Cinematic Paradox

-No, I'm not going to do a full post on the Oscar nominations. For one thing, by the time I get around to doing them, like eight hours after the nominations, they're old news. And for another thing, I've found that people don't generally respond to awards coverage. Well, definitely not in the last few years I've done it, anyway.

-Plus, I can't really add anything new. The Tom Hanks snub sucked. American Hustle seems to be the buzz, and I'm going to reserve judgement until I see the film (possibly next week), but is this The King's Speech of this year? I reckon it is totally going to True Grit things - have all those nominations but no awards to show for it.

-Also, The Great Gatsby getting no love in the song section hurt, too. WTF is Alone Yet Not Alone?

-Anyway, so here's the story of nominations night: they were at 2.30am, and even though I was supposed to get sleep before and after then, I was up all night sick. However, I managed to contain the stomach flu for the nominations, but I had to do silent fist pumps so I wouldn't wake the house (like I did when Rooney Mara got nominated). There were a lot of silent fist pumps. First, for Jonah Hill. I knew it was going to happen (but sadface for Daniel Bruhl, though). Then for Sally Hawkins, who I knew I was right for predicting - remember when everyone thought it wouldn't happen? Then for Before Midnight getting a screenplay nod. And then for my girl Amy Adams for finally breaking through into the lead category. Started from the bottom now you here, Amy.

-And then along came Best Actor. When Christian Bale got called, I was like "no, no, no, no, no, dear god no that is Leo's spot". And then it happened. All of my hopes and dreams came true in that one moment. I didn't even pay attention to the rest of the nominations.

-But "Academy Award nominee Matthew McConaughey" sounds perfect, doesn't it?

-Anyway, this wasn't the only time of the week that Leo made my hopes and dreams come true. Of course, the Golden Globes - a.k.a the only awards show I'll be able to watch fully this year - happened and he got the award there, too. Ah, it was perfection.

-The Golden Globes were very entertaining. Was very happy to see Matty M, Amy Adams, Jared Leto, Alfonso Cuaron and Steve McQueen get awards. Plus, Amy and Tina were gold. Can't really say too much other than that - just flip through my Twitter feed for my uncensored, unedited thoughts.

-But I must say, I keep watching Matty M's speech because I love hearing him say "alright, alright, alriiiiiight" and "go get it, McConaughey". Like I swear that's going to be my new catchphrase for awards season: "go get it, McConaughey". I seriously need to stop saying it in real life situations.

-I really wish we could just have Jessica Chastain giving Matthew McConaughey awards all season. Their cute friendship makes me all the more excited about Interstellar.

-It would seem that Jennifer Lawrence backlash is the new black right now. Now, I love her as a person. I loved her in Winter's Bone and particularly The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. I'm still a little angry about her winning for Silver Linings Playbook, as I don't think she ever owned her character. And it appears that the same thing happens with American Hustle. I dunno - she has an exceptionally good filmography and she's an exceptionally good performer, but she seems to be getting an awful lot of praise for movies she's not necessarily right for. If she wins that Oscar this year, the backlash will be terrible. But I think that's going to go to Lupita Nyong'o, who broke my heart in 12 Years a Slave. Well, at least I hope it does.

-On the opposite end of the spectrum, and awards getter that I'm loving at the moment is Barkhad Abdi. Maybe I'm a sucker for stories like his, but it is so awesome how he does literally one film and then gets nominated for an Oscar. He's really sweet, too.

-I've been catching up on 2013 films, with films like Short Term 12 (man, y'all were right, such a great film), Rush (I liked it, a bit sad Daniel Bruhl didn't get nommed but no big loss), Dallas Buyers Club (go get it, McConaughey), 12 Years a Slave (yeah...I've never cried so much in my life. Steve McQueen has the most perfect filmography of anyone), and...The Canyons, which I will probably write a post about in the next week or so. Man, that was an experience.

-The next and final installment in my "money" series will take a look at Side Effects and Blue Jasmine, but I'm just waiting for Blue Jasmine to come out on DVD so I can watch it again. And soak up the amazingness of Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins.

-And in non-movie related news, I got my exam results back. I managed to achieve Level 3 with Merit endorsed (which I suppose is like a solid B-grade/A- for you Americans), which I was told at the start of the year I couldn't do because I was Head Girl. Ha. Also managed to get Excellence endorsed in Level 3 English (solid A+ grade), getting Excellences in everything I did apart from my damn Othello essay, which I got Merit in. And I also got Merit endorsed in Drama. And yeah, that's high school completely done. I didn't fail anything last year, which was also quite the achievement. I got my acceptance letter into Canterbury and have to scrape together so much money - uni is so hard and I haven't even gone yet!

-Oh crap, just realised the SAG awards are tomorrow. I won't be watching, as I have work, but I don't really see the point as Leo isn't nominated anyway. Alas, my quick predictions would be: Best Ensemble - probably American Hustle since everyone loves it, but judging by only having Jennifer Lawrence nominated, this could well go to 12 Years a Slave (as it should); Best Actor - I imagine this is going to Matthew McConaughey, but there could always be a spoiler from Bruce Dern; Best Actress - Cate Blanchett, no doubt; Best Supporting Actor - Jared Leto, no doubt; Best Supporting Actress - most likely Lupita Nyong'o - I only think Jennifer Lawrence's chances would be helped if the rest of her cast was individually nominated.

-And make sure you listen to the Across the Universe podcast, where the Chicks with Accents discuss/cry over The Wolf of Wall Street. It's beautiful.

What's been going on in your cinematic lives lately?

The KickStarter phenomenon is an interesting one. While I'm sure it does good work in getting artists to share their vision with the help of the donations, there's also the other side to it. That side is taken up by the film The Canyons, a film which introduced me to the KickStarter scheme, Bret Easton Ellis' Twitter feed and porn star James Deen. Oh, and then I actually saw the film.

Wow, that was pretty terrible.

Now I hear there's all sorts of sides to the story that equate to why this was a massive failure. The way Bret Easton Ellis would wax poetic about his screenplay adaptation back in its early days made it seem like the movie would be the next American Psycho, the next game-changing definition of our generation in the gritty noir setting of LA. Granted, the film didn't have talent like Christian Bale, Reese Witherspoon, Jared Leto etc to headline the film. Instead, we had Ellis''pet project' James Deen, and everyone's favourite tabloid superstar Lindsay Lohan.

Then the film came out, directed by Paul Schrader, who once wrote Taxi Driver. Apparently, Ellis wasn't too impressed. Steven Soderbergh offered to edit the film in a few days so it wouldn't lag so much. Schrader wasn't having any of that, and what we as an audience (albeit a small audience) got in the end was a movie of just over 90 minutes, that is the longest 90 minutes anyone ever spent after Only God Forgives: a soulless, particularly unthrilling, laughable, pandering attempt at an honest portrayal of our generation.

Oh, and did I also mention that this is also about the death of cinema? Well, apparently it is supposed to be.

I'm not sure whether this was Ellis' decision, or Schrader's decision. However, throughout the movie, our 'establishing shots' are of broken down, derelict cinemas. Serious props to the location scouts and the photographer who found them, because that would make one hell of a photography essay. But in The Canyons, a film which is about a jealous trust fund kid who has serious issues with the world, maybe not the right time to unveil those photos?

That's not to say that this film doesn't deal, in some way, with the film industry. Part of the plot centres around Christian (James Deen) - the jealous trust fund kid - helping his sister finance some random film that she's making. While he makes his own strange movies through his iPhone. I don't know - is that what Paul Schrader is trying to say? That film is dying because we can make films on our iPhones? That films can now be funded via the internet? And then one of the last scenes is in a video shop, of all places. I don't know, maybe if this film were studied in English classes, I'd be able to find some metaphoric meaning in all of this. Instead, we have a movie trying to be Hugo and Casino all at the same time. Alas, despite writing Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader is definitely not Martin Scorsese.

The Canyons is unbelievably boring, saving its 'thrills' for the last minute. It seems more concerned with making sure it pushes its censorship rating, with plenty of sex, swearing and then even domestic violence, without any real point and definitely no class to pull it off. Just take a second to think of everything The Wolf of Wall Street has that makes it work. Now imagine if you took all of that away. What you have is The Canyons.

It's hard to say who's fault this is. Imagine if Mary Harron had been given the chance to make American Psycho 2.0, and she could have made the deep, dark and sinister strain to Ellis' screenplay work. Or was Ellis' screenplay trying to be way more than it actually was? (if it was aiming for softcore porn with a lurid American Dream of murder, it certainly achieved it) Was it the actors? James Deen can't carry a film. Lindsay Lohan, for all her personal life problems, was actually pretty good. Not enough to give her the comeback she desperately needs, but there were a few scenes that proved yet again why she deserves screen time. And then there's Nolan Funk, who is pretty much dead throughout the entire film. Would it have worked if there were different, more bankable stars? Perhaps. But I do think that the majority of the film's problems lie with Paul Schrader. If there was anything that would make the film work, it would be someone who had their finger on the pulse of the generation it's trying to portray. Schrader doesn't. It's like he's desperate to make a 70's B-grade thriller, but Ellis' material really doesn't benefit from that aesthetic or treatment. Someone with a bit more drive and control could have made a mainstream star out of James Deen and given us back the Lindsay Lohan we once had. But from the very beginning, where we have an awkward, stilted conversation between four people which throws the camera around at each person while they're not talking. It seems as if it could be inspired, artistic filmmaking, but it is cheap and off-putting. Not to mention that there's a scene where Tara is talking about how she doesn't like movies and the camera is literally waving from side to side. I don't like to throw this word into the ring, but it is pretty incompetent filmmaking.

At the end of the day, the movie is only really about a misogynistic, controlling trust fund kid. We never learn why he is that way. But we've seen this done so many times that if you're gonna keep beating it to death, at least give us some answers. Don't just give us a disgustingly boring film that throws in a murder to give the screenplay some sort of weight. It doesn't work that way.

But yes, wonderful photographs of derelict cinemas. Kind of fitting, when this film is the embodiment of cinema at its most lifeless.

I wouldn't say I have a lot of dramatic training - I did it all through school with considerably good grades and both performed in and directed several stage shows - but there's one thing that we're trained to do: stick to the script. Many days and nights are spent going over the lines, with annotations adorning the margins, and when it comes time to do the performance, the only worry is if you're going to stuff up one of those meticulously learned lines. One of the greatest things that can happen is if someone does end up stuffing up, who will take the initiative to improvise and cover up the missed line so the audience is left none the wiser?

If you're that person (as I have been quite a few times), there's nothing that can rival that sense of achievement and pride.

But that's only a line. What happens when you're given a story and a character and you have to make up everything they say?

This week I had the interesting experience of viewing both Drinking Buddies and American Hustle, two films that were heavily improvised by the actors. As someone who doesn't think cinema gets much better than The Social Network's script and with ambitions of becoming a screenwriter myself, wonders how you can get an improvised feature made, I have a few conflicting thoughts about fully improvising films.

It is always cool to look on IMDb's trivia and see how some great scenes weren't in the script - i.e. the Money Chant from The Wolf of Wall Street, Tom Hardy saying "you mustn't be afraid of dreaming a little bigger, darling" in Inception and becoming the best life motto of all, Leonardo DiCaprio cutting his hand and using it to a vicious extent in Django Unchained. You could easily say that either Matthew McConaughey, Tom Hardy or Leonardo DiCaprio are acting geniuses who lifted their respective movies into being a cultural phenomenon. But what about the stars of American Hustle? Yes, they all have their Oscar nominations, and well done to them for being able to essentially make up a whole movie with David O. Russell "method directing" from behind the camera. But...this is a movie that could have used a script.

Originally titled 'American Bullshit', Eric Warren Singer, who had only previously written The International, wrote a mostly true screenplay detailing the Abscam operation in the 1970s, which made it onto the Blacklist (best unproduced screenplays). David O. Russell got a hold of it, and rewrote the characters as caricatures of the real people involved with Abscam, gave those characters to people he wrote them specially for like Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner and his golden girl Jennifer Lawrence, and slapped a "some of this actually happened" title card on the front of the movie.

Improvisation is an interesting thing, because it shows just how much you understand about your character. We used to do it all the time when we did "hot seating" exercises to build whatever characters we were given. Granted, we didn't have an admittedly complicated story to go with our characters. So yes, it is great if you can immerse yourself in a character enough to decide what they'd say and what they wouldn't. And to some extent, I'm sure a lot of actors do look at scripts with their vision of the character and go "hmmmm, maybe not that". Sometimes I wonder if Daniel Day-Lewis follows a script, because he's that immersed in his characters.

The actors of American Hustle? Not so much. The big problem, I found, with the film, was that it was incredibly hard to find a coherent plot, and I admit to looking into the real Abscam operation to get some answers. This is a story about con-men - essentially what movies are in general, but when you add an extra layer of conning, you've gotta be careful about how you do it - who are dealing with quite a complicated con. Sure, I'm not a fan of over-exposition and more a fan of subtlety. But American Hustle can't afford to be subtle. The plot has really got to give audiences something to latch on to, because the characters themselves are quite hard to reach because they're so over the top. And we have Jennifer Lawrence in it, which promises teens blinded by The Hunger Games to come in to the cinemas in gaggles, but we'll get to that later.

Films like Your Sister's Sister and the aforementioned Drinking Buddies work as improvised features because the characters are real, they can sit down and chat about real stuff, and they really don't have that much going on in their lives to explain to us. American Hustle has characters who are dealing with a lot more, yet they only seem to skim the surface of what they're doing. When Christian Bale commented on how with the improvisation, the film was likely to change a lot down the track, David O. Russell said "Christian, I hate plots. I am all about the characters, that's it." All well and good, if you're making a film like Silver Linings Playbook, which doesn't have an amazing plot but has a sufficient amount of charm from both the characters and the actors playing them. American Hustle needs a plot, though. And while the actors do a good enough job, are any of them ever more than caricatures? Not really.

Christian Bale is a balding, overweight con-man who does look a little overwhelmed by everything he's doing. He's the guy who propels most of the stuff that's going on in the plot, standing like a post and having everything bounce off him. Bale is immersed in his character, but I'm not sure if I ever found him interesting. Then you have Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence fighting over him, even though they both go off to get other boyfriends in the process. While Adams' Sydney is the great partner of Bale's Irving and does have a lot of fun pretending to be Lady Edith Greensly, at the end of the day, most of her problems revolved around the men in her life. Same with Lawrence's Rosalyn, who feels all alone and deserted and doesn't really serve much of a purpose to the plot in the grand scheme of things. Yes, all of this stuff does provide amusement by being familiar territory. But Sydney spends far too long crying over her relationship with Irving, at the expense of us really being aware of what the heck Robert De Niro is doing in the film (maybe I'm stupid, but I was genuinely stumped for quite a while there). Then you have Bradley Cooper as a crazy FBI guy who seems just a little bit too aggressive with his actions. Amusing, yes. Anything but a caricature? No. The only guy who has been outside of awards contention has been Jeremy Renner as general good guy Carmine Polito. He gets to have a lot less fun, but he's a bit more relateable than the skittish improvisation that comes with the rest.

