Can you feel it? AFI Fest is just around the corner, this Thursday to be exact and I am super excited to attend the festival on behalf of AwardsCircuit.com. Seeing as how we just did a staff wide top 10 film list, I figure I should release my personal choices for the 10 films I most want to see at the festival. Check it out!
Can you believe that we are just two months from 2014? The new year seemed so long ago like two weeks ago but now here we are about to be done with the year. Which of course means now is ripe for a new set of Oscar Predictions! I will be attending AFI Fest on behalf of AwardsCircuit.com, which I may have spoken about (idk really it’s been a rough past two weeks). Anyways there has been a lot of jostling and jockeying in the past few weeks.
By the time 12 Years a Slave had finished it’s running time, I found myself having to take stock of myself. The film, directed by Steve McQueen, is certainly an experience, painting a tough portrait of what happened to many Black people. Though I managed to make it through the film without much incident, I felt a small sense of disconnect, having endured through the movie but not thoroughly engaged, inspite of knowing the film was good. Luckily, there was enough artistry and ideas to keep the film bouncing around my mind and some truly astonishing performances to smooth the issues.
Things have been slow going here at the blog because of some server issues (or the CH stans who got mad at those photos I posted lol) but the world has continued on. Lord has it been a mess, a highly entertaining mess, but a mess nonetheless. And of all the things I thought could have happened, one of the biggest surprises would have to be Lee Daniels announcing that he wants to make an action film with a gay interracial couple as the leads. He also mentions that he’s tapped Alex Pettyfer to be the white half of the interracial couple. So…now that you’ve re-read that a couple of times I have some thoughts.
There are moments in Gravity that truly remind you of the power of movies as a medium. Alfonso Cuaron’s space survival epic was built to just wow and the big screen and wow it does, bringing the kind of intensity and wonder that you hope every movie would. But for all of that intensity and virtuoso filmmaking, there’s something that just doesn’t quite connect. It makes for an interesting contrast that the film doesn’t quite manage to make work.