The critical and commercial successes of The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook have made David O. Russell is a major name to look for in awards season now. American Hustle will be one of the major contenders this winter and the number one reason is that it features one hell of a cast made up of Russell regulars Bale, Cooper, Lawrence and Adams. The Abscam Sting of the 1970s is a juicy story and, judging from the trailer, this cast and crew is going to make a winner out of it.
Showing posts with label jennifer lawrence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jennifer lawrence. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
The critical and commercial successes of The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook have made David O. Russell is a major name to look for in awards season now. American Hustle will be one of the major contenders this winter and the number one reason is that it features one hell of a cast made up of Russell regulars Bale, Cooper, Lawrence and Adams. The Abscam Sting of the 1970s is a juicy story and, judging from the trailer, this cast and crew is going to make a winner out of it.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Friday, April 26, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Tonight, Never Mind Pop Film is blogging the Oscars live.
The big talk of the 85th Academy Awards will definitely be whether Argo continues to steamroll into a write-in win for Best Director. Daniel Day-Lewis could make history tonight if he wins Lead Actor for the third time. Also looking to make history is Amour actress Emmanuelle Riva who is poised to become the oldest winner for Best Actress, but in order to so she will have to fend off Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain. The big question tonight will be what wins Best Picture (the last four years, the winner was a given going into the evening, but tonight is a toss-up).
Tonight is my first attempt at doing this, so here goes nothing...
Seth MacFarlane is doing well thus far. He already made Tommy Lee Jones laugh. Still, taking no prisoners.
And there goes his goodwill...
Captain Kirk! Where was he when James Franco co-hosted?
So no Muppets version of Flight then? Bummer.
Best Supporting Actor
Christoph Waltz
Cool! Nice to see that the Academy doesn't make a big deal about winning recently.
Best Animated Short
Paperman
Best Animated Feature
Brave
"So you got nominated for something a 9 year old can do?"
The Avengers assemble to not piss of Samuel L. Jackson.
Best Cinematography
Life of Pi
Best Visual Effects
Life of Pi
That cut-off was a little harsh. Congratulations on the Life of Pi team and Rhythm and Hues anyway.
Best Costume Design
Anna Karenina
Best Make-Up and Hairstyling
Les Miserables
Skyfall wasn't nominated for Best Picture, but here's the attention Bond deserves.
Best Live Action Short
Curfew
Best Documentary Short
Inocente
Any films plugged with Liam Neeson's voice has an excellent chance to win.
"When the Levee Breaks". Best song ever, yes?
Best Documentary Feature
Searching for Sugar Man
Best Foreign Film
Amour
I don't think anyone anticipated the director of Funny Games would win an Oscar for a romance.
Thank you, John Travolta, keep on dancing.
Damn, Jennifer Hudson. Just damn. I feel bad that Les Miserables has to follow her performance.
Best Sound Mixng
Les Miserables
Best Sound Editing
Zero Dark Thirty/Skyfall
Where are the Von Trapps! Well done, MacFarlane, well done.
Best Supporting Actress
Anne Hathaway
Best Editing
Argo
Argo's first win of the evening, Les Mis and Life of Pi lead the pack with two each thus far.
I always wondered where winners put their Oscars for the rest of the show. Thanks, Christoph Waltz.
Best Production Design
Lincoln
There's Lincoln's first win for the night.
D.A. Pennebaker, you rock.
A nicely done In Memoriam.
Best Score
Life of Pi
Life of Pi pulls ahead with 3, is an upset coming with director and picture?
Best Original Song
Adele - Skyfall
Best Original Screenplay
Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained
Best Adapted Screenplay
Chris Terrio - Argo
Best Picture rarely wins without screenplay. Will the Argo train continue?
I really thought that the Academy wouldn't touch the script for Django Unchained with a ten foot pole. Too much controversy didn't bother them apparently.
Best Director
Ang Lee - Life of Pi
Keeping my fingers crossed that picking Life of Pi as Best Picture pans out. Ang Lee looks psyched.
Best Actress
Jennifer Lawrence
Grace under pressure, she earned that Oscar.
Best Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis
Such an amazing lineup for Best Actor, there is literally no way they could go wrong. Meryl Streep didn't even need to look.
That's a record, congratulations, Mr. Day-Lewis, even if you were second choice behind Streep.
Best Picture
Argo
And let the conspiracy theories about George Clooney and the White House begin.
That's a night folks, drive safe and enjoy everything the movies have to offer in 2013!
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Sunday night is rapidly approaching and the favorites for the 85th Academy Awards have mostly set themselves apart from the field. Still, favorites have a way of managing to be surprised when the winner's name is announced. These nominees may just benefit from playing the dark horse.
