Who will win at the Critics' Choice Awards 2014?

I love the way the Critics' Choice Awards have some categories for different genres like action and comedy. It's also good to see a few films that haven't been included on other nominations lists like Stories We Tell and The Way Way Back.

The winners are going to be announced on 16th Jan 2014 but for now, here are the nominations for  the 19th annual CRITICS’ CHOICE MOVIE AWARDS. I've highlighted those I'd like or who I think will win. Here is a list of the actual winners.

BEST PICTURE
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
Saving Mr. Banks
12 Years A Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST ACTOR
Christian Bale – American Hustle
Bruce Dern – Nebraska
Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years A Slave
Tom Hanks – Captain Phillips
Matthew McConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club
Robert Redford – All Is Lost

BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock – Gravity
Judi Dench – Philomena
Brie Larson – Short Term 12
Meryl Streep – August: Osage County
Emma Thompson – Saving Mr. Banks

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Barkhad Abdi – Captain Phillips
Daniel Bruhl – Rush
Bradley Cooper – American Hustle
Michael Fassbender – 12 Years A Slave
James Gandolfini – Enough Said
Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Scarlett Johansson – Her
Jennifer Lawrence – American Hustle
Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years A Slave
Julia Roberts – August: Osage County
June Squibb – Nebraska
Oprah Winfrey – Lee Daniels’ The Butler

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS
Asa Butterfield – Ender’s Game
Adele Exarchopoulos – Blue Is the Warmest Color
Liam James – The Way Way Back
Sophie Nelisse – The Book Thief
Tye Sheridan – Mud

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE
American Hustle
August: Osage County
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Nebraska
12 Years A Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST DIRECTOR
Alfonso Cuaron – Gravity
Paul Greengrass – Captain Phillips
Spike Jonze – Her
Steve McQueen – 12 Years A Slave
David O. Russell – American Hustle
Martin Scorsese – The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Eric Singer and David O. Russell – American Hustle
Woody Allen – Blue Jasmine
Spike Jonze – Her
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen – Inside Llewyn Davis
Bob Nelson – Nebraska

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Tracy Letts – August: Osage County
Richard Linklater & Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke – Before Midnight
Billy Ray – Captain Phillips
Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope – Philomena
John Ridley – 12 Years a Slave
Terence Winter – The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Emmanuel Lubezki – Gravity
Bruno Delbonnel – Inside Llewyn Davis
Phedon Papamichael – Nebraska
Roger Deakins – Prisoners
Sean Bobbitt – 12 Years A Slave

BEST ART DIRECTION
Andy Nicholson (Production Designer), Rosie Goodwin (Set Decorator) – Gravity
Catherine Martin (Production Designer), Beverley Dunn (Set Decorator) – The Great Gatsby
K.K. Barrett (Production Designer), Gene Serdena (Set Decorator) – Her
Dan Hennah (Production Designer), Simon Bright (Set Decorator), Ra Vincent (Set Decorator) – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Adam Stockhausen (Production Designer), Alice Baker (Set Decorator) – 12 Years A Slave

BEST EDITING
Alan Baumgarten, Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers – American Hustle
Christopher Rouse – Captain Phillips
Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger – Gravity
Daniel P. Hanley, Mike Hill – Rush
Joe Walker – 12 Years A Slave
Thelma Schoonmaker – The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Michael Wilkinson – American Hustle
Catherine Martin – The Great Gatsby
Bob Buck, Ann Maskrey, Richard Taylor – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Daniel Orlandi – Saving Mr. Banks
Patricia Norris – 12 Years A Slave

BEST HAIR & MAKEUP
American Hustle
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Rush
12 Years A Slave

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
Pacific Rim
Star Trek into Darkness

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Frozen
Monsters University
The Wind Rises

BEST ACTION MOVIE
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Iron Man 3
Lone Survivor
Rush
Star Trek into Darkness

BEST ACTOR IN AN ACTION MOVIE
Henry Cavill – Man of Steel
Robert Downey Jr. – Iron Man 3
Brad Pitt – World War Z
Mark Wahlberg – Lone Survivor

BEST ACTRESS IN AN ACTION MOVIE
Sandra Bullock – Gravity
Jennifer Lawrence – The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Evangeline Lilly – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Gwyneth Paltrow – Iron Man 3

BEST COMEDY
American Hustle
Enough Said
The Heat
This Is the End
The Way Way Back
The World’s End

BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY
Christian Bale – American Hustle
Leonardo DiCaprio – The Wolf of Wall Street
James Gandolfini – Enough Said
Simon Pegg – The World’s End
Sam Rockwell – The Way Way Back

BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
Amy Adams – American Hustle
Sandra Bullock – The Heat
Greta Gerwig – Frances Ha
Julia Louis-Dreyfus – Enough Said
Melissa McCarthy – The Heat

