Academy Awards 2017 - The Biggest Blunder in Oscars History

The Oscars this year were something, to say the least. The nominations were a given, no one could really question them (except for a head-scratching snub for Amy Adams for Arrival or Nocturnal Animals) and everyone had a dog in this fight; "La La Land is the greatest thing ever", "Moonlight is a game-changer and it had zero budget", "Ryan Gosling learned how to play piano, dammit, who cares if his performance was a little lacklustre". It's extraordinary how commonplace it is for everyday to posit this idea of the mainstream awards. After the headache inducing buy out of the Golden Globes, pretty much solidifying what we have always thought of how easy it is to gain the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's love, the Oscars was supposed to hold the yearly enjoyment of the long speeches, the perfect outfits and the fist-pumping adulation for your favourite actor getting what you feel they deserve. Boy howdy, this was unexpected.

The ultimate screw-up and the, to date, biggest mistake in the Academy's long Hollywood history means more than the slew of internet feedback could think. La La Land was prototypical Oscar Gold; a Hollywood set musical, calling back to the musical days of yore with naught but love for film and Hollywood and a bittersweet love letter to Los Angeles. It was a shoe-in for Best Picture, its box office and cultural appeal was undeniable. Moonlight, on the other hand, was not typical Oscar fuel; an LGBT themed coming-of-age story of the life of a young, disenfranchised boy living in the drug culture area of Liberty City, Miami. It details his plight to find his identity, including the physical and emotional abuse he receives as a result of his homosexuality. Including an all-black cast with mostly unknown actors, this was a risk but it gained critical adornment and audiences found it unusually acceptable. High risk and a high reward is the perfect phrase. This event was all the press could talk about, poor Emma Stone had to ward off the comments until eventually she could say nothing else except for "I f---ing love Moonlight", but still the questions came. The world was lit up by the sheer disbelief, no one could comprehend it; the Academy had honoured the exact opposite of what they're known for and it meant more than anyone could have anticipated. Moonlight was granted with the highest honour of being new; it wasn't about slavery, it wasn't exploitative, it was truly unconventional in every way. And the Academy gave it the praise it deserved.

The rest of the wins were less eventful but everyone got the ideal choices;

Casey Affleck - Best Actor

Mahersha Ali - Best Supporting Actor

Emma Stone - the Best Actress

Viola Davis - Best Supporting Actress

Manchester By The Sea - Best Screenplay

Moonlight - Best Adapted Screenplay

Zootopia - Best Animated Feature Film

Beauty and the Beast Review

Pretty much a shot-for-shot remake, Bill Condon's Beauty and the Beast is an enjoyable film but it's inevitable to compare it to its original that this one is trying so hard to capitalise on. In that way, it does not surpass it but it does not fail, something I think many people are happy for.

The cast is perfect, the bad auto-tuned singing not withstanding. Emma Watson is a perfect Belle, she elevates the passivity of the original character into a dynamic and interesting character. Her singing, while good when sung live, is unbearable once autotuned. I really don't understand why they felt the need to mess with her vocals, she has a perfectly good voice on its own as you can hear during the film where they didn't feel the need to tamper with it at all. The rest of the cast is perfect in theory, but Emma Thompson and Ian McKellen stick out to me as a little off. Thompson lacks the warmth that Angela Lansbury leant to the character and Ian McKellen just did not hit any of the character beats that David Ogden Steirs originated.

The songs are brilliant, the new numbers like Evermore, Days in the Sun and How Does A Moment Last Forever are wonderful additions, they lend themselves very well to the score.

My biggest problem stems from Josh Gad's character LeFou. While I think Gad is perfect for the role, I question the decision to turn LeFou from a coded gay lacky to a love-sick, over the top gay stereotype. There was a huge deal made about the film and its inclusion of an officially gay character and I personally just saw a stereotype with no well-written textual backing for the decisions.

All in all I highly enjoyed it. Does it have any reason to exist? No. Is it shamelessly capitalising off of the original too much? Inevitably, yes. But I haven't enjoyed a cinema experience from Disney this much since Princess and the Frog and I left with a spring in my step for sure. I'll be watching it, no doubt, many times in the future.

The Girl on the Train - Movie Review

With an award-worthy performance by Emily Blunt and a twist to rival Psycho, these elements cannot keep this mess of a film from de-railing its source material.

Based on the hit mystery novel by Paula Hawkins, this film makes the unfortunate choice of adapting it the exact same way the book was written; a first-person narrative from the perspective of three different people. The narration, the jumpy narrative and the terrible pacing are all evidence of filmmakers and screenwriters who did not know how to edit the novel for a film medium.

The cinematography and editing are very cliche and address all the tropes for a typical thriller; the phasing edits, the cutting frames, the rack of focus, the colloquially called "Hitchcock Shot"). The tropes are all addressed but they never really feel motivated and the overall framing for the blackouts is more fascinating than the actual "memory" moments where she recovers what she's forgotten. It's a well-made film based purely on its shot design, the composition is wonderful and the camera's movement is very smooth and thankfully low in seizure-inducing "shaky-cam" which most modern day thrillers use. There are some very good uses of these tropes, her first two flashbacks are evocative of the kind of feel I have in mind for my thriller treatment.

The acting is amazing; Emily Blunt is one of my all-time favourite actresses and she gives an incredible performance. She plays the alcoholic part a little too well, it's rather chilling. If this were an all-around stronger film she should have been a big awards contender. But the low critical and box-office rates hindered the film beyond all relief, both from an audience and awards point of view. Rebecca Ferguson, another one of my favourite actresses, gives a very enthralling performance. She doesn't have a ton to do, her character is more or less a plot device, but she does the best she can with what she's given. Luke Evans, another great actor, plays the abusive, possessive husband brilliantly, I'm glad to see his career is doing well as he's a very likeable actor with a lot of range. Lisa Kudrow has a fleeting cameo and she does a very good job, she is the nicest character in the entire film. She is relegated to being a bit of an expository character, basically helping to lay out the twist at the end of the film (which is genuinely brilliant), but she makes it work. The rest of the cast suffers from their bad writing and it is sometimes cringeworthy. Allison Janney as Detective Riley is playing a hard-bitten, grizzled cop and she plays every cop cliche ever done, Hayley Bennet is relegated to a sexy-lamp, she is an object that is passed around before being promptly murdered. She spends the entire film nude, having graphic and poorly filmed sex scenes and strutting around her balcony in skimpy outfits. Any character comes through in her writing, as she was written brilliantly in the original story, but she never has a narrator so most of her lines are her thought trains from the book. No actress could make those lines sound natural. And then there's Justin Theroux's Tom. Theroux, a David Lynch alumni and a fantastic actor is given nothing to work with. His character is so one note that you can place it the minute you see him. He plays the manipulative, conniving killer but his motives are unclear, his backstory is non-existant, his depth is that of a puddle. The only way Theroux manages to heighten his work is in just how cold and sinister Tom really is. And while the twist is genius, he never plays into that genius. He lets the twist speak for itself; it works with or without him and he's a weak, flat antagonist that adds nothing to the overall story except for a weak way to tie these stories together.

Setting Up The Shoot

 

Casting of Melanie

We had a bit of a problem with the casting of our protagonist, Melanie. We had at first cast Mia Rodgers, an AS Drama Student, in the role but due to scheduling she could not make it for filming day. Instead we cast my friend Lilli Schlaeffli in the role. While we had to change some visual elements, I am very happy that Lilli will be working with us. If we were to replace anyone over Mia, Lilli is ideal. She's incredibly talented and works incredibly well.