The Plaid Silhouette: February 2015

Monday, February 23, 2015

2015 Academy Awards Winners

ITS HERE FINALLY!!!!

See below a full list of winners from the 87th Academy Awards, announced Sunday at the Dolby Theater. The show, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, aired live on ABC. “Birdman,” “Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Whiplash” came out of the event as big winners.

Best Picture
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher and James W. Skotchdopole, Producers (WINNER)
“American Sniper” Clint Eastwood, Robert Lorenz, Andrew Lazar, Bradley Cooper and Peter Morgan, Producers
“Boyhood” Richard Linklater and Cathleen Sutherland, Producers
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales and Jeremy Dawson, Producers
“The Imitation Game” Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky and Teddy Schwarzman, Producers
“Selma” Christian Colson, Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, Producers
“The Theory of Everything” Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce and Anthony McCarten, Producers
“Whiplash” Jason Blum, Helen Estabrook and David Lancaster, Producers

Spirit Awards 2015: The Complete Winners List

The 30th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards are being handed out today in a tent on the beach in lovely Santa Monica. Keep up with the winners as they are announced below.

Best Feature
"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" - WINNER
"Boyhood"
"Love is Strange"
"Selma"
"Whiplash"

Best Director
Damien Chazelle, "Whiplash"
Ava DuVernay, "Selma"
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"
Richard Linklater, "Boyhood" - WINNER
David Zellner, "Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter"

2015 Berlinale Film Festival Awards

In a win for freedom of speech, Iranian director Jafar Panahi was awarded Berlin’s Golden Bear for his latest movie, Taxi — despite being banned from filmmaking in his home country and not being allowed to travel abroad. Taxi was well-received by critics and buyers (Celluloid Dreams has international rights) during the festival. In the film, Panahi set a camera on the dashboard of a yellow cab as it drives through Tehran. He plays the cabbie who interviews the diverse characters that make up his fares.

LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK – The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) tonight announced the winners of the 2015 Writers Guild Awards for outstanding achievement in writing for film, television, new media, videogames, news, radio, promotional, and graphic animation categories at simultaneous ceremonies at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles and the Edison Ballroom in New York City.

FILM WINNERS

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Grand Budapest Hotel, Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness; Fox Searchlight

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Imitation Game, Written by Graham Moore; Based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges; The Weinstein Company

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, Written by Brian Knappenberger; FilmBuff

Approached by CITIZENFOUR, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill along with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras fly to Hong Kong in the summer of 2013 to meet with the man who ended up being Edward Snowden to discuss and divulge secret information regarding covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence programs of American and international citizens.

The documentary is a thrilling and terrifying account of the actions that transpired before, during and after the groundbreaking reports were leaked and the turn of events by the American government. This review of CITIZENFOUR is not going to be a debate regarding the right or wrong of whistle-blowing or the government collection of data. That discussion can be saved for when someone mentions that they have seen CITIZENFOUR and an debate-like argument will indubitably ensue. This review will try to focus, as much as it can, on the scope of its impact and effectiveness of the film as a documentary.

Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan do the best they can with this film. It's not a bad film per se, but it jumps around a lot in the story which can make it hard to follow at times. I get why they did it. To show contrast between the high points in their relationship vs the low points. However, as I said it isn't always easy to follow, plus some of them don't make sense.

I am going to be honest in general avoid films that are 95% singing .At all costs. I started watching the last five years without the knowledge it was mostly singing and almost turned it off when Anna Kendrick started singing the opening song. and I am glad I didn't turn it off. although the film had its flaws I did enjoy watching it.

Based on the book "Where Rainbows End" by Cecelia Ahern where –long story short- Alex and Rosie are perfect for each other but for whatever reason keep getting pushed apart. I read the book earlier in the year after learning that it would later be adapted into a film. Although I enjoyed the book towards the end it was becoming more and more irritating that they still weren't together.

