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Academy Awards 2014


Clappy

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Nominations were announced a few days ago.  You can find the list at many sites like here:

 

http://boxofficemojo.com/oscar/chart/?view=allcategories&yr=2014&p=.htm

 

Some of my initial thoughts:

 

-That has to be the lowest grossing best picture nominee set in at least a decade.  Granted I've only seen one of the eight movies nominated (Birdman, which was great), I plan to catch all eight so I can see if I agree with the winner.  High on my priority list of the films nominated though is American Sniper, The Imitation Game, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.  Yes I am aware that the last one has been out for at least a year.  Yes I know Wes Anderson movies are fantastic.  And yes despite all the praise, I have not watched it yet out of laziness.  Going to change that this weekend though since I rented it.

 

-Hey terminoob.  Good job predicting Steve Carrell being nominated for Best Actor.  Don't know how the movie is since once again, I'm dragging in terms of award bait movies, but he's going to have a tough time beating Michael Keaton.

 

-The Lego Movie not being nominated for Best Animated Feature is a crime.  Sure it had like ten-fifteen minutes of live action sequences, but it should have been nominated.  Definitely don't agree with the Academy on that aspect.

 

-You can honestly put Meryl Streep in anything and she'll get a nomination.  That being said, I doubt her role in Into The Woods should have warranted her a nomination.  Yet again, I'm dragging on the awards bait movies, so I could be wrong.

 

-This year's races are wide open because there are no obvious front runners like there have been in the past.

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Everyone's complaining about The Lego Movie, which is fine, but I'm more upset over them not including The Book of Life. That was such a unique movie and it's constantly getting glossed over. I'm pulling for How To Train Your Dragon 2 since DreamWorks needs a win (badly) or Boxtrolls so Laika/stop-motion can get some recognition but it'll probably go to Kaguya or Big Hero 6.

 

I don't know how I feel about anything else. I've only seen Grand Budapest Hotel, which I suppose was good enough for a nomination? It didn't really blow me away or anything but it was definitely good. I hope it wins something. Definitely won't win for Best Picture, and I'm sure Linklater or Inarritu have Director, so maybe it'll win for Cinematography or Art Direction (which would both be great since Wes Anderson clearly puts a lot of thought into those two things).

 

Hoping for PTA to win for Adapted Screenplay, since Flynn wasn't nominated for Gone Girl, but I'm sure Anthony McCarten will win.

 

Thanks to the three day weekend I'll be able to binge a majority of the movies and have more thoughts later.

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Everyone's complaining about The Lego Movie, which is fine, but I'm more upset over them not including The Book of Life. That was such a unique movie and it's constantly getting glossed over. I'm pulling for How To Train Your Dragon 2 since DreamWorks needs a win (badly) or Boxtrolls so Laika/stop-motion can get some recognition but it'll probably go to Kaguya or Big Hero 6.

 

I don't know how I feel about anything else. I've only seen Grand Budapest Hotel, which I suppose was good enough for a nomination? It didn't really blow me away or anything but it was definitely good. I hope it wins something. Definitely won't win for Best Picture, and I'm sure Linklater or Inarritu have Director, so maybe it'll win for Cinematography or Art Direction (which would both be great since Wes Anderson clearly puts a lot of thought into those two things).

 

Hoping for PTA to win for Adapted Screenplay, since Flynn wasn't nominated for Gone Girl, but I'm sure Anthony McCarten will win.

 

Thanks to the three day weekend I'll be able to binge a majority of the movies and have more thoughts later.

Haven't seen The Book of Life yet, but the animation looked wonderful, but could not agree with you more on DreamWorks.  They BADLY need a win since the studio seems to be in a bad rut the past three years.

 

I'm also surprised about the lack of nominations for Gone Girl.  Not just in terms of screenplay, but I thought it would at least warrant a nomination for Best Picture and Director.  Glad to see at least Rosamund Pike got nominated for Best Actress.  She was fantastic.

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Haven't seen The Book of Life yet, but the animation looked wonderful, but could not agree with you more on DreamWorks.  They BADLY need a win since the studio seems to be in a bad rut the past three years.

 

I'm also surprised about the lack of nominations for Gone Girl.  Not just in terms of screenplay, but I thought it would at least warrant a nomination for Best Picture and Director.  Glad to see at least Rosamund Pike got nominated for Best Actress.  She was fantastic.

 

If you plan on seeing The Book of Life, I recommend... um... preparing yourself for the soundtrack. It's very odd. I loved it and thought it was hilarious but it definitely could potentially take you out of the movie or ruin it entirely.

