Simplistic Reviews Picks (on) The Oscars!

It's that time of year again.   The time of year where overprivileged stars get together, shake hands, say how much they appreciate each other, attend the Vanity Fair after-party, get smashed, and yeah...win awards.

Our job here at Simplistic Reviews, besides being jealous of these actors, is to decide who will win, and who will lose.  It's Oscar time ladies and germs!

The 86th Annual Academy Awards are this Sunday, March 2nd, and to commemorate this special occasion DJ, Justin, Neal, who has been dubbed "The Voice of the People", and Matt are picking the winners.

To make things easier, we are color coding their picks.  In the event of the same picks multiple colors will be added per winner.  Throughout the night, this post will be updated with the winners along with a running total of who has the most correct picks.  The boys will also be live tweeting the awards in an effort to mock every horrible outfit and every clunky acceptance speech.  Follow @srblogspot, @chezitman and @tryingtobedjv for all types of hilarity.

Justin is RED
Neal is BLUE
DJ is GREEN
Matt is ORANGE 


Best Picture

• American Hustle
• Captain Phillips
• Dallas Buyers Club
• Gravity
• Her
• Nebraska
• Philomena
• 12 Years a SlaveWINNER
• The Wolf of Wall Street 

Best 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)WINNER

Best Actress in a Leading Role

• Amy Adams (American Hustle)
• Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)WINNER
• Sandra Bullock (Gravity)
• Judi Dench (Philomena)
• Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

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

Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Ironically, the two black guys pick the white chick, and the white guys pick the black chick)

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

 Best Animated Feature

• The Croods (Chris Sanders, Kirk DeMicco, Kristine Belson)
• Despicable Me 2 (Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin, Chris Meledandri)
• Ernest & Celestine (Benjamin Renner, Didier Brunner)
• Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Peter Del Vecho)WINNER
• The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki)

Best Cinematography

• The Grandmaster (Philippe Le Sourd)
• Gravity (Emmanuel Lubezki)WINNER
• Inside Llewyn Davis (Bruno Delbonnel)
• Nebraska (Phedon Papamichael)
• Prisoners (Roger A. Deakins)

Best Costume Design

• American Hustle (Michael Wilkinson)
• The Grandmaster (William Chang Suk Ping)
• The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin)WINNER
• The Invisible Woman (Michael O'Connor)
• 12 Years a Slave (Patricia Norris)

Best Directing

• American Hustle (David O. Russell)
• Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)WINNER
• Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
• 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
• The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

Best Film Editing

• American Hustle (Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers, Alan Baumgarten)
• Captain Phillips (Christopher Rouse)
• Dallas Buyers Club (John Mac McMurphy, Martin Pensa)
• Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger)WINNER
• 12 Years a Slave (Joe Walker)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

• Dallas Buyers Club (Adruitha Lee, Robin Mathews) WINNER
• Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Stephen Prouty)
• The Lone Ranger (Joel Harlow, Gloria Pasqua-Casny)

Best Original Score

• The Book Thief (John Williams)
• Gravity (Steven Price)WINNER
• Her (William Butler, Owen Pallett)
• Philomena (Alexandre Desplat)
• Saving Mr. Banks (Thomas Newman)

Best Original Song

• Happy (Despicable Me 2)
• Let It Go (Frozen)WINNER
• The Moon Song (Her)
• Ordinary Love (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)

Best Visual Effects

• Gravity (Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk, Neil Corbould)WINNER
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, Eric Reynolds)
• Iron Man 3 (Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Erik Nash, Dan Sudick)
• Star Trek Into Darkness (Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Ben Grossmann, Burt Dalton)
• The Lone Ranger (Tim Alexander, Gary Brozenich, Edson Williams, John Frazier)

Best Adapted Screenplay

• Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke)
• Captain Phillips (Billy Ray)
• Philomena (Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope)
• 12 Years a Slave (John Ridley)WINNER
• The Wolf of Wall Street (Terence Winter)

Best Original Screenplay

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

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The Simplistic Reviews Podcast: Oscar Nomination Reaction Special

It's that time of the year again folks.  You might think "Oh, the time of the year where you continue to embarrass yourself with your inept film talk?"  Well, yeah, that too, but we're talking about The Academy Award Nominations sillies.

Join DJ, Justin, and Matt as they go over the nominations, share their disdain for the people who got nominated and their joy for those who got snubbed.  It's sure to be a super-rad time on this special edition of The Simplistic Reviews Podcast.


Show Notes:
Full List of Oscar Nominations 2014
Biggest Oscar Upsets
Worst Oscar Winners

Music Notes:
"All Gold Everything" By Trindad James
"Police Academy March" By Robert Folk

FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY.

