Tomorrow morning the Academy Awards will announce their slate of nominations. After hearing from the Golden Globes and reading the nominations from groups like the Producer’s Guild, Director’s Guild and Screen Actor’s Guild, it’s pretty apparent which films have the most heat behind them. Continue reading
When Netflix announced they would be adapting Lemony Snicket’s (aka Daniel Handler) A Series of Unfortunate Events I was a little skeptical. Now, it’s true that a lot of their original series efforts (Stranger Things, Orange Is The New Black, BoJack Horseman) have been consistently excellent and entertaining, but A Series of Unfortunate Events is something very near and dear to my heart, and I’ve been burned once before. Nickelodeon’s film adaptation, though handsomely made and entertaining in its own right, failed to capture much of what made Handler’s series so engrossing and exceptional. Time passed, the actors grew too old and a sequel or even a reboot seemed pointless as the years rolled by and the final book was released. Any hopes of seeing the misadventures of the Baudelaire orphans told on the big screen seemed hopeless.
One of the most bizarre things about this whole awards season is the over performance of Nocturnal Animals and Deadpool. In the case of the former, it won major nominations from the Golden Globes and one award for Aaron Taylor-Johnson over the presumed winner Mahershala Ali. This morning, The BAFTA’s (British Academy of Film and Television Awards) nominated the film in categories like Best Picture, Director, Actor and Supporting Actor. In the case of Deadpool, the film received nominations from the WGA and PGA, highly predictive guilds when it comes to the Oscars.
After last night’s La La Land dominance at the Golden Globes, it would be easy to say that all is said and done and that its march towards the Oscars is complete. All seven awards, including Picture (Comedy or Musical), Director, Actor and Actress (Comedy or Musical) and Screenplay went to Damien Chazelle’s musical which has been tearing it up at the Box Office. La La Land also boasts top honors from the Broadcast Film Critics and the Toronto International Film Festival, two prizes that certainly don’t hurt when trying to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
La La Land‘s biggest competition was thought to be Moonlight (which won the Drama Globe for Best Picture) and Manchester By The Sea (which won Actor in a Drama). Both films landed Screen Actor’s Guild Ensemble nominations where La La Land did not, indicating weakness from La La Land amongst the biggest voting block in the Academy: the actors. Even films like Beasts of No Nation which only had three credited actors (and only one of them being well known) was able to land a nomination last year. But one film that is absolutely tearing up the box office right now, and won nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild that I believe many are underestimating in the long game is Hidden Figures.
I called that it was going to be a big night for La La Land, but I didn’t anticipate it being this big. The Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling led musical won all seven of the awards it was up for, including Screenplay and Director which many thought could have gone to Kenneth Lonergan or Barry Jenkins.
Just how many awards is Damien Chazelle’s La La Land going to win tomorrow night at the Golden Globes? It’s a film that seems tailor made for this particularly group, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and benefits from the split by genre in Motion Picture awards. It will no doubt win Best Film and Actress, but can it go all the way in categories like Screenplay, Score, Song, Actor and Director too?
The other big question heading into tomorrow night is who will emerge victorious in the Drama categories: Manchester By The Sea or Moonlight? All three of these films are the big names heading into the Oscar nominations, so who can make the biggest mark prior to nomination day?
Let’s take a look at all of the major categories.
La La Land was one of my most anticipated films of the year. From the moment that excellent first trailer arrived, I was hooked. First of all, I’m a huge sucker for musicals. And while I wasn’t a huge fan of director Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, he seemed to be aiming towards evoking the nostalgia of the great Hollywood musicals of the past, with a modern spin which I was totally down with. I’ve also been a huge fan of Emma Stone’s since her brilliant star making performance in Easy A, and this seemed like the perfect project for her talents. And she had such great chemistry with Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid Love so what could go wrong, right?
Since then, La La Land has gone on to become the Best Picture frontrunner. It’s racked up wins from the New York Film Critic’s Circle, the coveted People’s Choice Award from TIFF, a bunch of Critic’s Choice wins and a bunch of Golden Globe and Screen Actor’s Guild nominations. It’s been written to death about how La La Land is the perfect antidote for our flaming garbage pile of a year, because after 2016, what we need is a breezy, delightful musical.
But La La Land simply doesn’t live up to the premise or hype bestowed upon it. And while it has some charming moments, they can’t hide the flawed and flimsy plot beneath all of the glitz and nostalgia.
Last year, The Force Awakens burst onto the screen at the end of the year and kickstarted a love of Star Wars for a whole new generation, while (sort of) making up for the dreadful prequel films that still feel all too recent to longtime fans of the series. The film was, in a word, fun; it had everything that made the original trilogy so enjoyable, while not being so wrapped in nostalgia that it felt old and recycled.
We still have another year before we get a look at the next chapter in the adventures of Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron but damn it we need something to hold us over until then! Enter Rogue One, a stand-alone film that sets back the clock a bit to before the events of A New Hope and some time after Revenge of the Sith. The Empire looms large over the galaxy, the Jedi are gone and Luke Skywalker has not yet had his fateful encounter with Obi-Wan Kenobi, nor has Princess Leia been captured.
The Screen Actor’s Guild revealed their nominations this morning, and clearly had a lot of love for Moonlight, Fences, Manchester By The Sea, Hidden Figures and the Viggo Mortensen led indie Captain Fantastic; all were present in SAG’s Best Ensemble Cast line up, which is their Best Picture prize so to speak.
Jon On Film 