Cinema Sins put out another in their series of “everything wrong with” video here, this time on one of Simon’s favouritesL Inception.
As someone who liked inception I gotta say that at while some of this is a stretch, some of it is pretty spot on.
85th Annual Academy Awards Live Blog and Results
Howdy folks. Watch here for all our thoughts on the Oscars tonight! Newest updates at the top, and I’ll update with a winners list as we go.
#### Winners
* Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor
* Paperman for Best Animated Short
* Brave for Best Animated Feature
* Claudio Miranda for Life of Pie for Best Cinematography
* Life of Pi for Best Visual Effects
* Anna Karenina for Best Costume Design
* Les Miserables for Best Makeup
* Curfew for Best Live Action Short
* Inocente for Best Documentary Short
* Searching for Sugarman for Best Documentary Feature.
* Amour for Best Foreign Language Film
* Les Miserables for Best Sound Mixing
* Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall tie for Best Sound Editing.
* Anne Hathaway for Best Supporting Actress
* Argo for Best Film Editing
* Lincoln for Best Production Design
* Life of Pi for Best Original Score
* Skyfall for Best Original Song
* Chris Terrio for Argo for Best Adapted Screenplay
* Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained for Best Original Screenplay
* Ang Lee for Best Director
* Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress
* Daniel Day Lewis for Best Actor
* Argo for Best Picture
2013 Oscar Predictions
The Oscars are later tonight and Simon and I will be live blogging them. Just for fun, I’m going to lock myself into a few predictions.
#### Sundry Categories
Without going into too much detail on these ones here are how I’d like to see a few of the categories with less fanfare to play out.
* “Skyfall” to win Best Original Score.
It’s the only memorable one of the nominees.
* “Skyfall” to win Best Original Song.
Best Bond Song in years and just a great song. Outside chance for _Everybody Needs a Best Friend_ from Ted, but doubtful.
* Roger Deakins to win Best Cinematography for “Skyfall”.
[There’s lots of reasons to love Roger Deakins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Deakins#Filmography), but more to the point he’s never won the awards despite some brilliant work _and_ Skyfall is a gorgeous film.
* “Prometheus” for Best Visual Effects.
Prometheus is not a good film, but it’s a gorgeous film and the effects are seamless.
* Animated Movies
I haven’t seen all the nominees for best Animated Feature, so I have no idea who will win. I have hoever seen all the nominees for Best Animated Short and I really hope that ***Paperman*** wins.
And now, on to the big ones.
#### Best Adapted Screenplay
* “Argo” – Chris Terrio
* “Beasts of the Southern Wild” – Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin
* “Life of Pi” – David Magee
* ***”Lincoln” – Tony Kushner***
* “Silver Linings Playbook” – David O. Russell
I want to say Argo, but it will probably be ***Lincoln***. In the battle between American heroism and America’s most beloved president, I think it’ll go to the president.
#### Best Original Screenplay
* “Amour” – Michael Haneke
* ***”Django Unchained” – Quentin Tarantino***
* “Flight” – John Gatins
* “Moonrise Kingdom” – Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
* “Zero Dark Thirty” – Mark Boal
***Quentin Tarantino*** has to win this one. Django is almost entirely overlooked in the nominations, but there’s no denying the screenplay is the best this year. Tarantino’s dialogue is amazing as always. You can question his directorial choices but you can’t question how he writes.
#### Actress in a Supporting Role
* Amy Adams – “The Master”
* Sally Field – “Lincoln”
* ***Anne Hathaway – “Les Miserables”***
* Helen Hunt – “The Sessions”
* Jackie Weaver – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Are you kidding me? ***Anne Hathaway***. Everyone here is great, I wish that Amy Adams will win because she is as amazing as everyone else in The Master, and also because I’d really like to see the Academy slightly embarrassed by having all the actors win while their movie nor director is nominated, but Anne Hathaway plays a hooker with a heart of gold, doing everything for her kid, with a debilitating disease, in an adaptation of a beloved stage musical.
