Wood Elf palace.  It was gorgeous.  I wished we got to see more of it.  I also think I might be crazy, but I swear there’s a part when Thranduil says something about gold and riches, and perhaps even mentions the Arkenstone, and I swear I saw his eyes glitter.  It would make sense considering something else he does later, but it happened so fast I can’t be sure I saw it. If I did, that’s cool.  If it didn’t happen, well, further proof I’m insane.

 

Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review/Synopsis

There was one scene I found hilarious. It was like Peter Jackson had just gotten done watching the “A Golden Crown” episode of Game of Thrones and was like “HEY I CAN DO THAT BUT WITH A REAL DRAGON OMG YEAH LETS DO IT!!!”.  And hence comes the scene where the dwarves cover Smaug in molten gold.  It was cool to see, but that’s all I could think of the entire time.  Most of the Smaug scenes were pretty cool, although I wish he riddled more with Bilbo rather than just talking at Bilbo, which he did a lot of.

Another thing I hated was the focus on the Arkenstone.  I like how in the book you don’t really know much about it, just have heard it mentioned a couple of times.  DOS made it seem so much more important and kind of changed my opinion of Thorin in the movie than how I thought of him in the book.  Yeah, he’s a greedy little dwarf, but still.

Also, I mentioned the romance above, but SEPARATING THE DWARVES? COME ON!!! NO! They did that just for their stupid little romance.

 

Overall: 6.5/10

Better than the first, more action, but I still won’t ever watch it again.  It was a one and done.

Review – About Time

Movie Title: About Time

Director: Richard Curtis

Date Released: November 8th, 2013

Date Seen: October 23rd, 2013, advance screening

Seen with: Anna

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

A surprisingly hilarious and well written romantic comedy, with an added element of time travel.  The story follows Tim (Donhnall Gleeson), who after his 21st birthday is told a family secret – the men in their family have the ability to travel through time.  Dad (Bill Nighy) explains the basics – you must go into a dark closet, clench your fists, and think about the moment, and you will be there.  That’s all that the audience is told, but you can also then come back to the future, you don’t have to relive everything.  So while you can’t travel forward past where you’ve already lived, you can essentially move around in your own life changing things.  Tim uses this to meet the girl of his dreams, Mary (Rachel McAdams).  They really are perfect for each other – and we watch the story of them meeting and falling in love.  Unlike other romantic comedies, Tim and Mary are a very real couple.  Their first date is the most realistic first date I’ve ever seen, awkward moments, real laughs, corny jokes, etc.  It’s not the ideal romance that most movies or romantic comedies give us. For that, I was very glad.

The time travel aspect in the movie is alright.  I like the idea of it, but some elements of how this movie made time travel – were purely to move the plot along.  I won’t spoil it here, but some elements of the time travel were so unnecessary other than a plot device.  You need to not get nit-picky on the time travel aspect, because that isn’t what the movie is about.  The movie is about a man discovering how to live life to the fullest and enjoy every moment spent with his friends and family.  It does a great job of showing that.

The side characters are really the stars of the movie.  Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams are great, and Tim is a very interesting character, but the side characters – wow.  Uncle D is Tim’s uncle, is just a little bit slower than everyone else, and might forget who people are, but he adds a nice dimension to the family.  They are always talking about how impeccably dressed he is, and while he can’t remember who people are at times or asks inappropriate yet hilarious questions, he’s always there when you need someone to talk to.  Harry (Tom Hollander) and Rory (Joshua McGuire) are two of Tim’s friends who are both hilarious in their own ways.  I would marry Harry in a heartbeat – he’s so depressed and angry all the time, but doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks – unless it comes to his life work, a play.  It’s great.  Tim has such a wide range of friends of different personalities, it makes Tim feel just like that much more of a real person you would know, rather than a character in the movie.  I loved that about this movie. Everything felt so real, besides the fact that Tim could travel in time.

Definitely go see this movie, if you like romantic comedies.  I’d also say go see it if you think the previews look good.  The movie was definitely funnier than the trailers made it out to be, so that was a nice surprise.  I’m also a person who doesn’t usually like romantic movies at all, but this one was great since it wasn’t a pure romance movie.