The actors do quite a good job. Aided by whatever physical changes they were given, whether it be Bale's combover, Adams' exposure of her v-neck boobs, Cooper's perm or Lawrence's updo, you could tell that the actors were immersed in their caricatures (save for maybe Lawrence, who I felt like, most of the time, was just being herself - apart from in her bedroom scene with Bale, which was crazy good). But it is the kind of achievement, on their part, which would be better if the script helped us, the audience, know what they were doing and why they were doing it. At the end of the day, actors have their job: acting. Writers have their job: writing. If you can marry the two together, that's great. You give one side a bit too much creative leeway, you might run into issues. And that's the big issue I have with American Hustle: there's no balance, it is all just a big mess. Perhaps that's because it is every actor's dream to play big bombastic characters with big bombastic hair and big bombastic costumes. Apparently it is David O. Russell's dream to be Martin Scorsese, and to also have Jennifer Lawrence play a ditsy, sexpot housewife. I have nothing against these kinds of dreams, as you can do or be anything in cinema, but when it is strung together with Hollywood cliches - including a reductive happy ending which ties everything up, unlike the gritty, 'real world' ending of The Wolf of Wall Street - and is masquerading about with a thin veil of American history over it, it doesn't really make for the fascinating piece of cinema that it is supposed to be. In the end, though, another few days in the editing room, maybe a bit of recasting (Jennifer Lawrence, though she's good, just...wasn't Rosalyn), and god forbid, a script, would have made American Hustle the movie it was supposed to be, and definitely the movie deserving of 10 Oscar nominations.

But it does leave me to wonder, though - is improv the way of the future? I just couldn't imagine shooting a scene that hasn't been meticulously rehearsed, with heavy storyboarding and knowing exactly where thing are supposed to be and when they're supposed to happen. Perhaps that's because I've been trained for over-rehearsing stuff until I'm sick of it.

In American Hustle, Irving Rosenfeld points Richie DiMaso to a forged painting that everyone believes in real, and asks who the real master is: the painter or the forger. In a film that could be filled with allegories, this one particularly sticks out. Who is the real 'visionary' director: the one who can follow around his actors with whatever it is they do, or the one who meticulously plans everything out? Atonement would be a very different film if Joe Wright's actors were given free range. Drinking Buddies, with it's brilliant performances, particularly from Olivia Wilde, may have been a very different film if it had a script. Even though David O. Russell is all about his characters, American Hustle is not. Sometimes you can take one over the other, but other times you need both. American Hustle needed both the painter and the forger, because the forger, no matter how good, still leaves too many flaws.

(also, mega congrats to our Kiwi girl Lorde for her two Grammy awards today - to see a teenager with such amazing creativity from little old New Zealand do so well up against the big leagues is, well, for lack of a better term, the best thing ever. So incredibly proud, and definitely feeling inadequate as an 18 year old, haha)

So if you look on my Tumblr page, 95% of it is Leonardo DiCaprio. Mostly because of my undying obsession with The Wolf of Wall Street, but also because the gifs that the site comes up with to chronicle Leo's apparent struggle for an Oscar are quite funny. Here are a few of my favourites:

Yes, it is entertaining, but it is a little bit excessive (as most things are on Tumblr, particularly seen by Jennifer Lawrence's meteoric rise to Queen of Everything). Let's take some calm, practical steps to acknowledge why Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is merely Oscar-Nominated Actor Leonardo DiCaprio instead of Oscar-Winner Leonardo DiCaprio.

1. Back up the truck, he's only 39 years old.

Paul Newman was 62 when he won his first Oscar. Christopher Plummer was 82. Peter O'Toole never even got an Oscar. Sure, there's more to an actor's life than winning an Oscar, but then again it is kind of annoying when 22 year old Jennifer Lawrence has an Oscar. Maybe it seems like Leo has been struggling for so long when really, this has been a saga that's been going on for 20 years - not really that much time. I mean, Brad Pitt doesn't have an Oscar, why is no one complaining about that? Since Leo got nominated for What's Eating Gilbert Grape in 1993, he waited another 11 years to be nominated for The Aviator, following it up two years later with a nomination for Blood Diamond, and now, 7 years later, we have his nomination for The Wolf of Wall Street. We only have four chances here for him not to get the award, and to be honest, a lot of actors suffer through worse (and let's not even get started on Roger Deakins). Which leads me to my next point...

2. Breaking down why he didn't win in the years he was nominated.

1993 is one of the only real "wtf" years that Leo was involved in, since the other two years went to quite deserving candidates. But even then, the 1993 award shouldn't have gone to Leo. That year, Tommy Lee Jones won the award for The Fugitive, when in actuality, the award should have gone to Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List, which still remains as my favourite performance of all time (seriously, why does no one ever talk about how the hell Ralph Fiennes doesn't have an Oscar? That's the real Oscar travesty). I'd say that up until The Wolf of Wall Street, What's Eating Gilbert Grape is the performance I'd pick to give Leo the title of "Oscar Winner Leonardo DiCaprio" because, well, it was the role that made me fall in love with him. In 2005, he lost to Jamie Foxx's performance in Ray, which was a rather good performance, but it is kinda strange to think that Foxx has more Oscars than Leo. And in 2007, he lost to Forest Whitaker's performance in The Last King of Scotland, but to be honest, Leo should have been nominated for The Departed instead of Blood Diamond. So it really isn't like Leo was unlawfully ignored when he was in contention.

3. SNUBBED.

We all know that there's many performances out there that should have been nominated - or even won - that didn't make it to the final cut. We have Tom Hanks and Brie Larson this year, but let's not even start with that. Now, many people I know (in fact everyone I know) gets really shocked when they hear Leo wasn't nominated for Titanic. Which I don't quite understand, because that's far from his best performance, but then again, considering how many other nominations the film got, it was weird he missed out. So consider that exhibit A of "Leo vs. the Academy". And then what about when Leo didn't get nominated for The Departed? Sure, he had Blood Diamond as sort of a consolation prize, but The Departed is still one of his strongest works (plus, Mark Wahlberg got nominated for it and look at how terrible his filmography is now). Revolutionary Road is another one that sticks out, but that film had a curious case: Kate Winslet's category fraud saw her win the Golden Globe for Best Actress for Revolutionary Road and also Best Supporting Actress for The Reader. All of a sudden her performance in The Reader was considered as a leading role, and then Revolutionary Road was pushed out. The film still managed to get a nomination for Michael Shannon's brief performance, but Leo's snub for that hurts quite a bit. It definitely wasn't the Titanic reunion people were hoping for.

However, the snub of Leo's career that hurts the most was his omission from last year's Best Supporting Actor ballot for his performance in Django Unchained. On paper, it has everything that would make the Academy buzz: Leo checking Quentin Tarantino off his "Acclaimed Directors Bingo", playing completely against type...and they always love a villain. However, somehow Leo missed out on a nomination, with a nomination instead going to Christoph Waltz, who subsequently won. I have nothing against Christoph Waltz's performance (it is fantastic), but compared to Leo's performance, I just don't get how Leo wasn't nominated. For one thing, last year's supporting actor ballot was weak, and Leo easily topped them all, but also, how about that one scene where he cuts his hand and uses it to a terrifying extent? Sure, that's only one scene, but it proves that Leo is dedicated, and not just the pretty boy who can get bums on seats that many people touted he would be after the success of Titanic. His performance in Django Unchained never misses a beat: he's having fun, even though we're all terrified of him, and it is certainly the most different we've seen him. Of all the possible "Leo vs. the Academy" situations, the whole Django Unchained is the only one that doesn't make clear and perfect sense to me.

4. "He's Oscar baiting""Leo must really want that Oscar" etc...

Now this is an interesting one. When Django Unchained came out, everyone - myself included - were all like "oh wow, how good it is to see Leo loosen up and stop with those Oscar bait movies".

Then, if you really think about it, did we really go through an uninterrupted phase where all Leo did were Oscar movies? No. In fact, I truly think there's only one film that could be seen as an out and out Oscar bait project for Leo: J. Edgar. And boy, was that misguided. It has become a rule of thumb to immerse yourself in a real life character in order to be seen by the Academy. Which Leo did do, with ten tonnes of prosthetic makeup helping him chart each stage of J. Edgar Hoover's life, a thick accent, but unfortunately no script that did his dedication justice, instead making it look like a plea for attention from the Academy. Though it did get attention from both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild, Leo missed out on the Oscar nomination thanks to Gary Oldman getting his well overdue first nomination for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Which was for the best, because J. Edgar was genuinely terrible and it dragged Leo down with it.

But would we really say that outside of J. Edgar, Leo's been Oscar baiting? I wouldn't. His filmography is so strong that Oscar nominations or not, he certainly has one of the most impressive resumes in Hollywood. Sure, The Great Gatsby could have been Oscar bait if it was nominated in late 2012 like it was supposed to (and I genuinely do think his performance in that warrants some recognition, he is a perfect fit for the character). Yes, Django Unchained and The Wolf of Wall Street do signify a new turn for Leo, when we finally see him loosening up and not playing a whole bunch of characters that no matter how different, all fit under the same serious umbrella. If that makes it sound like Leo doesn't have a lot of range, just look at his filmography. He's seamlessly grown with his career (which is something that Jennifer Lawrence may have a few issues with), going from the young actor with a lot of promise, to the hottest movie star, to the serious actor, and now the guy who's trying a few wilder flavours to see where that gets him. And for that, yes, Leo does try his best. And that's enough for all of us.

5. The Wolf of Wall Street.

Leonardo's best performance to date, I think, is his performance as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Why? Because I've been watching a whole lot of interviews with the real Jordan Belfort, and I was surprised by how little difference there is between the real life Belfort and his movie counterpart. I've never really seen Leo as the Daniel Day-Lewis type, but his performance in Wolf is possibly his most immersive piece of work. Every speech, every Quaalude induced movement, every moment of disgusting debauchery is part of such a layered, masterful performance that sees Leo stretch his ability to have fun but still be totally in control. It is a beyond perfect performance. But where does that see Leo in terms of Oscar? It would seem like Matthew McConaughey is very much in control of the Oscar race right now, but here's some food for thought: Leo and Matty M will never be pitted against each other until Oscar night. At the Golden Globes, where they both won, Matty won for Drama, while Leo won for Comedy. Leo missed out on a SAG nod, likely because The Wolf of Wall Street came out so late (just as what happened to Christoph Waltz last year). Matty missed out on a BAFTA nod, because Dallas Buyers Club wasn't eligible, which could see Leo taking out that award. And then we have Oscar night. I know I'll probably end up disappointed come the time when Matthew McConaughey's name gets called out (and I'll be happy if that happens, because his career comeback has been the best thing ever), but I'm just saying that Leo poses a much bigger threat to the ceremony than people give him credit for.

Is it time to give him that Oscar? I'd be happy if he could get it now, because it would be so hard for him to top The Wolf of Wall Street until he starts going the full Daniel Day-Lewis in his 50's and plays every American president. And let's be honest here: his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street is easily the best of the year, because he plays up his own movie star persona to induce this terrifying portrayal of one of the most controversial, horrible people who can still walk around in a rich life freely. I'd give him the Oscar now. And if he loses, then we can really start making up conspiracy theories of why Leo doesn't have an Oscar yet.

Until then, Tumblr, continue making your gifsets of Jennifer Lawrence doing funny facials, just to blow her stardom even more out of proportion, because we all love that so much.

What do you think about Leo's career? Would you give him an Oscar yet?

I contemplated not writing anything on the sudden, shocking and sad passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman - because what more did I have to add? - but I truly don't think I've been hit so hard by a passing in the film community. I felt kind of stupid for crying as soon as I found out this morning, and then again as I saw the midday news, and then when I got to work and reached for our copy of Doubt, just seeing his name.

Simply put, Philip Seymour Hoffman was one of the greats. And he went far too soon.

I was looking back on his career and how long I've had his presence in my movie obsession, and I came to realise that he was there from the very start. Back when I was ten years old, one of my first initiations into the film industry was the 2006 Oscars. As I did with most of the things I was obsessed with, I made a poster on the Oscars for my class (for literally no reason). If you recall, this was the year that Hoffman won the award (and every other award) for Capote. I still, to this day, haven't seen Capote, but I remember doing a little bit of research into the guy, since he wasn't the type of 'actor' I was used to seeing around. I may not have watched any of his films at age 10 (that I can remember), but I made a mental note to one day follow his career.

Before I started high school, I distinctly remember watching both Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and Doubt, which helped to reinforce my developing taste in film, and my developing knowledge of what a great performance is. Throughout the years, as I was introduced to Paul Thomas Anderson films, and the awesomeness of Almost Famous, Philip Seymour Hoffman was always there, turning out great performance after great performance.

And perhaps that's what my eyes have been watering all day - especially as our new trailer disc has a trailer for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire on it, and I couldn't help but shed a few tears at the brief glimpse of him the trailer offers - Philip Seymour Hoffman was always one of the cinematic family. He was the one you could depend on to bring something different to the table, to make any film better by his presence. And he was the one that we all felt like we'd have around forever, adding his magic to films. Just the thought of the fact that he will no longer be gracing our screens, even though we all want to see so much more of him - it is unbearable.

Sometimes deaths offer hyperbolic statements, but no hyperbole could ever do Philip Seymour Hoffman justice. He was truly one of the greatest actors we ever had. And we were so lucky to have him be a part of our family.

Tomorrow is Waitangi Day - which, as you likely don't know, is a national public holiday in New Zealand to commemorate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (if you want to know more, attend any kind of school in NZ). So I thought, what better way to celebrate than tell you a few home truths about the country I've lived in for my entire life. Because you've always wanted to know more about New Zealand. I suppose.

1) Everyone knows someone who was in Lord of the Rings.

If you watch Lord of the Rings (as most NZers are required to do and required to like), then yes, you're essentially watching a nine hour long tourism video for our vast green landscape and mountains. And then you add in the nine hours of The Hobbit and wow, that's 18 hours of tourism endorsement from Peter Jackson. Seriously, it will take most of you 18 hours to fly here, so you may as well just spend that time watching Middle Earth because all you can really do here is make like a Hobbit and go walking around on mountains and stuff. But anyway, one of the coolest things is that in those 18 hours, literally everyone in NZ can go "hey, I know someone who worked on this". I know several jockeys who were a part of the big horse riding scenes. And just recently the guy who was used as a height scaler (because he is over two metres tall) for scenes where Gandalf and the Hobbits are together just moved into Dannevirke, and now he lives next door to my sister. I have him a membership at Blockbuster, and he is besties with Peter Jackson. Plus some guy from my high school did effects work on The Hobbit. So yeah.

2) If you're going to do anything in the film industry, you are going to be Peter Jackson.