Yeah, it’s Anne Hathaway’s year.
#### Actor in a Supporting Role
* Alan Arkin – “Argo”
* Robert De Niro – “Silver Linings Playbook”
* Philip Seymour Hoffman – “The Master”
* ***Tommy Lee Jones – “Lincoln”***
* Christoph Waltz – “Django Unchained”
No clear winner here. Everyone is amazing and everyone has won before. I don’t see Christoph Waltz winning since he did just a couple years back for a very similar role, I don’t see Robert De Niro winning because unlike Jennifer Lawrence (whose performance is elevated above the movie she is in) he’s good but not great.
Alan Arkin was great but also was how Alan Arkin always is.
So that leaves Tommy Lee Jones and Philip Seymour Hoffman. I’d love to see Philip Seymour Hoffman win because he and Joaquin Phoenix are both spectacular in The Master, but ***Tommy Lee Jones*** I think might win for Lincoln because Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t going to win his trophy.
#### Actress in a Leading Role
* Jessica Chastain – “Zero Dark Thirty”
* ***Jennifer Lawrence – “Silver Linings Playbook”***
* Emmanuelle Riva – “Amour”
* Quvenzhané Wallis – “Beasts of Southern Wild”
* Naomi Watts – “The Impossible”
Do we even have to talk about this? I’m pretty sure this is Jennifer Lawrence’s award to lose as of this moment. Silver Linings Playbook may not be a great film however Jennifer Lawrence is great in it. She’s already been robbed once (have you seen _winter’s Bone_? She’s amazing) too so that pretty much locks it down.
So here’s hoping that Jessica Chastain wins next year, because ***Jennifer Lawrence*** is going to win this year.
#### Actor in a Leading Role
* Bradley Cooper – “Silver Linings Playbook”
* Daniel Day-Lewis – “Lincoln”
* ***Hugh Jackman – “Les Miserables”***
* Joaquin Phoenix – “The Master”
* Denzel Washington – “Flight”
As with the Best Supporting Actor category there doesn’t seem to be a clear front runner here. Everyone did great. I was particularly surprised by Bradley Cooper who is getting better and better. However, I think it’s going to go to ***Hugh Jackman*** because say what you will about Les Mis, he acted the shit out of it.
It’s too bad too, because Joaquin Phoenix was amazing in The Master.
#### Best Director
* “Amour” – Michael Haneke
* “Beasts of the Southern Wild” – Benh Zeitlin
* “Life of Pi” – Ang Lee
* ***”Lincoln” – Steven Spielberg***
* “Silver Linings Playbook” – David O. Russell
***Steven Spielberg***. Honestly, of all the directors eligible to be nominated this year he’s the only one on this list that would also be on mine. Paul Thomas Anderson, Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow, and Quentin Tarantino are all missing for the record.
#### Best Picture
* ***”Argo”***
* “Django Unchained”
* “Les Miserables”
* “Life of Pi”
* “Amour”
* “Lincoln”
* “Silver Linings Playbook”
* “Zero Dark Thirty”
* “Beasts of the Southern Wild”
Argo has already won almost every major award there is in this category, including the Golden Globe, Producers Guild, Directors Guild, and SAG awards. You know why? Because it’s a great film and it deserves to win.
It’s also the safest bet because unlike _Zero Dark Thirty_, which I think is a better movie, it’s a story about one man’s heroism and the Academy eats that up.
Outside chance for _Les Miserables_, but for all the fanfare at its release no one is talking about it anymore.
So, ***Argo*** it is.
Later tonight we’ll be live blogging the show so you can watch in real time to see how I did with my predictions then! In the mean time, do you guy have any predictions or movies you are pulling for to win?
Review: Black Mirror, Series Two, Episode One, “Be Right Back”
Charlie Brooker is back again folks. Three more extreme but within-the-realm-of-possible stories to get us thinking about ourselves.