Click HERE to listen to podcast

Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Letterboxd, and Pinterest

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Simplistic Reviews Oscar Preview Podcast Trailer #2

What's the one voice Sandra Bullock doesn't want in her head while struggling to survive in space?  Yep...good ol' Julie.

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Holiday Hangover: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds - Tension

I don't think any war in our nation's, or world's, history has been done to death like World War II.  There have been romantic, comedic, heart-wrenching, and just plain bad tellings of "The War to End All Wars."  On the top of my list I have "Saving Private Ryan" and the so-far-under-the-radar "Enemy At The Gates,"  whereas craptastic crap like "BloodRayne" remains at the bottom of the English Channel.  But you know that when a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino gets a bug up his ass that he wants to make a war film its not going to be like any war film you've ever seen.  Enter, "Inglourious Basterds."

Before I dive into "Basterds," I'll preface;  I was actually going to review all of Tarantino's directorial efforts in order, but the holidays sidetracked me and I ended up skipping right to "Django Unchained," where you can read that review right here.  I'd like to think of "Basterds" as the moment where Tarantino went mainstream, and I mean REAL mainstream.  "Basterds" was his first film to feature a TRUE leading man in Brad Pitt, and he finally was able to reward one of his actors with an Academy Award in Christoph Waltz.  In a way it was also one of his most accessible efforts in theaters where it was the largest release for a Tarantino movie to date, "Kill Bill Vol.1" was a close second.  And it was the first of his films to be available in a Digital, DVD, and Blu-Ray format (since the writing of this review you can pick up the Tarantino XX Blu-Ray Collection that features all of his films in an HD format).

"Inglourious Basterds" follows the exploits of a group of Jewish-born Army Mercenaries and their commanding officer Lt. Aldo Raine as they merrily maraude across Europe killing, scalping, and branding Nazis.  But that is just a small portion of the film, which also follows a French-born Jewish female theater owner planning her revenge against Nazis who are planning to premier a propaganda film entitled "Nation's Pride."  Included in attendance are Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.  As you can imagine there are twists, typical Tarantino humor, and scenes of fantastic violence.  The difference between "Basterds" and Tarantino's other films is the tension and you can cut it with a knife in several scenes.  The best examples include the Strudel scene and the Bar scene.  What you also start to see, and this might have started after QT finished up his "Kill Bill" saga, is the change in his tone of film.

Tarantino began making and writing films with an edge, a very gritty edge.  He dealt with the wrong side of law in thieves, murderers, sadists, and hit-men   And for the most part, it all seemed to fit in some realm of reality.  When "Bill" was released you began to see a different side; which included more fantastic plot devices and stories that revolved more around revenge and the bloody road that leads to it.  I'm not going to say that Tarantino is getting lazy, its really just a maturation process in his filmmaking, or an evolution if you will.  He's moved from the gritty streets of Los Angeles, to a fantastic Earth 2 of DC proportions.

Look at any war genre film from the 1960s and 70s, and "Basterds" has its fingers all over it.  From the original "Inglorious Bastards" to "The Dirty Dozen" and maybe in throw in a little "Wild Bunch" and you have "Basterds" in a nutshell.  What Tarantino really brings out is the fact that a so-called "foreign" film can be accessible to any audience.  There are a ton of subtitles across this nearly three hour epic, but the actors who read the dialogue do it so well, and with such fluidity, that you get seduced by their delivery, no matter if its in German, French, or Italian.  I brought up Christoph Waltz winning an Oscar for his portrayal of Col. Hans Landa, aka, The Jew Hunter, and part of that victory must have come from his ability to act and deliver dialogue in English, German, French, and Italian with gusto, hilarity, and conviction.  Every time he appears on screen you are transfixed on his slimy SS Officer.  You both hate and love Landa, and there aren't many characters in the history of film you can say that for.

Is "Inglorious Basterds" a good movie, of course it is.  While some viewers saw it as a little boring, uneven, and maybe even a romantic take on Nazis and World War II France, there is still plenty to take away from "Basterds."  Also, I would put money on the fact that the ending of "Basterds" is one of the most satisfying in any Tarantino film to date, even "Django Unchained."  If you haven't already, or maybe if you've even seen it a few times, check out "Inglourious Basterds," it's tons of fun, and started a new chapter in the career of Quentin Tarantino.

Fun Fact:  Eli Roth, who appears as Sgt. Donny Donowitz, aka The Bear Jew, in "Basterds" directed the scenes from the film-within-a-film, "Nation's Pride."

