2013 Oscar Winners and Reactions

The 85th Academy Awards have come and gone, and this year featured many surprises and a disappointment here and there(at least for me).  The overall show was pretty good; Seth MacFarlane did a great job hosting and actually managed to hold back but still stay true to his brand of comedy.  The show itself was quite a success, with the exception of a pointless appearance by Michelle Obama. Now onto the awards themselves.

Best Picture:
Winner: Argo
I don't want to say this was a surprise, but in some ways, it was.  Argo didn't win any of the other Big Five awards and wasn't even nominated for Best Director.  Despite this, it managed to take home the grand prize as the Academy's best movie of the year.

Best Director:
Winner: Ang Lee for Life of Pi
Probably the biggest curve-ball of the awards, I don't think many people expected Ang Lee to beat out Steven Spielberg for Best Director.  Ang Lee has had quite a diverse career and hopefully this will get him more recognition in America and have him be known for more than that terrible first Hulk movie.

Best Actor:
Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln
No surprise here.  Presenter Meryl Streep didn't even have to open the envelope for this award.  I really liked the fact that despite all of the praise surrounding Day-Lewis' performance, he still sounded very humbled in his acceptance speech.

Best Actress:
Winner: Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook
The second biggest surprise of the night, Jennifer Lawrence has made quite a name for herself in this past year alone.  Hopefully, this Oscar will give her an extra boost in the future of her career.

Best Supporting Actor:
Winner: Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained
A big and much needed win for Christoph Waltz.  Hopefully he'll be able to get some better roles outside of Quentin Tarantino films following this award.

Best Supporting Actress:
Winner: Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables
Again, no surprise on this one.  Anne Hathaway picked up yet another award for her excellent performance as Fantine in Les Miserables.

Best Cinematography:
Winner: Life of Pi

Best Editing:
Winner: Argo

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Winner: Argo

Best Original Screenplay:
Winner: Django Unchained

Best Foreign Language Film:
Winner: Amour

Best Animated Feature:
Winner: Brave
This is the only winner that I'm actually upset about.  Don't get me wrong, I liked Brave(I even own it), I just thought that the other nominees were much more deserving.  Wreck-It-Ralph and Frankenweenie had more creativity and originality in them than Brave did.  Brave was just put together using pieces of many other, and better, Disney movies.  Again, I liked Brave, it just didn't deserve to win in my opinion.

Best Documentary Feature:
Winner: Searching for Sugar Man

Best Documentary Short:
Winner: Inocente

Best Costume Design:
Winner: Anna Karenina

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Winner: Les Miserables

Best Production Design:
Winner: Lincoln

Best Original Score:
Winner: Life of Pi

Best Original Song:
Winner: "Skyfall" from Skyfall

Best Animated Short Film:
Winner: Paperman

Best Live Action Short Film:
Winner: Curfew

Best Sound Editing:
Winner: Tie between Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty

Best Sound Mixing:
Winner: Les Miserables

Best Visual Effects:
Winner: Life of Pi
This would be kind of expected from a movie people are hailing as "the next Avatar".

In the end, while Argo may have won the big award, Life of Pi swept the show, picking up four awards.  Argo and Les Miserables followed with three awards each.  Lincoln, Django Unchained, and Skyfall all took home two awards each.  Bringing up the rear was Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, and Zero Dark Thirty each taking a single award.  The 2013 Oscars were much better than last year's with many more surprises than I was expecting.  I'd say it's time to look forward to the movies for next year's show, but with the movies that are out right now we may have to wait a little while.  In the meantime, I've got some catching up to do with these movies.

2013 Oscar Predictions

The 85th Academy Awards are this coming Sunday, and they're already looking to be a lot more interesting than last year's.  The results of past awards shows this year have made it virtually impossible to say exactly who will take home the big awards, but I'll still make my predictions anyway.  Please note: I have not seen many of these movies so most of these are blind guesses.  Also, I won't talk about Best Short Film-Live Action, Best Documentary as I know next to nothing about the nominees in these categories, nor will I talk about technical awards.

Best Picture:
My initial pick for Best Picture was Lincoln, but now that Argo has been a hit at the awards shows, I'm thinking that the Ben Affleck film could take the show.  Again, it's very hard to say exactly but out of all the films nominated, I'm going with a toss-up between Lincoln and Argo.