I’m going to warn you right now that this will contain spoilers. I am going to do my best to keep them to a minimum however I can’t talk about everything I want to talk about without including a few so I highly recommend that if you haven’t seen this episode yet you’d best bookmark this, go watch, and come back. There will also be some spoilers for series one of Black Mirror. Normally I’d consider a previous series fair game, but spoiling some of this stuff would be like spoiling who Kaiser Soze is, so seriously: go watch and then come back. You’ve been warned.
Good. Let’s begin then.
_Be Right Back_ stars Hayley Atwell and Domhnall Gleeson as Martha and Ash, a young couple. He is clearly addicted to his phone and the internet, to the point where he doesn’t hear her offering him ridiculous things and she has to tell him to put his damn phone away and interact with her. We get just enough screen time with Ash to get a sense of who he is and who they are together and then he dies.
Wracked with grief Martha is signed up by a friend for a service that basically is an app that lets you speak to the dead. It scrapes data from your social media profiles, emails, videos, photos, anything you can feed it and comes up with an approximation of the person in question.
What follows is both an exploration of grief and anguish as well as the question of the human experiences. We follow Martha as she is emotionally laid low and then raised up again by speaking to this approximation almost non stop.
When she drops her phone the system offers her “the next step”, an artificial Ash with the personality profile uploaded.
I’d like to point out here that both Atwell and Gleeson are superb. Atwell has to run the gamut of human emotion and does so beautifully. Gleeson plays both the internet addicted boyfriend and the approximation thereof well, in particular the contradicting states the False Ash has to exist in.
At first Martha takes full advantage, and I mean full advantage, but it soon becomes apparent that all is not right. Her grief is both quelled and then returned with even greater power. False-Ash at first being a comfort comes to drive her to the edge of sanity because he’s just not Ash.
And therein lies the reflection in the black mirror. Slowly but surely we’re putting more of ourselves online and more people are interacting with facebook, twitter, and every other form of online communication you can think of, and many friendships are made and broken vie these methods. You come to feel like you know someone based on the things they put out there but through False-Ash we’re reminded that none of that can replace the human experience.
In the climax of the story False-Ash is driving Martha to the edge of her sanity because on the one hand he’s right there with her, but on the other he lacks all the mannerisms, all the little tics, and the emotions that aren’t registered online. When she orders him to jump off a cliff and he willingly goes she rails against his utter willingness and how he isn’t acting like Ash. He then takes that information and mimics Ash not out of some sense of preservation but because that’s what False-Ash thinks she wants.
_Be Right Back_ is far more subtle than any of the previous episodes to date. Not hard when you consider that last series had a man fucking a pig, a man selling out, and a man relentlessly torturing himself with recordings of his life built into his brain. That doesn’t actually make it any less thought provoking though, in fact I’d say just the opposite. It’ll make you think about grief and the lengths you might go to, but also how you interact with your friends and family.
Black Mirror is about holding up ideas and showing us reflections that we haven’t considered, or maybe reflections we don’t want to consider about society and technology, and it’s off to a lovely start for this series.
Awesome: Bungie Unveils “Destiny” *UPDATE*
Bungie has finally drawn back the curtain on their first project since they left *Halo* behind them and sold their souls to Activision. *Destiny* seems to be an FPS MMO hybrid – a persistant sandbox galaxy that requires a mandatory internet connection. There won’t be subscription fees and they’ve been quick to pull away from the MMO connection, but the structure of the combat certainly sounds more like this genre than any other:
“Players love MMOs and open world games more for the emergent gameplay than the gameplay crafted by their designers. They remember the things that happened because players got together and did stuff, whether it be some dramatic boss fight at the end of an hour-long raid or the exploration of a cave discovered off the beaten track. Story lead Joe Staten expects Destiny will work in a similar way, with players building their “personal legend”.
It’s all a little vague still, with no gameplay or even screenshots to speak of. However, Bungie has certainly demonstrated in the past that they are able to single-handedly redefine online multiplayer, so they have the benefit of the doubt at this point.
Also, the concept art is *stunning*:
Check it out at Eurogamer’s comprehensive write-up [here](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-17-destiny-bungie-unveils-its-shared-world-shooter).
