Month: January 2015

The Wire Watchalong: Season 4, Episodes 6 and 7

 

TheWireSeason4

Welcome to the Inanimate Blog watchalong for The Wire. Every week we’ll be watching two episodes and posting our thoughts. We’re not recapping each episode in detail; that’s what Wikipedia is for. This week is Season 4, Episodes 6 and 7.

S04E06

Emily: Carcetti at the black church is one of my favorite images. The clapping alone filled me with so much glee. So stiff. So off beat.

Sam: It was not particularly smooth, in the best way. I liked the line the reverend gave him when Carcetti was leaving, when Carcetti was all “Moses, huh?” and then took Jesus’ name in vain (in front of a man of the cloth… oops). The reverend was super smooth and was just like “Moses will do for now, we’ll save Jesus for your second term.” It’s the kind of normal corny line that exists in real life. I love this show.

Emily: It was also a nice way of showing that the minister could tell that there was a real possibility that Carcetti was going to win and that they were going to have to be able to work together once he took office. Continue reading →

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Oscars 2014 Nomination Reactions

grandbudapesthotelHoo boy has it been a morning (ahem… three days ago. This may have sat as a draft for longer than I meant). Pretty disappointing all around, to be honest, so let’s take it bit by bit. As with the Golden Globes, we’ll divide this in four categories this time, along the twin axes of Surprise vs. Not Surprise and Good vs. Bad.

Quick note: as a reminder, as a general rule, you cannot complain about something being a snub if you can’t also say who should have gotten the spot instead.

Unfortunately, the category of Unexpected and Bad easily has the most notes, so let’s start there and get it out of the way: Continue reading →

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Golden Globes 2015: TV Reactions

fargoEven later than the movie results, it’s time to talk about the TV Golden Globes category. At this point, it’s practically an afterthought but that’s appropriate considering that that’s kind of how the Hollywood Foreign Press Association treats the TV awards.

The best and worst part about the TV Golden Globes is that they make really weird decisions, most of which would never happen on the Emmys. Note the lack of wins for Jim Parsons or anything from Modern Family. We’re going to break the awards down into different degrees of expected and unexpected.
Continue reading →

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Oscars 2014: Nomination Predictions

theoryofeverythingIt’s that time again! Today and tomorrow are the most exciting days of the awards season year. Today is the day of posting wild speculations on who’s going to get nominated, and tomorrow we already get to see if we were right. The Oscars themselves are great, but it’s also the end. This is the high point of the season, with the maximum number of possibilities still in play. Whee!

Best Picture

Let’s start off with a bang. As I said a bit in the Golden Globes prediction piece, the two frontrunners are Boyhood and Birdman, with the addition here of Selma. Both of the British Mid-Century Genius Biopics have held on strongly, and Grand Budapest Hotel has gotten so much traction that it’s hard for me to not imagine it getting a nomination. Foxcatcher has been getting pushed hard, it feels like. As we all remember, there can be between 5 and 10 nominations in this category. I am sure the following films are getting nominated. Continue reading →

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Golden Globes 2015: Movie Reactions

BirdmanTime for the post-mortem! Quick and dirty version because it’s already Wednesday…So things break down into three possible categories as we analyze the options between Expected and Unexpected and whether the win was Good or Bad. If things went as expected, they aren’t bad, because it means I was right. If things did not go as I expected, they were either right or wrong (and don’t worry, I will tell you all about it. As though that’s a thing you would worry about.)

In the Expected category, we have most of the evening. Boyhood won for Drama and Richard Linklater won Best Director for directing it, Julianne Moore won in Actress – Drama, Michael Keaton won for Actor – Comedy/Musical, Patricia Arquette won for Supporting Actress, and JK Simmons won for Supporting Actor. Those were all chalk, and can reasonably be considered as frontrunners in their respective categories at the Oscars. At a minimum, expect them to all be nominated on Thursday.

Now let’s do the Unexpected, and we’ll go least surprising to most surprising. Continue reading →

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Golden Globes 2015: Movie Predictions

nightcrawlerIt’s an admirable thing, to put on one’s To Do list on October 26th, “Write too-early Oscars post.” It’s kind of less admirable when you don’t get that post written by January, by which time the critics associations and most guilds have given awards, half the movies have already come out, and oops, the Golden Globes already have nominations out. To say I’m behind on this Oscar season is an understatement.

But that’s not going to stop me! Let’s talk arbitrarily about the Globe nominations before the ceremony happens and I miss it all, shall we? Continue reading →

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The Wire Watchalong: Season 4, Episodes 1, 2, and 3

TheWireSeason4Welcome to the Inanimate Blog watchalong for The Wire. Every week we’ll be watching two episodes and posting our thoughts. We’re not recapping each episode in detail; that’s what Wikipedia is for. This week is Season 4, Episodes 1, 2, and 3.

S04E01

Sam: A fresh, new season! We’ve made it all the way to season 4! As a quick programming note, since season 4 has 13 episodes, we have to bunch three together somewhere. Since less stuff typically happens in the first episodes than the last, we’re doing episodes 1-3 together now and will proceed with the typical two episodes per post from here on out. In related news, after these episodes, we only have 20 episodes left in the whole series! Continue reading →

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This Week in the Box: Dirty Harry

dirtyharryNote: This Week in the Box is a year-long series where Sam works through the entire Warner Brothers 50 Film Collection box set. To find reviews of the other films in the series and see the complete list, click here.

Dirty Harry opens remarkably darkly. It’s a ballsy move to open your movie through crosshairs, which is menacing enough, but for the first action in your movie to be a sniper killing a woman as she does some swimming, well, that’s something. Continue reading →

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