The Monuments Men

Sometimes a film has all the right components to make a perfect viewing experience and it just doesn’t work. The cast can be top-notch, the story enthralling, the production values great but the film just doesn’t add up. And so it is with George Clooney’s latest directorial effort, The Monuments Men…

Going My Way

As I wrote in my review of Argo I’m way behind on my viewing of films which have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I am working on that though and making my way through the films from the 20s until today. I did try to watch The French Connection…

The Sum Of All Fears

It’s now May and my New Year’s resolution to watch all of my unwatched DVDs hasn’t exactly got off to a great start. As we’re nearly halfway through the year I think we can all agree that it’s actually had a dreadful start. I think I have to watch about five films a day…

Argo

Just before the Oscars I did one of those Facebook quizzes – how many Best Picture Academy Award Winners had I seen. I was confident and as I started clicking from 2011 downwards I was quite happy – The Artist, The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker – I was on fire…

In Defence of Seth MacFarlane – Kind Of…

There are many thankless tasks in this world but as Seth MacFarlane is probably now realising, being the host of the Academy Awards is possibly the most public way to make yourself a worldwide figure of hatred literally overnight. His reviews are not great and some of the Twitter vitriol has been appalling…

Oscars 2013 Predictions

It’s Oscars Day and I’m excited. I love the Oscars, I love the good and the bad outfits. I love the gushing speeches and the losers proving why they lost by not being able to act happy for the winners. On the other hand I can’t stand the moaning minnies who complain that it’s all back-slapping and aren’t there more important things in the world to be concerned about…

Zero Dark Thirty

I’m doing my best to catch up with as many of the films and performances in this year’s Oscar race before February 24th. I’ve managed Lincoln, Les Miserables (for the second time) and The Impossible in the past few days. I may have missed the boat on The Master, Argo and Amour but if it’s still on locally I’ll get to it. I was really glad to have made it to Zero Dark Thirty…

Lincoln

When you look at the cast and synopses of some films they scream “Oscar fodder” at you. You just know that at the back of studio executives’ minds when the film goes through the development stage is Oscar Night and a row of shiny bald gold men lighting up their Hollywood offices…

Baftas (almost) live blog

Last year I had a lot of fun live-blogging the Oscar’s ceremony so I’m going to do the same again this year and thought I’d also blog the British Academy Awards. It’s only an almost live blog as it’s live blogging the television broadcast..