*UPDATE:*
[The official *Destiny* website](http://www.destinythegame.com/) has released an [introductory video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EwOUi4JDC4o) with a few snippits of gameplay and, more importantly, a sample of the new score by Marty O’Donnell. More excited now.
Review: A Good Day to Die Hard
I’ve written quite a bit about this movie so for those of you who just want to TL;DR version that covers the important bits here it is:
* A Good Day to Die Hard is fucking terrible
* John McClane is even less relatable than he was in Life Free or Die Hard
* Jai Courtney is alright, but if you’re a fan you’ll wish he had a different big break into movies
* Die Hard is still the best Die Hard movie, and always will be (followed by “With a Vengeance”, “Die Harder”, “Live Free” and now “A Good Day”, and in that order)
* Mary Elizabeth Winstead needed to be in this movie more
So here we go.
In 1988 John McClane was a different kind of action hero. He was an everyman, nor an adonis or a martyr or highly trained ninja/soldier/pastry chef, he was just a guy who was thrust into the position of being a hero by shitty circumstances. He got the shit kicked out of him, no one believed him when he initially called for help, and when he finally prevailed he was so beat up it’s amazing he could still walk.
All of this worked because not only was John McClane more relatable than every other action hero (and indeed went on to be the template for so many other action heroes through the 1990s and on to the present) but because Die Hard was also a well constructed film. It’s an action movie yes, but it takes a good half hour before any of the real action starts allowing for a lot of character development and plot set up that’s often missing from the bigger more bombastic action films.
Fast forward to 2012 and the sad fact is that they’ve now basically unmade the character and fit him every so neatly into the mould he originally broke.
John McClane is no longer an everyman, he’s an action god, casually sending a flatbed mercedes cargo truck into an e-brake spin to avoid an oncoming RPG or driving a commandeered SUV through a guard rail on an overpass, landing it on a moving semi truck with a car trailer and literally driving over traffic to get to the road below, all the while spewing off bad one liners which have clearly been added in ADR.
I can’t tell if Jai Courtney is terrible or if it’s just the material he’s given to work with. He plays the son angry at his absentee father bit alright, but it’s kind of unbelievable. Especially when you consider that the reasons John McClane Sr. was absentee were a) his mother kept moving him away and b) John MCClane has literally saved three major cities and the entire country at this point, so it’s not like he was gone because he was a deadbeat dad, but that’s the angle they play it from rather than the “you were there for all those strangers but not for me” angle.
And since we know he was there for those strangers, and his exploits are known to people in that universe, it makes no sense that the bad guys don’t seem to know who he is and don’t kill him immediately when they find out. But of course they couldn’t even if they wanted to because the bad guys are actually incompetent in this movie. Previous bad guys just underestimated John McClane, these guys are actually idiots.
The main henchman even goes off on a cliched and pointless monologue at one point, after having John and John Jr. tied up, and they tie John Sr’s hands _in front of him_ so he can lunge at a bad guy when the moment strikes, and John Jr’s _behind his back_ so he can reach the super secret spy knife/gun –which they previously gratuitiously showed him putting in his shoe– so he can cut his bonds and strike said moment.
Oh, and that bad guy? He’s meant to be malevolent but it’s so poorly executed that quite literally the only thing about him that I remember, let alone dislike, is that he chewed a carrot with his mouth open during his excruitatingly terrible monologue. That made me dislike him, but not for the right reasons.
This is the problem with structure of the movie: there are no surprises. Literally everything that happens is so obviously telegraphed that you always know what’s about to happen.
_Live Free or Die Hard_ was not a great movie but at least it tried to be something. I mean, it tried and _failed_, but at least it tried. _A Good Day to Die Hard_ feels like a movie that was made with a checklist. Big car chase? Check. One liners? Check. Kill a helicopter? Check.
It’s just a shame the checklist didn’t include “make this all fit together in any decent way.” Or maybe it did and they didn’t get to check that item off.
