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The Oscars Make a Statement While Still Staying Safe

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Somehow last night’s Oscars showed that the Academy certainly did care about political movies but not so much they would give them its highest honor.

If you were watching last night you will most likely agree that almost all the films and actors that should have won took home a statue. That was kind of nice. But then Green Book won Best Picture and you could see Hollywood still playing by its old rules.

Before we talk about that though let’s talk about what worked last night. There may have been a bit of a delay but The Academy seems to have finally gotten the #OscarsSoWhite memo as more awards went to people of color than any other year before. And the awards were well deserved. It opened the door for Ruth E. Carter to win for her costume design in Black Panther, a major studio film that focused on Afro Futurism. The film won for production design as well.

In a major upset Into the Spider-Verse took home best animated feature, the first in ages to not belong to Dreamworks or Pixar. This is even more important because not only is the film one of the most creative animated films to come out in years but it revolves around an Afro-Latino superhero. While that detail may seem small it is very important on a cultural level. Bohemian Rhapsody cleaned up as well in a move that really honored everything Freddie Mercury stood for, even if the movie itself had flaws. The whole night seemed to be an apology for years of #OscarsSoWhite.

Then Green Book won Best Picture. The film itself isn’t bad and it has some fantastic actors involved. Anything Viggo Mortensen or Mahershala Ali do is going to be a masterclass in acting. That doesn’t change the fact that the story plays out like a reverse Driving Miss Daisy. A film which, as it turns out, beat out the far superior Do The Right Thing. The same thing seemed to happen last night as Green Book beat out Lee’s exceptional Blackkklansman, a truly timely and hard-hitting film. Even if the Academy ignored Lee’s movie Vice was nominated as well and could have made a statement. It’s as if Hollywood was prepping itself to make a grand statement and backed out at the last minute.

Maybe next year the Academy will be ready to give its highest honor to a more deserving film but for now it seems happy making comfortable decisions that don’t disrupt the status quo.

 

Best Supporting Actress

Emma Stone (The Favourite)

Rachel Weisz (The Favourite)

Amy Adams (Vice)

Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)

Marina De Tavira (Roma)

 

Best Makeup and Hair

Border

Mary Queen of Scots

Vice

 

Best Documentary

Free Solo

Minding the Gap

RBG

Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Of Fathers and Sons

 

Best Costume Design

Black Panther (Ruth E Carter) – WINNER!

The Favourite (Sandy Powell)

Mary Poppins Returns (Sandy Powell)

Mary Queen of Scots (Alexandra Byrne)

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Mary Zophres)

Best Film Editing

 

Bohemian Rhapsody (John Ottman)

Vice (Hank Corwin)

BlacKkKlansman (Barry Alexander Brown)

The Favourite (Yorgos Mavropsaridis)

Green Book (Patrick J Don Vito)

 

Best Production Design

The Favourite (Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton)

First Man (Nathan Crowley and Kathy Lucas)

Roma (Eugenio Caballero and Barbara Enriquez)

Mary Poppins Returns (John Myhre and Gordon Sim)

Black Panther (Hannah Beachler and Jay Hart) – WINNER!

 

Best Cinematography

Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)

Cold War (Łukasz Żal)

Never Look Away (Caleb Deschanel)

The Favourite (Robbie Ryan)

A Star Is Born (Matty Libatique)

 

Best Sound Editing

First Man

A Quiet Place

Bohemian Rhapsody

Black Panther

Roma

 

Best Sound Mixing

A Star Is Born

Bohemian Rhapsody

First Man

Roma

Black Panther

 

Best Foreign Language Film

Roma (Mexico) – WINNER!

Cold War (Poland)

Shoplifters (Japan)

Capernaum (Lebanon)

Never Look Away (Germany)

 

Best Supporting Actor

Mahershala Ali (Green Book)

Richard E Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)

Sam Elliott (A Star Is Born)

Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman)

Sam Rockwell (Vice)

 

Best Animated Feature

Incredibles 2

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Isle of Dogs

Mirai

 

Best Live Action Short

Detainment

Fauve

Marguerite

Mother

Skin

 

Best Animated Short

Animal Behaviour

Bao – WINNER!

Late Afternoon

One Small Step

Weekends

 

Best Documentary Short

Black Sheep

End Game

Lifeboat

A Night at the Garden

Period. End of Sentence.

