My Saturn Award Picks

Joss Whedon attended once, so they’re legit, you guys.

In a few hours, the 40th Saturn Awards are due to be presented are to be presented in Burbank, California. Those of you with lives that involve more than lazily scrolling through Wikipedia might ask me what exactly the Saturn Awards are and why they should care about them. The short answer is that the Saturn Awards are presented each year by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honour the best in not only movies of those genres, but also TV and, for some reason, home video.

“Chucky: The Complete Collection” and “Award Nominee” are two phrases that you never thought would ever appear in the same breath.

As for why we would need this fairly anonymous award, that’s rather straightforward as well. While I love and cherish the Academy Awards, they can be notoriously stuffy when it comes to nominating movies for the Best Picture Award. There’s a reason that some movies are referred to as “Oscar-bait”: It can seem sometimes that all some movies need to to is try really hard to be nominated for an Oscar and the Academy will lose  its shit over it, even if it’s just so-so or, in some cases, just plain bad.

Unrelated Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close poster.

 One of the more recent examples is The Dark Knight in 2009. TDK was the highest-grossing movie of that year and is widely considered, along with The Avengers and the new X-Men movie to be in the running for the title of greatest comic book movie of all time. It’s such a damn great movie that even the Academy took notice, rewarding it with 8 nominations: Best Visual Effects (Which it lost to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Best Film Editing (Lost to Slumdog Millionaire), Best Makeup (Lost to Benjamin Button), Best Cinematography (Lost to Slumdog Millionaire), Best Art Direction (Lost to Benjamin Fucking Button) Best Sound Mixing (Lost to Slumdog Bloody Millionaire) Best Sound Editing (Which it won) and, obviously, Best Supporting Actor for the late Heath Ledger (Which it also won, as it damn well should have).

Notice anything about those categories?

Not a single one of them is the Best Picture category.

Now, I can understand that not every great movie can get a nomination. If that was the case, the Oscar ceremony would double in length, and Ellen DeGeneres was already a bit thin on material during regular programming. But do you know what movie was nominated for Best Picture instead of TDK? The Reader. A movie that just barely got a “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and that you have probably never heard of before. Oscar-bait at its most stereotypical.

So basically, that’s why I like the Saturn Awards so much. Even if the movie are, in general, inferior to the Oscars, the Saturn Awards still let the movies that us plebes enjoy take the spotlight. Besides, let’s be honest here: How many of you actually watched 12 Years a Slave before it won the Oscar?

Ah,whatever. I’ve rambled long enough. The following are my Saturn Award picks. The list of nominees can be found here. I won’t be doing predictions for TV or Home  Video categories, but I do hope that Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones clean up.

Best Independent Film

“Fucking Matthew McConaughey.”

My pick: 12 Years a Slave

Second place: Inside Llewyn Davis

12 Years a Slave is the best movie of 2013 (The Academy didn’t screw this one up!) So it’s obviously going to win the majority of awards it’s nominated for, and it doesn’t even have to contend with Dallas Buyers Club or Gravity this time around.

Best Special Effects

My pick: Gravity

Second place: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Gravity has proven since its release that as long as you combine an unspectacular, somewhat predictable script with plot holes, nobody will give a shit if your movie looks pretty enough. Hell, I didn’t care! I gave it a 9.5 out of 10!

Best Makeup

Fun fact: Evangeline Lilly is from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. She remains the only Fort Saskatchewan resident whose fame isn’t attributed to hockey or petty crime.

My pick: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Second place: Thor: The Dark World

 Any Middle-Earth movie is pretty much a shoo-in for awards like this. Odd that they couldn’t do anything about Orlando Bloom starting to look like Joaquin Phoenix though.

Best Costume

Good Lord.

My pick: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Second place: Thor: The Dark World

This might be the only category that 47 Ronin has ever been nominated for that wasn’t “Biggest case of cinematic blue balls of 2013.” Don’t pretend like you didn’t hear the words “Keanu Reeves samurai movie” and immediately start pissing yourself in excitement. Or maybe that was just me.

I might have problems, you guys.

Best Production Design

Blah blah blah Gravity, blah blah blah special effects orgasm blah blah blah so fucking good blah blah blah…

My pick: Gravity

Second place: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Man, if Gravity hadn’t been released in 2013, The Hobbit might’ve really cleaned up in their Oscar categories, never mind the damn Saturn Awards.

Best Editing

My pick: Gravity

Second place: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

I’m still not totally sure how to properly evaluate editing, but when in doubt, go with Gravity.

Best Music

“Doo doo doo, dooo, doo doo doo… Do do do… DOO DOO doo doo… doo doo doo…” That’s classic stuff, right there.