**Rating 2/10
[rating=2]**
Trailer: Into the White
Into the White tells the story of a group of British and German bomber squads forced to live and work together by circumstance and weather during World War 2. Let’s take a look.
First thought: I really hope that Rupert Grint is amazing in this. Daniel Radcliffe is branching out and Emma Watson is achieving some acclaim so it would be nice to see them all doing well.
Second thought, this looks like it might be entertaining but a bit predictable. That’s not necessarily a bad thing –look at Avatar, if you couldn’t see every plot point coming there then you probably weren’t paying attention but it was still a hell of movie– but it doesn’t exactly bode well either.
Awesome: Bungie’s Destiny Will Be Revealed Sunday
We’ve been hearing tidbits about Destiny for a long time. It’s the first thing that Bungie has done since spinning off and leaving Halo is others hands and needless to say I –and every other gamer on the planet– am pretty excited to see what they’ve come up with.
They’ve kept a pretty tight lid on things, but they’ve [announced via facebook](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=398946153534028&set=a.398946146867362.88374.356414807787163&type=1) that we’ll start getting info this coming Sunday, 17th of February.
You can pretty much pick your poison for finding out, Bungie has set up Destiny [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/Bungie), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Bungie), [Google+](https://plus.google.com/+bungie), [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/user/Bungie) as well as a [new section on their forums](http://www.bungie.net/en-US/View/community/Forum/Topics?tg=%23destiny0).
Anyone else crazy excited???
[source: [polygon](http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/12/3981140/bungies-destiny-reveal-coming-feb-17)]
Trailer: Monsters University
I was about to write that it’s not that often that Pixar revisits material, but then I remembered Toy Story 2 and 3, and now Monsters University.
A lot of people I know still count _Monsters Inc_ as their favourite Pixar film but I am not one of them (it comes in th middle of the pack for myself, with _Up!_ and _The Incredibles_ alternately at the top of the list). One of the things I really did like about it though was how self contained of a film it is. There’s really no room to make a sequel to it.
So they went ahead a prequel. I’d love to say I’m excited but to be honest I’m kind of worried. Prequels so rarely work out in my mind because I never feel like I need to know the back story, and often the back stories that are produced are nowhere near as cool as I’d imagined them to be.
Still, this is Pixar so it’s definitely worth giving them the benefit of the doubt. Are you excited for Monsters University?
Trailer: Jack the Giant Slayer
Apologies for the lack of posting folks, real life happened a bit this week. Should be back up to speed by Saturday or so.
In the meantime, Jack the Giant Slayer got a new trailer.
Originally this was scheduled for last year. It certainly looks prettier than the original trailer but this one does a far worse job of selling me on the idea that it might actually be a good movie.
What do you guys think?
Trailer: L’Ecume Des Jours/Mood Indigo is something you need to see
Remember how blown away you were by the look and feel of _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ the first time you saw it? Michel Gondry certainly has a style to his own and it looks like he’s about to blow us away again. Here’s the trailer for L’Ecume Des Jours, his latest film (otherwise known as Mood Indigo):
So, another romance set in another crazy dreamscape of a world. I’m totally down for this. I love Gondry’s style and it doesn’t hurt that Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris and Omar Sy, each of them are amazing, are starring.
And just read the synopsis of the novel it’s based on. It’s like it was written for Gondry:
> Colin is a wealthy young man with a resourceful and stylish man-servant, Nicolas, as well as a fantastic olfactory-musical invention: the pianocktail. With dizzying speed, Colin meets and weds Chloé in a grand ceremony. Generously, Colin bequeaths a quarter of his fortune to his friends Chick and Alise so they too may marry.
> Happiness should await both couples but Chloé falls ill upon her honeymoon with a water lily in the lung, a painful and rare condition that can only be treated by surrounding her with flowers.
Long story short, this looks like it might be the best Gondry film in a while and I can’t freaking wait.
[source: [slashfilm](http://www.slashfilm.com/mood-indigo-trailer-michel-gondry-unveils-another-dreamy-romance/)]
Trailer: Big Ass Spider!