I get this a lot, because this is currently a scene out of my life:

"So what are you off to do?"
"I'm going to Canterbury to study Cinema and English."
"Cinema? How do you study cinema?"
"I want to be a filmmaker one day *nervously laughs because it sounds so stupid and ambitious and crazy when I say that and people don't understand*"
"Oh my gosh! Like Peter Jackson?!"

I've had this exact conversation at work, at school, sober driving people at 12am, on the streets of Dannevirke, at cafes...if I had a dollar for every time someone said "you're going to be the next Peter Jackson!" to me then maybe I'd be able to afford university. I kinda want to be the next Jane Campion instead, but that's all good.

3) We don't all personally know Lorde, nor are we all related to her.

No, just because Lorde is a year younger than me and because New Zealand is apparently so small that we all know each other (4 million is not that small), does not mean that I'm best friends with her. I mean, I wish I was, just so I could sap some of her perfect writing skill, but no, I do not know Lorde. It is kinda funny though, because "Royals" came out around this time last year, and I thought it was sung by a 30 year old. And we were all kind of debating whether we liked the song for a while. Then we found out she was 16 and we all cried because how was a 16 year old more successful than all of us? So yeah, even though we all secretly hate her because she's doing so much better than all of us, we love her because her card once declined for Subway that was $8 and she does weird dancing on stage but she's literally the best thing that happened to NZ.

4) To be successful in the entertainment industry you have to be a child prodigy.

Okay so this is really only true in three cases but these guys have Oscars (and/or nominations) and Grammys to prove that talent is really only bestowed on young New Zealanders. Anna Paquin won an Oscar for her performance in The Piano when she was 11 years old, becoming the second youngest ever person to win an Oscar. Keisha Castle-Hughes was nominated for her performance in Whale Rider at age 13, which made her the youngest actress to be nominated in the Best Actress category until Quevenzhane Wallis showed up. And yeah, Lorde just won a couple of Grammys when she was 17. I also won Lammys and stuff when I was 15. Just don't grow up in NZ, because once you hit age 10 and realise you haven't won an Oscar it doesn't do good for your psyche.

5) Lord of the Rings isn't the only notable in the film industry.

We sure like pretending it is, but there are some cool people out there who hail from these shaky isles. Russell Crowe was born in Wellington (our capital) and moved to Auckland later, but now Australia have claimed him (though he did throw in a shout out for us in his Oscar acceptance speech for Gladiator). Andrew Niccol, the guy who wrote and directed Gattaca (and The Host but we like to forget about that) and was nominated for an Oscar for The Truman Show comes from Paraparaumu, which is just up the road from Wellington. Richard Curtis, writer of all your favourite romantic comedies, was born in Wellington to Australian parents, and was once Head Boy (see, I'm part of a legacy). Andrew Adamson, who directed Shrek, was born in Auckland. Martin Campbell, who directed Casino Royale, was born in Hastings, which is just up the road from Dannevirke and where I'd often go to the horse races. Zoe Bell, who you could probably tell with that accent in Death Proof, was born in Waiheke Island, which is around Auckland. Melanie Lynskey, best known for Heavenly Creatures but also for being bloody Aunt Helen in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, was born in New Plymouth. Karl Urban, who was in Star Trek and the majorly underrated Dredd, was born in Wellington. And Bret McKenzie, who wrote my favourite shower song "Man or Muppet" for The Muppets is the son of Peter McKenzie (who was also in Lord of the Rings), who used to train racehorses and was friends with my father. So yeah, it is a small group, but we do have a bit more to offer than nice looking landscape.

6) Don't associate us with Australia, they're always trying to claim our shit.

Okay, while I'd love to claim stuff like Margot Robbie, Baz Luhrmann, Elizabeth Debicki, Cate Blanchett etc, we as New Zealanders play fair. However, Australia is always stealing out shit. For one thing, don't confuse our accents. Ours are softer and kind of nice to listen to if you like listening to irritating accents. For another thing, there was once this horse named "Phar Lap" back in the 1920s/30s - if you ever need to know anything on this horse, I know everything - who, while trained in Australia, was born in Timaru (down the road from Christchurch) so technically is from New Zealand. There's this dessert called the "Pavlova", named after ballerina Anna Pavlova, which was invented in New Zealand, but because it tastes decent, Australia wants to claim it to. But hey, at least we don't say "sex" when we're trying to say "six", Australians.

Sorry if you're Australian. I like Australia a great deal. And half of New Zealand moves to Australia every year so all good.

7) We have no native mammals, just native birds.

So here's something interesting if you're into biology (which apparently I am, because I got top marks on a biology exam question). When Gondwanaland broke up and we were left with the Zealandia continent, most of what is now New Zealand was underwater so mammals, you know, had a hard time living on that. Anyway, New Zealand surfaced and there was a lot of plant life (and I mean a lot, where I live now used to be known as the 90-mile bush), and then birds flew here, interbred, and we got lots of native birds that included Moa and Kiwi. Because there were no predators at the time, many birds filled a vast range of ecological niches, including the ground floor, which was handy for the Kiwi since they were flightless. When NZ became populated with humans (we were one of the last land masses to do so), those humans brought mustelids such as stoats, ferrets and possums, which killed the easily targeted Kiwi and have left them on the brink of extinction. If you ever do come to New Zealand, make sure you go to Mount Bruce, which is a couple hours from Wellington, because they have a white Kiwi named Manukura, and seeing it will actually change your life.

8) This isn't the best place to come if you're scared of earthquakes.

This picture was taken just after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake...terrifying stuff.

Because of the many faultlines that run through New Zealand, we are otherwise known as the "shaky isles". There's a faultline that pretty much runs parallel to where I live. I'd say that aside from snakes, earthquakes are my greatest fear on Earth. Which is great, because I'm moving to Christchurch in a week, which, as many of you know, was devastated by two earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 (from a faultline no one knew existed), and the aftershocks there still continue. But that's okay - when I first went there in early 2010, I fell in love with the place, and even though the earthquakes temporarily put me off, it is actually the best place in New Zealand, because it is the only place where things are changing and are different. If you go on Geonet, you can see that there's an earthquake somewhere every few hours, with the most recent big one being around 30kms from where I live and resulted in me turning into The Wolf of Wall Street in front of customers at work and swearing often. They're not fun things.

9) Just some pictures to make yo' all jealous that you don't live in Middle Earth/the middle of nowhere.

The Southern Alps. I can't wait to fly back and forth between home and Christchurch in the winter to see these babies covered in snow.

Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland in Rotorua. It really stinks here (like all of Rotorua smells like rotten eggs) but some of thermal stuff is crazy.

Abel Tasman National Park in the South Island, where most people from my high school go for camps when they're Year 10. It is literally heaven on Earth.

10) New Zealand humour is actually the best.

More specifically, Jono and Ben at Ten humour is actually the best. It makes me sad that not everywhere in the world gets to see this program. Here's some of my favourite videos from it:

And here's a couple for all us movie people (like you are all legally required to watch these):

So yeah, that's NZ in a nutshell, both filmic and not. Anything else you could possibly need to know? Like what our Prime Minister John Key is really like from that ten seconds of meeting and photo time I once got from him? Or how there's enough sheep in New Zealand for every single person to have 12 sheep each? We're a treasure trove of fun facts!

Can you believe it is almost a week until the Oscars? Even though I've been howling about Leonardo DiCaprio for what feels like months, we're just around the corner from seeing if he can seal the deal with Oscar. Which would, of course, be amazing. Like many blogs around here, it is going to be all about the Oscars for the next few days - so do grin and bear it. However, I have a guest post on here from Morgan Gray, who shares her tips on what makes an Oscar party awesome. Really makes me want to throw one myself! So here you go -

My friends and I trade around who gets to host, and this year it's my turn—and I couldn't be more excited! I have a lot of ideas to make for a great party.

Food and Beverages
When it comes to the food and drinks—one of the major parts of any party, especially an Oscars party—I like to put in a lot of effort and run with a theme. For example, last year when Silver Linings Playbook was up for awards, I made mini Philly cheese steak sandwiches to bring to my friend’s potluck party. This year, I'm going to make Nebraska the theme, so I'll be making hors d'oeuvres like cornbread, mini chicken-fried steaks, and mashed potatoes and corn in Mid-West style.

The beverages are also key. This is another great place to make a theme run, but this year, I want to give my guests a lot of options. Thus, what I've decided to do is put together a bar they can run themselves and make their own drinks! I came across this fun infographic from RedEnvelope and it’s a good starting place. The drink of choice this year is the San Francisco Cocktail for Blue Jasmine (I'm a sucker for anything Woody Allen), but I also found a list of “classic Oscars drinks.” I'll ask people to bring a bottle or two of alcohol to make it fair for everyone, less expensive for me, and fun to let people take what they want home afterward!

Décor
I absolutely love dec-ing out my place for any party, but the Oscars give us a chance to go full-out. To make my guests feel extra-special, I'm going to make up some Hollywood Stars for them with their names on them and hang them around (I'm bracing myself in advance for the selfies). I'll also cut out the Hollywood sign from white paper and paste it on a black sheet with lots of star confetti to add a glimmering effect. The tablecloths will all be glittery black, with white- and gold-colored plates and plasticware to make everything look especially classic and clean-cut.

Since I'm having friends with children come this year, I've decided not to do a red carpet because I don't want the kids tripping on it. So what I've decided to do instead—and I've given myself a pre-emptive pat on the back for this—is bake a large batch of red velvet cupcakes instead! Why buy a cheap streamer-like carpet from the party store when you can make tasty treats that everyone will enjoy so much more?

Costumes
What we've done in years past is have the traditional Oscars ballots, where everyone votes for the films they think will win different awards. This has always done well (the winner normally gets a nice bottle of wine or a small cake), but I've decided to take it one step further this year. We're going to have a costume party! Having the children come is what inspired this idea, but then I figured—why wouldn't my friends want to dress up too? I'm going to ask that my guests come dressed in some fashion for their choice of Best Picture (my friend Dave is going to dress as Christian Bale's character from American Hustle) and that can count as extra points in the ballot race. I think this one will work very well this year!

Throwing a party can be stressful for sure, especially when there's pressure to keep up with the great parties in the past. However, with some tried-and-true tricks, some new ideas to keep things fresh, and a lot of black cloth and glitter, you can be sure to have a great Oscars party!

Do you have any ideas for an Oscar themed party? Leave a comment and with all these ideas, someone could have the best Oscar party ever!

This is the long-awaited final entry into my series about money, and also my entry into Encore's World of TV and Film's blogathon "Motifs in Cinema", where I've obviously chosen the "Economics and Money" motif. Here's a little more info here: Motifs in Cinema is a discourse across film blogs, assessing the way in which various thematic elements have been used in the 2013 cinematic landscape. How does a common theme vary in use from a comedy to a drama? Are filmmakers working from a similar canvas when they assess the issue of death or the dynamics of revenge? Like most things, a film begins with an idea – Motifs in Cinema assesses how various themes emanating from a single idea change when utilized by varying artists.

Also in the series about money: We Might Be Hollow, But We're Brave: Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring(young girls and money) and Baby, You're a Rich Man: The Wolf of Wall Street and Pain & Gain(men and money). And for those wondering why I haven't/am not going to cover The Great Gatsby in this 'series', unbelievably I've had enough of ~~incessantly making a case for~~ talking about it and that's all about old money and stuff so yeah. There's a bit of spoilerage here for Side Effects, but y'all should have seen it by now.

I'm a big "past" person - always looking back at things and internally crying that they are no more. Alas, I don't think I have such a problem with the past as Jasmine French does in Blue Jasmine and Emily Taylor in Side Effects. Why? They used to have money. And they miss it now it's gone.

"Imagine everything you ever wanted shows up one day and calls itself your life. And then just when you start to believe in it - gone. And suddenly it gets very hard to imagine a future. That's depression, right?"

Who knows if Emily Taylor came from a place of wealth before she met her husband, Martin, who gave her all of the riches she needed. But once it's all gone, she isn't terribly interested in reverting back to a life without wealth. No, she doesn't go off and rob celebrity houses or hook up with a guy with cornbraids and shorts in every colour. Instead, we have the rather intricate and complicated plot of Side Effects, which takes a sharp turn three quarters of the way through the film and gives us a twist which was pretty unexpected. Let's just say, it is an elaborate twist, which involves faking depression to the extent of being put in a home, driving stock prices and a lesbian relationship between Rooney Mara and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Let's just say, Emily really wanted her money back. She even killed her husband (who lost the money for her) just to do it. Yes, that's crazy. But the crazy thing is that she's doing it for revenge. While Martin isn't offered a lot of screentime, you can see that he's trying to make the effort to get the money back, and they're living a pretty comfortable life together. Emily, however, seems bent on getting revenge on her husband for making her life miserable and moneyless for a couple of years. Not a long time in the grand scheme of things, but it shows where her loyalties lie: it's all about the money, who even cares about the husband who got all the money for her in the first place?

In Blue Jasmine, however, we have Jasmine French, who was introduced to an extravagant and opulent life by her husband, who in turn was arrested for ripping off a whole lot of people and hung himself in prison. Jasmine lost everything - but it was her own doing. Serious mental issues aside, Jasmine will do anything to get her old life back, which she thinks will happen if she goes back to school to study Anthropology. However, as all of us students know, that study life isn't cheap so instead she decides to become an interior designer by learning how to on the internet - but she needs to learn how to use a computer first. To stay afloat, she works as a receptionist for a dentist. Which is all very well and good, because she's taking a more practical approach towards getting her money back than Emily Taylor, but what I find most interesting about Jasmine's approach is that she still looks like she has money - taking every opportunity to stand out in her designer clothes and to point out that her luggage is indeed Louis Vuitton. And that's the way she defines herself. She doesn't have any applicable real world skills that would allow her to make her own money, but she has her clothes to give off the appearance that she's highly successful and elite, which is just where she wants to be.

Blue Jasmine and Side Effects are both about how money can manipulate. Blue Jasmine is more about how money can manipulate consumerism, and how it is way cooler to have expensive labels to adorn you than actually be a good person. And Side Effects shows you how a person can be so manipulated by having money and then losing it, and the power of manipulation to get it back. Jasmine and Emily aren't particularly taken by the idea of actually earning their money, but instead manipulating everyone around them to get it. Side Effects definitely had the extreme way of going about it - but it is joining the leagues of films from 2013 that showed that money isn't always a good idea.

