Author: Lauren

I'm Lauren and this is my life.

The Big Bad Oscar Post

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Guys!  Are you prepared for Oscar Sunday?  Did you listen to a billion podcasts and read every award prediction article you could find?  Did you have many deep (sometimes testy) discussions about Get Out with your significant other?  Did you rank and re-rank the Best Picture nominees, then give up because you couldn’t fully decide what you liked and didn’t like?  Same, same.

As we’re mere hours away from one of my favorite events of the year (a list that also includes Great American Beer Fest, Thanksgiving and Rockies Opening Day), I have some serious thoughts to share in the form of a “Who I Want to Win vs. Who Will Win” list.  Here we go!

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Best Picture

Who I Want to Win: This category is, by far, the hardest for me to pin down.  I would LOVE for Lady Bird to win because come one, it was a perfect film!  But I sort of get the feeling that it has no chance.  I also want to take this opportunity to say The Disaster Artist was hands-down the most fun I had at the movie theater this year.  What an honest-to-God shame that it wasn’t (couldn’t?) at least be nominated.

Who I Think Will Win: Begrudgingly, The Shape of Water.  For all its beauty and all its underlying messages about being an outsider, I just thought this movie was so under-developed.  I left the theater knowing next to nothing about so many of the main characters, with so many unanswered questions and mainly with the feeling that I had seen this exact plot play out in Splash, which, for the record, I liked a lot more!  Also, please consider this my plea to let Octavia Spencer play a different character in her next film.  She deserves better.

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Actor in a Leading Role

Who I Want to Win: Not to play devil’s advocate because I guess Gary Oldman is deserving but kind of loved Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name.  That final stare scene was masterful.  I thought Daniel Day-Lewis was great too!

Who I Think Will Win: Gary Oldman, the end.  It feels traitorous to criticize the actor who played Sirius Black but I mostly feel confused on how to judge his performance in Darkest Hour.  Am I supposed to think his portrayal of Winston Churchill is uncanny?  Because here’s the thing… I have literally NO IDEA what Winston Churchill was like.  I’ll just assume this is all over my head since everyone else seems to think it was such a powerhouse performance.

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Actress in a Leading Role

Who I Want to Win:  What an incredible category!  They’re all so worthy of winning.  Saoirse Ronan is so relatable, Margot Robbie is both fierce and vulnerable, Sally Hawkins does not speak a word but somehow evokes such emotion, Meryl Streep is well, Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand is a force of nature.

Who I Think Will Win:  And for that reason, I think Frances McDormand will take home the win.  Her character is so flawed, so angry, so human and she takes this persona on with 100% commitment.  It’s truly incredible.  That little speech she gives to the priest when she comes home to find him at her kitchen table is epic.

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Actor in a Supporting Role

Who I Want to Win:  Is it too late to give this to Michael Stuhlbarg?  Between his heroic attempt to save the fish man in The Shape of Water to his brief but vital role in The Post and most importantly, that incredibly moving speech at the end of Call Me By Your Name, he had a killer year.  Alas, he’s not nominated so I’m going with Willem Dafoe on this one.  His portrayal of a hard-shelled but ultimately protective and kind-hearted motel manager was truly wonderful.

Who I Think Will Win: If every other award show is any indication, Sam Rockwell is no doubt taking this one home.

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Actress in a Supporting Role

Who I Want to Win: Okay, I thought Allison Janney was incredible but then I heard some good points being made about how A) the role was written with her in mind and B) she’s sort of good at playing this role already and it really detracted from the difficulty and made me favor Laurie Metcalf, who played such a complicated character in such a convincing and captivating way.

Who I Think Will Win: Allison Janney will win this one though and I won’t be entirely mad.

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Yes, there are many many other awards but I think I addressed all the heavy hitters, plus hi, I still don’t know the difference between sound editing and sound mixing or what film editing or production design mean, so let’s not hear my thoughts on those please.  Mostly, please tell me what you think will win Best Picture and what snacks you’re making to get you through all the boring speeches and references to last year’s La La Land/Moonlight debacle.  I’m planning on Buffalo Wing Popcorn 🙂

Happy Oscar Sunday!

Book Review: Dark Matter

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Remember when I read/reviewed The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August way back in 2015?  Or remember when I read that one Dan Brown book (The Lost Symbol) way way back in 2008??  Okay, you probably don’t remember that second one because it was before I started putting my life on the internet, but the point is, Dark Matter reminded me of those two books (both of which I really enjoyed!) and I liked this one a lot too.  Allow me to explain.

A Brief Synopsis: Jason Dessen is a college psychics professor who put his research ambitions aside to have time for his wife (Daniella) and son (Charlie) but as he’s walking home alone one night, he’s abducted and wakes up in another universe where he is a celebrated physicist, but he’s also a complete bachelor.  He’s switched lives with the version of himself who decided not to have a family or put aside his career and it’s that other version that’s now living HIS life, with HIS wife and HIS son.  The rest of the book involves a black box that gives Jason access to the “multiverse” and enter all kinds of different universes where different versions of Jason made all types of different life choices and ended up in worlds that are different than HIS world, the only one he’s desperate to get back to.

In conclusion: SCIENCE.  It reminded me of The Lost Symbol in that it involved an abduction and sensory deprivation stuff (though in this book, it involved a drug that altered your mind… or something) and it reminded me of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August in that I didn’t fully understand the quantum physics of the whole plot but had to be okay with that in order to just enjoy the novel.  Sometimes you just have to understand it enough to not be totally lost, sort of like when you read Shakespeare.  Hey, I guess I did learn something useful in college!

Anyway, I really did find this book fascinating and creative in a way that made it a real page-turner.  I also think it tapped into a question we all ask ourselves at some point: What if?  Life is nothing but a series of decisions, some big, some small, and it’s impossible not to imagine what your life would be like if you made any number of different decisions.  If this book taught me anything, it’s that the decisions you didn’t make sucked and all the ones you did make were for the best.  Okay, not really but it does put everything into perspective.  It also makes for a mind-bending, entertainingly bizarre read that really sucked me in.

What are you reading?