Check this out.
Am I the only one that thinks this movie looks like it might be kind of amazing? Not high art, but a great throwback to the “giant insect” type B-Movies of the past. _Snakes on a Plane_ amazing, if you will.
Here’s the official synopsis:
> An exterminator (Greg Grunberg) and his sidekick (Lombardo Boyar) are caught in an epic battle when a military assault fails to contain a giant alien spider rampaging through the city of Los Angeles.
Looks ridiculous. Where do I sign?
[source: [slashfilm](http://www.slashfilm.com/big-ass-spider-trailer-sxsw-midnight-entry-delivers-exactly-what-it-promises/)]
Awesome: Please Let Today’s Star Wars Rumour Be True
Oh, man. There seems to be a new Star Wars rumour every day – this week alone has suggested origin movies for Han Solo and Yoda – but today’s is so good that I’m just praying that this one turns out to be true.
An Australian radio show is quoting a reliable source that insists the main baddie in JJ Abrams’ new Star Wars will definitely be…John Noble, AKA Walter Bishop from Fringe.
If you’ve seen him as the evil alternate Walter or his character in *Lord Of The Rings* then you’ll know how deliciously evil he can be without turning his character into a pantomime stereotype. Exactly what Episode VII needs. So, while I’m pretty sure that 99.999% of all the current *Star Wars* rumours will prove to be completely false, I’m hoping against hope that this one happens.
*Via [io9](http://io9.com/5982377/could-fringes-john-noble-really-be-playing-the-villain-of-star-wars-episode-vii?utm_source=kotaku.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation0)*
Awesome: A Look at How The Steam Box Will Redefine Consoles
[T.C. Sottek Writing for The Verge](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/6/3958162/valve-steam-box-cake):
> Valve is trying to build a game console that you haven’t seen before: something that brings the PC (the big thing sitting on your desk) and the traditional console (the little thing sitting under your TV) together into a single device. A device that will run Valve’s Steam platform: the biggest digital game distribution service on the market, with upwards of 50 million users. (By comparison, Xbox Live has somewhere around 40 million subscribers.) But what does that really mean?
> […]
> Based on what Valve has told us, its Steam box will — like a console — be something small and quiet that you can fit near your television while you kick back on the couch with a wireless controller. Like a PC, it will let you buy and download your games as many times as you want without needing any discs, and choose from a vast library of free game customizations. The Steam Box will also include a few unique twists, like controllers that can passively sense your feelings (biometrics), and wireless technology that can connect the console to several rooms and screens in your house at the same time.
> Valve is shopping for the right ingredients — the features, parts, and partners — to make the Steam Box a reality. But why would a software company like Valve, known for its game-making chops, want to bake its own consoles and controllers? Let’s look back at 2012 to find out.
It’s a long article so be sure to get comfy before you sit down to read, but do sit down to read because it’s a nice rundown of everything that seems to be going on.
I, for one, can’t wait for this thing.
[source: [the verge](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/6/3958162/valve-steam-box-cake)]
Trailer: Fast and Furious 6 Extended Trailer is Kind of Awesome
We saw the first trailer during the Super Bowl and now there’s an extended version.
I’m looking forward to this movie. Like I’ve said before the 4th and 5th entries in this series were both good, with Fast Five being the best in the series so far if you ask me. This looks like it’s going to tie up all the loose ends from the story so far and bring (almost) every character into the action. Luke Evans appears to be a bit of a stereotype “ex special forces bad guy” but as long as he has the charisma there’s nothing wrong with that in a movie like this.
And let’s face it, some of the stuff they do with the cars is pretty freaking sweet.
If I have any complaints they’d be that at 3 minutes 20 seconds this trailer doesn’t really leave me wanting a lot more. I’m worried that I’ve basically seen the whole movie now (which wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened) and also I kind of wish they’d stuck with one system for naming the movies so that this one would be called _6 Fast 6 Furious_.
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