Emmanuelle Riva
For a majority of the season, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain had the inside track for Best Actress, but along the way 86 year old Riva upset both actresses at the BAFTAs. Her strong performance may connect with a majority of the voting body that thinks Lawrence hasn't paid her dues and Chastain has many nominations in front of her.
Frankenweenie
Wreck-It Ralph is the hip choice right now, it has swept its respective category for the last several awards, but these two animated features have their own passionate fanbases. Tim Burton has never won an Oscar over his long career and maybe that changes Sunday evening. Either way, Disney will win its first Animated Feature Oscar for the first time since the category's inception.
Silver Linings Playbook
Chris Terrio (Argo) and Tony Kushner (Lincoln) are the front-runners for the Oscar, but Academy voters have a history of giving awards to films as compensation for losing bigger contests. David O. Russell has a lot of competition for Best Director, but conceivably he could come home with the adapted screenplay award.
Ang Lee
Ben Affleck's snub opened the field up for a while and if Steven Spielberg doesn't capitalize on the moment, Lee seems most suited to take home the trophy. Life of Pi has no acting nominees, but nearly all voters acknowledge the technical prowess Lee exercised while making the film.
Joaquin Phoenix
Mr. Phoenix may not personally be keeping his fingers crossed, but current guarantee Daniel Day-Lewis name-checked the actor for his work in The Master when accepting one of his awards. Is a groundswell starting for the recently retired Phoenix? Day-Lewis has won Lead Actor twice previously so his win is a lock, yet a surprise here would be almost unprecedented.
Emmanuelle Riva
For a majority of the season, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain had the inside track for Best Actress, but along the way 86 year old Riva upset both actresses at the BAFTAs. Her strong performance may connect with a majority of the voting body that thinks Lawrence hasn't paid her dues and Chastain has many nominations in front of her.
Frankenweenie
Wreck-It Ralph is the hip choice right now, it has swept its respective category for the last several awards, but these two animated features have their own passionate fanbases. Tim Burton has never won an Oscar over his long career and maybe that changes Sunday evening. Either way, Disney will win its first Animated Feature Oscar for the first time since the category's inception.
Silver Linings Playbook
Chris Terrio (Argo) and Tony Kushner (Lincoln) are the front-runners for the Oscar, but Academy voters have a history of giving awards to films as compensation for losing bigger contests. David O. Russell has a lot of competition for Best Director, but conceivably he could come home with the adapted screenplay award.
Ang Lee
Ben Affleck's snub opened the field up for a while and if Steven Spielberg doesn't capitalize on the moment, Lee seems most suited to take home the trophy. Life of Pi has no acting nominees, but nearly all voters acknowledge the technical prowess Lee exercised while making the film.
Joaquin Phoenix
Mr. Phoenix may not personally be keeping his fingers crossed, but current guarantee Daniel Day-Lewis name-checked the actor for his work in The Master when accepting one of his awards. Is a groundswell starting for the recently retired Phoenix? Day-Lewis has won Lead Actor twice previously so his win is a lock, yet a surprise here would be almost unprecedented.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Judging from videos like the one above, entertainment columnists devoting their columns to the voting selections of octogenarians, and Oscar bloggers grabbing at each other's throats, it must be award season again.
Ideally, award shows should be about the celebration of cinema as all moviegoers get a chance to become acquainted with the nominees. For most people, that is the case, but not for Oscar bloggers. War paint is thoroughly applied, for your consideration ads are placed conspicuously and Twitter turns into a battleground.
The problem with the awards season itself is that it doesn't really strive to provoke interesting conversations, Oscar prognosticators act more like loiterers surrounding a fistfight: they spur on the conflict and get their kicks in when one film gets knocked down. In many ways, it's not that different from The Hunger Games, contestants enter battle to the death and only one is crowned victor.
Read more at Film Annex
Ideally, award shows should be about the celebration of cinema as all moviegoers get a chance to become acquainted with the nominees. For most people, that is the case, but not for Oscar bloggers. War paint is thoroughly applied, for your consideration ads are placed conspicuously and Twitter turns into a battleground.
The problem with the awards season itself is that it doesn't really strive to provoke interesting conversations, Oscar prognosticators act more like loiterers surrounding a fistfight: they spur on the conflict and get their kicks in when one film gets knocked down. In many ways, it's not that different from The Hunger Games, contestants enter battle to the death and only one is crowned victor.
Read more at Film Annex
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Of all the franchises in the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles have the most impassioned fanbase. Wins move the entire city, a loss, particularly at Dallas, could ruin an entire Sunday. Eagles fans' well-being depend on a winning season. The Solitanos are such a family.
Pal Solitano (Bradley Cooper) has no control over the things that come out of his mouth. Everyone is guilty of having their mental filter go on the fritz, but Pat's is permanently stuck on off. He's been working on self-improvement at the clinic he was court-appointed to following a violent conflict between himself, his wife and her lover. His mother Dolores (Jacki Weaver) has decided that eight months is long enough and brings Pat back home.
