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Image description: Michelle Pfeiffer portraying Countess Ellen Olenska in the film Age of Innocence. Martin Scorsese is, without doubt, my favourite film director. Watching GoodFellas in my early teenage years, I was captivated, while somewhat conflicted, by the anti-hero Henry Hill’s life of excess. The film begins with Henry as a teenager himself. Soon, he […]
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Ever since Dustin Hoffman won the Oscar for Best Actor playing Rain Man, half of Best Actor Oscars have been won by men playing characters with significant disability. The 2018 Academy Awards have recently graced our screens; including Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar-winning performance last year in The Theory of Everything as motor neurone disease (MND) sufferer […]
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Loving Vincent is the world’s first fully painted feature film. Under the direction of husband-and-wife duo Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, 125 artists worked for six years to produce this animated biographical film about the life and mysterious death of Vincent van Gogh, primarily in the unique and instantly-recognisable painting style of the artist himself. […]
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Hollywood is drawing to the end of movie awards season, with stars and films alike receiving some of the industry’s most-coveted titles. The internet is awash with videos of acceptance speeches and on-stage performances, and style bloggers are in their element as they survey the red carpet fashion. But these days, with anyone having the […]
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In 2015, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy became the first Pakistani filmmaker to win two Academy Awards with her documentary A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which exposes the practice of honour killings in Pakistan. Her first was awarded in 2012 for Saving Face, a documentary which followed the victims of acid attacks. Born and […]
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Lenny Abrahamson’s awards-tipped drama, Room, threatens to be nothing short of a two hour emotional bludgeoning of the audience at the hands of a story all the more nightmarish for its basis in fact. Brie Larson plays Joy Newsome, incarcerated for seven years along with her five year old son, Jack, (Jacob Tremblay), for whom […]
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Jada Pinkett Smith, Charlotte Rampling, Matt Damon, Lupita Nyong’o are all people who have had their say about what some will label the Oscars controversy. For the second year the Oscars have shown how little diversity matters to them, with not one single non-white person being nominated for any acting category. Some will argue […]
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‘I can’t help but ask the question, is it time people of colour recognise how much power and influence we have amassed, that we no longer need to ask to be invited anywhere.’ These words, recently spoken by Jada Pinkett-Smith, seemed to resonate with many in the face of another overwhelmingly white batch of Oscar […]
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Criticism of the film-world is rife in the period between late November and the Academy Awards ceremony around the end of February. For some, this time is the height of Hollywood’s self-congratulation, praising a familiar collection of names – actors, writers and producers – and treating the already immensely rich to yet more decadence and […]
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What makes a movie ‘foreign’? Is it the financing, or the location? The language of the performers or the ethnicity of the director?
Continue ReadingREFRESH MANUALLY TO KEEP UP 05:07- Right, that is that. The Oscars 2014 are over, awards have been given out, friendships have been broken, twitter records shattered, many people left happy. If you have been reading this with us, it has been a pleasure to guide you stutteringly through the awards, and we hope you’ve […]
Continue ReadingA Balliol alumnus has been nominated for an Oscar for his short film, The Voorman Problem. Baldwin Li, who completed an English degree in 2004, scripted the film, which features Sherlock star Martin Freeman and has received multiple awards and nominations. Nominated for Best Live Action Short Film, The Voorman Problem tells the story of […]
Continue ReadingWhy Leo DiCaprio must play the waiting game if he is to get over his ‘Criminal Snubbing’
Continue ReadingGoodbye lads (and ladies, I’m not sexist), it’s been an absolute cracker of an evening, although the Oscars weren’t much cop. Thanks for reading, if you did. Fuck you if you didn’t. It’s been emotional; it’s been drunk; it’s been live. It’s now over, so go to bed. See you next year. Oh, sorry, ARGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO […]
Continue ReadingFor long-time fans of the stage musical of Les Misérables, it has been hard to approach the film production other than on a rollercoaster of trepidation. From the mere idea of making it into a film, through the sometimes surprising casting news to the first set photos of what appeared to be a giant barricade […]
Continue ReadingThe Oscar for Best Picture does not confer greatness on its own. Few would argue that Crash is a better film than Brokeback Mountain, or that Forrest Gump has had more of an impact on pop culture and films than Pulp Fiction. However there is still a sense of disappointment when a truly great film […]
Continue ReadingBefore giving this review, I need to first make one point very clear: the Oscars have always nominated films deemed overrated by the general public. Sometimes it seems like they are too formulaic, too preachy, too overenthusiastic to make a sweeping statement about humanity told innumerable times before. But it is not really fair to judge […]
Continue ReadingBest Actor? Best Film? Nope. (It is unfair to put incorrect answers into your mouth without even asking the question) The2012 Oscars category which is easiest to predict is Best Original Song. Bret McKenzie’s ‘Man or Muppet’, a barnstorming power-ballad in the style of Harry Nilsson, is comfortably the best song nominated and will definitely […]
Continue ReadingWell no, since you asked. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t deeply flawed. The Oscars are the high watermark of film recognition. The red carpet trampling, lovvie love-a-thon that is the motion picture awards season starts in earnest with the Golden Globes in early January and extravagantly culminates every year in late February with the […]
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