This movie will have you clenching your fists with frustration, laughing out loud, and welling up in the right moments and sometimes at the same time. Whenever something made yours eyes swell up with tears, something small happens to keep you from losing it and breaking down in the middle of the theatre. Rosie (Collins) and Alex (Claflin), childhood bestfriends who dance around their true feelings for each other through multiple decades, countries and partners. The story line tortures the viewers that sit on the edge of their seats, praying and waiting for the two friends to finally admit their feelings and get together.

When I saw the trailer for this movie, I was excited for it, because it was from the director of X- Men: First Class. People are also saying that it is a tribute to classic spy films (mainly the James Bond movies of the past), and judging by the posters, it pretty much is trying to be. Now, after seeing the movie, what do I think about it? Let's find out.

The plot of Kingsman: The Secret Service starts out by showing us a Kingsman secret agent dying during a mission. After that, Harry Hart, another Kingsman secret agent, visits the agent's widow and their son, Gary "Eggsy" Unwin to give them a medal with a phone number on the back. He tells Eggsy and his mother that if they need any help, then all they need to do is to dial the number and use a special message.

The acting is great from the ensemble cast. Colin Firth, does a great job, carrying charm and wit to his character. Newcomer, Taron Egerton also carries a lot of charm and wit to his character. Samuel L. Jackson is very charismatic and bad ass as the villain. Even though his act was more a parody, Samuel Jackson was up there with the best Bond villains, weaving a colorful archetype of a man who thinks he's doing what's best for the world in what turned out to be a very cleaver, over the top plot. Aided by a cool henchmen, with blades on her prosthetic limbs, it makes you wonder what would happen if he went heat-to-head with Roger Moore. The supporting work from Michael Caine, and Mark Strong, are also great with the limited material that they work with. Overall, the cast is great and all look like that they are having fun in their roles.

2015 BAFTA Award Winners

The BAFTA Awards are being held on Sunday, with nominees including “Birdman,” “Boyhood” and more. Variety will be updating live with a full winners list here. See the full list of nominees, and winners as they’re announced, below.

BEST FILM
“Boyhood,” Richard Linklater, Cathleen Sutherland (WINNER)
“Birdman,” Alejandro G. Inarritu, John Lesher, James W. Skotchdopole
“The GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL,” Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson
“The Imitation Game,” Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky, Teddy Schwarzman
“The Theory of Everything,” Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, Anthony Mccarten

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
“The Theory of Everything,” James Marsh, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, Anthony Mccarten (WINNER)
“’71,” Yann Demange, Angus Lamont, Robin Gutch, Gregory Burke
“The Imitation Game,” Morten Tyldum, Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky, Teddy Schwarzman, Graham Moore
“Paddington,” Paul King, David Heyman
“Pride,” Matthew Warchus, David Livingstone, Stephen Beresford
“Under the Skin,” Jonathan Glazer, James Wilson, Nick Wechsler, Walter Campbell

While Sam Smith and Beck dominated the 57th annual Grammy Awards, they were hardly the only winners Sunday night. From Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament (and Eddie Vedder, using his pseudonym "Jerome Turner") scoring Best Recording Package to Beyoncé taking home Best Surround Sound Album, here is the full rundown of all the Grammy winners.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

• Morning Phase, Beck

• Beyoncé, Beyoncé

• X, Ed Sheeran

• Girl, Pharrell

• In the Lonely Hour, Sam Smith

RECORD OF THE YEAR

• "Fancy," Iggy Azalea Featuring Charli XCX

• "Chandelier," Sia

• "Stay With Me (Darkchild Version)," Sam Smith

• "Shake It Off," Taylor Swift

• "All About That Bass," Meghan Trainor

2015 Directors Guild Award Winners

For much of the night, women ruled. US-CINEMA-DGA AWARDS-TROPHYLesli Linka Glatter won best dramatic series director for Homeland, Jill Soloway took the comedy series nod for Transparent, Lisa Cholodenko for HBO’s Olive Kitteridge and Laura Poitras for docu Citizenfour.

FEATURE FILM

ALEJANDRO G. IÑÁRRITU
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
(Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Mr. Iñárritu’s Directorial Team:
Unit Production Managers: James W. Skotchdopole, Robert Graf
First Assistant Director: Peter Kohn
Second Assistant Director: Amy Lauritsen
Second Second Assistant Director: Catherine Feeny
Location Manager: Joaquin Prange

This is Mr. Iñárritu’s third DGA Award nomination. He was previously nominated in this category for Babel in 2006. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials for “Best Job” (Proctor and Gamble) in 2012.