Of course, it isn't a new idea, and yeah, it's sometimes a bit hard to swallow when the people who make these cautionary tales have their fair share of money (but in saying that, they worked hard to earn that). It's hard to ignore that 2013 has been the year of the construction and deconstruction of the American Dream. The year of the "money doesn't make you a good person". The year where money, consumerism, materialism, excess and debauchery were put under the spotlight, in several completely unique ways. We have The Bling Ring and Spring Breakers giving us teenage fantasies of money, with The Bling Ring focusing on the celebrity obsessed culture that enraptures teenagers, and Spring Breakers showing teenagers who are chewed up and spat out by the American Dream which comes in the form of the maniacal Alien, who introduces the girls to the violent side of getting what you want. This is also explored in Pain and Gain, one of the more underrated films of this wave, which was mostly about the violence and how movie culture influences what people do to get money ("I've watched a lot of movies Paul, I know what I'm doing!"). The Wolf of Wall Street, which is probably the King of these movies, perhaps served us the biggest cautionary tale of all: how Jordan set up his wealth at the expense of others, and the ensuing controversy on whether or not the film glamorises the corruption and debauchery. I could go into book-length detail on what a test on society that film is, but it's hard to deny what a terrifying symbol Jordan Belfort is for our generation. And then we have Blue Jasmine and Side Effects both exploring what happens on the other side of money - one in a modern Hitchcockian thriller kind of way, and the other in a Woody Allen way.

But if there's one thing these films have in common, it's that they're fuelled by this appearance driven society, where success isn't measured by who you are and what you do, but by who you appear to be. And every single one of them has characters that believes that success is money, and appear as heroes because of the money they have. Lately, I've been to a few leadership conferences where they say that success is achieved by doing what makes you happy. And in the purest form, that's what it is. But it is getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that now, in 2014, success is measured by money. These films all try to show disdain for this notion, but they're all signs of the time.

On the bright side, though, for any of you people who don't think that cinema is offering us anything that'll be particularly memorable in a few years - I can see this little movement of 2013 films being studied in a few years...

Forgive me if this year's awards nerdism has been a little slight compared to previous years. Normally I'd attribute this to not being able to watch most of the films before the Oscars, but since I finally moved to a place that has three multiplexes and three other smaller cinemas, I have no excuse (except in the case of Nebraska, which is only playing in Auckland and Wellington so I won't see that until DVD time). And unlike the past couple of years, I've been much more into this year's awards season because I think there's a few races that remain wide open - even the bigger categories (I still have my prayer circle for Leo going, just tweet out something with #prayercircleforleo and we can make a movement). So yeah, as per usual, I'll roll out my 55% informed predictions, but I don't have the usual pictures to go with them (like Smiling Silva, 'Overjoyed' David and Loopy Looper) because I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered figuring out three photos for them. Instead, I have colours, because that's totally original. To add to the originality, they're traffic light colours, and here's how they work:

Red - The longshot, the outsider who pretty much won't be getting their name called out.
Orange - The real prediction, the one who will probably get their name called out.
Green - Who I really want to win.

Tonight, I'll be looking at the Sound categories (Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, Best Achievement in Sound Editing, Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures - Original Song, and Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures - Original Score) and the Design categories (Best Achievement in Production Design, Best Achievement in Make-Up and Hairstyling, Best Achievement in Costume Design). As we get through the predictions, I promise there'll be some of my famous prediction poetry. Because I'm secretly Shakespeare.

Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

Captain Phillips / Gravity / The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug / Inside Llewyn Davis / Lone Survivor

I'm not sure about anyone else, but did anyone kinda forget that Lone Survivor was a thing? It comes out in NZ today, and I was genuinely surprised at when the trailer popped up before a couple of movies I went to go and see. It was strange to see it pushed so much for awards contention, considering it looks like just another Mark Wahlberg film, and well, it came out on the other side worse off, and has it's place in the two sound categories. Will it win big? Unlikely. This is definitely going all to Gravity, because the sound in that is INSANE. It is probably in my top three aspects of that film (there's a long, long list of stuff I love about that film). Just as a side note: isn't it sad how little love Inside Llewyn Davis got? I just saw it yesterday and while I wasn't taken by the whole film, it was impeccably made and Oscar Isaac gave a perfect performance (then again, the acting category was so packed this year).

Best Achievement in Sound Editing

All is Lost / Captain Phillips / Gravity / The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug / Lone Survivor

All Gravity. And just putting The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug as the longshot because I can't wait to hear on the news after the Oscars that The Hobbit didn't win any Oscars. They even did that for the bloody Baftas. Only one more year, one more year.

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures - Original Song

~~"Alone Yet Not Alone" -~~ ~~Alone Yet Not Alone~~ / "Happy" - Despicable Me 2 / "Let It Go" - Frozen / "Ordinary Love" - Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom / "The Moon Song"- Her

Yes, I did just put Alone Yet Not Alone as the longshot because the rest of the songs are so close together, it is hard to pick a longshot. So let's just have a moment of silence for the rescinded nominee, who's song was actually terrible, and the movie looks equally terrible, and which should have been replaced by a song from The Great Gatsby (ANY ONE OF THEM WOULD HAVE DONE FINE THANK YOU). Alas, this is a pretty tough race, and I'm going with Frozen to take the award, even though any one of them could take it. And even though Happy has been played on the radio here a ridiculous amount of times, I'd be, um, happy if that wins.

But for the last time, let's tell a few Alone Yet Not Alone funnies:
-Nominated Yet Not Nominated
-Weirdest Possible Oscar Performance Ever Yet Not Weirdest Possible Oscar Performance Ever
-"Friendly Campaigning" Yet Not Friendly Campaigning
-"Distributed" Yet Not Distributed
-etc etc etc

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures - Original Score

John Williams - The Book Thief / Steven Price - Gravity / William Butler, Andy Koyama - Her / Thomas Newman - Saving Mr. Banks / Alexandre Desplat - Philomena

Seems to be many of the usual suspects here. Like, John Williams could just hit a single piano key and then he'd have a nomination. However, I'd say he's the long shot here, and first time nominee Steven Price will probably get the award for his brilliant scoring of Gravity. Because Gravity will probably win all of the awards, y'all.

Best Achievement in Production Design

12 Years a Slave / American Hustle / Gravity / The Great Gatsby / Her

Let's just call this the section where The Great Gatsby wins all the awards because Elizabeth Debicki still deserved a supporting nod and if The Wolf of Wall Street wasn't so brilliant, Leo would be flying the Gatsby flag too. But yes, I've accepted the fact that I'm one of a small minority who thinks Baz Luhrmann and his Gatsby are the best, so I'm excited to campaign the shit out of it being nominated for a few awards. And it'll probably win. Why? Because for the 50 millionth time, Gatsby is awesome.

Best Achievement in Make-Up and Hairstyling

Dallas Buyers Club / Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa / The Lone Ranger

This category kind of confuses me, but I'd say that Dallas Buyers Club because it has the rest of it's big nominations behind it and Jared Leto's make-up in particular was quite good. But yeah, it is really anyone's game. I wouldn't be surprised if Bad Grandpa won, but then again, it would be weird if Bad Grandpa was an Oscar winner, y'know?

Best Achievement in Costume Design

12 Years a Slave / American Hustle / The Great Gatsby / The Grandmaster / The Invisible Woman

Yeeeeeeah, some more Gatsby love for me to campaign the shit out of. But the costumes were actually amazing, weren't they? Especially that dress that Daisy wears to Gatsby's party that is made from crystals, and everything that Jordan wears, and Gatsby's pink suit...ugh, they're all so pretty. I'd say that Gatsby does have the most expansive and exciting costume set out of them all, but they may just give American Hustle a bit of love here (but I'm banking on American Hustle being completely shut out, just to spite David O. Russell).

So there's tonight's set! Tomorrow I'll look at all the "Bests" categories (Animated, Foreign...) and the "Visuals". Who do you think will win big in these categories?

I won't go into a whole lot of detail, but tonight I'll be predicting the winners for the 'visual' awards (Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Editing and Best Achievement in Visual Effects), the 'bests' awards (Best Animated Feature Film of the Year, Best Foreign Language Film of the Year and Best Documentary, Feature) and the writing awards (Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published). Remember: Red = the longshot, Orange = the predicted winner, Green = who I want to win.

Best Achievement in Cinematography

Emmanuel Lubezki - Gravity / Bruno Delbonnel - Inside Llewyn Davis / Phedon Papamichael - Nebraska / Roger Deakins - Prisoners / Phillipe Le Sourd - The Grandmaster

Remember that time when Emmanuel Lubezki didn't win best cinematographer for The Tree of Life? Does anyone remember that travesty? The Academy has a lot of atoning to do, and I can definitely see them righting their wrongs this year by giving him the award for his brilliant, transcendent work in Gravity. I still haven't seen Prisoners but maaaaan, Roger Deakins must be getting fairly annoyed with all these nominations he's getting without actually winning. I still can't believe he lost for Skyfall, but, well, this looks like another year that he'll go empty handed.

Best Achievement in Editing

12 Years a Slave / American Hustle / Captain Phillips / Dallas Buyers Club / Gravity

Finally! A category that I can fully comment on because I've actually seen all of these movies! And it is an interesting category indeed. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in the editing of 12 Years a Slave, particularly at the start where we had all of those fade in/fade out splicing together of scenes...it just didn't feel very Steve McQueen at all. But that's about the only thing I didn't like about that film. Editing American Hustle would have been a tough job considering all of the improv that came into play but yeah, wasn't very taken by it. Dallas Buyers Club is a rather odd choice to have in this category - particularly over the brilliant editing of The Wolf of Wall Street - but if that floats anyone's boat, then that's okay. I'd say that this is very much a race between Captain Phillips and Gravity, both of which have brilliant editing. I'm more inclined to give the edge to Gravity, since I'm 98% sure that the Oscars will be a Gravity sort of night.

Best Achievement in Visual Effects

Gravity / The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug / Iron Man 3 / The Lone Ranger / Star Trek Into Darkness

Again, I can't wait to see the news crying over how The Hobbit won't be winning this award. This is the one they'll be most upset about, too. But this is all Gravity's.

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year

The Croods / Despicable Me 2 / Ernest & Celestine / Frozen / The Wind Rises

Usually I'm well versed in this category, considering they're the only ones that actually come out before the Oscars happen, but I haven't seen any of them. I considered getting out The Croods and Despicable Me 2 several times but I just...didn't. And I'm like, the only person ever who hasn't seen Frozen. So yeah, I can't offer up anything worthy about these films, but I do hope that Frozen wins because yay for girl power and all that stuff.

Best Foreign Language Feature Film of the Year

The Broken Circle Breakdown / The Missing Picture / The Hunt / The Great Beauty / Omar

I've only seen The Hunt, which is probably my favourite foreign language film of 2013 (with Blue is the Warmest Colour and The Past close behind), so I'm campaigning for this all the way. I do think that it could pull through with a win, but The Great Beauty seems to have this all locked in...even if I haven't actually heard of anyone who liked it...

Best Documentary, Feature

The Act of Killing / Cutie and the Boxer / Dirty Wars / The Square / 20 Feet From Stardom

My documentary watching has been really down this year, and my favourite (and also one of my favourite's of the year), Stories We Tell, was not nominated. So I don't have any preferences here, but I could see this being very much a race between The Act of Killing and 20 Feet From Stardom.

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell - American Hustle / Woody Allen - Blue Jasmine / Spike Jonze - Her / Bob Nelson - Nebraska / Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack - Dallas Buyers Club

I can see American Hustle winning for it's non existent script but I'm going to keep an open mind and say that it isn't going to do that. I still haven't seen Her (tomorrow! tomorrow!), though I'd really like to see that win, if only because Spike Jonze is adorable and his speech would be equally adorable. After recent events, I definitely can't see Blue Jasmine winning, even if it does have the best screenplay of the pack. Dallas Buyers Club is a bit of an outside and Nebraska will likely go home empty handed.

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke - Before Midnight / Billy Ray - Captain Phillips / John Ridley - 12 Years a Slave / Terence Winter - The Wolf of Wall Street / Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope - Philomena

Gaaaaaaah, this is probably the toughest race we have at the Oscars. Out of all of them, I'd definitely say that Before Midnight has the best screenplay of all, but considering that this is the only nomination it has (how?!), it might be a little tough to see it win. Captain Phillips won the WGA, so that gives it a wee bit of an edge. If 12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture, it could get a little bit of a boost here, because the Oscar loves the completist party. The Wolf of Wall Street hasn't gained an awful lot of traction for it's screenplay, but then again, it does have a pretty awesome and definitely extensive screenplay that makes sure it isn't an outsider. Philomena got the BAFTA, which, judging by the craziness of this year's victors at that awards ceremony, that could mean absolutely nothing. However, I do have a sneaking feeling that Philomena could come out on top. The screenplay itself is fantastic, and I don't think the Academy will be able to resist this British delight, because they never can. A bit of a risky prediction, but this is seriously anyone's game.

Phew - that was a big list. Tomorrow will be dedicated to the actors and the directors (#prayercircleforleo), and then the day after I'll be ranking the Best Picture nominees. We're almost there! Anyway, who do you think will come out as winners in these categories? Particularly the adapted screenplay race? Let me know in the comments!

Well lookie here, I'm back to my world famous (okay, maybe not), fantastic prediction poetry that everyone loves. I am not a poet, nor do I have any intentions of becoming one, but normal predictions do bore me a little bit and spinning a rhyme is one of my favourite things to do. It is dry stuff, but hopefully you find some joy in it...

Best Achievement in Directing

Alfonso Cuaron - Gravity / Steve McQueen - 12 Years a Slave / David O. Russell - American Hustle / Martin Scorsese - The Wolf of Wall Street / Alexander Payne - Nebraska

Without Paul Greengrass it's not really the same,
Especially as his place went to Alexander Payne,
Remember that film The Descendants with the Cloon?
I think everyone forgot that pretty soon,
Nebraska's chances here are pretty grey
(yeah, thinking of that joke took me all day)
Since this time the Cloon is out in space,
And Alfonso Cuaron is likely to win this race,
Meaning there could be a Pic/Director split,
But I don't think Steve McQueen will quit,
It's great to see him getting notice for 12 Years a Slave,
Even if I'm pretending it's really for Shame,
And then there's Oscar favourite David O. Russell,
Getting his third nomination for American Hustle,
Which is great for making an easy rhyme,
But I didn't find the movie to be a good time,
Yet, my loyalties lie with The Wolf of Wall Street,
With Martin Scorsese's direction being no mean feat,
Because his direction is terrifyingly fun,
And better than anyone else could do at 71.

All I can say is that I want Alfonso Cuaron to win because Gravity is easily the best directed film of the decade, but then I want Steve McQueen to win because 12 Years a Slave makes the third out of three movies of his that got 5/5 from me. But I also want Martin Scorsese to win because his direction of The Wolf of Wall Street is so amazing because he is taking the piss out of so much and it is beautiful. And yeah, I haven't seen Nebraska so I can't comment on Alexander Payne and well...not a fan of either David O. Russell or American Hustle. Apart from the fact that they rhyme. Whenever I say "American Hustle by David O. Russell" I automatically feel like putting my hood up, getting out my grills and corn rows and start an underground rap career.

At least I took something away from that movie...

