Recap: Oscars 2015!

The Oscars 2015 came and went last night.  I feels like this year is zooming by.  Although, I didn’t manage to get to catch up with a lot of Oscar nominees (not just Best Picture), I was looking back at my past two years and realized this year, the whole having a week of watching Oscar nominees, was effective because I actually watched 10 movies that were nominated in various categories.  I beat my own personal record so thats something. I’m guessing, next year, I’ll try to schedule Oscars earlier, except how? The Valentine’s marathon clashes with it a little.  Anyways, I have a year to figure it out.

We celebrated Chinese New Year dinner while watching Oscars this year, so that was a pretty nice addition because for once, I’m not sitting there by myself with a cup of tea in a lonely dining room.  I actually had my mom and her friend, plus my boyfriend (who was dozing off eventually).  It was appreciated because its one thing to talk about red carpet in my head but its always more fun to hear other opinions.

Lets start this with Best Dresses that wowed me! 🙂 The order is from left to right for Top 5.

After that, I also liked: Emma Stone, Margot Robbie and Gwyneth Paltrow.

I’m a little on the fence with Marion Cotillard’s dress.  I can appreciate its elegance but the back part wasn’t really my cup of tea.

BEST MOMENTS

This year’s Oscars had a lot of moments.  The moments are not in any order.  I’m just numbering them so that I don’t get carried away.

1. Neil Patrick Harris, Anna Kendrick and Jack Black opening act

Respectable and paying tribute to a ton of epic movies with awesome singing and adding a little funny moments with Jack Black butting in from the audience.  It was classy and fun all at the same time.  Unfortunately, Neil Patrick Harris cracked only a few jokes last night that I found worked and didn’t feel awkward. Can we have Ellen back for next year?

2. Patricia Arquette’s speech & Meryl Streep’s reaction

Oscars 2015 was not only full of surprises (which were more like unexpected turnouts), but it was full of meaningful speeches.  Not so many people thanked the Academy but rather used the opportunity to share a personal view.  Patricia Arquette spoke for women rights equality.  While, documentary winners also did it: Citizenfour spoke out for fighting for privacy and democracy, while Crisis Hotline:Veterans Press 1 shared a heartfelt speech dedicating the award to her son and making a point that suicide should be “talked out loud”.

3. John Legend and Common’s performance followed by John Legend’s speech

Other than “Everything is Awesome”, which was a really fun performance, I haven’t heard any of the other songs.  In the Red Carpet/pre-Oscars part, they had talked to Tim McGraw and how it was going to be a tissue-worthy performance.  It was an extremely calm and soothing song.  Then, John Legend and Common was on for the last original song performance for Selma called “Glory” and that was just absolutely awesome.  They had to win this and they did in absolute style with John Legend’s inspirational speech.

4. Eddie Redmayne for Best Actor in Leading Role

Its always great to see an Oscar winner completely shocked by winning.  Plus, talk about an awesome honeymoon gift, right? Eddie Redmayne’s shocked and enthusiasm was amazing and charming and adorable all at the same time.  I kind of started hating myself a little for not finding the time to watch The Theory of Everything before the Oscars.  But then, its still rented and I’m going to try and get that in this week some time.

5. Lady Gaga’s performance for The Sound of Music 50 year tribute

The Sound of Music is my most favorite movie of all time.  I was wondering what Lady Gaga’s performance would be for and when they announced it, I paused a little because c’mon, Lady Gaga? The Sound of Music? Not exactly a match.  BUT, other than the fact that there was a few parts you can tell her forcing an English accent as she sang to replicate the song, she did a fine job and her voice is a lot more than Bad Romance and all her other funky hits (that I’m not exactly a huge fan of). She did a stellar performance and Julie Andrews looked absolutely touched by it all.  Julie Andrews is incomparable and her showing up at the Oscars made my night 🙂 Lady Gaga’s gown here looks a lot better than that avant-garde one she wore on the red carpet, just my preference…

THE AWKWARD AND SLIGHTLY CREEPY MOMENT

It all started great with making fun of John Travolta and his butchering of Idina Menzel’s name last year.  But when he turned around and got all touchy and making that weird face.  I was a little disturbed with the whole thing.  Oh goodness…Need to move on and not look at that…

In terms of awards, there were a few unexpected but well deserved surprises.

The Grand Budapest won all the artistic merit ones: Best Costume Design, Best Hairstyling and Makeup, Best Production Design and Best Original Score.  I personally loved all of those things and I loved that each of those winners thanked Wes Anderson for thinking up the fun and quirky adventure that the Grand Budapest was.

I haven’t seen Whiplash but I didn’t really expect it to win Film Editing.  But then, all the other nominees had a deserved spot to be there, just looking at the concept.  I only knew Boyhood and that one had good editing too. I need to find Whiplash and check it out 🙂

Which goes to say that I’m going to be searching out Birdman now because it won all the awards I had wanted Boyhood to win.  Boyhood was a little gimmicky but I hold true that it was a brilliant movie.  We’re all entitled to our opinions, right? Thats what makes the blogosphere so fun 🙂

This has gone on long enough! Time to wrap this up!