The 2015 Sundance Film Festival concluded on Saturday (January 31) night with a Tig Notaro-hosted award ceremony in which it seemed like nearly everything was given an award by one of the Festival's juries.

"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl," directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, won both the US Dramatic Jury Prize and Audience Prize, an increasingly less rare double.

On the US Documentary side, Crystal Moselle's "The Wolfpack" won the Grand Jury Prize, but "Meru" won the Audience Award.

John Maclean's "Slow West" won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, while Chad Garcia's "Russian Woodpecker" was the World Cinema Documentary Grand Prize winner.

While "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" was one of the most buzzed-about titles in the US Dramatic Competition, several other rave-winners picked up key prizes on Saturday night, including the Grand Jury Directing Award to Robert Eggers for "The Witch," the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for Tim Talbott for "The Stanford Prison Experiment" and a cinematography prize to Brandon Trost for "The Diary of a Teenage Girl."

Producers got their moment in the spotlight on Saturday, Jan. 24. The 2015 Producers Guild Awards took place at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles and plenty of stars came out in support of their producers, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kerry Washington, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Birdman took home the biggest win of the night, but see who else scored:

The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures:

American Sniper (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Birdman (Fox Searchlight Pictures) – WINNERBoyhood (IFC Films)
Foxcatcher (Sony Pictures Classics)
Gone Girl (20th Century Fox)
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
The Imitation Game (The Weinstein Company)
Nightcrawler (Open Road Films)
The Theory Of Everything (Focus Features)
Whiplash (Sony Pictures Classics)

The plot of this flick is about the discovery of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis). Turns out, she's royalty in the universe, and what a giant universe it is: various 'Houses' are on planets throughout the system, and the House Abraxas has its eye on Jupiter Jones - turns out she is the reincarnation of the mother to the children of the throne James D'Arcy, Tuppence Middleton, and Redmayne. But she's eyed to be killed for reasons that involve things with the Earth and populations and things that I shouldn't go into for too many useless spoilers.

he plot. It's everywhere. The story is all over the place. One minute, it's a comedy. The other, it's a serious Game of Thrones-like kingdom drama. Another minute, It becomes Modern Family. It's everywhere! The plot has no focus whatsoever. It feels like someone grabbed some deleted scenes of his favorite TV shows and put them together on his laptop. Even Memento, though the non-linear narrative is confusing, it still had a simple storyline. Even Inception had focus, despite it's big scale. But those two were great movies. Jupiter was not.

My Thoughts: From the moment I saw the trailer I knew I wanted to see this movie. Though I will admit I was a little worried. Kevin Hart has been pumping out movies like crazy and sadly not all of them have been good or all that funny. Sometimes he seems to focus to much on height jokes and it gets overused.

But that is not the case in The Wedding Ringer, yes there are a few height jokes in there but only a few and then we move onto other jokes and gimmicks. I was also worried because I was not the first one of my friends to screen this movie and all I kept hearing was how great this movie was, how funny it is, and that they couldn't stop laughing. .

Kevin Hart is Kevin Hart in this movie. And frankly, that's exactly who we want him to be. He's an intelligent, talented man who seems pretty grounded in real life. And let's give him credit as the hottest crossover comedian around. I went to an afternoon matinée and every patron in the theater was White. I have to admit that at some point I would like to see Kevin Hart do a straight dramatic role. It's clear he could handle it.

In the movie Jonny Deep is playing a very royal and very smart role of saving the country's national security and he played is role really very good but the I got away from the story. I didn't liked the story, it could have been great as they had the most talented actor and they could have done it a very different way and could have grabbed the audience's voice. People may like it may not but overall it was not a bad movie.

This film is no masterpiece but it is certainly entertaining. The dark humor sometimes is silly, but that's the point of parody. There are bits of disgusting things, bits of blood, and bits of vulgarity, but enough jeopardy and suspense throughout Mortdecai's transcontinental adventure.