 

Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review

The part of the time travel I felt was a plot device was the fact that you cannot go back farther than when your child was born, or else you end up with a different child.  It was a very important piece to the plot that they made, but considering how the movie developed their version of time travel, it didn’t fit.  Why, Tim specifically asks Dad about any kind of Butterfly Effect happening.  Yes, the rest of Tim’s life was the same but having a different child is a VERY big thing.  I think you’d mention it early on.  I also didn’t like the fact that Tim took Kit Kat back in time.  I don’t like that she could go back as well just by holding his hands.  How did Tim know it would work? It makes sense that Dad and Tim could go back together, since both can time travel.  But I didn’t feel Tim should have been able to take her back.

Also the movie didn’t really do a good job of explaining that you can go back in time, change a moment, and go back to exactly where you were in the present.  It took me a bit to figure that out.  But again, the movie is more romantic comedy than time travel, so the sci-fi freak in me shouldn’t be so nit picky.

 

Overall: 7.5/10

Way better than I thought it was going to be, especially being a romance movie which normally I can’t stand.  Hilarious, good plot, alright time travel, amazing characters, and a good thought to leave you with at the end.

Review – Dnevnoy dozor / Day Watch

Movie Title: Dnevnoy dozor / Day Watch

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Date Released: January 1st, 2006

Date Seen: August 15th, 2013

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

A sequel to Night Watch, still following the same cast of characters from the previous movie.  Anton is back and now he is a full member of the Night Watch, and is even training Svetlana to become a member of the Night Watch.  But, things start to go wrong (of course) when Anton is accused of murdering a member of the Dark Others – and the Night Watch must prove his innocence.  There is also a search for the “Chalk of Destiny” going on, that will change any mans fate….

I liked this movie more than the first one, because it seemed less messy and the plot made more sense.  This could just be because I already knew the general out line of the Light vs Dark story, so I didn’t have to adapt to that.  But even beyond that, there weren’t as many confusing parts in this movie as in Night Watch.  The plot was better laid out than the first movie, which allowed me to enjoy it more.  There are still some confusing parts, but significantly less.  I also enjoyed this plot a little bit more, because it explained more about the “Others” than the first movie did.  For example, we get to see some more cool powers that they have – such as body switching, putting on a mask of someone else’s face – and even other layers of “the Gloom”.  We are also introduced to “Great Others” and you can easily guess who they are (we know Yegor is from the first movie, but there’s another one, pretty easy to guess who).

Similar to Night Watch, the subtitles are very interesting and fun to watch, which is a refereshing change of pace for most foreign films.  They do the blood fading out thing again, but also there is a really cool couple of ones, like cutting across a man and killing him, and the words being cut in half as well.  Other interesting scenes to watch, that I’m sure they just do for effect and have no real plot point, but make it fun, are like a vampire cutting hair, but not appearing in the mirror (just the hair and scissors do).  This scene was useful though because it explained something I was slightly confused about from Night Watch.  It explained to me that not all DARK Other’s are vampires – because I thought they were from the first movie.  It confirms that because there are a couple of other (ha) Dark Other’s in the room, that are seen in the mirror.

One slightly stupid thing that dates the movie is that they use MSN messenger as like their secret messaging system.  Hilarious. You have a message you want no one else to see, so you send your enemy a MSN message?  I about died laughing at that part.  Another hilarious thing is that one character, Alicia, has devil horns in her hair.  As in, her hair forms convenient points that are definitely supposed to be devil like.  They are definitely not a coincidence because of how pronounced they are.

 

Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review/Synopsis

There’s a good synopsis here.

Here are some of my thoughts during the movie.

What was with the guy kissing the poster of his favorite soccer team, then the poster guy wiped his face? Is this harry potter all of a sudden?

The scenes where Olga and Anton have switched places, and then Anton (in Olga’s body) goes and hangs out with Sveta, and then they fight, was both hilarious and awkward at the same time.  Especially in the shower that then transforms into a like pretty island waterfall scene, and Anton is himself again…. SO weird.  It is even more weird when they go out on the date to the Chinese place, and Olga’s body, now has makeup on.  More than she did before.  It’s weird to think about.  But lots of funny parts come from that, such as the elevator scene where they switch back bodies.

When Svet starts going cray cray allowing Anton/Olga’s body to escape, and Zavulon starts whipping the power lines at her as she runs off was quite possibly one of the coolest moments in the film.