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And here I thought everyone was complaining about Selma.

 

Recently saw The Book of Life. It was a pretty interesting flick, kind of a Moulin Rouge thing going on with the soundtrack that was hit and miss for me but overall I enjoyed it.

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Well after watching it today, I just want to point out that The Imitation Game was surprisingly excellent. The acting was fantastic with Benedict Cumberbatch really sticking out. A highly compelling story as well that I did not see coming about the life of Alan Turing. Highly recommended.

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Well after watching it today, I just want to point out that The Imitation Game was surprisingly excellent. The acting was fantastic with Benedict Cumberbatch really sticking out. A highly compelling story as well that I did not see coming about the life of Alan Turing. Highly recommended.

 

Do you think Keira Knightley deserved a nomination for it?

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Do you think Keira Knightley deserved a nomination for it?

Keira Knightley was good as always.  I don't have a problem with her being nominated since her character was intriguing being not only the prominent female in a movie so heavily male dominated, but her chemistry with Benedict was fantastic.  It's just that Benedict's acting really stuck out so far from everyone else involved that I think he deserves to be recognized with a win.  

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Since this is coming this weekend, I still stand by my pick of The Imitation Game being the best of the best picture nominees (granted I have yet to see Whiplash).  As for the others nominees on my quest?

 

-I already gave my thoughts on Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Boyhood when listing off my best pictures from 2014.  Birdman and Boyhood I still believe are the favorites to take home the best picture award.  I would be fine with Birdman since I thought that was a damn great character study.  Boyhood hit me right in the nostalgia and was heart warming, but I still stand by the flaws really being glaring and it holding it back from being the "gamechanger" critics are making this movie out to be.  It's unfortunate that Grand Budapest has gotten zero buzz when it was probably Wes Anderson's best flick in a decade.

 

-Selma could have been executed a lot better.  I think it was trying a bit too hard to be this years "12 Years a Slave" in terms of execution and buzz.  What 12 Years had going for it last year was that it really struck a deep chord with the viewing public (me included).  Plus what hurts Selma is that it just doesn't really that strike that big of a controversial chord that it really wants to go for.  Still thought that this was ok, but if you want a better Martin Luther King biopic, just wait a few more years.  Oliver Stone is developing one that I'm damn sure will be better in execution.

 

-The Theory of Everything was well acted.  That's all it has going for it.  Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones carry this movie by themselves with their fantastic performances.  Otherwise, this was this year's King's Speech.  A movie that is so heavily carried by great acting that hides a meh script.  Not to say that the story of Stephen Hawking wasn't great.  I learned a lot about him from this, but I feel like that it dragged at times and could have been shaved off by 30 minutes.  All this being said, I can see why Eddie Redmayne is the favorite to win Best Actor.  I just wish Felicity Jones had more buzz going for her with her performance because I think she held her end of the spectrum damn well too.

 

-And last but not least, the current "crowd favorite" of the nominees American Sniper.  Was it good?  Yes.  But just like the two movies listed above, I can think of a better movie that this was trying to mold itself from.  Zero Dark Thirty.  American Sniper just doesn't do as good of a job to mold out it's own identity other than being an anti-war movie.  That's not to say that Bradley Cooper put on the best acting of his career and Clint Eastwood has finally bounced back into being the great director he was about ten years ago.  Because I felt that this was a compelling story and it was directed beautifully.  It tries to carve out it's own identity but I just don't think that it succeeded on that aspect.

 

So if you want my own ranking?

 

1. The Imitation Game

2. Birdman

3. The Grand Budapest Hotel

4. American Sniper

5. The Theory of Everything

6. Boyhood (honestly this and the choice above keep flip flopping spots for me)

7. Selma

 

Not Yet Ranked: Whiplash

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Wait, Redmayne is the favorite for Best Actor? I thought Keaton was.

Well as far as I know, it's 1A and 1B between both Redmayne and Keaton. Eddie Redmayne from my understanding (aka skimming thru the Awards circuit results), has won more Best Actor trophies than Keaton. If Birdman is going to win Best Picture, my guess is that Redmayne is going to win Best Actor because that's what the Academy has been doing the past couple years.
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Well as far as I know, it's 1A and 1B between both Redmayne and Keaton. Eddie Redmayne from my understanding (aka skimming thru the Awards circuit results), has won more Best Actor trophies than Keaton. If Birdman is going to win Best Picture, my guess is that Redmayne is going to win Best Actor because that's what the Academy has been doing the past couple years.

 

Okay, that's fair enough. I haven't been keeping too close an eye on this so I wasn't sure what was happening with it.

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