Oscar Nominees 2015: Part 7 of 12

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7 of 12:

Captain America: the Winter Soldier

1 Nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Cast: Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan, Frank Grillo, Cobie Smulders, Maximiliano Hernández

This was really fun. It is so much better than the first Captain America movie, mostly because this movie has a lot of action. In the visual effects department there is just so much. Gigantic set pieces and flying buildings, and Anthony Mackie is something called Falcon and he flies around Washington DC like a badass. It's all very cool. I am sort of surprised this movie wasn't nominated for more things, but I take it that the Academy is not really into the whole Marvel-as-studio thing. This is perhaps not surprising, since they are sort of snobby, but Marvel is making tons and tons of money and giving a lot of people work. The Academy should get hip, especially if the movies are as good as this one was.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #43 out of 80

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

1 Nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Matt Reeves

Cast: Andy Serkis, Toby Kebbell, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Keri Russell, Nick Thurston, Kirk Acevedo, Judy Greer, Terry Notary, Doc Shaw

Yeah, this is very good. This is a good series with lots of big ideas. And this movie, like the last one, also dealt with real and interesting issues about humanity, racism, and animal rights. I wrote a little mini-essay on it when I first saw this movie back in July. I liked Dawn of the Planet of the Apes a good deal more than I liked more "important" movies this year – it's higher on my list than six of the Best Picture nominees, for example. This movie is excellent, and everyone should see it. It's exciting and powerful and imaginative and will ask you to use your brain. As for visual effects, this movie really works because of the humans who are digitally captured performing as apes. The effects people on these movies are doing insanely good work. This is great stuff.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #30 out of 80

X-men: Days of Future Past

1 Nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart, Peter Dinklag, Ian McKellen, Nicholas Hoult, Halle Berry, Evan Peters.

This was awful. I don't want to complain about it anymore, though. My review is here. And the visual effects, particularly in the Quicksilver sequence that is pictured above, are really great. So this nomination is deserved. I want these movies to be better. I think that's the real issue with everything X-men. I love the X-men; have since I was a kid. And I just want these movies to sort of rock instead of being sentimental and schmaltzy. Use your powers and be a badass and stop moping around.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #69 out of 80

The Hobbit: the Battle of the Five Armies

1 Nomination

• Sound Effects Editing

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Lee Pace, Richard Armitage, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, Aidan Turner, Dean O'Gorman, Evangeline Lilly, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee, Sylvester McCoy, Stephen Fry

How the mighty have fallen! Like this dragon in the image above, who dies within the film's first twenty minutes, this final episode of The Hobbit series simply peters out, rather than being anything interesting. It's sad because The Lord of the Rings series is so delightful, but The Hobbit series is painful. They look like they are the same but they are manifestly not the same. I have gone over my feelings about this movie in detail here, so I won't go through any of that again, but the absurdity of this film is almost incomprehensible. Who knew that an excellent little piece of literature like Tolkien's original novel could be this dumbed down?
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #76 out of 80

Days of Future Past

Well, I am still seeing these X-men movies.  
Days of Future Past, though, really has to be the low point so far. The script was apparently cobbled together by fans of Star Trek, since the plot is really a kind of mash-up of Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home and Star Trek (VII): Generations. There's even a moment in the film when we go into Beast's office and an episode from the original Star Trek series is playing on the television set (and of course the captain from Generations is playing Professor X).

And everyone is in this X-men movie. Not content with the origin stories of the X-men that we saw in 2011's X-men: First Class, this X-men movie places us in the past and the present. We have all of the casts – the old and the new. Double the pleasure!

Well, double the confounding plots anyway. I honestly had no trouble following all of the absurd plot twists, but I can't say that I cared much about what was happening. Wolverine goes back in time into his own body in 1973, and he has to convince Professor Xavier and Magneto to work together to stop Mystique from killing Peter Dinklage. And if they do that, the world will be less afraid of mutants in the future.