My pick: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Howard Shore)

Second place: Iron Man 3 (Brian Tyler)

I’m kind of surprised that Steven Price wasn’t nominated for Gravity, but hey, he already has the damn Oscar, and it’s not like you could ever go wrong with Middle Earth music.  

Best Performance by a Younger Actor

From Kick-Ass to Carrie, Chloe Grace Moretz is at her best when doused in blood.

My pick: Chloe Grace Moretz, Carrie

Second place: Ty Simpkins, Iron Man 3

Yes, Carrie was total dogshit, but Chloe Grace Moretz was the best part of that whole mess. Just please pick a better movie next time.

Best Supporting Actress

My pick: Scarlett Johansson, Her

Second place: Evangeline Lilly, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug… I guess

It might seem like an odd pick, considering that ScarJo never once appeared on screen, but a) She was pretty damn amazing in that movie and b) Name one other actress on that list who was anything other than “pretty good.”

Best Supporting Actor

My pick: Benedict Cumberbatch, Star Trek Into Darkness

Second place: Tom Hiddleston, Thor: The Dark World

Some people may criticize Benedict Cumberbatch for being, y’know, a white guy playing an Indian character (Khan Noonien Singh), which would be a legitimate argument if he wasn’t already played by Ricardo Montalban in The Wrath of Khan, who was, you know, Mexican.

Best Actress

My pick: Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Second place: Sandra Bullock, Gravity

Because Jennifer Lawrence is amazing, and Gravity can’t win everything.

Best Actor

My pick: Joaquin Phoenix, Her

Second place: Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis

I also really loved Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man 3, so any of these three actors winning would be fine in my book.

Best Writing

My pick: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Inside Llewyn Davis

Second place: Spike Jonze, Her

Her might have won the Oscar, and that was a fine movie, don’t get me wrong, but to tell you the truth, I grew a lot more attached to the Coen brothers’ movie. On an unrelated note, I was surprised that Jennifer Lee was nominated for Frozen. I love Frozen, but.. y’know, come on.

Best Director

My pick: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity

Second place: Peter Jackson, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Ah dammit, we’re back to kissing Gravity‘s ass. I guess you couldn’t really argue with it.  2013 was kind of Alfonso Cuaron’s bitch.

Best Comic-to-film Motion Picture

My pick: Iron Man 3

Second place: Thor: The Dark World

Gwyneth Paltrow notwithstanding, Iron Man 3 is the only nominee from this category that isn’t all that seriously flawed, although Thor, Man of Steel and Wolverine were all very enjoyable, in my opinion.

Best Animated Film

Seriously, that dress is made of ICE. There is no fucking way that’s comfortable.

My pick: Frozen

Second place: Despicable Me 2

Well, duh.

Best International Film

I don’t usually watch foreign films, so I’ve missed out on all these movies. The World’s End looks awesome though, so I’ll have to check it out at some point.

Best Action/Adventure Film

The only one of these movies that I’ve seen is The Lone Ranger, and fuck that movie.

Best Thriller Film

I haven’t seen any of these movies either.

Best Horror Film

My pick: This is the End

Second place: None. Horror movies suck.

Horror movies are, in general, pretty damn stupid. But hey, if this Academy is going to consider This is the End a horror movie for some unfathomable reason, then who am I to complain? That movie kicked all sorts of ass!

Best Fantasy Film

My pick: Her

Second place: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I considered going with The Hobbit, as I don’t consider Her to be a fantasy movie (At least in the traditional sense). However, This is the End isn’t an actual horror movie, and I still gave that movie the nod in that category, so whatever.

Best Science Fiction Film

My pick: Gravity

Second place: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

With no 12 Years a Slave or Dallas Buyers Club to stand in its way, Gravity should take the top prize it is capable of receiving. Much respect to Hunger Games, Star Trek and Pacific Rim  though, who would have been top contenders in any other year.

 

Oscar Movie Review: Gravity

It’s a vicious circle, folks.

I’ve been getting such good views (You know, for me) because of my Oscar and Razzie reviews that I’m afraid to do my planned articles about baseball, because my previous baseball posts didn’t garner that much interest. Eh, what are you  gonna do?

Anyways, the next movie I’m reviewing pretty much dominated the Academy Awards, taking home seven awards out of ten nominations.

 Directed By: Alfonso Cuaron

 Produced by: Alfonso Cuaron, David Heyman

  Written by: Alfonso Cuaron and his son, Jonas Cuaron

  Genres: Drama, Thriller, Science-Fiction

  Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

Other Actors: Ed Harris, Phaldut Sharma, Orto Ignatiussen

Oscar Nominations (Wins in Bold): Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score (Steven Price) Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture

Plot: The location? Spaaaaaaaaaccceeeee!!!!….