Kyosta has the BEST going out hat EVER. EVER EVER EVER.  It’s a big furry thing, with flaps, and is hilarious.  I also like that he wears it to go out and try to get with Alicia.  That silly boy. He then goes from not wearing it at the party to suddenly having it on when he saves Anton from being stabbed by Kyosta’s dad, the butcher.  I love that family, because Kyosta was just so conflicted with everything he did involving Anton, and his dad was just trying to do what was best for his son (because he regretted now turning Kyosta into a vampire).

One question I had was that why at the end did Anton not remember what went on? Earlier, when we saw the flashback to the FIRST guy getting the chalk and rewriting his “fate”, the first guy seemed to remember and killed the man guarding the tomb, thus avoiding his death.  However, that man didn’t remember.  But at the end of the movie when Anton rewrites his fate, it seems EVERYONE remembers Anton (even the Night Watch truck driver who died), but Anton remembers nothing?  Strange.  Maybe it will be explained in the next movie, should it ever come out.

 

Overall: 6.5/10

Some really cool scenes, interesting plot, though slightly confusing at times, but overall better than its predecessor, and had me watching straight through. Definitely good for a Netflix watch, but make sure you watch Night Watch first.

Review – Nochnoy dozor/ Night Watch

Movie Title: Nochnoy dozor / Night Watch

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Date Released: July 8th, 2004 (Russia)

Date Seen: August 8th, 2013

Country/Language of Origin: Russia/Russian

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

A Russian movie, based on a novel (which I have not read) about “Others” – people who posses some type of supernatural power, such as shape-shifting, seeing the future, etc. Others choose to be either Light or Dark, who have a truce amongst themselves.  But now, things are getting intense as the “Night Watch” (Light Others who govern the Night) have a few strange encounters, hinting at an inevitable war between Light and Dark.  We follow one character, Anton (Konstantin Khabenskiy), who is a member of the Night Watch with the ability to see the future.  He finds Dark Others (vampires) who are breaking the law or the “truce”. On one mission though, he encounters something he’s never seen before, takes things a bit to far, and then things start to get real.

The movie reminded me a lot of “Constantine”, in the light versus dark arena, because the humans couldn’t always see what was actually going on around them, like in “Constantine”.  There’s also a separate realm that the characters move into, called “The Gloom”, reminiscent of Constantine going to hell, but not really the same.  It had a weird factor like that of “Oldboy”.  What I mean by this is you are watching and then you will have the most random scene ever, or something that doesn’t make sense – but hopefully will later.  Because of this, the movie is hard to follow.  For about the first 30 minutes, I was just watching trying to figure out what the heck was going on.  The little introduction up there I wrote will give you way more of an idea of what is going on than if you just pick it up blind, like I did.  There were things that needed to be be explained better, but never were.  For example, The Gloom.  They don’t ever explain it very well, at all.  I wish they had.  They also don’t mention that the all the Other’s have powers until towards the end, so that would have just been nice to know.  They also introduce characters like they are going to be super important, but then they never are.  I have a feeling it is people that were more relevant in the book, or might be important in Daywatch.  But I’m not sure.  It was just kind of a messy, hard to follow, incomplete plot.  But it was good, nevertheless.  There is a very cool scene at the end, that I don’t want to spoil.  It’s cheesy but so awesome.  I’ll mention it down below, in the second part, if you’re interested.

Thanks to Timur Bekmambetov, this movie is stylistically very cool.  You can tell it’s his film a mile away.  There’s a lot of scenes that involve the zooming in really close to things, or following the camera through the engine of a car as it starts up, or following someone’s blood moving through their veins in a highly magnified way.  Even the subtitles had a bit of flair to them – and I know that sounds stupid, because how can subtitles have flair? Just trust me, they do.  The subtitles will appear as someone opens a door, or disappear with the character as they walk behind a pole.  Another thing they do is increase in size as someone gets louder, or start to shake as a person gets madder, until they are actually exploding at the screen.  Towards the beginning, the boy Yegor has a nosebleed in a pool, and he keeps hearing a voice, and the words kind of disappear and fade into the blood when he goes into the pool.  It was REALLY cool.

Overall, it was a decent movie.  I loved the style of it, the cool subtitles and had a fun time watching it.  The plot left something to be desired, but I would watch it again and am excited to see Day Watch.

Part 2 – In-Depth Spoiler Ridden Review/Synopsis

There’s a very good synopsis here.