Um... ok. Will he be successful? We all know the answer is yes, but if only the doing of all of this had any fun attached to it! It doesn't, or at least it has very little. Even Wolverine (who is plenty of fun and has lots of delightful quips even in the bad movies that feature only him) is boring in this movie. Worse yet are James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence, who cry and cry and have a lot of feelings throughout the film.

There is one really fun sequence in the film, when Quicksilver breaks into the Pentagon and rescues Magneto from his metal-less prison cell. This part is fun fun fun. But the rest of the movie just doesn't have the same joie de vivre; it drags and drags some more, and it's filled with ponderous philosophizing about "doing the right thing" and "noble sacrifices" and "believing in people's true path".

Let's not lie, I'll probably see the next X-men movie, all the same. (I explain my fascination with the X-men here.) But Days of Future Past was a real misstep.

The Wolverine

Don't confuse The Wolverine with X-men Origins: Wolverine, although, well, I guess it wouldn't matter too much if you did.

This poster is awesome.

I insist on seeing these X-men movies, and I am not really sure why. I guess it is out of queer solidarity. Mutant powers are an obvious (and useful) metaphor for deviant sexuality, certainly, and then there are all of the gay people in the movies. Which is fun. But most of these X-men movies have, frankly, not been very good, so I am not sure why I am as loyal as I am to the franchise. In any case, I couldn't bring myself actually to see The Wolverine in the theatre when it was out, but now that Oscar season is over, I rented The Wolverine. Oh yeah, and this isn't the sequel either to the 2009 Origins: Wolverine film or the 2011 X-men: First Class. This movie is a follow-up to X-men: the Last Stand (i.e. X-men 3), which came out 7 years ago. I, frankly, couldn't remember anything that happened, but apparently I saw it back in 2006 because I blogged about it back then.

This movie is bad. Honestly, though, I still kinda liked it. First off, this film takes place in Japan and is filled with every single movie cliché that Hollywood has ever churned out about the "land of the rising sun" and about Japanese people in general. These include:

• women pouring tea (and I don't mean sharing gossip)
• women cooking for men
• samurai swords (a lot of them)
• the phrase: "Chopsticks standing up are a bad omen. Everything has meaning."
• 10th century wall hangings
• the word rōnin, which is used multiple times
• the factoring of the bombing of Nagasaki into the plot
• an outdoor winter scene (which is weird, because sometimes it's Spring in the film)
• martial arts galore
• nefarious businessmen (see the Christopher Nolan Batman reboot films for more villainous Asians)
• a low-rent Japanese brothel
• the Yakuza
• the phrase: "I don't expect you to understand; you're not Japanese"

We even got the biggest Hollywood cliché of them all in films about Japan at the end. As he finally kills the bad guy for good, Hugh Jackman looks into the villain's eyes and says: Sayonara. Boom.

But there are a lot of good things, too: the villain is really cool. Actually, she is the hot blonde chic that exists in all Hollywood films about Japan. (There is always a hot, evil, blonde chick with whom we can contrast the naive, docile, but incredibly gorgeous Japanese woman, with whom the hero is supposed to fall in love.) But anyway, this blond villain, whose name is VENOM, is really cool.

Why wear a shirt? This guy is 45 years old and he looks amazing.

And Hugh Jackman is shirtless a lot, and he looks amazing. In fact, Hugh Jackman is shirtless so much that I started to wonder who this film's intended audience is. I mean, it is filmed like a silly movie for teenage boys (the violence is almost egregiously fake and cartoonish), but this film loves Hugh Jackman's body, and there is an extended sequence with a sexy Japanese guy in his underwear, too, and I couldn't really figure out why. Not that I'm complaining.

What else? I guess there isn't much else to say. We learn almost nothing about Logan or his origin, of course, and the acting is pretty terrible across the board except for the excellent Hiroyuki Sanada and a really great performance by Ken Yamamura.

Basically, this is for Hugh Jackman fans but pretty much nobody else. I take that back. Honestly, I'm not much of a Jackman fan, but I sure am a fan of his upper body. Woof.

Spotlight Seven

I did this interview for a new interview series on the School of Theatre website at FSU. The interviews are only up for a week, so mine has been replaced now by someone else, and I figured I'd post the interview here.