 

Best Visual Effects

First Man

Avengers: Infinity War

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Ready Player One

Christopher Robin

 

Best Original Screenplay

Green Book (Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly and Nick Vallelonga)

The Favourite (Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara)

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)

Vice (Adam McKay)

First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

 

Best adapted screenplay

If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)

A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, Will Fetters and Eric Roth)

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty)

BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel and Kevin Willmott)

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)

 

Best Original Score

If Beale Street Could Talk (Nicholas Britell)

Mary Poppins Returns (Marc Shaiman)

Isle of Dogs (Alexandre Desplat)

BlacKkKlansman (Terence Blanchard)

Black Panther (Ludwig Goransson)

 

Best Original Song

Shallow (A Star Is Born)

All the Stars (Black Panther)

I’ll Fight (RBG)

The Place Where Lost Things Go (Mary Poppins Returns)

When a Cowboy Trades his Spurs for Wings (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs)

 

Best Actor

Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) – WINNER!

Christian Bale (Vice)

Viggo Mortensen (Green Book)

Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born)

Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate)

 

Best Actress

Glenn Close (The Wife)

Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born)

Olivia Colman (The Favourite)

Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)

Yalitza Aparicio (Roma)

 

Best Director

Alfonso Cuarón (Roma)

Adam McKay (Vice)

Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite)

Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman)

Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War)

 

Best Picture

Black Panther

BlacKkKlansman

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

Green Book

Roma

A Star is Born

Vice

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Joy Ride Is An Extremely Raunchy And Hilarious Comedy

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Joy Ride is an extremely raunchy and hilarious comedy that takes the mantle of ensemble risky
comedies that at times, leave your mouth on the floor. Joy Ride focuses on two best friends
Audrey and Lolo (Ashley Sullivan and Sherry Cola) end up getting roped up into a trip to Asia,
they end up on gals pal cross-continent trek to find Audrey’s long lost birth mother so she
doesn’t lose a huge business deal.

The chemistry in this movie is superb. Every character has their moment to shine and there’s
rarely a scene where you don’t get a belly laugh. I was shocked at how crazy and bold this
movie got, continually pushing the line to get a laugh. The movie does a good job of getting to
the point and getting to the scenes that really make you chuckle. There are some editing choices where the story flies by some stuff, and it feels a little incomplete, but never at the expense of really enjoying being around for the journey.

I thought that this was a sleeper for this year and certainly a movie worth watching with your
friends some weekend. It’s great to throw on if you want a laugh and really just enjoy some
great actors riffing off each other. The focus on culture was a nice touch and really elevated the movie to another level. While I would say if you’re easily offended, this movie is not for you – if you’re looking for a no holds barred comedy, Joy Ride is a trip worth taking.

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Who Doesn’t Want To Wear The Ninja Suit Of Snake-Eyes Or Dress Like The Mandalorian?

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Hasbro has had their pulse app out for a while now. It allows for access to items to buy, preorder, and a look into future projects and releases. It also allows for a very cool thing most nerds (a group of which I am a proud card-carrying member) have always wanted, the ability to make yourself into an action figure. I’ve contemplated making one for a time but, I finally got my chance to get my hands on one at Comic-Con this year. Now, of course, I had to wait in line as it was a pretty sought-after item. Who doesn’t want to have themselves wear the ninja suit of Snake-Eyes or dressed like a Mandalorian? I was approached by one of the booth staff as I was showing my nephew all the cool ways we could get him his own MIles Morales action figure with his face (as he’s a massive fan) and invited to take a seat and scan our faces into the Hasbro Pulse app with the help of their awesome team and make this dream a reality. My wife was with us, so of course she got in on the fun too. We scanned our faces in and it was very simple and quick. Then we all selected our figures to add our heads to. We all chose Power Rangers(Me as the Black Ranger, my wife chose the pink ranger and the nephew got the red ranger). Then we were told that we needed to wait about 4-6 weeks and we’d have our custom action figure team in our hands. This was a major part of our Comic-Con adventure and definitely, a memory my wife and nephew won’t forget (as it was both of their first Con ever). Thank you to Hasbro for being so generous(also getting me brownie points that home) and I highly suggest checking out Hasbro Pulse and all the cool stuff it has to offer.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter: Double-knock on wood!  

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Adapted and written largely from the Captain’s Log chapter of Bram Stoker’s magnum opus Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the story of Dracula’s journey by ship from Carpathia to London, and what happened to her crew in the interim.

So here we are in Bulgaria, middle of 1897, and Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) of the Russian schooner Demeter is here to take on some strange cargo from some unknown client and transport it to Carfax Abbey in London. In need of some extra hands, the Captain sends out his capable Second Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) to scout for some, and initially the roving black doctor and aspiring philosopher Clemens (Corey Hawkins) is passed over in favor of more work-roughened men. The adorable cabin boy of the Demeter, Toby (Woody Norman), narrowly misses being crushed by the mysterious dragon-marked crates being loaded onto the ship, saved by Clemens himself and switched out with the superstitious sailors running from the Demeter like they had been poisoned by the sign of Dracul. And now, armed with some nine or so crewmen, Doc Clemens, and Captain Eliot himself, the twenty-four strange what looks like coffins adorned with dragon signs brought mostly safely aboard, the Demeter can make for open water and the Hell that awaits them there.