One thing about I found slightly amusing, is that the Night Watch is essentially playing “Bait car”.  Instead of a police team, it’s the Night Watch.  Instead of cars, it is innocent humans.  Instead of criminals, it is vampires.  But they bait them, follow them, and then arrest them.  Of course our experience with the hair cutter guy and Yegor goes a little astry, but still, their overall premise is that of Bait car… err… bait human? Another random thing, when Yegor is watching an episode of Buffy, I about died laughing.

A couple of things that bothered me – one is the Dark neighbor.  They made it seem like he was going to be such a big deal, that their friendship was a very bad thing.  They even had the extra scene with him, which was essentially unnecessary in my mind, when he came to the apartment with clothes for Olga.  I want to know why they seemed to put such a big emphasis on it, and then kind of ignored it.  Again, maybe once I watch Day Watch it will be clear, but who knows.  Another thing is when Yegor is climbing the scaffolding outside of his building.  They all know what happens when you get in a vampire induced trance – that the victim listens to every command – why doesn’t the Tiger lady then just keep yelling “Yegor, come back!” Because it clearly worked the one time she yelled it, so why not keep yelling it, until you can at least catch up to him? Just seemed kind of silly.

Also – most awesome scene ever is when Zavulon breaks his back open, rips his spine out, and reveals it to be a sword.  WHO DOES THAT?  As in, who even thinks to put that in a movie? It was so awesome.  I loved that scene SO much. Just for the sheer, wait, is that his spine, whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, aspect that it had.

Overall: 6/10

The last scene was incredible, awesome subtitles, cool stylistically, and decent plot.  Give it a netflix watch.

Trailer Reviews 9

300: Rise of an Empire

The trailer looks alright, but obviously not as good as the first one.  This one looks like it’s actually trying to be a good movie, not the overly cheesy, gory, and yet so awesome movie that was 300.

 

The Butler

Take all my money.  Give it all the Oscars.  Yes.  It has great potential, and I hope it’s good, because it looks great from this trailer.

 

Elysium

While this trailer (it’s the 4th one according to the VISO trailers page) seems to show a lot more of the movie – I don’t care, because it still makes me want to see it.  I was already going to see it no matter what, but yep, still hooked, even after a slightly show-you-everything trailer.  Even though that annoys me, it’s a good sign that I still want to see it.  Matt Damon looks great, as always, and Jodie Foster looks surprisingly good as a “bad guy”.  So, I approve.

 

The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug

If you remember, I hated The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (review here), because of all the additional stuff that wasn’t in the Hobbit book.  Some stuff was from other novels (like Silmarillion or LOTR appendices), but other was just completely made up.  That pissed me off…. so, just take a guess at what I think of this trailer, when Legolas shows up.  Nope. not happy.  Stop trying to toot your own horn, Peter Jackson.  Just make me a good Hobbit movie. Ugh.  I know that Thranduil is a character in the Hobbit and Legolas is his son but you know, just let it be like a fun little easter egg that fans can catch and get excited about rather than throwing it in our faces and adding in the character as well. Also, the actor playing Thranduil is 2 years younger than Legolas…. apparently elves are like those people in IN TIME in this movie… Not only immortal, but stop aging at about 30. Anyway, this does look *marginally* better than Unexpected Journey, in that it actually looks actiony… and I’m excited for Benedict Cumberbatch as the voices of Smaug and The Necromancer…. so, we’ll see.  I don’t have high hopes.

 

Kick Ass 2

ALL THE YES. At the appearance of Jim Carrey, I was 100% sold.  I liked the first one, and this one looks good to.  I will say though, Christopher Mintz-Plasse…. the mustache…. no…. not digging it.  I do like the idea of seeing more “superheros” though… in other words, more crazies.

 

Riddick

If you put Vin Diesel in a movie, I’ll see it.  If you make it science fiction, I’ll definitely see it.  You make another Riddick movie? I’ll see it no matter how bad it might look.  It will probably be craptastic and predictable, but I don’t care, I love these movies.

 

The Wolf of Wall Street

This had potential, until you see Jonah Hill is in it… then you are like “oh, no…”.  And then there’s a scene where they discuss midget tossing around a boardroom table and then proceed to do it… so…. no, lost all hope.  I love me some Leo, but yikes.  Then however you notice Martin Scorsese directed it… so dang it, I’m back in.  Ugh.  We’ll see how this goes as more trailers come out.

