Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 2:00PM Is this why she needs every second Tuesday off? pic.twitter.com/jWoW7KkbDW
— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) December 27, 2018
After the jump the current state of the DC cinematic universe, good jokes about Us, A Star is Born, and recognizing Sandra Bullock and Adam Driver. Plus more Mary Poppins Returns fun...
Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 10:31AM by Nathaniel R
A lot of people who win two Oscars by the age of 32, with only three films under their belt (not that there's many of those people, mind you) might safely be said to have peaked early. If the Golden Globe nominated score for First Man is any indication however, Justin Hurwitz is still on a steady ascent into his power as a composer. The gifted 33 year-old has scored all four of Damien Chazelle's films. The first three were musicals in spirit or by nature. The fourth, First Man, is less of a departure than expected since the emotive score is crucial to the film's success.
Chazelle and Hurwitz were college roommates and have been fiercely loyal since. While Chazelle was struggling to get his first films made, always with the plan for Hurwitz to score them, Hurwitz survived by breaking into sitcom writing "I don't take for granted how lucky I was to get to write comedy professionally," he says but the plan was always to be a composer "I am more passionate about music than anything else in the world."
Our full interview, edited and condensed for clarity, follows...
NATHANIEL: When did you first know you wanted to be a composer?
JUSTIN HURWITZ: I grew up playing piano, taking lessons since I was six. My parents gave me a synthesizer and a sequencer for my tenth birthday that lets you layer tracks, so I started composing then. I wasn't thinking about movies yet but it was around that same time that I started noticing film scores. The most impactful to me were the John Williams / Steven Spielberg films. Jurassic Park had a big impact on me. E.T. on VHS... I was so in love with that score.
NATHANIEL: Touchstones for a lot of people!
JUSTIN HURWITZ: As I got into college I discovered composers like Nina Rota and Bernard Hermann and all sorts of others.
Watching First Man, I thought 'god this most have been an overwhelming film to score,' but on the other hand after La La Land, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps it was a piece of cake?
It was definitely not a piece of cake. In a lot of ways it was my most challenging score...
Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 7:16AM Please welcome guest contributor Abe Fried-Tanzer from Movies with Abe. Since we hadn't discussed Clint Eastwood's new movie, he's doing the honor...
This is not the first time that Clint Eastwood has released a film at the tail end of awards season. That strategy worked wonders in 2014 for American Sniper, which landed major Oscar nominations despite missing out on a number of precursors. A full decade earlier, Million Dollar Baby launched late and managed to overtake the Oscar frontrunner, The Aviator, to win Best Picture. Eastwood may have arrived too late to earn accolades for this effort, which marks his 37th film as director, but he’s sure to earn some fans for his performance.
The most comparable frame of reference for The Mule is the most recent film that saw Eastwood as an acting Oscar hopeful, 2008’s Gran Torino...
Friday, December 28, 2018 at 5:30PM 
by Eric Blume
The new limited-theatrical-release / now-on-Netflix movie Bird Box is a puzzlement. It’s a post-apocalypse thriller directed by Oscar and Emmy-winner Susanne Bier, and stars Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, Jackie Weaver, and Trevante Rhodes as survivors of a world-ending crisis. A lot of talented people are involved in this film, so it’s a true curiosity that the whole thing ends up a gigantic shrug.
The details of this apocalypse are a little murky, but it goes something like this. Scary creatures (which we never see) are appearing around the globe, and they tap into your deepest fears somehow(?), and cause you to immediately commit suicide...
Friday, December 28, 2018 at 3:30PM President Obama (god how we miss him) randomly named his favourite movies of the year today on Instagram. Turns out he's been keeping up with critical recommendations because look at this list which is a nice mix of foreign, docs, indies, Hollywood, and Oscarables!
You can also see his favourite songs of the year on the same post.