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Sally Hawkins - Blue Jasmine / Julia Roberts - August: Osage County / Lupita Nyong'o - 12 Years a Slave / Jennifer Lawrence - American Hustle / June Squibb - Nebraska

Remember when Jennifer Lawrence fell up the stairs?
Let's hope that doesn't happen for a second year,
J-Law seems to be a bit of a chance,
Even if her performance is a bit of a farce,
But all hopes are pinned on Lupita Nyong'o,
Who is absolute perfection in her first screen go,
There's also Hawkins, Roberts and Squibb,
Who won't be the ones whom the Academy give,
Still, the race is neck and neck,
And Nyong'o is probably the smartest bet.

Well...all I can hope is that Jennifer Lawrence doesn't prematurely win another Oscar. I'm still not over her winning last year for Silver Linings Playbook (again, I love the movie, but I didn't love her performance at all), and I can honestly say that she was my least favourite performer out of the big five in American Hustle. However, it definitely does look as if she remains a 50% chance to take this award, with Lupita Nyong'o being the other 50%. And I just hope more than anything that Lupita does win, because her speech will be absolutely beautiful and I'm still emotionally scarred by her performance in 12 Years a Slave.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

Barkhad Abdi - Captain Phillips / Bradley Cooper - American Hustle / Jonah Hill - The Wolf of Wall Street / Michael Fassbender - 12 Years a Slave / Jared Leto - Dallas Buyers Club

Jared Leto seems to have this race all but won,
But let's pretend there's a little surprising fun,
Even though it's not for the amazing Shame,
It's great to see the Fass finally getting Oscar fame,
Bradley Cooper has nomination number two,
For being my favourite of the Hustle crew,
Jonah Hill's also back for a second round,
How weird does that sentence sound?
Even cooler is the guy who's the captain now,
Barkhad Abdi's screen debut sure does wow,
With a BAFTA in his hand he could surprise,
But the winner will be Jared Leto in disguise.

Yeah, Jared Leto is almost definitely going to win this one. Which is absolutely fine, because it is great to have him back on our screens and he's a wonderful Rayon. However, there is every possibility that Barkhad Abdi could be the captain now with this one, since people can't resist the story behind his sudden rise to fame and how wonderful his performance is. I may just be speaking as someone who loves Abdi dearly, but if there's anyone who can contend with Leto, it is him. This category is crazy good, though, with Jonah Hill being my second favourite thing about The Wolf of Wall Street, Bradley Cooper being my favourite thing about American Hustle and Michael Fassbender being my favourite thing about life. Actually - in my English lecture yesterday, we were talking about slavery and the lecturer brought up 12 Years a Slave and then all of a sudden he said "who loves the Fass?" Seriously, Canterbury is my favourite place.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Amy Adams - American Hustle / Cate Blanchett - Blue Jasmine / Sandra Bullock - Gravity / Judi Dench - Philomena / Meryl Streep - August: Osage County

Amy Adams gets her first nom for being a lead,
And it's nomination number 18 for Meryl Streep,
Everyone has won before,
Apart from Adams who has missed out x4,
This doesn't seem to be her year,
For no-one seems to compare,
To the brilliant work by Queen Cate,
Who makes a Jasmine to love and hate,
While she's impossible to beat,
Sandra Bullock's Gravity performance has some heat,
Judi Dench is an outside bet,
Considering all the love the Brits usually get.

There's no way that Cate Blanchett won't be winning this. Which is perfect, because she'll be accepting the award off Daniel Day-Lewis and it'll probably become one of my top five Oscar moments because both of them are flawless royals of cinema. I'm probably more excited about Daniel Day-Lewis presenting this award than I am Cate Blanchett winning it (because God knows when we'll ever see the guy again), but seriously, Cate will become one of the most deserving actress winners ever. She is perfect in that film.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Christian Bale - American Hustle / Bruce Dern - Nebraska / Leonardo DiCaprio - The Wolf of Wall Street / Chiwetel Ejiofor - 12 Years a Slave / Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club

Sorry, I can't put this category into poetry. It is hard enough doing a prediction for it. But here's how I think this'll go down:
-Christian Bale has absolutely no chance because he is where Tom Hanks should have been.
-Bruce Dern could easily go in for the upset but no one has really been talking up Nebraska, but maybe I'm just turning a deaf ear because I haven't seen the film.
-Matthew McConaughey is currently the favourite and that's good because the McConnaissance is my favourite thing to be living through and I like to imagine this is all for Killer Joe. But I just don't believe he can win yet.
-Chiwetel Ejiofor, however, I can see winning. I've actually laid awake thinking about him winning for several nights in a row. I think he can just pull it out of the hat.
-Buuuuuuut there's Leonardo DiCaprio. Who I still believe has every chance of winning. I know that it is hopeful and maybe a little delusional, but can people ignore that this is his best performance ever? Everyone is saying so. And I feel like I just have to predict him as the winner. Because his performance is my favouite of the year by far. And I just want to see him win for this performance.

This category is tearing my soul apart. SO MANY DIVIDED LOYALTIES. But yeah, I'm predicting Leonardo. Haters gon' hate. Can't be tamed. Never learn. Yolo. All that stuff.

"When life gives you lemmons, turn it into an Oscar."

Anyway, what do you think about these categories? Who do you think will come out on top? Anyone have as much faith in Leo as me?

I think I've done pretty well this Oscar season, seeing all but one Best Picture nominee - Nebraska - before Oscar time. And I must say, the quality has been high. Not 2010-2011 Oscar season level high, but pretty close to it. So here's my ranking of all of the films I've seen that are nominated:

8. American Hustle, Dir. David O. Russell
To be honest, American Hustle is probably the only Oscar nominee from this year that I didn't really like - it's skating someone in between a 2.5/5 and a 3/5. I just couldn't stand the sprawling nature of it and how the improvisation was so indulgent and distracting. Otherwise, it was fun enough and offered a few interesting insights, and had some stellar performances from Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper. There were parts of it that were great, and some not so great parts...it was a mixed bag that I struggle to understand how so many people loved it, but hey, everyone seems to love David O. Russell so that's cool. I do think that it'll end up going home without an Oscar to it's name, though.

7. Dallas Buyers Club, Dir. Jean-Marc Vallee
Now here's a film that would be nothing without the dedicated performances from Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto. It tells a fairly basic story in a fairly basic way (and yes, it could fall into that dreaded 'Oscar bait' territory) but it manages to be touching, relevant and actually worthy of the gold bestowed upon it because of the two central performances. I wouldn't say that it is particularly memorable and will have a loud, proud place on the hall of fame, but since it's here right now, it is worth celebrating a little bit.

6. Philomena, Dir. Stephen Frears
This seems to be the dark horse to the awards, since it just showed up and it's just there. In fact, I wasn't even sure that I wanted to make the trip to the cinema to see it, but I'm glad I did. I'm also glad that Stephen Frears is back in the fray, because his last few films - Cheri, Tamara Drewe and Lay the Favourite - slipped under the radar even before they came out. Philomena is a devastating little film, which shows film-making and it's most plain but most able to tell a good story. Which I think is an achievement in itself, because good, simple storytelling is often overlooked for so many other aspects. Oh and yeah, I cried throughout the entire thing.

5. Captain Phillips, Dir. Paul Greengrass
I'm still not at all over this film. I found the clip of Tom Hanks' final scene in this film and it is still as emotionally scarring as it was the first time I watched it. To say that the entire film hinges on that one scene wouldn't be a compliment to the rest of the film, but that final scene is probably the best acting I've ever seen on film. However, the rest of the film is so intense and expertly made, that it brings true meaning to cinema being an experience. Plus, there's the incredible debut from Barkhad Abdi, who has justly been earning his share of accolades. And it's also great how unpatriotic this film is. Had it been in the hands of anyone else other than Paul Greengrass, this film could have been a two hour lovefest towards America, the land of the brave.

4. Her, Dir. Spike Jonze
I only saw this yesterday but it already has a special place in my heart. Probably because it made me happy and depressed in equal measure. Is it a sweet film? Yes. But is it a sign of worrying times? Yes. It manages to be so many things at once, much like Samantha herself. It's really difficult to sum up this film, other than to say that it tells a strange story and makes it strangely relatable. Such an endearing little film with perfect production design. So much to love.

3. 12 Years a Slave, Dir. Steve McQueen
If 12 Years a Slave wins tomorrow, I'll be emphatically happy. Mostly because Steve McQueen is a perfect director, and while this film is my least favourite of his, it still warrants a 5/5 rating from me. I can't help but feel like this is our Schindler's List and much will be said about this film in the future. And honestly, Steve McQueen did an almost perfect job of making this film (I really wasn't a fan of the early editing and Hans Zimmer's score, but the rest of it was amazing), making an utterly brutal, unflinching portrayal of something most filmmakers would shy away from. It's so, so, so great. I can't wait to see Steve McQueen up there accepting the award.

2. Gravity, Dir. Alfonso Cuaron
Gravity is the other favourite to take the award and I wouldn't mind seeing this one win either. Mainly because it is another film that is pretty much our generation's phenomenon: we'll be talking about it for years to come. It is masterful filmmaking of the highest order, it has changed things in cinema, it has reminded us that cinema is alive and kicking...and when you think about it, it is part of a very select group. So if it wins, I'll be very, very happy. There's nothing between both 12 Years a Slave and Gravity, which makes things ever so exciting.

1. The Wolf of Wall Street, Dir. Martin Scorsese
This doesn't have a shit show of winning (unless all the voters are on ludes, but we know they're all prudes, dude). But upon another watch this film became my favourite film of the year, and definitely a strong representative of our times. And, well, even though it is three hours long, every second is perfect. From the batshit crazy performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie (along with the amazing ensemble), to the wonderful screenplay, to the electric direction from Martin Scorsese, just...everything. This movie is probably scarier than all of the horror films from 2013 put together.

So, the big prediction:

Yessir, all bets are placed on 12 Years a Slave to take the big prize, with a little bit of competition coming from Gravity and (ugh) American Hustle. However, I doubt anything will be able to take down Steve McQueen's masterpiece.

What say you? Are you on the 12 Years a Slave camp? Guess we'll find out tomorrow!

I really shouldn't start a feature, because as seen in the past, I've been terrible at keeping them up, but I've had this one milling over in my head quite a bit over the past few months. Anyway, the simple premise of "Throwback Thursday" is not to share cute photos of myself frolicking in fields with horses when I was five and putting them on Instagram with the dubious #tbt. Instead, it is to kinda...look back on films that aren't all that talked about any more. But mostly, films that I once loved upon release (or if I delve into classic films, probably the films that had a huge influence on me a child) and how I feel about them now that I've had some distance and am re-evaluating them. Or it could just be random movies I just watched that aren't in IMDb's top 250 or every best of list of all time.

Whatever, it's mostly just films that were not made in the past couple of years. Even though half of you are probably saying that now the Oscars are over, films like Philomena are irrelevant. Because that's generally how awards season works. But that's another post.

Anyway, the subject of this week's throwback is Lone Scherfig's An Education, which, after three years (and I used to watch this all the time), I finally gave another watch. Mainly because every time I used to watch this film, I wanted to bury my head in books and study, and last night, I needed some motivation to jam my dome full of knowledge about Indian independence.

Instead, I found myself ruminating over things like: a) why do we not talk about this film more? b) what happened to Carey Mulligan? c) what happened to Peter Sarsgaard? d) why is Rosamund Pike not a huge star? and e) FEMINISM.

A great deal of what I like about An Education comes from the fact that it occurs in the right part of my life. From when I first saw it back in 2010, I was in the throes of the big "what am I going to do with my life?!" question, and it's been that way since. I've been working hard, like Jenny, to attain my grades, to be the perfect candidate to be the first choice for everything. And now I'm at university, because it feels like the right choice in order to live a successful life and all that stuff.

But what struck me as quite interesting about the film this time around was the really interesting issues with feminism and the right of a female and all of that kind of stuff. That's mostly because I've been reading way too much about the issues of females in film, but An Education tells quite an interesting story.

The predicament that Jenny is presented with is this: she works her ass off to get an education at Oxford University, or she marries David and lives happily ever after as a housewife. Of course, the latter option is a trope that feminists will denounce, and we do seem to be a little past this 1960s way of thinking, but Jenny feels as if she'll have a lot more fun not "dying" in the education system. Until she finds out that David screwed her over, and she has to revert back to her old plans of going to university.

The most interesting character in this film is not Jenny herself, but her father. Her father who begins the film by demanding that Jenny leading a perfect life so she can get into Oxford: getting top marks in everything, having an "interest or hobby" mostly as a convenience to make herself sound more interesting at her Oxford interview, forcing her to participate in the Youth Orchestra in order to make herself look like a "participant". When she doesn't do so well in Latin (despite her best efforts), private tuition is suggested - but her father doesn't want to do that, because his entire existence revolves around money, to the point that it is far more important than Jenny's education. Then David comes into the equation, who, at first, Jenny's father is somewhat reluctant to let Jenny hang out with because it will interfere with her study. And as David's considerable charm and commitment to Jenny are revealed, her father's dreams of her daughter being an Oxford girl drip away. To the point that once David proposes marriage, her father seems quite happy to have his daughter married off because David has her covered with money.

And this kind of thing is age old. You either have someone to provide for you, or you get an education - which may not wind you up with a job anyway (I should know, I'm doing exactly this with my Arts degree). So limiting. Such oppression. But also, Jenny herself has the predicament of whether she should go to Oxford and not have any fun, or live life while she's at it with David.

That's what is the true beauty of this film: such a simple story, with simple storytelling, but it tackles such a big issue. Not the kind of biopic/historic/struggles of the world "big issue", but a big issue which I've found particularly troublesome over the past few years. While times may have changed a little bit since the 1960s, it's still such a timely film, especially since the apparent necessity for an education at any cost seems to be at an all time peak.

But, to the other questions: the careers of those in the film. Carey Mulligan was nominated for an Oscar for this, which was quite an inspired choice. Without her, this film wouldn't work at all. The strange thing is that she was so perfect for this role she is almost impossible to fit anywhere else. Sure, she's great in films like Never Let Me Go, Drive, Shame, Inside Llewyn Davis and The Great Gatsby, but in each of those she either feels miscast or underused. Jenny is a lot to live up to. Carey does seem to be a versatile actress, but no one has found the right way to utilise her just yet. Peter Sarsgaard was also perfect in this film, and has done very little since, apart from a really creepy turn in the otherwise ineffective Lovelace and a brief spot in Blue Jasmine. And Rosamund Pike should have been nominated for all of the awards for her performance as the ditsy, airheaded Helen in this movie. Just the things she says in this movie. And how she truly believes the stuff she's saying. Jenny is way too smart to be like her. Alas, Pike has Gone Girl coming up this year, which should be all kinds of exciting.

So yes, I would say that I'm quite a fan of An Education, still. I don't know where I'll stand on it in a few years when I'm out of the education system, but for now, it is so blisteringly relevant it continues to scare me.

Prepare for a post full of paradoxes. About time I gave meaning to the shitty, nonsensical title I gave this blog when I was 14 and impaired by my Inception obsession.