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Happy Holidays: Jackie Brown

Jackie Brown - Comeback

Pam Grier was a big star in the 1970s.  I mean she was Foxy Brown (the original Foxy Brown, not this one, even though this one did have something to do with the following film) and Coffy.  She was the epitome of "the baddest bitch" (and not this shit either).  Pardon my language, after dealing with Tarantino flicks for the past two weeks I finally feel like I'm getting into character.  The novice Tarantino head will consider either "Pulp Fiction" or "Inglorious Basterds" his masterpiece (for the record I have no issues whatsoever with either film, they are both fantastic in their own rights) but "Jackie Brown" from 1997 is by far Tarantino's most accomplished effort and showed a master at work, in complete control of his cast and story while developing an alternate universe that paralleled, or maybe even intersected at times, his "Pulp"and "Reservoir Dog," universe.

A comeback can come in many shapes and sizes.  For "Brown" this was a comeback of sorts for both Grier and Robert Forster (who was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance) and also Tarantino himself.  Between the time "Pulp Fiction" premiered in 1994 and the release of "Brown," QT had hit some rough times.  Have you ever seen "Destiny Turns on the Radio"? And while "Four Rooms" was decent enough it was still a bomb.  Come 1997, he had a lot to prove, and by God, he proves it.

Like any great genre film, the plot is simple, yet complex.  We have an airline stewardess, played by Grier, who works for a small-time pimp and drug-runner named Ordell Robbie, played by Samuel L. Jackson (and for my money the best performance of his career).  Two ATF agents bust the stewardess and she heads to prison.  Enter the middle-age bail bondsman, who falls head over heels for our stewardess who has a plan to put an end to Robbie's career.  We have twists, double and triple-crosses, and enough quirky characters and quotable lines to shake a stick, or an AK-47, at.  "Brown" is an exercise in blaxplotation for the mod-set.

What makes "Brown" special is the fact that normally when books are taken and transformed from the written word to the silver screen, it's never done as good and you always hear the same comment, "the book was better."  Well, when the author of said book that you are adapting says that this is his favorite adaptation of his work, you got something good.  "Brown" is based on Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch" from 1992.  You might remember another Leonard novel that was adapted shortly before "Brown," which was "Get Shorty" from 1995, starring John Travolta, who was Vincent Vega in "Pulp Fiction."  It's the circle of life baby.

Overall, if you want the perfect Tarantino flick to check out during the holidays, or anytime for that matter, it has to be "Jackie Brown."  While it might be the most unappreciated of his film repertoire, it's an exercise in writing, acting, and direction at the genre's best.

Fun Fact:  Have you ever payed close attention in "Pulp Fiction" to the music faintly played (between 2:30-2:35) in the hallway where Jules and Vincent are discussing foot massages?  That song is "Strawberry Letter 23" which you can also hear in this scene in "Jackie Brown."

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The Master

The Master - Comeback

I was sitting in the theater Friday morning/afternoon watching "The Master."
.........that's it.  No funny little story, I was just literally watching "The Master."  However, I will say; Welcome back Joaquin Phoenix.  My word, you're good you!

In case you haven't heard, both Paul Thomas Anderson (or P.T. Anderson for the mod set) and Joaquin Phoenix are back.  For Anderson this is his first film since "There Will Be Blood" in 2008, and for Phoenix, well, he started a rap career and "documented" himself in 2010's "I'm Still Here" with the help of Casey Affleck, but this is his first "film" since 2008, where he appeared in "Two Lovers" (?)  But forget about the past, let's discuss "The Master", simply.

The basic idea of "The Master" is control and fervent belief.  The setting is just right (the film spans approximately from 1942-1950), and it makes complete sense.  After World War II, and the pre-Red Scare era, many people were looking for guidance and someone to believe in, and Lancaster Dodd (played brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is probably on his way to another Oscar) is that man.  He takes in a disturbed Naval vet, played by Joaquin Phoenix (who WILL win the Oscar this year) as his protege, while Dodd's son has become suspect of his father's practices and teachings to his followers.

The film also stars Amy Adams as Dodd's wife, and Rami Malek as Clark, Dodd's new son-in law, who looks shockingly like Bruno Mars.  But this film is all about Phoenix, who gives the performance of his life, and I really didn't think he had it in him.  Sure, he was great in "Gladiator" and "Walk the Line" but to create a character like Freddie Quell from the ground up is something to behold.  This is his comeback.

While movies by Anderson ("Boogie Nights" and "Punch Drunk Love") have always been critically acclaimed they all seem to have a veil of inaccessibility and being a little too art house.  But do yourself a favor, if you like film and really enjoy acting, "The Master" is top-notch in all aspects, and hey, making fun of Scientology and cults is fun.

Fact Fact:  This is the fifth collaboration between Anderson and Hoffman, starting with "Hard Eight" in 1996.

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