Name: Aaron C. Thomas
Position in School of Theatre: PhD Candidate in Theatre Studies
Hometown: Los Angeles CA

1. How did you get your start in theatre?
Well, in high school, the drama class met at zero period, which was, I think, at some god-awful hour like 7.00a or somesuch. I was having none of that. And anyway I was already a big ol’ nerd, so hanging out with drama kids wasn’t exactly going to make me look any cooler. So I didn’t take classes in theatre in high school. But when I was a junior this very attractive senior (his name was Ali if you must know), told me that he was auditioning for the Christian drama club and that I should too. I obviously auditioned. I got in, but of course Ali never auditioned; so I ended up performing Everyman in Lutheran churches (seriously) and my dreams of spending time with my attractive friend were dashed. In college I was an Accounting major for two years, but transferred to Theatre Arts because I found it to be much more difficult than Business Administration.

2. What is the best performance you have ever seen OR what is the craziest thing that has happened to you during a performance?
Best performance I’ve ever seen? How can anyone even answer this? I have a couple, I guess. I saw Faye Dunaway play Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Master Class in 1996 and we just kept applauding. We clapped through seven curtain calls. No lie. It was a brilliant performance. I’ll also never forget Julie Taymor’s production of Flying Dutchman at Los Angeles Opera. And… we did The Rocky Horror Show here a couple years ago and I might’ve gone three times.

3. If you could have any career outside of theatre, what would it be and why?
I’d be doing humanitarian work. Advocating for imprisoned populations seems particularly attractive to me right now. The amount of injustice that surrounds the prison system in this country especially when it comes to the treatment of men of color is extraordinary to me. Actually, I sometimes think about leaving everything and going and doing humanitarian work anyway. But I admit: I’m old and bourgeois and have a mortgage and things now. I may yet…

4. What inspires you in your free time/ what do you do for fun?
I watch movies. As many as possible. Before I came to graduate school I used to watch something like six or seven movies a week. I watch a lot fewer now, but I keep a movie-blog, and I am obsessed with the Oscars – I’ve memorized all kinds of useless trivia about them. Also, I’m all about cooking.

5. What brought you to Florida State?
FSU is a Research One university, and when I got accepted here I immediately decided I would go. Because I had been a fairly lazy undergraduate student (most of my students now are way better than I ever was as an undergrad) I felt excited that FSU even accepted me. I have to give credit to Mary Karen Dahl for seeing past my ridiculous record and believing in me despite it.

6. If you could give an aspiring theatre artist any piece of advice, what would it be?
Jeff Calhoun once said to me that “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.” I’ve always kept this in my mind. No one should be producing theatre just to do it. Really though, I probably don’t know anything. I was saying to a friend the other day that my only goals when making art are to try to avoid clichés and to remember that I am not there to teach anybody anything: I do not believe that the theatre is a classroom.

7. Wild Card Question: If you were a super hero, who would would you be and why?
I would definitely be one of the X-Men. I tend to be a little psychic, so I’d probably be some kind of telepath. Jean Grey? She was kinda fierce.

X-Men 3

So has everyone already seen X-men: the Last Stand? I know that shit came out May 26th and I know it's September 7th, but I saw it tonight for the first time. It was free, though, so I guess that's good.

Did everyone like the movie? I liked it. I mean, I know it's not Bryan Singer and all and the intelligence quotient of the film plummeted from the second to the third, but I still really liked it. I did groan a couple of times (at the cheap sentimentality), but I still hope they make a fourth one. I love X-men. It's my favorite of the comic book series (not that I'm well-educated in such matters.)

Also: any excuse to see Shohreh Aghdashloo is a good one, in my opinion. And I'd also like to say that Ian McKellan's Magneto is, like, my new gay hero. He's all about taking no prisoners. It reminded me a little of Rufus Wainwright's "Gay Messiah." I think Magneto is the Gay Messiah. Pray for your sins: the gay messiah's coming. It's Magneto in a fabulous outfit, oh yeah, and he can kill you.