Pat has a game-plan toward getting his life back in order: get in shape, get his old job and get his wife back. Nikki has since moved on and as a gesture of good faith, filed a restraining order against him. Despite what his friends tell him, he is quite happy in his delusions.
In an effort to get Pat readjusted, his buddy invites him to dinner with his wife and her sister, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence).
From their first meeting Tiffany gets Pat, when most people in a room step back from him, she steps forward. Pat is hesitant to ingratiate himself with Tiffany, she's loose with her body and Pat needs to maintain with Nikki that he is above such behavior. Oblivious to Pat, Tiffany has her own problems. Since her husband's death she has been an inconsolable mess, any contact she can get, she takes.
While it is immediately clear to the audience that Tiffany and Pat are kindred spirits, he needs convincing. Tiffany slyly offers a deal: be her dance partner and she will pass along his letters to Nikki, in an effort to convince her to get back together.
With Pat spending so much time at Tiffany's, Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro, on a streak after Being Flynn) just wants his namesake to sit alongside him Sunday afternoon and take in a game with his old man. Each passing week, Pat Sr. puts a little more money on each game, with his son as his good luck charm, he can't go wrong.
Bradley Cooper is one of those familiar faces recognized from parts as the sidekick and the aggressive boyfriend, but he never really broke out. With his performance as the at times lucid and at others raging Pat, Cooper has announced that he has taken that step into the next tier of leading men.
David O. Russell has a knack for capturing dysfunctional familial units. His most recent effort, The Fighter, garnered him an Academy Award nod for the first time, but, despite the quirk of brothers Micky and Dicky, the the film was ultimately viewed as a workman effort. Silver Linings however comes right out of the auteur's wheelhouse. Russell adapted and directed the film, adding alterations to the story that ultimately result in a tighter, better film.
The popular knock against Silver Linings Playbook is that the film lacks awareness when it comes to mental illness. That conclusion obfuscates the trying moments that Pat Sr. and Dolores combat with after he comes home from the hospital. Russell's film is more or less about capturing the daily highs and lows of Pat and Tiffany's issues. Not every living moment for a person with an illness is wrenched in agony.
Silver Linings destigmatizes disorders in a way that most films just don't care to. Like the Solitano's home, it invites you in.
***1/2 out of ****
Monday, March 26, 2012
People have been pitted against one another in deadly combat forever. As long as civilizations have sought venues for entertainment, bloodsport has been there to satiate the need. The difference between Hunger Games and history is that children were never participants in the combative arena.
District 12 serves as a ghetto for children. They are represented by wealthy ambassadors that do not live there, the eldest take on parental duties, and on a regular basis they are required to fight each other to the death in a tournament. At the age of twelve children are required to enter a pool where the name selected shall serve as a contestant. At “The Reaping,” boys and girls are taken from each district and selected by age and the number of rations they accepted throughout the year. There, they are thrown into a controlled arena, only one child survives.
Primrose Everdeen is entering her name for the first time and her sister, Katniss, is insistent that she won't be selected. Katniss was wrong. So distraught by Primrose's entry into the games, Katniss volunteers to go in her stead. Now, she must fight for her life or become another member lost to the boredom release valve that is Capitol City.
There could not have been a better casting choice than Jennifer Lawrence for Katniss. The quiet reserve of strength that every District 12 resident depends upon. Much like Ree in Winter's Bone, Lawrence takes a character and makes her heartfelt. The only chink in Lawrence's armor is when she is seemingly forced to choose between Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and Gale (Liam Hemsworth). It is below her talent and more importantly, it feels forced in this entry to the series.
Thankfully, the romantic subplot between the three is not made the central focus of the film. What director Gary Ross does is create a world where you are placed in Katniss' shoes. Your heart races with every ticking second and attempt on her life. This is a harrowing experience and it is amazing that Ross got away with a PG-13 rating.
Which brings me to my only problem with The Hunger Games, there seems to be no sympathy. Granted, there are those who finds themselves trying to aid Katniss and Peeta, but those who do are far outnumbered by the main who remain lethargic. Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) and Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) cannot make up for the sheer ignorance that allow the games to exist. In films like Spartacus and Gladiator the protagonists' circumstances create reasonable suspension of disbelief. There is nothing that can serve in an equatable fashion for The Hunger Games. Elites like Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) know the game to be nothing less than an occupation. A producer continuously rising like Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) can only hope that the carnage exceeds expectations. I do not want to live in a world that has people that are so incredibly lethargic that they can cheer on a massacre like a sweeps episode of The Bachelorette.
What The Hunger Games creates is a lived-in universe where the characters act and feel authentic. Lionsgate has created something here that will tap the zeitgeist. I look forward to how this series will play out and where Lawrence's Katniss will go.
***/****
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