BOOM! Seventies nostalgia!

Medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is, for some reason, on her first space shuttle mission, aboard the space shuttle Explorer, accompanied by seasoned, chatty astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), who is planning to retire after this trip to the heavens, and the crew of the Explorer. During a spacewalk to service the Hubble Telescope, Mission Control in Houston (Ed Harris) warns the space walkers about a cloud of debris heading their way. This debris was caused by the Russians blowing up one of their satellites. I guess Russia hasn’t been making the soundest decisions lately.

BOOM! Current events!

 Despite the early warning, Stone and Kowalski get caught in the debris storm, which kills the rest of the crew and flings the two survivors into space.

That’s all I’m gonna say about the plot, because, in all honesty, plot was DEFINITELY not the main focus of this film. All they needed was the most basic excuse to get these characters into space, and you know what? Even if I’m still wondering what the hell a goddamn medical engineer was doing operating the goddamn Hubble telescope, I’m perfectly fine to let that slide, because if it leads up to the special effects that followed the initial incident, then I don’t care if Sandra Bullock’s character was a fucking veterinarian.

There isn’t much that I could say about the special effects (And overall look) of this movie that hasn’t already been said,  but I just can’t resist gushing about this movie. It is, without a doubt the best-looking movie I have ever seen. Period. Never has a movie captured the atmosphere of space so realistically, and that more than makes up for the minor plot holes in the beginning.

Acting: I’ve never been that into Sandra Bullock before (Though she was great in The Blind Side, which I loved, by the way), but she was pretty awesome in this movie, perfectly capturing her character’s arc from being, well, the scared little bitch that most of us would be if we were floating freely through space  to the determined badass, fighting her way back to Planet Earth.

And, while some of his lines were kinda cheesy, I liked George Clooney in this movie as well, as the cocky veteran astronaut.  I’m not gonna say his performance was Oscar-worthy, but hey, it wasn’t out of place and I could tell he was having fun with his character, so I’d say he deserves an “Attaboy!”, at least.

The script, however, didn’t earn and probably didn’t deserve a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. It’s not like it was terrible or bad, even. It did what it needed to do to move along the plot so we could see more spacey shit and listen to the amazing soundtrack. You can’t ask for much more than that, but I didn’t find it Oscar-nod worthy. It just didn’t seem that special to me.

What Oscar Nominations/Wins Did it Deserve?

• Best Visual Effects: Uh, fucking YES. Any other movie winning this travesty would’ve been a travesty.
• Best Sound Mixing: …Okay?
• Best Sound Editing: Um….It sounded good, so sure. What the hell’s the difference between sound mixing and sound editing again?
• Best Original Score: Hell yeah. The beautiful soundtrack by Steven Price really captured the intense feel of this film, especially during the climax.
• Best Film Editing: I’m still unsure about what this is, but why the hell not?
• Best Production Design: I haven’t seen The Great Gatsby yet, so I’m withholding judgement, but hey’re gonna have to do a lot to convince me that a movie with a 49% from Rotten Tomatoes could trump this fantastic movie.
• Best Cinematography: Absolutely. I don’t see how any of these other nominees could even compare.
• Best Actress: Again, I’m reserving judgement, because I haven’t seen all of the other nominees, bout out of the ones I’ve seen, she’s been my favourite.
• Best Director: I can only imagine how much of a pain in the ass this must have been for Mexican director (And Guillermo del Toro associate) Alfonso Cuaron to shoot, and he still did an impeccable job of it.
• Best Film: Nomination? Yes. Win? Nope.

Overall Rating: 9.5/10

P.S. I correctly predicted most of the Oscar categories, much to my surprise, but there were still movies that I hadn’t seen that won major categories and, as a result, have been added to my review queue. They are:

• The Great Gatsby
• Frozen
• The Great Beauty
• Blue Jasmine 

There was also a movie added to my queue of Razzie reviews, Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. Oh well, at least Madea is nowhere to be found in this one.

We really do learn nothing from recent history, do we?

My Oscar Picks

Well, it’s not like I can do so much freaking Oscar reviews without doing a quick prediction. These predictions will have the same format as my Razzie predictions, with my top three picks for every category, except the ones which I haven’t checked out because they didn’t have any Best Picture Nominees (Categories with an “*” are categories in which I’ve seen less than three of the nominated movies). Also, if any movie that I did not watch wins their respective category, that movie will be added to my seemingly never-ending queue of reviews.

Honestly? I just look at the trophy and see a golden novelty dildo.