The duty of showing Clemens around the ship falls to a cheerful Toby, who proudly shows him the living areas, the Captain’s quarters, the very-large cargo hold, the galley and kitchen where the overly-devout Joseph (Jon Jon Briones) cooks the crews meals, the various above decks, even the sails, and the rigging are all at least touched on, and the livestock pens that Toby himself is in charge of, including the handsome good-boy doggy Huckleberry, or just Huck. We the audience get a very clear feeling of what it’s like to actually be aboard the Demeter, just how large she really is, and what living on a ship for months at sea is really like, the reality and practicality and the dangers of it.

Everyone more or less settles in for a hopefully uneventful voyage, taking mess around the common table and exchanging ideas or aspirations for when they arrive in London early thanks to the fair winds, and receive a handsome bonus for their troubles. But that involves being alive and making it to London to spend said bonus and pay, and the coffin crates spilling dark soil from the motherland and disgorging all sorts of other nasty secrets, have some serious plans to the contrary.

First, it’s the livestock, innocent and shrieking in their locked pens as a monster takes great furious bites out of their necks, and of course, the creature just straight up ruins poor doggy Huck. Then there’s the fully grown girl that gets dislodged from an open coffin-crate, covered in bite scars and as pale as death, she eventually starts interacting and talking after several blood transfusions from Doc Clemens, Toby learns her name is Anna (Aisling Franciosi). And then, as the weather turns foul and the winds begin to be a serious problem, the attacks turn toward the remaining humans onboard the Demeter.

Most people these days are familiar with Dracula, that gorgeous cunning vampire Elder who can supposedly transform into a bat or a wolf, seducing women to voluntarily offer up their veins like an unholy sacrament, a being at once beautiful and powerful, but also horrific and murderous if given half a heartbeat to smell your blood. This is not Dracula.

Instead, the creature that hunts the humans occupying the Demeter is an absolute monster, not a single human feature left to it, barely even recognizable as humanoid-shaped, instead boasting not just full-length bat wings but an entire exo-skin of bat membranes that can be used for feeding, a mouth full of needle-like teeth akin to a predator of the deepest darkest parts of the ocean, those yellowed Nosferatu eyes that will not tolerate light in any way, and of course giant pointy bat-ears. This is a thing, a grotesque straight from the depths of Hell, and no amount of glamor magic can make this Dracula (Javier Botet) seem like anything other than what he, is – a parasitic demon who only wants your blood. There is no reasoning with it, no trapping it, not even really any talking to it (kinda hard to talk when your throat has been ripped out), and, like the much more frightening Dracula stories of old, no amount of pure faith behind a symbol does anything other than give false hope.

Coming face to face with an actual abomination does different things to different people. The formerly delightfully foul-mouthed Abrams (Chris Walley) dissolves into a blubbering mess; poor Larsen (Martin Furulund) didn’t even get to see his own death coming; and it turns out Olgaren (Stefan Kapicic) wants to live so badly, he’ll suffer becoming a blank-eyed Renfield if that’s what it takes. All of Cook Joseph’s purported pure faith didn’t stop him from trying to take the coward’s way out and didn’t save him anyway when the sound of unnatural bat wings descended on him. I find that kind of irony delicious. Dear Anna, resigned to her fate to be eternal food for the horror that terrorized her village, nevertheless wants to try and save whoever is left of the Demeter with her own sacrifice, and there aren’t many. Wojchek of course wants to kill Dracula, but for all his logic and solid practical nature, has no experience whatsoever with this sort of thing, and sure doesn’t want to sacrifice the Demeter, the beloved ship he called home that was promised to him by Captain Eliot himself, in order to destroy that demon. Even poor sweet Toby isn’t safe from the creature’s clutches, and what happens to the cabin boy of the Demeter is what finally sends Captain Eliot over the blooming edge. And who could blame him? For this sort of thing to happen during the last voyage of such a proud, solid ship as the Demeter, is some serious bullsh*t.

To leave such a film open for a potential sequel, especially when called the last voyage of something, was a pretty hefty ask, and somehow the filmmakers managed it. I personally think a different version of Van Helsing, the infamous vampire hunter, teaming up with a certain black doctor who nurses a serious grudge against Dracula, could be a kickass sequel. Until then, experience the doomed final journey of the Demeter and her poor crew in all it’s bloodstained glory, in theaters now!

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