I swore I would never write a big post on the state of feminism/females in the film industry. But after Ryan, who will forever be the rabbit I chase (not insinuating you are a rabbit, Ryan, but you get the metaphor I'm heading for here), posted a piece on Lena Dunham not pushing her case for females being given opportunities in the whole entertainment industry hard enough, I chimed in on the comments section. And hey, in the two hours of lectures that came after that comment, I decided I want to make a post on this ongoing saga.

I've never seen anything Lena Dunham has done apart from This is 40. Girls has been on my watchlist but considering I still haven't seen Game of Thrones season three, I don't think I'll be getting around to it any time soon. So really, I can't judge her standings on anything, but she did raise some valid points at SXSW where she noted that Adam Driver is getting some great role offers, yet the central female cast are not. Ryan said that Lena should aspire to write about more females rather than the ones she knows of. Fair points all round.

This is where I stand on feminism. You probably know by now that I want to be a filmmaker. It's leaning more towards writing screenplays because I want to write about females. The reason that I want to be a filmmaker stems back to the literal moment that Kathryn Bigelow won an Oscar for Best Director in 2010 (though she did win for a largely "male" film, which critics are quick to point out, but AT LEAST IT HAPPENED). Late last year, likely due to procrastination, I found myself reading Indiewire religiously, especially the Women in Hollywood/other pieces on women. Anything else I could find on the internet about this topic, I would read. I still do it. However, as this is inspiring and fuels my aspirations more, it's also poisonous.

I don't claim to know what it is like in the film industry for a filmmaker, and maybe in 20 years if I ever do achieve my dream my tune will be changed. But I feel like all we ever do is talk about these problems. Sure, it's great to talk. It's what I'm doing right now. If I were to ever become famous enough to do a Ted Talk or something (which is one of my many weird aspirations), this is what I'd be saying:

Continuing to talk about these problems with a low rate of females in the film industry is like that eight year old girl who begs her parents to let her have a pony but she lives on the 10th floor of an apartment building in the middle of a city. But she wants one just because that’s the thing you want when you’re an eight year old girl. If she were to have the pony, she’d have to go live on a farm, go back to the grassroots, and work hard to look after that pony. What we need to do is go back to the root of the problem and start again. Work hard to preserve what we want if we want it enough. Creating the opportunities instead of settling with the opportunities made available to us. Because that girl is never going to get a pony on that 10th floor. If she really wanted it, she’d have to create her own opportunities and work hard to preserve it. I'm not saying that the eight year old girl can go out and buy a farm, but it's not entirely impossible either. Her parents may keep telling her no, and then all of a sudden when that girl is able to buy her own farm, she no longer wants to have a pony. If we keep pointing out the flaws in the system, we're going to stop wanting to fix them.

Perseverance is key. The uncompromising power that you threaten the normal with is key. Creating the opportunities that you want to see, instead of talking about them for many people to go "hey, cool idea kid", but they don't actually do anything about them.

But hey, who am I to talk? I'm not a filmmaker. I don't even fully believe in my dream (thanks to other poisonous ideals that come with the film industry). If I still persevere with this dream, this is the change I'd like to see. All I have to do is think back to moments like Kathryn Bigelow winning an Oscar, Cate Blanchett outing the sexism in Hollywood in her Oscar acceptance speech, Jessica Chastain's character in Zero Dark Thirty, the filmographies of the likes of Blanchett, Chastain, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams etc etc etc to see that great stuff has happened, so instead of complaining, let's persevere.

And yet, the biggest flaw in the system is that we constantly have an arrow in the back of these mythical "strong female characters". You wanna know one of the most underrated characters of 2013? Margot Robbie as Naomi in The Wolf of Wall Street. Here we have a film clearly about misogyny, and an extremely misogynistic man, and in the middle of all this we have this woman who fits Jordan Belfort's misogynistic ideals. People were quick to comment on the fact that Margot doesn't wear much in the way of clothing, but here's what she has to say:

"As for my character in particular, the nudity and the sexual side to her is her main power over Jordan. She uses that to manipulate men to get what she wants. That’s her form of currency in a world where she’s surrounded by millionaires, and she’s come from nothing. She didn't have any money whatsoever. That’s how she became a millionaire, you know? So she definitely wouldn't see it that way. She wouldn't feel sorry for herself for having to take her clothes off. She would do that willingly. In fact, she would pity the men that are dumb enough to fall for it. It’s her form of power, so it wouldn't feel exploitative for my character at all."

She's just as materialistic and money-obsessed as Jordan, just in a different way. And at the end of the film, the domestic violence comes into play and that became a big controversy, but does that mean that Naomi loses her power over Jordan? Is she weak? No and no. She's a fighter, Jordan is a heinous and disgusting man. And yet, all anyone wanted to talk about were all her nude scenes, and how that weakened her "feminist standing". She made a complete fool of Jordan and his stupid ideals! Also, it was a perfect deconstruction of the "trophy wife" being a part of the prized American Dream. We see her right from her introduction into the dream and how she gets out of it.

The "strong female character" is something that makes it so hard to be a feminist. Critics are quick to say that Katniss Everdeen is a great female character because she's strong, but she's weakened by her love triangle. As soon as men come into play, females lose their "strength". Maybe it's because of an over-saturation of romantic comedies. But, I don't know, just because I'm a female who might be in love with a guy, does that all of a sudden mean that I'm a weaker human being? Feminism and the "strong female character" seems bent on erasing males. If it's equality you're looking for, you may as well show how they can balance and co-exist and stop trying to have them in a power play that's all based on strength. Weak women are interesting. Powerful women are interesting. Weak women pretending to be powerful are interesting. WOMEN CAN BE INTERESTING. You just need to give them a chance to be interesting.

Also, "strong female character" is basically a synonym for "female character given male qualities to be seen as strong". Can we stop with this notion that males are the end all of strength? MALES AND FEMALES ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF PEOPLE. This does not mean that they aren't equal. Just because a woman puts a lot of effort into her appearance, is scared of breaking her nails, dyes her hair all the time, wears lots of make-up does not mean that she isn't strong. In fact, actresses are the strongest of all because they have to put up with the bullshit Hollywood standards. That's another post in itself (because the tabloid industry is just ridiculously sexist). Just don't ever think for one second that making a female character with solely male sensibilities will make them a "strong female character". A woman can break down crying if she wants to (case in point: people who didn't understand why Maya was crying at the end of Zero Dark Thirty). A woman can pin all her hopes on a man if she wants to. A woman can yell and scream until she gets what she wants. The moment you start looking for the qualities of a "strong female character", you've lost a good female character.

Let's stop pretending like females don't happen in Hollywood. They have before, they are now. Let's keep persevering and stop poisoning.

Otherwise, people like me won't want to write films about female characters because we don't want them to be so dependent on males. We want to make them appropriations of all of these contradictory feminist ideals, so much so that they aren't human. Everyone's so quick to say that there's a right and wrong way of writing female characters. And it's awfully restricting.

We are never going to have a perfect balance. We are never going to have equal opportunities. But to have people actually trying is better than nothing.

One last thing: it isn't the fault of women that they're under-represented in films. If we spent all of our energy waiting for the person at fault to fix their wrongs, we're going to be waiting an awful long time. Be the change you want to see. That's all there is to it.

Hey guys - just a bit of an editorial note from me here. Lately I've been a little busy settling into my new job/failing at university so I've been lacking on the time front. I will post soon! But in light of my last, and extremely popular (yay yay yay) post on feminism being hard in the film industry, I'm happy to introduce a girl who is doing exactly what I want to see: marching to the beat of her own drum and being the change we want to see! I'm really excited to introduce you to Alexia Anastasio and her upcoming film, Little Fishes.

What if we were so courageous in our art and in our lives that we are the envy of all the content creators around us? Suppose all of us are looking for connection to a courageous muse? It’s true.

This desire is the Goliath in all artists. It’s an unstoppable giant that demands more and more of us until we either put more of ourselves in the game or we give up trying to battle Goliath. This challenge is the essential driving force as artists. As filmmakers, we are artists. In the end, we will disappear, but the art will be left. The challenge is what makes us daring and grow. Making films is about risk, not knowing where the reward is going to come from.

Though I am in love with my new movie, LITTLE FISHES, being in love is scary. I want to share this story with my audience, but I know that I must take risks to do it. Truth or dare? Both!

In order to make art, we must take the dare and tell the truth. We may think that our project is an impossible uphill climb, until we examine it further. Many of my clients seem ready to give up before they even start. The artist inside beckons - but do we heed the call? How many of us will succeed in our quest and develop the backbone needed for our ultimate transformation?
I read a lot of blogs. What I found was a lack of application for most readers. It’s like so much candy. I guarantee that you will fail as an artist if you take advice at face-value. You must put ideas into practice, before discarding the key concepts. What is at stake here is that we need to fall down in order to learn. I can guess what you are thinking: Why fall down when I can play it safe? You are not wrong. Playing it safe can get you from A to B, but don’t you want to go further?

Provided below is a list of scenarios that I would at least like you to try out. They may seem a bit weird, but please indulge me. At its core, these exercises will help you to get to greater risks, which will seem easier after taking on these basic risks. Dare to dare!

1. The role of a lifetime. Ask yourself: What is the most uncomfortable event in your life? What made you scared or afraid to act? How can that be applied to your film? In a storyline, an audience expects a main character to overcome a series of trials and setbacks. Have you had a setback that seemed insurmountable? Try adding this event to your script. You don’t have to tell anyone why you added the event or that it is part of your own personal experience. Bring the story into your world.

2. Change up the setting. Does the script change if the confident guy in the bar is now a confident guy in a circus? Play with the setting and see where it takes you. If the same guy was in a burning building - would that change the circumstances and the outcome? Break the film into elements and examine the components. The overall piece may read entirely different. Get those people off their park benches and into a setting that causes them to react to something other than pigeons. Be adventurous!

3. Focus on inner interpretation. Very often we try to analyze why the story didn’t work. Wrong actors? Bad script? Bad director? Bad DP? No. Before we complete our film (or feel so depressed we want to scrap it), let’s focus on what kind of a story we want to tell and how we communicated the emotions in our characters. We may have never been in the situation depicted, but one thing is for sure: we have all lived and breathed. Did we leave anyone out of the joke? Being fearless is knowing that we can do analysis and that we can morph our films into better ones, rather than assigning blame. We want to see what making the film tick on the human level. Where is the heartbeat? Can it be stronger? Could it be that we have to break the rules of film language to tell this story at heart level? Look at juxtaposition in your shots. Move the shots around. Make reaction into action by flopping it around. Flip the script.

4. Get real about love. Most filmmakers I know tell me that this is their most sensitive area. Why? Love is close to home. Filmmakers can be shy, specially when creating love scenes that are believable. We need to step back. Love is a universal thing. It’s there and it’s not going away. It’s more powerful a force than hate. Often people are nude when they are intimate with each other. It’s part of life. If it’s in your script, chances are that there is a reason beyond titillation. I use nudity to wake people up that we are all beautiful expressive entities. If you are an actor also, put yourself in a scene where you are nude as the day you were born. I did this in LITTLE FISHES and I found the freedom in it to express myself without barriers. Find out if you can make a statement in the scene. Is it sexy and playful or a comment about society and censorship? Does it tell us how vulnerable the character is? Say it with love.

5. Have a good feeling about everything you do. Depressed people have a habit of thinking that they must be in that state to tell real stories. Not true. Ask David Lynch sometime if he’s happy. If you meet him and work with him as I did, you rapidly find out that he’s over the moon. He has been meditating for thirty years. My advice is to find your center of the universe and live there. The dare is be alive in your work and know in your heart that courage is unbounding. You will never run out of courage and hopefulness that you will get to the next projects. I find that I can’t help it and I am no different from you guys. Try being positive in the negative and elevate yourself into a filmmaking Goliath. Try it.

You can see my last film, Adventures in Plymptoons! on many platforms like Hulu, Vimeo, Amazon by going here: http://adventuresinplymptoons.com/

You can sign up for my email list and get updates whenever I have a new project on my website: http://www.alexiaanastasio.com

And you can view the new trailers and sneak peak scenes and even give to the campaign for Little Fishes here: http://www.littlefishesmovie.com

BIO: Alexia Anastasio is an artist, actress and filmmaker. She was featured in HBO's Bored to Death, VH1 “If you like...” commercial and Vetiver "Everyday" music video. Her work on the feature documentaries includes: Editor of Vampira: The Movie; Associate Producer of The Wild World of Ted V. Mikels; Co-producer of Beyond the Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey; Director of Adventures in Plymptoons! documentary on Oscar nominated animator Bill Plympton; Director of documentary, Ginger Girls: The Secret Lives of Redheads and Director of narrative, Little Fishes.

The Christopher Nolan that made Following and Memento is not really the same Christopher Nolan that made the Dark Knight trilogy and Inception. He's got more money, more trust, more opportunities. Yet, there's a clear connection running through his body of work, the identifiable Nolan-ism that makes us realise that Following and The Dark Knight Rises are made by the same person, instead of feeling like a rote blockbuster made by the same guy that's made 20 blockbusters before that.

And this is the case with Darren Aronofsky and his biblical epic/passion project, Noah. I must admit, had this been made by another person, I wouldn't have been at all interested in it. But because this is a film made by the guy who has given us films like Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler, I was excited to see how he'd fare when he was given a few more dollars in his back pocket and the opportunity to tell a tale that would get the tongues wagging - perhaps more so than ever before.

Noah is indelibly a Darren Aronofsky film. It doesn't feel like it's cut from the same cloth as Aronofsky's other films, but it makes a nice addition to a nice enough patchwork quilt. Aronofsky is the kind of director that we could trust with anything - even The Wolverine, had he chosen to make this film - but Noah seems like the biggest thing we've trusted him with yet. Or is it the biggest film that we've trusted anyone with yet?

Hmmm, one has to ponder.

Noah very much seems like another blockbuster that takes on a familiar story - think Alice in Wonderland, Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy etc - and gives it a dark spin for the 'new age'. And in a way, it kind of is. This isn't the colourfully illustrated story filled with animals from near and far that we were taught when we were starting out in school. Also, it's not just the story that we were taught. Aronofsky and his frequent collaborator Ari Handel have filled in some gaps, and then added another plot line. And that plot line is the thing that could either make or break the film.

I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say, it's a storyline designed to make you feel like a terrible person (hey, Darren, didn't Requiem for a Dream do that anyway?). And it gets really melodramatic, really fast. All of a sudden we have Russell Crowe, who was pulling in some really solid work beforehand, revert back into angry, telephone-throwing Russell Crowe mode. We have Jennifer Connelly only serving the purpose to yell at Russell. We have Emma Watson crying constantly. I don't really have an issue with the direction that Aronofsky was going with this (because it did give me a lot to ponder over), but I do have an issue with the way it was executed.

One word: melodrama.