 

The Worlds End

This appears to have a very very very similar plot to Shaun of The Dead (which makes sense sense Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg wrote both) plus a bit of the British horror comedy, Doghouse.  But, I don’t care.  I love Simon Pegg.  In everything.  I’ll even let his ugly black hair slide.  So I will see this.  We’ve had Simon Pegg and zombies, crazy cultists, aliens, and so why not robots? I’ll see it, hands down, day it comes out.

Review – Oz the Great and Powerful

Movie Title: Oz the Great and Powerful

Director: Sam Raimi

Date Released: March 8th, 2013

Date Seen: March 10th, 2013

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

I wasn’t expecting much from this movie – and because of that, I wasn’t let down at all when it sucked.  Really.  Don’t go see it, unless you’re maybe 12 – 15.

The movie had several problems.  The one I found the most obnoxious was that it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a serious movie or a funny movie.  There were some slapstick type lines/scenes, and then also some very serious scenes.  Related to this, the character development sucked.  There was a moment when Oz (James Franco) has a very emotional moment, and realizes that he can do good, so you think ok, he won’t be so much of a dick now.  But no, he goes RIGHT back to being a dick.  So he’d go from serious scene, to dick scene, to funny scene, to dick again, maybe a serious one… ugh, it was just annoying.  He was also not a character you really liked, because he was so much of a dick, so I didn’t really care what happened to him.  That’s a problem when your main character is too much of an annoying prick throughout the whole movie so you just don’t care about him.  Another “character” problem was the makeup on the witch who is revealed to be the “green” witch.  Her mask is HORRIBLE.  She looked like she was wearing “The Mask”.  As in, the Mask from the Jim Carrey movie, The Mask.

Another problem was the CGI.  The movie, if you just glanced at it – looked pretty.  However, it was blatantly obvious when there was a green screen. It looked SO cheesy at times because of that.  I also noticed that at times when Oz or Glinda (Michelle Williams) picked up the little China Girl (Joey King) that she didn’t appear to actually be touching their hands.  Like, there was a clear space between the hand/shoulder/whatever and the CGI.  This happened so many times that it took you out of the movie because you were distracted by it.  I also watched one review, here, that pointed out that on the Yellow Brick Road they appeared to sometimes be hovering a bit above it, rather than actually standing on it.  Really?! Also, if you watch the review I linked to – it’s SourceFed – one of my favorite Youtube channels, and I agree pretty much spot on with their review.

My final issue was the plot.  I thought certain parts were way too long (the beginning black and white scenes), while other scenes that could have been very cool were way too short (they could have showed more of the Porcelain town/what happened to it).  The lack of character development sucked.  Characters seemed to go from State 1 to State 237, without any intermediate feelings or interactions.  So, meh, didn’t care for it.  I feel like young teen kids will enjoy this movie, but it just wasn’t for me.

 

Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review

The character of “Oz” reminded me a lot of the character “Jason” in the BOOK “The Ultimate Gift”.  I know that there is a movie as well, but they changed the movie so much from the book that the character is different.  I hated that book because each chapter would start out with Jason being a dick, not wanting to do whatever his challenge is, being a dick while doing his challenge, figuring out that it is actually helping, be completely nice and thankful for the challenge, and then we’d start another chapter.  Jason would start out being a dick, not wanting to do whatever his challenge is…. etc.  It was the same formula every dang chapter.  That whole “dick-resistant-nice-dick-resistant-nice” loop felt like the Oz character.  That was probably why I hated the character so much.

The scene at the end of the movie was so awkward, when Oz and Glinda start making out. The dialouge was horrendous – but opened the door for a number of penis jokes.  I don’t remember exactly some of it – but Oz was giving everyone gifts.  He said he had a special one for Glinda.  I leaned over to my sister and said “his penis.”  He then takes Glinda behind the curtain and she says something like “it’s very tight in here.”  I whispered “that’s what he said….”  Then there’s a couple of awkward moments before they finally kiss.  The whole time my sister and I are sitting making vulgar gestures with our hands.  Then, someone blows a fanfare on the horn – and I said that’s the climax….  It was just too dang easy to make fun of!

 

Overall: 5.5/10

Don’t bother.  Maybe watch it if it’s on TV one day – but don’t pay to see it.