2021 OSCARS: The Winners

Here are the winners of the 2021 Oscars (93rd annual Academy Awards). I correctly predicted 5 of the Top 8 categories. Like everyone else, I was completely blindsided by Frances McDormand's Best Actress win. I actually thought that Anthony Hopkins should win for Best Actor but like everyone else, expected Chadwick Boseman to do so. Similarly, I thought The Father should win for Adapted Screenplay but expected Nomadland to do so. It was great to see a woman win Best Director (for only the second time ever!) and now two Asians have won this award in consecutive years.

Best Picture
Nomadland

Best Actor
Anthony Hopkins, The Father

Best Actress
Frances McDormand, Nomadland

Best Director
Chloé Zhao, Nomadland

Best Supporting Actress
Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari

Best Supporting Actor
Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah

Best International Feature
Another Round

Best Animated Feature 
Soul

Best Documentary Feature
My Octopus Teacher

Best Original Score
Soul

Best Original Song
“Fight for You,” Judas and the Black Messiah

Best Original Screenplay
Promising Young Woman

Best Adapted Screenplay
The Father

Best Cinematography
Mank

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Best Costume Design
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Best Film Editing
Sound of Metal

Best Sound
Sound of Metal

Best Live-Action Short
Two Distant Strangers

Best Animated Short
If Anything Happens I Love You

Best Documentary Short
Colette

Best Visual Effects
Tenet

Best Production Design
Mank

UPDATE: The Expanse Is Premiering On SyFy In December 2015!

I found other rabid fans of James S.A. Corey's books at Reddit and from there discovered that there's a second version of the trailer for the upcoming SyFy television adaptation and someone has grabbed  a bunch of screen captures from it.

Check it out! There are signs that SyFy has already approved Season 2 of the series even before the show has premiered. If true, this would be great news, although I'm a bit worried about the December premiere for the show. The big question for me will be whether The Expanse will premiere from the other big Science fiction show coming you this year, Jonathan Nolan's Westworld starring Sir Anthony Hopkins among others. Either SyFy is just trying to stick to their promised (and probably contractual 2015 premiere date and trying to take as long as possible to get it right, or they are not completely sure abut the show and have picked a time when most people are not paying attention to launch My Next Favorite Television Show.

The Expanse cast has Shohreh Agdashloo, Steven Strait, Thomas Jane and Chad Coleman in key roles.

Celebrity Friday: Sir Anthony Hopkins As Hitchcock

Sir Anthony Hopkins, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1991 for playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs is clearly trying to follow the footsteps of fellow uber-thespian Meryl Streep by physically transforming himself in the likeness of a well-known historical figure for his next role in order to win another Oscar.

The picture above shows Hopkins looking astonishingly similar to renowned film director Alfred Hitchcock. Hopkins is set to star in the film Hitchcock, which is about the making of the film's seminal film Psycho. Oscar winner and MadProfessah-fave Helen Mirren also appears in the film, along with Scarlett Johannsen, James D'Arcy, Toni Collette and others.

REVIEW: Fracture

The movie Fracture stars Sir Anthony Hopkins and Best Actor Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling in a taut thriller directed by Gregory Hoblit.

Although the film did not get very good reviews on its initial release or perform very well at the box-office The Other Half and I still went to see Fracture (albeit at our favorite cheapskate second-run theater Regency Academy Cinema in Pasadena) earlier in the summer because he thinks Ryan Gosling is cute and I like to see Hopkins in just about anything.

Since the movie was released on DVD yesterday (with two alternate endings!) I thought I would put down my thoughts about this film.

It's definitely not a painfully bad movie, and for someone who lives in Los Angeles there's always a certain frisson as one recognizes the locations in the film the characters are going to as places that you have been to yourself. That being said, this is clearly a two-man show, with some very fun scenes between Hopkins' character, Ted Crawford, the older, rich, successful engineer who shoots his philandering young wife in the head and Gosling's character, a young, ambitious, handsome but somewhat stuck-up district attorney who gets the case dumped in his lapas his last case before he can jump to a high-power, lucrative private firm. The smaller parts are well-cast, with actors like Cliff Curtis, David Strathairn and Rosamund Pike.

It's definitely not a perfect movie. The plot relies unfairly on information that the audience couldn't reasonably know in order to "solve" the mystery. It's really unsurprising that the DVD contains at least two alternate endings, since really the story could have gone in multiple directions without much more suspension of belief fom the audience. In addition, the chemistry between Gosling and Pike is weak, at best. What's interesting is that Gosling must have been paired with the legendary Anthony Hopkins before his Oscar-nominated performance as a crack-smoking elementary school teacher in Half Nelson became widely known. His next appearance will be in Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson's film adaptation of Alice Sebold's celebrated first novel The Lovely Bones, as the father of the murdered child who is the center of the story.

Overall, if you go in with lowered expectations and appreciate the interactions between two actors firing on all cylinders, Fracture is a pleasantly diverting two hours.

GRADE: B.