Oscar's Noms Watch 2014 - Best Visual Effects: Gravity, The Lone Ranger, Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3, The Hobbit: Desola
Warning!
There's going to be a flurry of posts on Fanbloomingtastic to catch up with my 2014 Oscar nominated movies watching....I'm doing pretty well achieving this year's goal of 41 of the 57 films, but haven't been spectacular in blogging my thoughts on them.
So....if you're not interested in movies or the Oscars, that's cool, just click on through and I'm working on some sewing projects (and re-decorating ones) that I'll be posting pretty pictures of soon.
What? You're still here. OK then :)
First up are the movies nominated for Best Visual Effects:
Why are we even pondering this category? If Gravity doesn't win it, then I'll go back to being an accountant. (Hang on, there isn't any doubt is there.....because I really don't want to deal with numbers and people again.....?)
Here's the trailer for Gravity:
And here's a video behind the scenes that tells you all you need to know about the complexity of making a film look realistically set in space, how they advanced the field and why it's going to win the Visual Effects Academy Award at the end of this week:
(WARNING: there's a BIG SPOILER that I know I wouldn't wanted to have seen before watching the movie at the end of this featurette, so don't watch the whole thing if you still want to see Gravity)
Gravity's nominated in 10 categories so I'll be talking about it more in coming posts (and shock horror I don't think it should win all 10....but it's got this one and several others hands down).
So basically the other 4 nominees for Best Visual Effects chose a bad year to be made ;) BUT if Gravity wasn't a sure cert, what about the rest?
Well there's The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug....
We saw this in the cinema at Christmas (well, me, Mr D and Goth Child......Melchett decided she still didn't want to see giant spiders on a giant screen and I think she made the right decision.....had she seen it I think both of us would suffer broken nights from subsequent nightmares).
I really enjoyed the movie. I'm liking the Hobbit triology so far MILES more than I did The Lord of the Rings 3, but perhaps that's because of Martin Freeman, it not feeling as nerdy as TLOTR3 and this time my determination to spot Stephen Colbert's cameo (I did, the family didn't).
But despite seeing this
I think it might go to another movie BC appears in.....
But let's rule out Iron Man 3 next:
I love Iron Man, but number 3 (except for Sir Ben Kingsley) left me a bit 'meh'. There are so many better movies out there, that I felt this one was a bit lack lustre. I totally appreciated Tony Stark re-evaluating his life after the events of The Avengers in New York, but I don't know, just meh (can't even be bothered to finish a sentence about my feelings).
The visual effects, yeah they were ok, but nothing ground breaking. We've seen it done before, it was just quantity this time not any particularly any additional quality.
The same goes for The Lone Ranger....
Despite all the reasons and controversy (Goth Child and I have argued them all out and agree we wouldn't have watched this movie had it not been an Oscar nominated one), if you put all the reasons aside why you shouldn't watch this movie, and perhaps imagine Johnny Depp is 100% Native American.........then actually this film surprised us that it wasn't as bad as we expected. In fact it was quite a lot of fun. It was almost as much fun as the original Pirates of the Carribean. OK, maybe not that good, how about POTC2: Dead Man's Chest. Yep, I'll stick with that.
I was also surprised that there were Native American actors in the movie (I'd just written it off and not paid any attention to any of the publicity stuff long before it came out). That was a pleasant surprise.
But visual effects? Well to be honest I think you saw all of them (or at least the best) in the trailer there. And there were some that made me think "that's a special effect" (one in particular where a man is thrown through both sides of a train and camera follows him through) and I don't want to be taken out of the action to think how its done.
So anyway, that leaves us with what would I would be crossing my fingers for when Best Visual Effects comes up on Sunday night......if Gravity didn't exist......Star Trek Into Darkness:
I loved this movie. It was fun. It was visually stunning. I'd heartily recommend anyone to see it (ok, maybe my inner geek is showing too much). But of the four excepting Gravity, it's the best Visual Effects by a mile.
HOWEVER......and this is going to become a regular bit to this week's posts, do you know what should also be here in this 5 and should be giving Gravity a damn good run for it's money? Pacific Rim:
Don't even get Goth Child started talking on this movie.....you'll never stop her. But without a doubt, Pacific Rim should have received a nomination....the category could easily have lost The Lone Ranger in favour of it.
To sum up:
Best Visual Effects Oscar will go to: Gravity
Movie I'll be rooting for (often not the same as above, but this time): Gravity
Stars I gave to each movie on IMDB (for the film as a whole not just this category):
Gravity ★★★★★★★★★ 9
The Lone Ranger ★★★★★★ 6
Star Trek Into Darkness ★★★★★★★★★ 9
The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug ★★★★★★★★ 8
Iron Man 3 ★★★★★★★ 7
The movie I'd tell you to watch if you could only choose one: Star Trek Into Darkness
Next categories up.....Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, and I'll have a big round up of my picks (and those that will actually win) on Sunday afternoon.