Best Actor:
Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln.  This is one of the easier predictions seeing as Day-Lewis has been garnering so much recognition for his portrayal of America's sixteenth President.  The only other person I can see winning is Denzel Washington for Flight, but that would be a long-shot.

Best Actress:
While I would love to see Jennifer Lawrence or Quvenzhane Wallis win for Silver Linings Playbook and Beasts of the Southern Wild, respectively, I have a feeling that Emmanuelle Riva will win for Amour.  Again, this is mostly due to the fact that she has gotten widespread acclaim for her role, and has been sweeping awards shows.

Best Supporting Actor:
This one is also a toss-up.  While it's more likely that Alan Arkin or Philip Seymour Hoffman will win for Argo and The Master, respectively, I would love to see Christoph Waltz win for Django Unchained.  He was easily one of the best parts of the movie, and it would really help him gain some more recognition in America.

Best Supporting Actress:
This one's a no-brainer; Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables.  Again, her portrayal of Fantine was easily the best part of the movie.  With the recognition she's gotten and the awards she's already picked up, it's easy to see her winning this award with no problem.

Best Director:
This one is also very easy: Steven Spielberg for Lincoln.  It would have been harder to decide if Ben Affleck had been nominated, but enough has been said about his snub.  As it is, I am fairly confident that Steven Spielberg will take home the award.

Best Writing:
In the Original Screenplay category I would love to see Django Unchained win.  This was some of Tarantino's best writing I've seen yet.  However, Zero Dark Thirty and Amour seem more likely to win.  As for Adapted Screenplay, it's another toss-up between Lincoln and Argo.

Best Foreign Language Film:
Amour will win this one.  There's not much else to say about this this category or the other nominees so let's just move on.

Best Animated Feature Film:
Yet another category where I have absolutely no idea who will win.  It would be great to see Frankenweenie or ParaNorman win as it will be a tremendous victory for stop-motion animation.  I wouldn't be displeased if Wreck-It-Ralph wins as it will be the first time a video game based movie will have won an award like this.  The only nominee I don't want to win is Brave.  Not that I didn't like the movie, I just thought the other nominees were much better.  Studio Ghibli's The Secret World of Arrietty was much more deserving of a nomination.

Best Animated Short Film:
I'm really hoping Disney's Paperman will win this award, as it was very creative and, in some ways, groundbreaking in mixing traditional animation with computer animation.  I was also hoping to see Pixar's La Luna get nominated, as I thought that was much better, but I still enjoyed Paperman.

I could be completely right, or I could be completely wrong in these predictions.  My guess is as good as yours.  The 85th Academy Awards will take place Sunday, February 24 at 7 pm Eastern and 4 pm Pacific on ABC.

Review: Dr. Seuss' The Lorax

As I sat in my room, one rainy March day, I decided to see what movie critics had to say.  A brand new movie was about to come out, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax was making people shout.  "It's atrocious! Abysmal! Dr. Seuss would be ashamed!" "But it's well-meaning and cute, it's really not that lame!"  I was sitting confused as I ever could be.  Was this a film that I should go see? Myself unsure and the reviews quite mixed, I avoided the film, until it popped up on Netflix.  I was still unsure, as I went to click Play. Would I find enjoyment in the film, or dismay?

Unfortunately, despite good intentions and some great ideas to make the original story work as a feature length film, The Lorax is another miss in the series of film adaptations of Dr. Seuss' works.  All the pieces were in place for the movie to join Horton Hears a Who as one of the better Seuss adaptations, but somewhere along the way the filmmakers lost sight of not only Dr. Seuss' vision, but of their own vision as well.

Dr. Seuss' story of a boy who goes to the Once-ler(voiced by Ed Helms) to hear the story of the Lorax(voiced by Danny Devito) and the destruction of the Truffula Trees remains largely unchanged. Except for the addition of an entire second plot involving the boy, named Ted(voiced by Zac Efron), and the citizens of the entirely-made-of-plastic Thneedville.  Ted wants to find a real, organic tree to get the attention of his neighbor Audrey(voiced by Taylor Swift). Led to the Once-ler by his grandmother(voiced by Betty White), Ted discovers that Thneedville lies in the center of a wasteland of smog and dead tree stumps.  Ted's actions attract the attention of Aloysius O'Hare, a powerful bottled air magnate who keeps the citizens Thneedville unaware of their surroundings.  As Ted listens to the Once-ler's story, he discovers that restoring the Truffula Trees may be more important than he could ever imagine.