Best Visual Effects:

1. Gravity
2. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
3. Star Trek Into Darkness

This one is pretty much a no-brainer. While Benedict Cumber-Dragon was amazing and J.J. Abrams lens-flared Star Trek into beautiful oblivion (I’m hoping that nonsense I just pulled out of my ass makes sense to somebody), Gravity had some of, if not the most  the most, beautiful visuals I’ve ever seen in my seventeen years of watching movies.

Best Film Editing:

1. Gravity
2. 12 Years a Slave
3. American Hustle

I’m still not entirely sure how one critiques editing, so admittedly, this category is kind of a crapshoot for me.

Best Costume Design* 

1. 12 Years a Slave
2. American Hustle

American Hustle could beat out 12 Years, because it did have a pretty fantastic costume design team, or whatever (And Amy Adams’ necklines sure help), but I think that the latter’s  costumes were just a little bit better.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling*

1. Dallas Buyers Club

I’m shocked that American Hustle wasn’t nominated for this category, but honestly Dallas Buyers Club should win this award, based solely on the work they did with Jared Leto.

Best Cinematography*

1. Gravity
2. Nebraska

I’m kinda surprised that Nebraska was nominated for this category, because I really didn’t like the choice of black-and-white colouring, but whatevs. Gravity should and will win, anyways.

Best Production Design

1. 12 Years a Slave
2. Gravity
3. American Hustle

Assuming that “Production Design” means “film sets and such”, I’d give it to 12 Years, mainly for the stunning contrast between the natural beauty of Louisiana and the brutality of the subject matter.

Best Sound Mixing/Editing

1. Gravity
2. Captain Phillips
3. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug 

Yes, I know I mixed the categories of Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing, but a) It’s pretty much the same movies, and b) I don’t know what the fuck the difference between sound editing and sound mixing is supposed to be.

That said, Gravity‘s soundtrack was downright gorgeous.

Best Original Song (I Haven’t seen most of these movies, but the songs are on YouTube, so all’s good.)

1. “Let it Go” from Frozen
2. “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
3. “The Moon Song” from Her 

Let’s face it, Disney songs are pretty much the bomb. Keep in mind that this is coming from somebody who thinks that any song off London Calling is the pinnacle of Western Civilization.

Best Original Score

1. Gravity
2. Her
3. Philomena

Like I said, Gravity‘s score is fantastic. I liked Hers’ soundtrack too, but Philomena‘s just seemed nondescript to me.

Best Animated Short Film, Best Live Action Short Film, Best Documentary-Short Subject, Best Documentary-Feature, Best Documentary Film, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Animated Feature Film

I  haven’t seem any of the movies nominated for these, because a) Honestly, these are the least interesting categories to me and b) While I actually love animated movies, there’s no way I’m going to a theater filled with screaming eight-year olds to watch Frozen.

Best Writing-Adapted Screenplay

1. 12 Years A Slave
2. The Wolf of Wall Street
3. Captain Phillips 

I didn’t find any of these scripts to be legendary, per se, but they were still pretty damn great. It could really go any way.

Best Writing-Original Screenplay

1. American Hustle
2. Dallas Buyers Club
3. Her

I wonder if I could somehow develop David O. Russell’s amazing dialogue-writing ability without also developing his crippling douchiness…

Best Supporting Actress

1. Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
2. Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
3. June Squibb, Nebraska

Holy shit, I son’t think you could have picked three cuter nominees for this category.

Pictured: The Axis of Adorable.

Jennifer Lawrence is my favourite actress, and June Squibb was awesome too, but there’s just no way they match up to Mexican-born Kenyan Actress Lupita Nyongo’s film debut.

Best Supporting Actor

1. Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
2. Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
3. Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips

Fassbender played Edwin “Evil Incarnate” Epps to perfection, and Somali actor Barkhad Abdi was awesoome in his debut, but they just had bad luck this time, going up against Jared Leto as the tragic Rayon.

Best Actress

1. Sandra Bullock, Gravity
2. Amy Adams, American Hustle
3. Judi Dench, Philomena

I think that Cate Blanchett is gonna win, considering the love she got at the Golden Globes, but I loved Sandra Bullock.

Best Actor

1. Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
2. Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
3. Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street

Man, does Leo ever have bad luck getting easy opponents on Oscar ballots, huh?

I had to pretty much flip a coin to decide who I thought was better between McConaughey and Ejiofor. All I can say is that I hope I don’t have to type either of their names again until next Oscar season, at least.

Best Director

1. Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
2. Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
3. Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

I’m not that big of a director guy, but you don’t have to be one to know that Cuaron did a fantastic job with Gravity.

Best Picture

1. 12 Years a Slave
2. Dallas Buyers Club
3. Gravity

Just read my review of 12 Years a Slave, it’ll tell you all you need to know.