Did you watch the Oscars? Which dress did you like the most? What was your favorite moment? Were there any surprises?

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Today I’m pretty proud of myself.  Not so much the weekend because I didn’t even get a romantic comedy review in for my Valentine’s marathon.  But then its always kind of quiet during the weekend.  Now, I’m proud because on Friday  night I said that I was going to go see Jupiter Ascending (one of my most anticipated movies of 2015!!) on Sunday afternoon and early this afternoon, I managed to get my ass to the theatres despite the snow.

Honestly, although this is still my most anticipated movie despite the pushing back of the release from last year to this year, I can’t help but be a little worried that it might let me down, especially since this is kind of trash season at the theatres.  Plus, RT has it at like 22% rotten, but then, I don’t always agree with RT so I kind of pushed that out of my mind and still went.  Channing and Mila haven’t disappointed me for a long time and I’m sure they won’t.  Got to stay positive, right?

Let’s check it out, shall we?

JUPITER ASCENDING (2015)

Director & writers: The Wachowskis

Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton

Jupiter Jones was born being told she was destined for better things as a baby.  As a young woman in Chicago, she wakes up at the brink of dawn to be a caretaker with her mom cleaning toilets and other people’s house.  Hating her current stagnant life, her only dreams are to have the money to get a telescope to gave in the wonders of the sky just like her father.  Until one day, a genetically engineered ex-warrior, Caine Wise under command to search and save her from the surprise attack from the current leader of Earth in the faraway planet in outer space, Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne).  Being whisk into this outer space world that recognizes her a recurrence of a past authority and mother of the current leaders of the world, she gets caught up in the fight between her past life’s children, Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), Titus (Douglas Booth) and Balem. The only person she can trust is Caine but she also needs to make decisions to save herself and possibly her family on Earth as well, while deciding if she can take on the rightful responsibilities to reign Earth.

Man, thats a really long synopsis. I just don’t know what to cut out and what is saying too much. Either way, when I make long synopsis, that usually means that I enjoyed that movie a lot.  Jupiter Ascending was absolutely not disappointing.  Sure, its not a perfect movie and its obvious that it wasn’t.  I’ll explain it a little more later but I was able to get past some of it and really fall in love of in for various reasons.  If there is no other reason to see this, the CGI is awesome in this.  Everything is so beautiful to look at it, from the Earth, the planets, kingdoms.

Another element to really love was ALL of the intense action.  Hell, every single time there was an action sequence it was crazy intense.  I was grabbing tight to the edge of my seat.  It was convincing to make me wonder if they would achieve their objective.  Channing Tatum’s Caine Wise was just absolutely bad ass! LOL! Plus, all that outer space technology was so fun!

However, visuals and action means little to some viewers and the one thing that a lot of people probably will critic will be the story itself.  I fully acknowledge it, especially because I kind of found the love story a little bit forced BUT, I was able to get through it because Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis took Caine and Jupiter and added this awesome chemistry.  I just couldn’t resist their presence together and I kind of fell in love with their characters more than the love story itself, plus some of the dialogue was pretty awkward and funny at the same time.  But hey, if you don’t see pass this, I’m guessing its going to be a big flaw. I’m just saying, I was able to get pass it.

Even if its not the love story, Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis both started out as an actor and actress that wasn’t extremely appealing to me but they’ve really stood out and improved so much that I always look forward their performances.

The love story however is the side story to the actual plot of this whole dictatorship and reigning of Earth’s story.  Everyone want a piece of this valuable land because it holds a lot of value and each sibling wants a piece of it.  Titus and Kalique both don’t have the rightful reign of it so they have to charm Jupiter to believe them. Its a game of whether who is lying and for what reason. Now, lets take a look at the siblings a little.  I’m going to put Tuppence Middleton’s Kalique away because sure, she was good and sufficient for what she did but the main ones here is Titus, played by Douglas Booth.  I spent a good bit of the movie trying to figure out where I saw him before.  It was in LOL and thats a movie that I kind of want to forget I saw..haha! I really liked the whole charming Douglas Booth because he really gave a convincing performance for Titus.  I hope that he gets more roles in the future.  I’d like to see how he progresses as an actor.

My surprise was that Eddie Redmayne was part of this.  Honestly, I only saw the preview once or something and I can’t even remember much of it but the concept of Jupiter Ascending was what drew me in even before I knew too much.  Sometimes, thats the best way to go see a movie.  I’ve loved Eddie Redmayne since Les Miserables so seeing him as a villainous ruler definitely a change in pace because he got a funky voice but also a very good performance on his part.

Overall, Jupiter Ascending has great CGI visuals and the set is lovely to watch.  The characters are engaging because of the casts’ outstanding performances and the action scenes which cover a good 70% of the run time is always intense to watch, keeping the movie at a solid pace.  However, the story has its flaws especially with a rather forced side love story between Jupiter and Caine.

Still, I had a lot of fun with this one and I’m definitely adding this to my movie collection when it comes out on Bluray 🙂

Valentine’s Marathon resumes tomorrow! Remember to check back!