Not only is there anger, crying, yelling, there's also a sharp turn in the way that Clint Mansell scores the film, going from a thing of beauty to all of a sudden going "BAD THINGS ARE HAPPENING." The film that was so indelibly a Darren Aronofsky film dangerously dips into the kind of rote blockbuster that this film looked like it was going to be, and I felt, for a moment, that Darren was letting us down. Not only that, but the character that Logan Lerman plays, Ham (who is Noah's son), is rather annoying because all he wants is a wife. I can totally see where he's coming from, because it does kind of suck if everyone is hooking up around you and you have no one, but he felt like a character that needed to be in another film. To put it frankly: he built an ark, and he should have gotten over it.

However, all is forgiven when you see what a spectacle this film is. Particularly in the evolution scenes, which were, hands down, the most beautifully done montages I had ever seen. It was just one of those moments where I wanted to stand up and clap and bow down to Aronofsky's vision. We've seen the evolution of the Earth so many times in film, but the two scenes in which Aronofsky time lapses through thousands of years is just achingly beautiful, particularly in the last one. His vision, though it is definitely roughened and toughened for the cynical new world, is something of beauty and a sad kind of relevance.

Yet, would I have Aronofsky continue on the blockbuster path? No way. The Aronofsky I like best is the one that made Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream. But it's good to see what he can do with a larger canvas - here's hoping he gets a few more opportunities to wield a bigger paint brush.

If you wanna here me actually speak about my experience with Noah, along with Vigil and Ben-Hur and various other tidbits about myself, make sure you head along to The Matinee to listen to this week's episode of The Matineecast. Ryan had to get up at 5am for it, so we deserve a heckload of listeners!

No, I didn't see Mean Girls 10 years ago when it first came out. I do remember it popping up in all of the little pre-tween magazines that I used to hoard, but I never saw it until it popped up on TV one day in 2007. I recorded it off the TV on one of those gigantic fossils we used to call videotapes. Unfortunately, the first three minutes cut out of my recording, so I never saw those first three minutes until I bought it on DVD a year later. Yet, I didn't need those three minutes. Mean Girls was, and forever will be, my favourite high school comedy of all time. Hell, probably even my favourite comedy of all time. Why?

Because 7 years since I first saw it, I'm pretty positive there hasn't been a day go by that I haven't quoted it in some way. Like seriously, there is a quote for every life situation:

When someone does well with something: "You go, Glen Coco!"

When someone asks someone else why they're white: "Oh my god Karen, you can't just ask people why they're white."

When you're a mother: "I'm not like a regular mom, I'm a cool mom."

When it's raining: "There's a 30% chance that it's already raining!"

When you don't want to go out with someone: "I can't go out *fake coughs* I'm sick."

When someone annoys you: "Boo, you whore."

Possible valedictory speech: "I'm sorry that people are so jealous of me...but I can't help it that I'm so popular."

When needing to do a rap: "Yo yo yo all you sucker MC's ain't got nothing on me! From my grades, to my lines you can't touch Kevin G! I'm a mathlete, so nerd is inferred, but forget what you heard I'm like James Bond the third, sh-sh-sh-shaken not stirred - I'm Kevin Gnapoor! The G's silent when I sneak through your door. And make love to your woman on the bathroom floor. I don't play it like Shaggy, you'll know it was me. Cause the next time you see her she'll be like, OOH! KEVIN G!"

Literally the entire script is quotable. The entire thing.

But why is it that Mean Girls stands the test of time and feels as fresh as it did 10 years ago? Why is it that we can quote it on a daily basis even after all of this time? Because Mean Girls is still very real. You may think that a film with such overdrawn caricatures such as a plastic surgery obsessed mum, the regulation gay best friend and the dumb blonde couldn't be aiming for realism in the slightest. However, it is the simplicity of the characters that makes this movie work so well. Each character is exactly who they are. Regina is the bitch. Gretchen is her loyal follower. Karen is the one who is too dumb to know what's going on. And Cady is built up by this.

Cady, for better or for worse, is the epitome of a teenage girl. No matter what people tell you, you can't be yourself at high school. Unless you're completely sure of what you wanna be. Cady is the one that gets gobbled up and spat out by everyone around her. Yes, this is a comedy. But it is also painstakingly true.

Oh, and let's not forget that it is based on a non-fiction self-help book. Just as everything is quotable from the script, everything also has a certain shred of truth to it. I'm not sure how much help it would provide as a survival guide for navigating cliques at school (my school wasn't even big enough to have a clique problem), but I'd say it is a pretty good place to start. It shows you the people to avoid, the mistakes to avoid, and how to tell if you have ESPN or something.

I could wax poetic for years on why Mean Girls is the best thing that ever happened to 12 year old me who stayed home sick from school one day and first saw this grace her TV screen. And it is still about the best thing that happens to 18 year old me watching it for the fiftieth time on a rainy afternoon in Christchurch. You know those movies that you grow up with? Mean Girls has left an indelible mark on my life in ways that I can't really explain. And even though I'm out of my high school years, I can honestly see me watching this movie for another ten years and my view wouldn't have changed.

All I can say is thank you, Mean Girls. Thank you for the quotes. Thank you for launching the careers of people like Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried and Lizzy Caplan. Thank you for giving us Lindsay Lohan's best performance. Thank you for keeping it real.

But lastly, here's a question: how many of you have felt personally victimised by Regina George?

If you've been following ze blog for a few years, you know that I don't deal well with watching movies from the year before until we're halfway through the next year. Hence my top lists of 2011 happening in July 2012 and my top lists of 2012 happening in August 2013. However, this year has been kinda different: I spent a lot more time watching good stuff (because I had so little time I didn't want to waste it) and I moved to a place with a cinema three months ago which meant I could catch up with a lot more. I haven't seen films like Nebraska, Saving Mr Banks or August: Osage County, but I'm pretty confident with the lists I have at the moment. So over the next few days/weeks/whenever I sit down at my laptop and actually blog for once, I'll be unleashing my top lists of 2013, beginning with my Top 15 Female Performances. Usually I don't go for 15 in the list, but there was so much goodness in 2013 that I didn't want anyone to miss out. People still missed out though. Which sucks, but hey, yay for cinema!

Honourable mentions: Berenice Bejo - The Past, Amy Adams - Her, Amy Adams - American Hustle, Jennifer Lawrence - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Jena Malone - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Judi Dench - Philomena, Sarah Paulson - 12 Years a Slave, Carey Mulligan - Inside Llewyn Davis, Brie Larson - The Spectacular Now, Olivia Wilde - Drinking Buddies, Lake Bell - In a World..., Amanda Seyfried - Lovelace, Scarlett Johansson - Don Jon, Melonie Diaz - Fruitvale Station, Octavia Spencer - Fruitvale Station, Onata Aprile - What Maisie Knew, Greta Gerwig - Frances Ha.

15. Andrea Riseborough as Nina Dunham in Disconnect

Disconnect is one of those films that works well mostly on the basis of the solid acting from an ensemble cast that includes Jason Bateman, Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgard and Michael Nyqvist, but no one stands out as much as Andrea Riseborough. I've long been a fan of Andrea's work since her brief role in the oft-forgotten Never Let Me Go, and she's pulled in some great work since in otherwise dull films like W.E. and Shadow Dancer. In Disconnect, though, she plays the part of an over-ambitious news reporter terrifyingly well, with the role fitting into her oeuvre perfectly - does she have one of the most underrated filmographies ever? She literally walks into this film and lights up the screen, even as her character goes through some pretty dark stuff. And yet, even as it becomes apparent that perhaps her character's storyline isn't the most exciting in the multi-stranded plot, she makes the plot last until the very end. Seriously, someone needs to line her and Rosamund Pike up and get them some great roles.

14. Sally Hawkins as Ginger in Blue Jasmine

Another ever-dependable performer, and definitely someone who turns a relatively thin role into a layered, beautiful performance. Blue Jasmine works on the merits of its pairing of Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins, who compliment each other in a way that I couldn't imagine any other actresses doing a better job of. Ginger is fiery, flighty, the exact opposite to Jasmine, and Sally is able to nail every single thing about the character that makes her different from Jasmine.

13. Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Eva in Enough Said

You know that feeling you get when you feel like you're watching a character that is the real deal? Julia Louis-Dreyfus does exactly that in Enough Said. Bolstered by a pretty perfect script from Nicole Holofcener, Julia gives us a big screen leading lady debut that just feels very much like a real person. And the special kind of comedic realism that Julia is so perfect at in this film is something that is severely underrated by Hollywood.

12. Scarlett Johansson as Samantha in Her

If only because Samantha never felt like the voice of a computer. She felt like a real person. It really felt like she was there. No wonder Theodore fell in love with her.

11. Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby

I will champion this performance (and this film) until the end of time. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Jordan Baker was by far my favourite character in the book and Elizabeth gets every single thing about her perfect. From the very beginning, her performance perfectly mirrors what Fizgerald originally wrote about the character, which is a bit of a rarity in the otherwise bold and brash Baz Luhrmann take on an otherwise subtle novel. The biggest crime was that she wasn't given more screen time, because she actually takes the film and runs away with it. Hollywood, listen up: here's your next big thing, please give her literally all the roles.

10. Julie Delpy as Celine in Before Midnight

Sometimes I sit back and think, what would Julie Delpy do? It takes a special woman to create one of the most complicated women characters and let her stretch her legs in three films over the space of 18 years. The Celine in Before Midnight is definitely the most complicated Celine we've had, and it is the perfect showcase for a modern woman in all her glory. I definitely wouldn't be surprised if I continue asking myself in the future, what would Julie Delpy do?

9. Lupita Nyong'o as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave

We all fell in love with her through Oscar season. Lupita Nyong'o is somewhat of a rarity. She's a classically trained actress who somehow made her debut film role an Oscar winning one, all the while winning the hearts of the entire world. Not only is Lupita one of the most beautiful, graceful women to ever live, but her performance that introduced us to her was one of the most devastating roles of the year, or perhaps ever. Not many people could do this role with the quiet intensity that Lupita did. She could have descended into melodramatic overacting, but she's never too much. Her suffering feels very real, and I'm never quite sure of just how Lupita was able to convey that so well.

8. Lea Seydoux as Emma in Blue is the Warmest Colour

Apparently Lea studied the mannerisms and posture of Marlon Brando and James Dean in order to play Emma, and you can definitely see that coming through. She goes through a complete transformation in this film, but we're never quite sure of exactly who Emma is. And that's quite refreshing, because Emma never has to answer for herself. The final scenes that she has are actually pretty heartbreaking, too.

7. Rooney Mara as Emily Taylor in Side Effects

Anyone who thinks that Rooney Mara is a one-trick pony should seriously reevaluate her career. Yes, Lisbeth Salander is a big role, and it's a big performance for her, and while whatever she does may remain under the shadow of that role, she's still creating some pretty perfect work. 2013 has been a pretty good year for her, with the Malickian drama Ain't Them Bodies Saints proving her power as a single mother trying to make her own way, and Her showing her as both the luminous lover and bitter divorcee. Side Effects is an entirely different beast, though. You're never quite sure of Emily's motives, which makes the ending so much better. Rooney nails the crippling effect of depression to Emily's crippling obsession with capitalism in one of the most interesting, underrated female characters of the year. Thankfully, Rooney's schedule is filling up and we get to see some more of her unique talent - and Side Effects definitely has me excited to see what height she can hit post-Lisbeth.

6. Shailene Woodley as Aimee in The Spectacular Now

I can't tell whether I'm holding her in such high regard because Aimee Finicky actually is me or whether Shailene Woodley is practically perfect in the role. I think it is definitely both. Shailene doesn't ever make this character descend into the familiar "ah I'm a teenager and my life sucks" kind of thing, she makes Aimee a painfully real character. The way that she reacts when Sutter tells her that she's beautiful is a beautiful thing in itself - so natural, so real and so far away from being the floaty manic pixie dream girl that the character could have been. I just really hope that Aimee had a fantastic life after high school, because God knows she deserved it.

5. Margot Robbie as Naomi in The Wolf of Wall Street

It is still extremely shocking to me that Margot Robbie got next to no love for her perfect performance in The Wolf of Wall Street. For one thing, I watched this girl on Neighbours every weeknight at 5.30pm for years. And then I see her pop up in this film, going toe-to-toe with Leonardo DiCaprio, and it is hard to believe that this is the same person. Everything from her accent, to her Brooklyn barbie doll look to the scenes at the end where she fights for her children is electrifying and magnetic. You'd almost expect a 23 year old woman in a Martin Scorsese movie with Leonardo DiCaprio to wilt and fade into the background, but Robbie is a force of nature in this film. Not to throw around comparisons, but she did the whole wife of a conman thing so much better than Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle. Which is why I'm still baffled that it wasn't Robbie there getting her deserved Oscar nomination.

4. Adele Exarchopoulos as Adele in Blue is the Warmest Colour

Like Shailene Woodley, Adele Exarchopoulos had the incomparable task of creating a realistic teen performance that wasn't alienating in any way. Not only that, but Adele had to chart her character from her young teens to her young adulthood and show all of the confusion throughout that time. Luckily, she did a pretty perfect job of it. It's such a raw performance that really requires her to let go a lot more than other actresses would probably want (or be allowed) to.

3. Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone in Gravity

I really would like to know how Sandra Bullock does it. How the hell could anyone be floating around in a green box for months, conveying every single emotion ever and not come up with a performance that verges on over-the-top self parody? Truth is, no-one could do this like Sandra did. It is a role that demands a lot of physical work, but the emotional work by her is what really carries the film and doesn't let it become a standard movie about floating around in space.

2. Brie Larson as Grace in Short Term 12

How in heck's name this performance got so little love by awards season is completely beyond me. This performance is beyond perfect. The thing that got me about Short Term 12 was how little it actually felt like a movie. It was just so simple and straightforward, telling a simple and straightforward story without embellishing it with needless melodrama. Brie Larson's performance is an acute reflection of that. She never misses a beat in conveying a woman who is such a guardian angel to everyone else but doesn't listen to her own advice. What's impressive is that this isn't the only great performance that Brie had to her name in 2013: her supporting turns in The Spectacular Now and Don Jon were highlights of each of those films. Again, Hollywood: please cast her in everything.

1. Cate Blanchett as Jasmine French in Blue Jasmine

This is one of those rare occasions where I agree with every single accolade that has been given to a particular film/performance. Watching Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine solidifies the fact that she may be one of the best, if not the best, working actress today. Just watch her face. Listen to her voice. It is possibly the most masterful female performance since Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire. I really can't say any clearer why I love this performance as much as I do, other than it is literal perfection and it's going to take a while before anyone can come close to topping it.

What do you think of these choices? Who were your favourite female performers of 2013?

More 2013 retrospective goodness just to remind you that 2013 happened and 2013 was great! Don't really need to waste a whole lot of time explaining this, so here are my favourite male performances from last year...

