YNMS: The Light Between Oceans

Lynn here, offering a little break from the frenzy of this year’s Oscars homestretch to ponder a possible future awards contender…

Fall, it seems so far away!  But it’s never too early to start thinking of the potential Oscars slate for next season, especially when you’ve got an adaptation of a popular book that features two mega-hot rising stars coming off fresh Oscar nominations and one Oscar winner who’s a bona fide screen goddess.  That would be The Light Between Oceans, which just dropped its first trailer yesterday.  Based on the bestselling novel by M.L. Stedman, it’s directed by Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines) and stars Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz.

Let’s break down the trailer, YNMS-style after the jump...

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Best Actor: The Year of the Ham

As noted by the recently departed Alan Rickman on his BAFTA win for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves "Subtlety isn't everything." As far as Oscar is concerned, this year Best Actor was go big or go home. Take a look the leading men outside the bubble and you'll find mostly nuanced performances like those from Michael B. Jordan, Tom Courtenay, and Tom Hanks with their scenery unchewed. Rewarding more broad work has made this the Year of the Ham.

Some of the bigger choices have been more welcome than others in this field, so let's have some fun assessing the hammage:

Bryan Cranston - Trumbo
Clearly the most guilty of going big for its own sake, Cranston's nomination leaves quite a sour taste in your mouth. The performance feels built upon arched shoulders and mustaches, even if Cranston is a game actor admirably going along with the film's schlocky tone. It's not just the scenery getting chewed, but the script, the costumes, the camera, and poor Diane Lane. It's so hammy, he even shows us his hams in a prison scene.
Level of Ham: SPAM - some people like it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Matt Damon - The Martian
Here's a role that actually calls upon the actor to be a ham. Matt Damon gets to use more of his natural charm than he has in anything outside of the Ocean's franchise and spends much of his performance breaking the fourth wall. He leans in on the nerd humor that's heavy on puns and dirty words, but thankfully never goes full broski. Everything lands, including his unexpected emotional moments, but this a performance playing right to the crowd. The visible hams are an obvious emaciated stunt double.
Level of Ham: Honey-Baked - generally pleasing to everyone

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London Calling. Kate wants Leo to win his Oscar

The London Film Critics Circle Awards were held last night across the Atlantic as something of a calmer arthouse alternative to the multiplex-lusting Critics Choice Awards here in the States, though they did share one winner: George Miller took Best Director for Mad Max Fury Road. We're trying not to think of him as the frontrunner here at TFE because it would be the most anomalous Best Director win of our lifetimes and too satisfying. Could it actually happen?

Judging on photos of the event, Kate Winslet was the main attraction of the night.

The Winners 

• FILM: Mad Max: Fury Road
• BRITISH/IRISH FILM: 45 Years
• DIRECTOR: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
• ACTRESS: Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
• ACTOR: Tom Courtenay, 45 Years
• BRITISH/IRISH ACTRESS: Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
• SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
• SUPPORTING ACTOR: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
• YOUNG BRITISH/IRISH PERFORMER: Maisie Williams, The Falling (supposedly this girls boarding school drama headlined by the Game of Thrones star will be released in the USA by Cinedigm)
• BRITISH/IRISH ACTOR: Tom Hardy (for multiple roles: Legend, London Road, Mad Max: Fury Road, and The Revenant)
• SCREENWRITER: Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight
• TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT: Ed Lachman, for the Cinematography of Carol
• FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: The Look of Silence (nominated for the Doc Oscar)
• DOCUMENTARY: Amy (also nominated for the Oscar)
• BRITISH/IRISH SHORT: Stutterer, Benjamin Cleary (it's also nominated for the Oscar)
• BREAKTHROUGH BRITISH/IRISH FILMMAKER (The Philip French Award): John Maclean, Slow West

A Fun Titanic Takeaway
Kate Winslet, who can add the London prize to her Golden Globe this year, doesn't seem to be thinking about her own Oscar run for Steve Jobs. Perhaps she doesn't care about a second statue (and Alicia Vikander could be tough to beat -- the advantage of being a leading lady in a supporting category... *sigh*).

