Golden Globes 2015

Another Golden Globes has wrapped and as usual, it was Hollywood's biggest party. It's not the most prestigious awards show nor the most glamorous but, it's full of the most drunk people.

Let's start with the hosts. Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are the best. I think they are wonderfully fabulous, smart, hilarious women and when they were on the screen they were amazing. I thought they had some great bits like Emma Stone being a Big Eyes painting (My husband has been asking why her eyes are so big for years). I also loved their Who Would You Rather bit (Colin Farrell vs. Colin Firth, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu vs. Richard Linklater) and the joke about Wes Anderson riding a bicycle made of tuba parts to the show. My favorite though, was their skewering of Bill Cosby. "He put the pills in the people." Youtube this comedy gold now. There was an audible uneasiness from the audience but Amy and Tina didn't back down. I was so happy because it was a great joke and by following through with the bit, they illustrated that just because Bill Cosby is "Bill Cosby" doesn't mean he can get away with drugging women. My only complaint is that after the first half hour of the broadcast, we barely saw the hosts. When we did see them, it was fun and usually accompanied by Margaret Cho as a "North Korean member of the HFPA" but, I wanted a little more.

One theme I noticed throughout the evening was either really awesome or really awkward pairs of presenters. The "best" awkward pairs were Jennifer Aniston and Benedict Cumberbatch, David Duchovny and Katherine Heigl, and Jennifer Lopez and Jeremy Renner. Cumberbatch "won" a chance to present by raising his hand first when Fey and Poehler asked who wanted to present with Aniston and he was charmingly awkward with her. Duchovny was hilarious in his complete disdain for Heigl's award show banter. She was trying to be funny and talk about how handsome the nominees were but Duchovny was having none of it. Renner though, had one of the best lines of the night when he said to Lopez that she had the "globes" as she opened up the envelope to announce the winner. Priceless. The more successful pairs included Katie Holmes and Seth Myers, Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, and Anna Faris and Chris Pratt. Myers and Holmes did a fun bit about all the losers getting a free breakfast buffet certificate with a lot of limitations to redeem it and Holmes was surprisingly funny. Wiig and Hader were of course hilarious as they bastardized famous "quotes" from movies. Watching that duo makes me wish I could hang out with them as they riff off each other. And the best pairing was Faris and her husband Pratt who "admitted" they are from a mixed marriage (CBS and NBC) but will raise their kids HBO. My favorite line was when Pratt told Faris to "take your own helicopter home," which received just a few laughs from the audience but had my husband and me cracking up.

Another subtle theme throughout the night was feminism and female empowerment. Both Amy Adams and  Maggie Gyllenhaal gave wonderful acceptance speeches. Adams' about the other nominees and women in the room being great role models to her daughter and other young girls and Gyllenhaal's about the increase of not just roles for powerful women on TV but actual women. Youtube both speeches; they are great examples of well spoken, intelligent women empowering others. On the comedy side of things Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda turned the ridiculous adage that "women aren't funny" on it's head while presenting the Best Comedy TV Actor Award and claiming that at last we've finally accepted that men can be funny too.

As for the other winners, there isn't much bearing for the Oscars and we won't even know officially if any of the nominees will cross over until tomorrow morning. But there were two winners that I hope to see on the stage again come February 22nd. I saw Theory of Everything last weekend and Eddie Redmayne was amazing in it. The way he manages to convey complex emotions with essentially only his eyes in the last quarter of the film is astounding. I've liked him for years (check him out in My Week With Marilyn) and he's so British and charming. I hope to see him accepting more awards throughout the rest of the season. The win I was most excited about though, was Grand Budapest Hotel for Best Musical or Comedy. As I said in my last post, it was one of my favorite movies of the year and Wes Anderson is long overdue for some award season love for his movies. He gave the best speech of the night and I really really hope I get to see him give some more.

Finally, a small awards show pet peeve on the eve of the Critics Choice Awards. If you are ever nominated for and award, be it an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, or Salesman of the Year, DO NOT clap when the presenter reads your name among the nominees. It looks tacky and self-congratulatory. Clap as loud as you want for the other nominees but when they call your name put your hands in your lap and look gracious. At the Globes, most of the movie nominees followed this simple rule, but the TV nominees were awful. Of all of the Best Comedy TV Actress nominees only Julia Louis-Dreyfus avoided clapping for herself. If 11 year old Quevenzhane Wallis knows better than to clap for herself, then all of the adults should know better as well. Hopefully, we'll see less of this egregious "self clapping" as awards season goes on.

Oscar Nominations will be announced in a little 7 hours! Until then...

Fresh Start (or So Long 2014, Here's to a New Year)

I'm baaaaack! Yes, I've been gone for about 9 months and never got to finish writing my post about what I thought of the Oscars broadcast. I started typing something up but two days after the broadcast my grandmother's pancreatic cancer took a turn for the worse and as she deteriorated over the next 6 weeks writing about movies didn't seem so important. And that was just the start of a difficult year in which my family lost 9 members including my dear Mawmaw and my father-in law. In short, 2014 was the worst. So, as the title of this post states, it's time to say so long to the year from hell and start fresh in 2015 with a new Oscar season.

For the record, I really loved last year's Oscars. I thought Ellen was a fantastic host and believe I tweeted that she should host all the Academy Awards; a modern day Bob Hope. I thought she had the perfect balance of silly fun and reverence for the history of the Awards. Ordering pizza with the audience and seeing the glamorous stars passing it around to one another was hilarious. Also I predicted 21 of 24 winners! My best predictions yet!

In light of the kind of year I had in 2014, a lot of my movie viewing habits were different from the norm. Basically, I let my husband pick a few more of the movies and saw a lot of bad comedies that I typically wouldn't have seen in the theatre. Including, A Million Ways to Die in the West (all the jokes were in the trailer and it was written by Seth MacFarlane), The Other Woman (not enough editing and incredibly predictable) and Blended (this movie was clearly just an excuse for Adam Sandler to take his family and friends on vacation to Africa). However, there were some good comedies in there as well, like 22 Jump Street and Neighbors. Both were very funny and found new ways to surprise the audience in genres that have been done to death; the over blown sequel and the frat movie respectively.

I won't take you through every movie I saw in the last 9 months, but my 3 favorites were The Grand Budapest Hotel, Nightcrawler and Guardians of the Galaxy. The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson at his best and Wes Andersoniest. I love his attention to detail and the way he balances giddy fun and melancholy. The partly animated chase scene through the snowy mountains also made me want another animated movie directed by him (Fantastic Mr. Fox is amazing). I really hope Anderson gets his first Best Director nomination this year as well as a Best Picture nomination. Nightcrawler is a great dark thriller and I mean dark. Jake Gyllenhaal gives a super creepy, electric performance as the morally hollow Lou Bloom who exploits any human suffering he can catch on camera. Rene Russo is also amazing as the almost as morally corrupt TV station news director who buys his exploitative videos. I think Gyllenhaal should get a Best Actor nomination and hopefully the movie will get some other nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress though it's more likely to get love for it's nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards. Finally, Guardians of the Galaxy is just a great all around movie. I laughed, I cried (the first 10 mins had me crying almost as hard as the first 10 mins of Up) and just had a really good time seeing it. All three times I saw it in the theatre. The cast is fun, the script is more so and the soundtrack is absolutely kickass! I really want this to get nominated for Best Picture like Star Wars did for the 1978 (airing) Academy Awards, especially since I consider Guardians to be the Star Wars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I know it won't happen but, a girl can dream.

Well, that's enough for tonight. It's good to be writing again. Only 10 days until the Oscar Nominations are announced!