BEST SCI-FI/HORROR MOVIE
The Conjuring
Gravity
Star Trek into Darkness
World War Z

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Blue Is the Warmest Color
The Great Beauty
The Hunt
The Past
Wadjda

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Act of Killing
Blackfish
Stories We Tell
Tim’s Vermeer
20 Feet from Stardom

BEST SONG
Atlas – Coldplay – The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Happy – Pharrell Williams – Despicable Me 2
Let It Go – Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez – Frozen
Ordinary Love – U2 – Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Please Mr. Kennedy – Justin Timberlake/Oscar Isaac/Adam Driver – Inside Llewyn Davis
Young and Beautiful – Lana Del Rey – The Great Gatsby

BEST SCORE
Steven Price – Gravity
Arcade Fire – Her
Thomas Newman – Saving Mr. Banks
Hans Zimmer – 12 Years A Slave

 Any you agree or disagree with?

Remembering Roger Ebert

Beloved film critic Roger Ebert died on April 4th 2013 at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer. I have written an In Memoriam piece on the late, great critic Roger Ebert over at Filmoria.

President Barack Obama said 'Roger was the movies'.

His wife Chaz said 'the world has lost a visionary and a creative and generous spirit who touched so many people all over the world'.

He had just announced the day before his death his intention to slow down after writing '306 movie reviews, a blog post or two a week, and assorted other articles' in 2012 alone.

I didn't grow up reading Roger Ebert's reviews like so many others. I was well aware of Siskel and Ebert, if not just because The Bloodhound Gang had that lyric 'Yes I'm Siskel, yes I'm Ebert and you're getting two thimbs up'. Check it out:



But I did occasionally check out his reviews and most often enjoyed them. I didn't always agree with them obviously but when he got it right, he really nailed it. I'm going to share a couple of my favourites:

On Titanic: 'Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well. The technical difficulties are so daunting that it's a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion. I found myself convinced by both the story and the saga.'

On City of God: It 'does not exploit or condescend, does not pump up its stories for contrived effect, does not contain silly and reassuring romantic sidebars, but simply looks, with a passionately knowing eye, at what it knows.'

On Trainspotting: 'It uses a colorful vocabulary, it contains a lot of energy, it elevates its miserable heroes to the status of icons (in their own eyes, that is), and it does evoke the Edinburgh drug landscape with a conviction that seems born of close observation.'

 On Terminator 2: 'T1000, as played by Patrick, is a splendid villain, with compact good lucks and a bland expression. His most fearsome quality is his implacability; no matter what you do to him, he doesn't get disturbed and he doesn't get discouraged. He just pulls himself together and keeps on coming.'

On Schindler's List: 'What is most amazing about this film is how completely Spielberg serves his story. The movie is brilliantly acted, written, directed and seen. Individual scenes are masterpieces of art direction, cinematography, special effects, crowd control. Yet Spielberg, the stylist whose films often have gloried in shots we are intended to notice and remember, disappears into his work. Neeson, Kingsley and the other actors are devoid of acting flourishes. There is a single-mindedness to the enterprise that is awesome.'

We certainly didn't agree on Fight Club which Ebert called 'the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since Death Wish' and a 'a celebration of violence'but his review is a brilliant teaching tool and I'm sure to always read it with my students when we discuss the film.

Anyway please go check out my proper In Memoriam piece on the late, great film critic Roger Ebert over at Filmoria.

What was your favourite Roger Ebert review?

Holiday Reading: Mark Kermode, Film Club, Robopocalypse

So the honeymoon wasn't all wildlife spotting, swimming, traveling, tropical rain, forest trekking, volcano climbing and hot springs dipping.  In amongst all that, I got time for some serious sunbathing and reading too.  I was worried that after so long of not following the latest movie news, I might get back and have nothing to blog about so I chose my reading materials carefully.

The three books I raced through in the 18 days I was away were:

It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive by Mark Kermode

The Film Club by David Gilmour

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

All three are very good books and I would recommend each of them.  I know lots of film bloggers worship Kermode but I find him to be pretty annoying and pretentious sometimes.  I'm not sure if reading a book about a film critic is the most exciting thing in the world but Radio 1's celebrated film critic litters his prose with so many film references that it's hard for film fans not to enjoy.

What I really liked about It's Only a Movie is finding out about Mark Kermode's early career as a film journalist; how he got into writing and then radio and then television.  It was also interesting to hear more about his love of horror.  Many know him as the guy who won't shut up about The Exorcist but his passion for horror extends far beyond that classic of the genre.