Honourable Mentions: Bradley Cooper - American Hustle, Bradley Cooper - The Place Beyond the Pines, Ryan Gosling - The Place Beyond the Pines, Dane DeHaan - The Place Beyond the Pines, Joaquin Phoenix - Her, Steve Coogan - Philomena, Dane DeHaan - Kill Your Darlings, James Gandolfini - Enough Said, Miles Teller - The Spectacular Now, Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club, Hugh Jackman - Prisoners, Daniel Bruhl - Rush, Michael B. Jordan - Fruitvale Station, Michael Douglas - Behind the Candelabra, Matt Damon - Behind the Candelabra, Leonardo DiCaprio - The Great Gatsby, James Franco - Spring Breakers, Jude Law - Side Effects, Jonah Bobo - Disconnect.

15. Dwayne Johnson as Paul Doyle in Pain & Gain
Let me preface this by saying that Dwayne Johnson may be my least favourite working actor. That's probably because I can't stand the fact that every single movie he is in, whether it is a cinema release or a straight-to-DVD release, will always rent in truckloads. Sad thing is that they're all exactly the same. I surprisingly dug Pain & Gain a lot against all odds (the Johnson/Mark Wahlberg/Michael Bay factor), but I was most surprised by Johnson's performance. He was obviously taking the piss out of his usual macho beef-cake persona, and in an alternate universe, he would be the perfect buff brother of Jordan Belfort who was nowhere near as smart as him.

14. Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective Loki in Prisoners
We never really know a lot about Detective Loki. We're just offered insights into his existence. I think that's what I admire most about any film who can do it right: a script which only offers insights into a character's existence instead of an outpouring of their life, and an actor who can build that existence into something truly believable. Gyllenhaal hits all the right notes, even when the film isn't necessarily concerned with him. It's all in the scene where he eats this Thanksgiving dinner at a diner alone.

13. Jared Leto as Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club
It's been a while since Jared Leto was on our screens, and what a comeback he makes. Sure, you could easily pigeonhole this performance as an easy way to get an Oscar: lose lots of weight, put on a dress and some makeup (which unfortunately didn't work for Cillian Murphy in either Breakfast on Pluto or Peacock which run rings around Leto's performance). Yet, Leto makes it into something that is truly heartfelt and heartbreaking, particularly in the scene where everything is crumbling around her. At any rate, it's just great to have Leto acting again.

12. James McAvoy as Bruce Robertson in Filth
James McAvoy is pretty much the nicest, most harmless guy next to Tom Hiddleston in show business right now. Bruce Robertson was pretty much one of the most vile, repugnant characters to hit screens in 2013. What better showcase is that? The film doesn't completely back him up - it tends to go more for the strange and absurd without having any real point - but he is a little bit terrifying in his drugged up stupor. Plus, I really like it when nice actors play generally bad people. And after studying every single fibre of Atonement for English last year, it was kind of interesting to watch James in this and wonder where my favourite blue-eyed beauty went.

11. Barkhad Abdi as Muse in Captain Phillips
I was surprised that people weren't hyping up Barkhad Abdi's spectacular story of how he went from limo driver to Oscar nominee more. However, this isn't a case of his fairytale being more interesting than the performance that heralded that fairytale. For a person who has absolutely no acting experience whatsoever and can scare the crap out of Tom Hanks and the audience is no mean feat. Hopefully he gets a few more opportunities. Sure, an Oscar nomination is a pretty good way to start, but he can still improve from here.

10. Matthew McConaughey as Mud in Mud
Matthew McConaughey has been having a really good run. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. He may have got the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club (which was...deserved, I suppose), but Mud was my favourite performance from him last year. It was a role that suited him down to the ground. I guess I should start reserving a spot for Matty M for these lists, because it's really only a fight for which performance I liked the most out of all of them (bring on Interstellar!).

9. Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate
The Fifth Estate is an interesting case. It was the biopic no one really needed to happen just yet, but it held a lot of promise considering the great cast. Somehow, it all went wrong. The only thing that didn't go wrong, though, was Benedict Cumberbatch's performance. I've never fully believed the hype about this guy (but that's because I haven't really watched Sherlock), but The Fifth Estate was a pretty good showcase for his talent. It would have been better if the film was a heckload better and wasn't so first draft rushed. However, I applaud Cumberbatch for his dedication and his fairly good attempt at an Australian accent. If the film had served him better, he would have been the one up there collecting the Oscar. Alas, his transition into the film industry is still a bit stunted - especially considering only five people even saw this film.

8. Ethan Hawke as Jesse in Before Midnight
I love Jesse. He is exactly the kind of man I want to marry in the future (and I'm a bit of a Celine also, so I guess the future is looking...interesting?). Just as Julie Delpy does, Ethan Hawke hits his highest notes in this instalment into the series. Just that look he has when he sees his son off at the airport, to that beautiful final scene. Please can we continue to see Celine and Jesse every nine years forever?

6. Michael Fassbender as Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave
The art of true villainy is a lot harder than some would suspect. But Michael Fassbender is truly terrifying in this film, never verging on self-parody. His eyes are so tortured. Just everything...he needs to make every single film with Steve McQueen forever. Then again, I do find it kind of annoying that this was the film to give him his first Oscar nomination, because I'm pretty sure I spent the entire awards season pretending that it was consolation for that Shame snub that I'll never get over.

6. Mads Mikkelsen as Lucas in The Hunt

Because people suck and Mads does a perfect job of conveying that in his face. There's really nothing else I can say about it.

5. Jonah Hill as Donnie in The Wolf of Wall Street
Sure, "two-time Oscar nominee Jonah Hill" does sound a little bit weird, but man did he deserve it for The Wolf of Wall Street. So much sass. So many teeth. So many great scenes that he's involved with, from the "emperor of fucksville" to the "I'll chop your fucking credit card, how about that?". Oh, and his part in the Quaaludes scene was pretty great too.

4. Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis in Inside Llewyn Davis
Oscar Isaac needs to start getting some credit for his great work, because it's starting to become a bit of a crime that he's not getting any. Especially for his performance in this film, which is damn masterful. He plays melancholy and down-trodden so well that you just want good things to happen for Llewyn, even though there's no possible way for things to go right for him. Hands up for who's excited for A Most Violent Year? Oscar has set an impossible benchmark for himself, but it is all up from here.

3. Tom Hanks as Richard Phillips in Captain Phillips
Just because that final few minutes is the finest acting I think I may have ever seen. How he even could convey that much emotion which can not be faked (or at least I didn't think it could) is absolutely beyond me. But the performance doesn't rest on those final few moments: Hanks keeps the momentum up throughout the entire film, without ever retreating into the movie star charm that I've found to be somewhat problematic with his most recent films. Let me just end this with one word, though: SNUBBED.

2. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave
There's a scene in 12 Years a Slave where Solomon is held in a medium close-up, looking off into the distance, then looks directly into the screen for a second and then looks up. This scene in particular has stuck with me since I watched it, simply because of the tortured, battered, soul-bearing look that Steve McQueen is able to capture on Ejiofor's face. His performance doesn't rely on anything he says or does, it is all about the look. It's such a quietly commanding performance, adding to the trio of fantastic lead performances that McQueen has put at the fore of all of his films.

1. Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street
There was obviously nothing that was ever going to beat this performance. It is flawless. It is controlled yet out of control. It is vile yet somehow attractive. Leonardo DiCaprio is Jordan Belfort. If you watch interviews with the real Belfort, you can see just how immersed Leo was in the role - it's almost impossible to tell them apart. Jordan Belfort is not an easy sell, but Leo is possibly the best salesman in show business. He's utterly engrossing, maniacal, hilarious...everything. I honestly can't see how he'll top this, but of course, I have no doubt that he can.

What do you think of the actors in this list? Who were your favourite male performers of the year?

Again, I don't have a huge disclaimer to put here. I know it's May, I know it's late, but hey, it is never too late to honour some pretty awesome directors, is it?

Honourable Mentions: Steven Soderbergh - Side Effects, The Coen Brothers - Inside Llewyn Davis, David Lowery - Ain't Them Bodies Saints, Abdellatif Kechiche - Blue is the Warmest Colour, Ron Howard - Rush, Lake Bell - In a World..., Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Don Jon, Ryan Coogler - Fruitvale Station, Asghar Farhadi - The Past, Richard Linklater - Before Midnight, Harmony Korine - Spring Breakers.

10. Spike Jonze - Her
Her is an incredibly brave film. Take it from one of the film's pivotal lines about love: "it's like a socially acceptable form of insanity." The way that the film ruminates on love is so beautiful, as opposed to sugar coating everything and having couples running of into sunsets and that kind of gooey stuff. Perhaps that's all because this is a film about a man having a relationship with his computer. Which is quite strange (it's quite hard to sell this movie to my friends), but Jonze does it in such a way that it feels completely natural. Not to mention, the futuristic world he creates is definitely a world that I could see actually happening, thanks to Jonze not over-saturating the film with ludicrous visions of the future. Even though the movie left me feeling extremely empty for a little while, this is a unique kind of beauty that I wish we could see more of.

9. Denis Villeneuve - Prisoners
Fun fact: throughout many lines of ancestry, it's possible that in some way I'm related to this guy (I would have even had his last name once upon a time, which would have been nice). If that somehow means that I have an ounce of his talent, that would be fantastic. Even though I haven't seen Incendies since it first came out about two and a half years ago, it is still engrained in my brain - it's so hard to shake the deliberately cold, striking way the film was made. It's the same with Prisoners, which Villeneuve could make with a bigger budget, bigger names, and the magic touch of Roger Deakins behind the camera. Prisoners is a masterful, slow burning thriller that mixes the suspense of detective work with the emotional trauma created within the families. It's a puzzle that doesn't seem willing to be solved, but it is made in such a way that I wasn't sure if I ever did want it to be solved. Villeneuve is always in control of his material. I haven't seen Enemy yet (because who knows if it will even get a release here), but how crazy is it that he managed to make those two films in the same year? And here comes my trademark saying: I want to be him.

8. Sofia Coppola - The Bling Ring
Sofia Coppola totally gets it. And she gets it in a way that is far more beautifully immaculate than anyone else. I wouldn't say that her work on The Bling Ring is her best - it's far from her best film - but she gets what it's like to be a self-absorbed teenager of the Facebook generation. She doesn't alienate her audience even though her characters are already alienated. That's because she doesn't let anything - her characters, her script, her film - pretend to be anything they're not. They're hollow, privileged brats making ill-informed decisions so they can up their cool points through the internet. This is a sad truth of the world, unfortunately, and Coppola both romanticises it through her pastel-coloured, airy style and criticises it through the fact that, well, the characters are not the brightest bulbs in the tanning bed. Also, she gets bonus points because I think we all secretly wish our lives could be as beautiful as a Sofia Coppola film.

7. Paul Greengrass - Captain Phillips
I must admit, I was kinda worried about Captain Phillips: it looked like the kind of film where the camera would be zooming in and out, shaking everywhere and erratically moving from side to side without any real direction. However, Greengrass keeps it mostly under control, which is great considering he's working with minimal sets that are constantly on the move. Not only does he make this film a tense one, he doesn't scrimp on the emotional strain of the film that comes from both parties. Also, props to him for letting Tom Hanks go for broke in that final scene.

6. James Ponsoldt - The Spectacular Now

Maybe it's just because I'm obsessed with this film, but I find James Ponsoldt's follow up to the excellent Smashed pretty perfect direction wise. Probably because it feels so real and not all sugar coated like half of the teen films out there. He let's the simplicity of the story really speak instead of dressing it up. But really, the thing that I liked the most about the way he directed this film was the way he handled the relationship between Sutter and Aimee. All the awkwardity was still there, all of the jitters that come with being a girl like Aimee who is suddenly thrust into the attention of another guy. It was so damn beautiful and painful to watch.

5. Sarah Polley - Stories We Tell
This is mostly because Sarah must have been fairly gutsy to make a movie about a difficult part of her own personal family life. Not only does she lay a whole lot of ugly secrets about her family out on the table, but she looks at how stories are told through the ages. It's so deftly clever and achingly beautiful to watch. Which is quite different to what I was expecting - anyone could make a film about their family story, but why would anyone outside of that family care? Sarah makes her film about so many things. You know that thing about there being so few female directors? Try look at Sarah's trajectory and not feel a little empowered.

4. Baz Luhrmann - The Great Gatsby
I'm going to cop a bit of flak for this. Baz Luhrmann was both the right and the wrong person to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald's beyond perfect novel. The novel is such an intricate, subtle piece of work that excels on the beauty of the words that Fitzgerald weaves together. And that is exactly why a good adaptation of the novel could never work. Luhrmann is the most over-the-top, extravagant director out there, and is the direct opposite to what this novel needs. In terms of an adaptation, Luhrmann does an extremely poor job in trying to emulate the beauty that Fitzgerald did. In terms of Baz Luhrmann making a Baz Luhrmann film? He does a bloody great job. It's all in that one scene where we meet Gatsby for the first time. The music, the fireworks, Leo raising his glass to the camera...even after seven times I still cry over the utterly perfect absurdity of it. You know what? Luhrmann knows how to use cinema to his full advantage. Yes, he likes to throw a lot of stuff at the screen but that's okay. It's a lot of fun to watch. And with the rather dull Australia being our only dose of Luhrmann since 2001, The Great Gatsby was a welcome return.

3. Steve McQueen - 12 Years a Slave
I love Steve McQueen. Each of his three films have been given 5/5 from me. While 12 Years a Slave is probably my least favourite of his films, there's absolutely no-one else who could have made this film the way that McQueen did. It's raw and unflinching, and shies away from adding a bucket of melodrama to make the material go down easier. Again, I go back to that scene where Solomon is looking into the distance and for the briefest of moments looks directly into the screen - it's such a beautiful, haunting scene that only McQueen could get away with. He's on a roll now, so it'll be interesting to see if his next film lives up to the rest of his perfect filmography.

2. Martin Scorsese - The Wolf of Wall Street
This film would have been very different if some young, hotshot director got a hold of this material. It would have been even more gratuitous, even more needlessly indulgent, and most importantly, would completely bypass the morality behind all of the immorality. Scorsese knows exactly how to handle this film, just like a circus ringleader who can serve up the spectacle, but will laugh at you behind the curtain that you're buying into this stuff. He knows how to both revel in the strangeness of Jordan Belfort's crazy life, but also take a step back and go "hey, fuck this guy." It's fun, yet it's sickening. Oh and yeah, Martin Scorsese is 71 and has more energy than me when I have a great night of sleep and a few energy drinks. Now that's crazy.

1. Alfonso Cuaron - Gravity
There's absolutely no competition here. Absolutely none. Gravity is a masterpiece of cinema. It is a film that in my twilight years, I'll look back on fondly and go "hey, I saw that in a cinema and it changed my life." This is such a difficult project that requires so many different modes of technology to create the correct atmosphere, all the while not losing the vital human component at the centre of the film. Cuaron uses everything he can effortlessly. He fills up a cinema in a way that no-one has ever done before. Gravity isn't really a film, it's an experience. And if you thought it was okay to watch it on a laptop screen, my heart aches for you but hey, it's your own fault. You really missed out there, buddy.

What do you think of these choices? Who were your top directors for 2013?

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