This stolen-painting-crime/comic plot is accompanied by subtle subplots. There's the mild love triangle between the jealous and insecure Mortdecai, his wife (Gwyneth Paltrow), and his college friend the detective (Ewan McGregor). There's the friendship with his utmost super-loyal and smart manservant and body-guard (Paul Bettany). And there's the want-to-be-passionate husband-wife relationship that leaves Mortdecai, a gentleman, bed deprived

Admittedly I did enjoy this film, despite its tired and uninspired use of the found-footage gimmick and the teen vibe that saturates every scene in this film. It's not wildly inventive with how it tackles the sub-genre of time-travel, but there are a few glimmers of originality in an already derivative heavy lineage and visually some of the effects are pretty neat. More time-travel movies need to have that explosive mode of teleportation like you'd get in the Terminator films.

This would have been an entertaining movie if not for the horrible flashing, jolting and constant moving of the camera. Apparently we were supposed to believe that the filming of the movie was done by one of the actors. At times that almost seemed credible but at other times impossible - particularly when David goes back in time by himself.

You might think this is just another love story. Although it has every aspect of one in it the main theme here is much more sophisticated. This movie is about living a lie. Being somebody you don't want to be and about meeting the one that can help you to find yourself. The real you. Beyond the lights shows the sociological and psychological tricks in the showbiz and how fake it actually is.

The story focuses on Noni, an British female R&B singer of mixed race parents who struggled against a heavier burden of competition with the racial prejudice on her. Now all grown up, she has made it in the USA, a famous and successful singer, now the girlfriend of a famous rapper. But she feels she's only being taken advantages of and not being considered as a person. After winning an award one night, she instead tries to commit suicide by jumping from her apartment balcony. A police officer Kaz, who was replacing a friend for a bodyguard detail, steps in and helps her from falling. Although Kaz initially avoids Noni because he was forced to lie at a subsequent press conference, they eventually become close. Kaz convinces Noni to be more courageous and stand up for herself, to have her boyfriend treat her better, and to insist that her songs be included in her next album. She musters up courage and softly breaks up with the rapper. Noni and Kaz then hook up and become a couple.

I was completely engrossed by Jennifer Aniston's performance. Like many I am a huge fan of friends and Aniston is barely recognisable in comparison. The story is gritty and compelling. In spite of Claire's character not being very nice you can't help but like her, even before you find out about the tragedy she has suffered.

Heard a lot about Jennifer Aniston's performance before I watched the movie and I didn't really trust on what people said. She always had the same type of roles and I honestly thought she could only be funny. I couldn't be so wrong. This is definitely the best role she has played. In every moment she was feeling pain, she acted it so real that I felt I was feeling pain as well. The movie itself is pretty good too. I personally love movies that don't show a journey or a very specific beginning, plot and end, but just a moment in the character's life where nothing gets fixed, like portrait.

Fresh off her Oscar winning performance and infamous on screen haircut in Les Miserables, Anne Hathaway stars in this infinitely smaller film from writer/director Kate Barker-Froyland. A Sundance Film Festival entry, the movie winds through the clubs, coffee shops and second hand stores that make up the indie music scene in northern Brooklyn.

Ben Rosenfield ("Boardwalk Empire") plays Henry, the kind of musician so enamored with his own folk sound that he is willing to play for pocket change in the subway tunnels. Failing to adhere to mother rule #1, Henry pays the price for not looking both ways prior to crossing a street in front of a New York cabbie. Next thing we know, he is comatose in a hospital bed. Henry's mom (Mary Steenburgen) beckons wayward daughter Franny (Anne Hathaway) home from her worldly pursuit of a Ph.d in Anthropology.

The Nicholas Sparks-like teary tropes are there: For instance, her folk singing brother, Henry (Ben Rosenfield), is in a coma while her mother (Mary Steenburgen) is eccentric and Franny (Hathaway) has been estranged from her and her brother . Enter heartthrob folksinger James Forester (Johnny Flynn), who sings sexy naturalistic songs and wins doctoral candidate Franny's heart.