With the cameras shoved in her face (seriously back off reporters) Kate is just loving on Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant (it's clear where her Oscar vote is going). There are also props to her current co-star Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs as well.

Link Brunch

Now with unlimited mimosas

Towleroad a Russian distributor is planning some law-defying cinephilia -- they're going to release Carol despite Russia's absurdly homophobic "anti-propaganda" law 
Marvel 2016 is Captain America's 75th anniversary so they'll be the new film Captain America: Civil War as well as a 2 hour TV special "75 Heroic Years" to air on ABC on January 19th
Pajiba clears up what the word "spoiler" means since the internet is always confused about it
MNPP Save the date - new Michael Fassbender picture on Oct 13th, 2017
Comics Alliance forget what we said earlier about Nicole Kidman co-starring in Wonder Woman. Apparently they coudln't work out schedules. The'll presumably be looking for another iconic star in Kidman's age range for the Queen of the Amazons  

List-Mania
Associate Press and Rolling Stone have best albums lists for 2015. Adele's "25" and Madonna's "Rebel Heart" make both of the top 10s
i09 best comics and graphic novels of the year
Film Comment picks the 20 best undistributed films of the year. I haven't seen even one of them which is strange given multiple festivals this year
THR the Women Film Critics Circle goes all in for Suffragette with 7 (!!!) awards. This is a group I'd love to sing praises to except so often their ideas about gender seem reductive / surface level. I like Suffragette just fine but in no way does its topic (women's voting rights) make it a better film about women than say Carol or Brooklyn or even less high profile pictures like Grandma or I'll See You In My Dreams or Mustang you know? They also say super strange things like this:

The Invisible Woman Award (performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored): Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

How, exactly, has a performance with that much Oscar buzz from a new star the media is fawning all over having a wildly successful ubiquitous breakout year count as "invisible"?

a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...
Vogue a grown Star Wars fan remembers her adolescent obsession with the series and debates whether or not to go to the new film
Vanity Fair looks at the origins of Star Wars - an indie film no studio wanted to make
Movie City News the 5 things David Poland hated about Episode 7 (SPOILERIFFIC obviously). Agree completely on #1 (oy!) and sort of on #2 and #3. Don't understand #4 or especially #5 as I loved the Darth Vader obsession -- a great dark mirror to our own Star Wars fixations only embedded organically into the actual narrative.
The Incredible Suit 'froths at the cock' (sorry) for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Funny review  

Cotillard + Fassbender = Scorching Hot

Murtada here. Are you ready for some sexy stuff at the movies? Now playing in limited release is the latest big screen version of Macbeth from director Justin Kurzel. Reviews have been mixed but there’s no denying the heat created by the performances of Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in the titular parts. The screen almost combusts whenever they are together; they make Shakespeare sexy. And not just because of their considerable beauty, but rather because of what they bring out in each other. Fassbender raises Cotillard’s intensity and she is so tenderly natural that he can’t help but match her.

Sometimes one wonders how actors arrive at on-screen chemistry? Maybe it’s about surprising each other. That’s what Fassbender told the National Board of review about one of their scenes together:

 I don’t like to talk too much, with either director or actor, before doing the scene. [ ] She just picks up the ball and she runs with it, like that scene—the scorpion scene. I put my hand underneath her dress; I didn’t tell her I was going to do that, and she took it and she went with it and then she kisses me and then pulls away. She’s got this sort of repulsion, and then she reengages, and she’s like, “I love this man, I feel him, he’s sick.” All these things are happening on her face. That’s when you realize you’re in the presence of somebody great.

Here’s part of that scene, however for the exact part Fassbender is talking about you'll have to go to the movies.

It looks like Cotillard, Fassbender and Kurzel had a good time creatively; they are reuniting for Assassin’s Creed which is currently shooting.