Sunday, February 22, 2015

2014 Imaginary Cinema Awards

2014 was a good year for Marvel movies (unless they had the word Amazing in the title) and an even better year for genre deconstructions (Birdman, Lego Movie, Under the Skin). There are still a few movies I haven’t seen, some of which may have made this list (Big Eyes, Hunger Games) and some which probably wouldn’t (The Hobbit 3). While there were some good movies last year, it really felt like a warm-up for the Age of Ultron/Force Awakens main event this year.

Best Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy
Runners-up: Birdman, Under the Skin, Big Hero 6, Into the Woods, Edge of Tomorrow, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Lego Movie, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, How to Train Your Dragon 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past

Best Screenplay: Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, ...)
Runners-up: Edge of Tomorrow, The Lego Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy

Best Direction: Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Runner-up: Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn)

Best Actress: Scarlett Johansson (Under the Skin, Captain America: The Winter Soldier)
Runners-up: Angelina Jolie (Maleficent), Zoe Saldana (Guardians of the Galaxy), Meryl Streep (Into the Woods), Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow), Emma Stone (Birdman)

Best Actor: Michael Keaton (Birdman)
Runners-up: Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy, Lego Movie), Andy Serkis (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), James Corden (Into the Woods), Edward Norton (Birdman).

Best Music: Guardians of the Galaxy

Best Visual Effects: Guardians of the Galaxy
Runner-up: Godzilla

Best Cinematography: Birdman

Best Editing: Birdman

Best Production Design: Into the Woods

Best Costumes: Into the Woods

Best Makeup: Guardians of the Galaxy

Hero of the Year: Spider-Man, for failing so badly with the sequel to the reboot that we are now getting another reboot, but this time he can play with the Avengers

Villain of the Year: Hackers and Transformers (the former for invading people’s privacy, the latter for still being the most successful movie of the year despite three or four crap films in a row)

Previous awards:

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Spidey's Coming Home!


So the internet exploded last night with the news that Sony and Marvel are teaming up to bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (thank you The Interview and Sony hackers!) So why should non-comic book geeks care about this news? Let me break it down for you:

We might get the first decent Spidey movie since 2004!
That's right, no Saturday Night Fever Peter Parker, no emo skater Parker, no Batman & Robin style villains. Marvel aren't perfect, but for the most part they get how to portray their characters on screen. Now the only crappy Marvel movies we have to worry about are Fantasic Four (X-Men are doing fine without Marvel).

Spidey will get to hang with the Avengers!
You know you want to see Tony Stark and Spidey try to outstark, I mean outsnark each other.

No more origin story!
Marvel showed with the Incredible Hulk that they can reboot without doing the origin story all over again.

Joss Whedon might get to write some Spidey one-liners!
That's if he sticks around post Age of Ultron, which is somewhat doubtful.

No Sinister Six or Aunt May movies!
Yeah, Sony was seriously gonna make those before this deal. Not that I have anything against Aunt May. An adaptation of this comic would be kinda cool:

No Andrew Garfield means Topher Grace will finally get to play the role he was born for!
OK, that's doubtful. Guy's almost as old as me!