Kermode and Herzog before the shooting

It's great to see a film critic getting to write a book about their adventures in film journalism but apart from the highlights such as the infamous interview with Herzog where the pair were shot at and Helen Mirren giving Kermode a good telling off at the Baftas, it's not an overly exciting read.  Still, it's informative and entertaining enough for any wannabe film critic to give it a read.  If you haven't seen Herzog get shot, check it out below:



My favourite quote from the whole book and one that I wish all filmmakers could read before they suggest that film critics are a complete waste of space is this:

'Despite my reputation for lambasting movies with a passion which borders on psychosis I remain genuinely stunned that anyone can ever get a film - any film - made at all.  I've been on movie sets where I've witnessed the corpulent chaos of  filmmaking first-hand and the sheer logistics of making sure everything doesn't go belly up on day one are mind-boggling'

David and Jesse Gilmour watching films

The Film Club  is the true story of a film critic who lets his teenage son Jesse drop out of school as long as he watches and discusses three film's of his father's choice each week.  This book is incredibly moving.  Gilmour narrates the tale of watching his son growing up while they get to have their little film club three times a week, watching classic films like The 400 Blows, La Dolce Vita and The Bicycle Thieves to less demanding fare like Basic Instinct to downright crap like Showgirls.

Gilmour talks to his son with honesty, intelligence and emotion.  Even when Jesse dabbles in cocaine and goes through heart ache with troublesome girlfriends, Gilmour is there for him, showing him great films and teaching him life lessons through the appreciation of those films.  I found myself choked up on more than one occasion.  I wish every boy could have a relationship with their father as open, honest and loving as this one.

Toby Young said of the book that it is 'an object lesson in how fathers should talk to their sons'.  I can't recommend it highly enough!

Spielberg is directing the film adaptation of Robopocalypse for a 2014 release.  Drew Goddard is writing the script but there have been no casting announcements yet.  I thought I'd get in early and read the book before the film comes out and was not disappointed. 

It is very similar to the book of World War Z in that it is an account from the perspective of many different characters of a significant and catastrophic event in human history.  Instead of zombies though, this has a robot uprising.  Like Skynet's rise of the machines, Robopocalypse has Archos, a super-intelligent computer that turns the machines against the human race.

It's going to make a brilliant film with it's action packed story and fascinating vision of the collapse of civilization when technology turns on us.  The book is divided into five parts; Isolated Incidents in which the robots begin to show signs of freaking out; Zero Hour in which all hell breaks loose; Survival in which the survivors of Zero Hour get their shit together; Awakening and finally Retaliation in which you can probably kind of guess where the story goes.

While it is a really exciting and a cool dystopian vision of the future, it felt rushed and I think this book could have been like Stephen King's The Stand at around 1000 pages rather than around the 350 mark.  I wanted each part to go on for much longer than it did.  Also this book was a little better than World War Z in that there were some frequently recurring characters and it's always nice to have more of a thread and therefore characters that can you can start to care about.


That was my honeymoon reading.  Anyone else read anything interesting recently?  Have I convinced you to give any of these a try?  Best of the bunch has to be The Film Club in my opinion.  I recommend it to anyone, especially if you've got a few daddy issues.  Next I think I'm going to read Ben Elton's Popcorn.

Everyone’s a critic!

Film critics… what are they good for and who do they think they are? Film lovers that didn’t make it in the production side of the industry? Failed journalists looking for an easy ride? Film snobs? Just people that love movies? Experts on film? Entertainers? Artists?

And what gives them the right to pass judgment on any film that producers, directors, writers, countless crew members have sweated over, poured their hearts into?

Well… as I can’t think of a more perfect job than sitting and watching films and then writing my thoughts down, I’m a bit bias.

So, how do I become a critic and is there any nobility in it? I got a book out called ‘Five Stars: How to Become a Film Critic, The World’s Greatest Job’ by Christopher Null. He says to become a critic you need to have ‘seen a ton of movies’ and be able to ‘separate them into good and bad’, ‘have the ability to write well’, ‘watch and review five or more films a week’ and find ‘an outlet for publishing your work’.

Seen a ton of films. Know which ones I like. Can’t get through 5 a week unless I quit my job. Can write ok. Could publish my reviews on this here blog. So I’m nearly ready.

But what gives me the right to say what I like and dislike when people have sweated over making these films? Can’t I just write reviews of films I think are great? After all, I was always taught if you got nothing nice to say, don’t say nothing at all!

But then I kept reading Null’s book. He says: ‘there are critics who strive merely to entertain us… there are those that deeply analyze a movie… and there are those rare critics who do both. This is when criticism becomes an art form on par with the movies themselves’.

Not sure I quite agree with that but instead of thinking about the negatives… I’m going to consider reviewing movies an attempt to entertain other movie lovers. After all I’ve read every issue of Empire and Total Film for over a decade now and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Negative reviews and all.

So for now I’m going to concentrate on reviewing movies I like. Movies I respect, love and have positive things to say about. Probably not too many rom-coms.