As you can see, there's a lot going on in The Lorax, and that's it's biggest problem.  In stretching the material to feature length, the filmmakers ended up adding too much additional material.  There are too many sub-plots and side characters, and the movie actually devotes more time to these than the main story.  On top of that, a lot of the extra characters are just unnecessary.  Too much time is spent with the families of Ted and the Once-ler.  They're just included for more jokes that didn't do much for me.  The new villain O'Hare is about as boring a villain as you can get, he just wants money and power, and the movie would have greatly benefited from his exclusion.  Also, the pacing can be pretty off at times.  The movie alternates from Ted's story to the Once-ler's throughout most of the movie, and it's a good balance at first.  However, the final part of the Lorax's story is reduced to a two minute song(yeah, The Lorax is also a musical), and the last 20 minutes of the movie focuses on the boring sub-plot with the boring villain.

Also lacking is the voice acting.  Not that it's bad, it's just that I can tell that these are celebrities talking into a microphone.  Also, some of the actors have such distinct voices it's hard not to be distracted.  Every time Ed Helms speaks or sings, I just hear Andy from The Office or Stu from The Hangover.  However, his voice for the much older Once-ler is very good.  By far the weakest link in the chain of celebrity voice actors is Taylor Swift.  She's trying her best, but half the time her voice acting doesn't match with the animation in the expressions on her character and it's really distracting.  The rest of the cast does a fine enough job, but you can tell they were cast for marketing reasons.

And that's how a lot of The Lorax feels; like the filmmakers got more concerned with making the movie more marketable, and that really betrays the message of the original story.  The message is still there, in fact it felt like the movie was trying to force it down my throat half the time, but it gets lost in the movie's huge Hollywood production values.

If there's anything good that came out of The Lorax, it would be the animation and design of the movie.  Everything looks like it was plucked right from the brain of Dr. Seuss.  The comedic timing is also very good, with character's expressions getting more laughs than the jokes that come out of their mouths.  The scenes involving the Once-ler's story are pretty good, as they're the parts that are the most faithful to the book, and I'm fine with giving Ted his own story, but there was just too much time devoted to it.  As the credits roll, artwork from the book is shown, which I'm sure was meant to pay tribute to the original, but to those who cherish the book and original TV special, it feels more like a slap to the face.  Everything looks like Seuss' original vision, but pretty visuals can't make up for the bad choices on the part of the filmmakers.  Just like the Once-ler got caught up in "biggering and biggering" his Thneed industry, the makers of The Lorax got caught up in biggering and biggering the movie's profits.

Score:
2.5/5 Stars

The Lorax means well and has some good moments as well some great animation, but everything the original stood for gets lost in the larger-than-life production values.

Why Disney's 3D Re-releases Failed

UPDATE: Despite the numerous reports saying that Disney shelved The Little Mermaid 3D, the recently released Diamond Edition of Peter Pan features both an insert and a full-length trailer advertising it.  A few days ago Disney released the exact same trailer online, however this trailer didn't make any mention of 3D, and only advertised a Blu-ray release for this fall.  This post will be updated again once Disney officially clears up the confusion regarding The Little Mermaid 3D.

For those of you who haven't heard, Disney has scrapped the planned theatrical 3D re-release of The Little Mermaid this September, and it's unlikely we'll be seeing more 3D re-releases anytime soon.  This news comes in the wake of Disney's previous 3D releases not matching up to the success of The Lion King 3D.  The re-releases of Beauty and the Beast and Finding Nemo each earned a little less than half of The Lion King's earnings, while Monsters Inc. only earned roughly a third.  With these numbers, it's easy to see why Disney lost their faith so quickly.  But these re-releases didn't have to perform as badly as they did.  There was definitely a public interest in the idea of seeing a classic film in a new way, let alone on a big theater screen.  The reason Disney's re-releases failed is a dual-headed failure in marketing on Disney's part.

