February's Monthly Five

As it is coming to the end of award season I thought in this monthly five I would look through the past 84 years of Academy Award winners for Best Picture and pick my top five.  Now even just the films nominated in each category are generally worthy of the title of Best Picture so it was no small feat in narrowing down all of the films that actually won down to five.  There are so many films on this list that are fantastic as you would expect so after looking at the list I sat down and thought about the films that I have watched countless times, that never get old and that still impress me or let me discover something new each time I watch them.  So with that in mind I managed to narrow it down to my top five.  These five are films that I probably own in multiple versions; DVD, Blu Ray, Boxset, Special Edition etc...  Films that were worthy winners and ones that have stood the test of time.  So without further ado here are my top five Best Picture Academy Award winners.

The Oscars 2013

The Oscars, formally known as the 85th Academy Awards, will be held tonight and I for one am very excited.  The show is going to be hosted by Seth MacFarlane who, if the nominations announcement was anything to go by, will be hilarious.  He discussed Amour being a better collaboration between Austria and Germany than their last co-production, Hitler.  Having the guts to make such a comment in a room full of Hollywood Jews, you have to give him props.  I loved the banter between him and Emma Stone and I think he had a good mix of satirical humour without crossing the line too far.  If Family Guy and Ted are any indication he is no stranger from making fun of celebrities and movies so I am looking forward to him hosting tonight.


I will be staying up till the early hours to watch it and my brothers and myself as usual have predicted who we think will win.  After the ceremony has aired I will update the post with the winners and we can see how many we got correct.  I think that everyone will be surprised if Argo does not take home Best Picture and if Daniel Day-Lewis does not get another Best Actor Oscar.  That said I think the Best Actress is more open than usual with the two main contenders being Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence with Emmanuelle Riva coming up from behind with her recent Bafta win.  Personally I like all three and think they all deserve it but I have been so impressed with Jessica Chastain over the past few years and she gave everything in her performance of Maya in Zero Dark Thirty.  Similarly it would be a crime if Anne Hathaway did not walk away with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar as she blew me away in Les Miserables.  I'd love to see Quentin Tarantino win another Oscar as he hasn't won since Pulp Fiction and based on past award shows he looks like the front runner.  A less likely desire of mine to come true is for John Williams to win again for Best Original Score but come on the man is a genius and has given us such iconic film music, there is a reason why he was nominated almost every single year in the 70s and 80s.

I do find it sad that all the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty has taken the steam out of its Oscar hopes.  When the film was first released it was being praised and winning all sort of critic awards then the controversy regarding the scenes of torture have made it virtually impossible for it to be another success for Kathryn Bigelow at this years Oscars.  Having seen the film I do not really understand what the big deal is as I have seen more shocking scenes in other movies.  That said, the torture scenes are hard to watch and horrifying, as they should be, as torture is horrifying and therefore filmic representations of torture should reflect that.  I do not pretend to know much about American politics regarding these issues but I do find it hypocritical for the people involved to have the nerve to condemn Bigelow.  I may not know much but I am not an idiot, what do the Senators think was happening in Guantanamo Bay all those years, it was not exactly a holiday camp.  I have yet to see Argo but I do wonder if the film would have had such success if all the controversy had not drowned out any hope for Zero Dark Thirty.  It may not have made any difference in the long run as although I thought Zero Dark Thirty was great I did think The Hurt Locker (2008) was a better movie and Argo was Roger Ebert's film of the year.  I am looking forward to seeing Argo and I am sure I will love it and if it does win it will be a well deserved victory but I do wonder if things would be different if Zero Dark Thirty had not been overcome with controversy.    

Read on after the jump to check out the nominations and our predictions for who we think will take home the Oscar and be forever introduced as Academy Award Winner...

2013 BAFTA Awards

So tonight is the night for the biggest film awards in Britain the BAFTA Awards ceremony of 2013.  This year has been interesting so far for winners and it is unusually open.  For me the only certain is Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor for Lincoln.  Everything else is wide open in my opinion but I have made my predictions and we'll see later tonight if my instincts were right.  My brothers have also made their predictions and I have included them too so you can see out of the three of us who got the most correct.  I will update this post with the winners once they have been announced.  Feel free to add your own predictions or thoughts on the winners (whether deserved or not), speeches and the ceremony itself.

This winners for each category have now been added so please do not read on if you do not yet know who won and do not want to find out.

Les Miserables (2013)

A film adaptation of the long running musical Les Miserables tells the story of Jean Valjean, a man who tries to survive in 19th Century France.  After breaking parole he is hunted by police inspector Javert for decades.  However, Jean Valjean's life if forever changed when he vows to care for a young girl, Cosette.  An epic musical with amazing visual effects, brilliant performances and a familiar tale that is reborn by director Tom Hooper.

January Movie Round Up

So I watch a number of films a month but never seem to have the time to review them all so as it is a new year I thought I would start a new ritual of having a brief mini review of each film which basically just involves a small amount of rambling from yours truly regarding whether or not I liked the film.  They will be short and sweet but it is a way for me to review all the films I watch in the short amount of time I have spare.  So without further ado read on for my January movie round up.

January's Monthly Five

So it's the first monthly five of the new year and it's the time where we look back on the previous year and on to the next.  Part of this for me always involves films and it got me thinking of how many awful films there were last year.  I did my top ten of the year but did not do a worst ten list and so because of that this month's Monthly Five is me ranting about the worst five movies of last year which was pretty hard to whittle it down as there was a lot of them to cut it down too.

House at The End of The Street (2012)

A mother and daughter move to a small town and find themselves living next door to a house where a horrific murder happened years earlier.  A young girl murdered her parents and as the daughter befriends the surviving brother she begins to discover there is more to the story than first appears.