Yes, I know it is a bit of a cliche to be excited about the new Star Wars movie but I don't care. Everyone is excited (except my friend Jim--weirdo) and I'm okay with that. I don't care that I'm not alone in this cultural fervor. Bring on the over saturation of Nerdist, Entertainment Weekly and Buzzfeed articles pertaining to the release this Friday. Give me more stupid memes and posts that are inundating my Twitter and Facebook feeds. Hell, I'll even take the ridiculous amount of merchandizing. Action figures and Legos? Those are just expected. Star Wars character coffee creamer and mac n cheese? Why not? That seems like whimsical fun. A CoverGirl makeup line? Okay, I'll admit that boggles me. But beyond strange Star Wars themed makeup I'm on board for it all.
See, I'm just unabashedly full of joy that we're getting another Start Wars movie. I loved the original trilogy growing up and remember being so excited to watch all of them on the big screen when they were re-released in the 90's. When the prequels were announced, I remember doing the math with my brother and realizing that by the time Episode III would be released I would be in college and, being in middle school at the time, thinking that that future seemed impossibly far away. Yet here we are, ten years beyond that impossibly far away future on the eve of the release of the seventh installment in my favorite epic space opera. I know some are worried about this new iteration after the disappointment of the prequels, but for me the fact that J.J. Abrams is involved gives me new hope (horrible pun intended). I like what he has done with the Start Trek movies and his ode to Spielbergian sci-fi, Super 8, is great. So I have faith that Abrams will deliver with Star Wars as well.
To prepare for and celebrate this momentous movie milestone, my husband and I are heading to one of our favorite theatres to watch a marathon of all six movies, an then ending with the premiere of The Force Awakens. The marathon begins at 1 am on Thursday so I'm trying to adjust my sleep schedule to be able to make it through the nearly 24 hr marathon without nodding off. We'll see how successful I am at that, but I'm determined to stay awake the whole time and I plan to aid my endeavor with plenty of caffeine. My husband intends on sleeping through parts of the prequels but I haven't seen Episode II or Episode III in ten years so I'm interested to see if time apart has made them better or not (I am prepared for not). So maybe I'll add some sugar to my caffeine regimen to keep going.
Now that I have my Star Wars ebullience out of my system let's move on to the various award nominations. For me, the biggest surprise of both the Golden Globe and Critics' Choice nominations was the inclusion of Mad Max: Fury Road. I know overall it was well reviewed by critics (I was in the minority of not liking the film), but I just don't think it is an award worthy movie. I'll grant that Fury Road is the best in the franchise and that the action sequences were stunning but one of the best movies of the year? No. And for it to get nominated over Brooklyn in the Globes drama category is just sad. So far, Brooklyn has been the best movie I've seen this year and I'm glad it got nominated for a Critics' Choice Award but I was hoping it would get a Globe nod as well. The Globes don't really have any bearing on what films or which actors get nominations for the Oscars but I like to see excellent movies get the attention they deserve. I'll keep my fingers crossed for Brooklyn to get an Oscar Nomination come January.
As far as the acting categories go, I was very happy to see nominations across the board for Saoirse Ronin in Brooklyn (she is brilliantly breathtaking), Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies (see my October blog for how much I loved his performance) and Kate Winslet in Steve Jobs (I loved her performance and think she deserves an award for the accent she uses alone). The only performance I was surprised to see left out of both the Globes and SAGs nominations was Mark Ruffalo's work for Spotlight. I thought he was wonderfully dynamic in the film so I'll be hoping he gets an Oscar Nomination next month as well. I also thought perhaps there would be more individual nominations for the other actors in the cast but at least Spotlight got best ensemble nominations from the SAGs and Critics' Choice Awards.
Beyond the movie nominations, all three of the awards shows to recently announce nominations now include television as well. So I just have to add that I was excited to see nominations for Mr. Robot from all three of the organizations (HFPA-Globes, SAG, BFCA-Critics). I was also happy that Outlander and Fargo got some love from the Globes and that Fargo, You're the Worst and UnREAL got nods from the Critics' Choice Awards.
I'm looking forward to seeing how all of these races play out and of course can't wait for the Oscar Nominations on January 14th. In the meantime, I've got Star Wars to look forward to tomorrow! (As I finish writing this I've only got 18 hours until the marathon starts!) I do plan on tweeting throughout the marathon in between movies so if you'd like to follow along feel free to find me on Twitter (@mandaailey). Well, I think I've thoroughly screwed up my sleep cycle so I'm off to bed. Good night!
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