The Little Mermaid 3D may never see daylight, but it didn't have to be that way

1. Audience Overload

When The Lion King 3D unexpectedly performed well, Disney must have gotten a big sugar rush  of excitement and announced four 3D re-releases throughout 2012-2013, three of those in 2012 alone.  That's simply too much for an audience to handle in a year.  Disney should have spaced them out to about one or two a year, or they simply could have nixed the Pixar movies and released classics that people actually wanted to see in theaters again.

2. Bad Timing

This one mostly pertains to Monsters Inc. but there's an argument for the other releases as well.  The reason Beauty and the Beast and Finding Nemo had more success was because Disney released them during times when there were hardly any high profile movies coming out.  But the problem with all three of the releases that came out was that they were already available on home video, whereas  The Lion King DVD had been out of print for a number of years.  Beauty and the Beast 3D was originally scheduled for release before the Blu-ray, but it kept getting delayed and eventually shelved because Disney didn't want to "over-saturate the market"(how ironic).  By the time it hit theaters, audiences had access to the new home video issue of Beauty and the Beast for over a year.  Where Disney really faltered was with Monsters Inc. Disney, for some reason, decided to release it during one of the busiest times in movie-going.  It got crushed by movies like The Hobbit, Les Miserables, and Django Unchained.  

The cancellation of The Little Mermaid 3D is unfortunate because it had a similar background to The Lion King 3D (out of print home video) and I believe that it could have been the most successful out of the four re-releases.  And who knows? Maybe we'll see it sometime down the road much like Beauty and the Beast.  But for now, Disney has delivered a pretty bad stab wound to the novel idea that they created in the first place.

Studio Ghibli's Latest gets a U.S. Release Date

Walt Disney Pictures has released an English-language trailer for Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli's latest feature, From Up on Poppy Hill, as well as given a release date of March 15.  The story, written by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by his son Goro Miyazaki, centers around two teenagers who discover life and love in post-war Japan.  Unlike previous Studio Ghibli features, Disney is not producing the English dub of the film.  The English dub is instead being produced by GKIDS, notable for The Secret of Kells and Summer Wars, though Disney will still be responsible for the international distribution.  It's currently unknown how widespread the U.S. theatrical release will be because of this.  My only reservation about the movie so far is the lackluster reception of Goro Miyazaki's last directorial effort, Tales From Earthsea, but the father-son team up has already garnered praise in Japan, so I'm looking forward to seeing it.

From Up on Poppy Hill will be in U.S. theaters March 15

J.J. Abrams Will Direct Star Wars: Episode VII

The past few months has been quite exciting for Star Wars fans everywhere.  After The Walt Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm this past October, they immediately announced a new Star Wars trilogy set to begin in the Summer of 2015.  This is great news and all, there was just one problem: Episode VII had to enter pre-production right away and Disney needed to get a team together fast.  They were quick to hire writer Michael Arndt(Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3), but the director position was still up in the air.  Among those approached were Steven Spielberg, Brad Bird, Joss Whedon, Jon Favreau, and J.J. Abrams. While Abrams initially declined the offer, Disney announced yesterday that he has signed on to both direct and produce Star Wars: Episode VII.

From Trek to Wars, J.J. Abrams is getting involved in Hollywood's most popular franchises

How has the community responded to the announcement? Very well for the most part, which isn't surprising considering the incredibly positive reception of his Star Trek reboot.  Which brings up another question: How will Abrams' involvement in Star Wars affect his involvement with Star Trek?  It's unknown at this point whether or not a sequel to this summer's Star Trek Into Darkness will be made(the box-office results will likely determine that), but if Paramount wants one I can guarantee they will want Abrams involved.  On the other hand, Abrams is not confirmed to direct the other two movies in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.  Abrams' involvement with the two franchises will likely depend on how well each one performs.  If both are successful(which would not be surprising), J.J. Abrams may have to make some very tough decisions in the near future.

Star Trek Into Darkness hits theaters May 17, while Star Wars: Episode VII is on track for a release in the Summer of 2015.

