DGA & ASC Winners: La La Land and Lion

Last night was a huge night in Hollywood with three award events: The Directors Guild of America, American Society of Cinematographers, and the Annie Awards (which we'll get to later today). Which would you have attended if you had to choose?  La La Land continued its seasonal dominance but Lion unexpectedly roared, too.  

Some of the winners last night are names you'll recognize from different contexts. The list and comments are after the jump...

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On This Day: Madonna's Globes, Damien's Birth, Biopic Worthies

Damien and Emma in Venice, Fall 2016Happy birthday to Damien Chazelle, who turns 32 today! He's already an Oscar nominee for writing Whiplash (2014) and he will easily boost his tally this coming Tuesday when he may well nab two nominations for writing and directing La La Land. If he wins Best Director he'll become the youngest person to ever win, beating a record set way back in 1931 by Norman Taurog for Skippy... who was 32½ when he won.

If you aren't dancing for joy at La La Land's success (and you should be... an original musical heading towards a blockbuster gross is great for the future of the genre!) here are other people and things you can celebrate today. Celebrate something since life isn't worth living otherwise in this brink of the apocalypse world.

Other Things To Celebrate...
1809 Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston and life was harsh from the get go - before he was two he was an orphan but his tales of the macabre will live forever in print and in their film and TV adaptations
1839 Post impressionist giant Paul Cezanne is born in France. The recent French film Cezanne et moi (2013) is about his friendship with writer Emile Zola

Biopic Suggestions and Golden Globe memories after the jump...

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La La Demy Land

Now that La La Land is in wide release word of mouth from regular moviegoers (rather than critics) keeps expanding. As expected with Best Picture frontrunners, not all of it is kind. This unique and ravishing film has begun to suffer from the inevitable backlash.  Some of my musical theater friends are balking that neither star is a great singer, the songs aren’t sophisticated, and it doesn’t honor Hollywood musicals in the way they’d expected.

To harp on these issues misses the point of what director Damien Chazelle has created.  It's true that neither Emma Stone nor Ryan Gosling have Broadway-caliber singing voices, and it’s also true that future composers of musical theater are likelier to study Sondheim than Justin Hurwitz.  But Chazelle isn’t making a Broadway show, he’s crafting a wholly-original tone for a film, stealing bits and pieces from a wide variety of sources, and doesn’t seem interested in making a purely traditional Hollywood musical.

Chazelle has spoken in interviews about how the single greatest influence on La La Land were the two musical films of French director Jacques Demy:  The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and The Young Girls of Rochefort...

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Gosling and Chazelle to Reunite on the Moon

Chris here. It's that time of the Oscar season where we are starting to hear about the major contenders next projects, and here's one that reunites two major forces behind the frontrunner. Ryan Gosling has already danced among the stars for director Damien Chazelle, and now he'll be launched back into them as Neil Armstrong for First Man.

From James Hansen's biography of the same name, the film will be adapted by Spotlight's Oscar winning cowriter Josh Singer and follow the story of the historic moon landing. The project had originally been developed by Clint Eastwood, but Chazelle is an incredibly more interesting and less expected choice for the project. This would be quite the about face from the jazz-focused La La Land and Whiplash, so we'll be curious to see the results whether or not he becomes the youngest ever Oscar-winning director this year.

Will this be one small step for Chazelle or a giant leap for Gosling?

Podcast: "Lion" and "La La Land"

Katey, Nick, Joe and Nathaniel talk two Best Picture contenders along with conversational detours that pop up as these detours do. The podcast will return in the New Year. 

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 LION (and movie titles) 
12:15 LA LA LAND (divisive direction!) 
27:10 BEST PIC & LIST-MAKING (tis the season)
31:13 CHRISTMAS MEDLEY (Rent, Kermit, Judy G)

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments and please have very happy and safe holidays until we're chatting at you again in January (probably around Golden Globes weekend January 8th-ish). 

Lion & La La Land