Top 10 Films of 2012

As awards season is in full swing, I figured it's time that I look back at the 10 best movies of 2012.  In order for a movie to make the list, I had to actually see the movie so many acclaimed films are off this list. Without further ado, let's begin.

10.

Not only was it cool to see so many different video game characters and references in one movie, it was great to see Wreck-It-Ralph not have to rely on these things to carry it.  Wreck-It-Ralph is the diamond in the rough when it comes to video game movies, and proved to audiences, critics, and (most importantly) studio executives that a good video game movie is indeed possible.









9.

Studio Ghibli could quite possibly be one of my favorite film studio, period.  They are responsible for some of my favorite movies of all time, and it's nice to see them grow in popularity here in the States.  The Secret World of Arrietty is very different from most animated films today in that it takes its time and is very atmospheric, instead of relying on constant action and pop-culture jokes to hold your attention .  In my opinion, this could go down as one of the most overlooked movies of the year.






8.

I've only recently become a fan of the James Bond series, and out the movies I have seen so far, this is by far the best.  As a 50th Anniversary movie, Skyfall celebrates everything that is good and goofy about Agent 007.  Throw in a great cast, several franchise in-jokes, and you've got one of the best action movies of 2012.  The movie is very clever in how it addresses the age of the franchise but also shows that there are no signs of it slowing down anytime soon.







7.

When this movie was announced, I was in the same camp as most people. "It's too soon".  However, I am pleased to say that this movie outdoes the Sam Raimi efforts many times over.  Everything about this reboot is instantly more likable than anything in the previous trilogy. This is a Spider-Man for the modern crowd, and is looking to be the series that many Spider-Man fans have been waiting for ever since the mixed results of the conclusion of Sam Raimi's trilogy.







6.

With the conclusion of the Harry Potter and Twilight sagas, young adult readers now turn to Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series to satisfy their need for teenage drama, violence, romance, etc.  What's great about this series is that it actually takes its target audience seriously, unlike the Twilight Saga.  This series has everything: likable characters, a great premise and setting, and on top of all that there's some pretty decent satire if you look hard enough.  I have high hopes for this franchise and eagerly await the next installment






5.

It's a wonder why a film adaptation of what could arguably be the most popular musical of the last 25 years didn't get made sooner.  However, the wait was worth it.  The cast and crew of Les Miserables do something different with the material.  Instead of lip sync the actors sing live, and at the same time sound more raw and dramatic in order to give the audience a greater sense of realism.  The style has caused a split with the fans and critics, but in my opinion, I think it worked quite well most of the time.  Add in a fantastic story, characters, and terrific performances, and you've got one of the best musical film adaptations of the past decade.





4.

If there's one thing that Disney and Pixar continue to impress me with, it would be their short films.  Screened with Pixar's Brave, La Luna is hands down my favorite Disney/Pixar short film to date, and was far better than the main feature.  The short oozes with creativity and like The Secret World of Arrietty, doesn't need to be loud or constantly throwing jokes to hold your attention.  Just sit back and let it captivate you.








3.

As an avid fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth mythology, I was one of the many people counting down to the release of the Lord of the Rings prequel.  Despite my disagreement with splitting the story into three movies, I was extremely satisfied with the first installment.  While some complained about the nearly three hour long run-time, I felt that it allowed the movie to fully cover the source material and tie itself into the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I have a feeling that the following installments will only get better.








2.

Watching a Quentin Tarantino movie is always an interesting experience because you know what you're going to get, but at the same time you don't.  Tarantino's throwback to Westerns is smartly written, funny, and of course, pretty violent.  Don't expect to see this on TV in the near future.  There isn't a bad performance to be found here, with Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson delivering the most.  Honestly, I don't have a single complaint against this movie, and it would have been my number 1 pick if it wasn't for...








1.

For a movie with four years worth of hype and expectations, The Avengers could have been a complete disaster in the hands of another director.  Fortunately, Marvel knew to give the director's chair to Joss Whedon, who has gained acclaim through his TV shows (Firefly, Buffy, Dr. Horrible).  It's a miracle that a movie of this ambition got the green light in the first place, and for the finished product to work as well as it does is even more impressive.  For being a game changer in not just the comic book movie, but in the way a movie is marketed altogether, no other movie sums up 2012 quite like The Avengers.