Winner predictions for the 87th Academy awards

Here at The California Aggie Arts Desk, we are all about the movies, and with the 87th Academy Awards coming up on Sunday, we are here to offer you lovely readers a 2014 year-of-films review, along with our Oscar-winner predictions. Four veteran Aggie Arts writers, as well as our Arts editor, have offered their opinions on the best and most overrated films of the year and have collectively decided which movies they believe will take home the coveted gold statue. Note that these predictions are not based on what the Arts Desk wants to win, but rather, what they believe will win based on historical Oscar-win patterns throughout the last several decades.

*Winner-predictions are bolded

Best Picture:

The Imitation Game

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Birdman

Boyhood

Selma

The Theory of Everything

Whiplash

American Sniper

Best Leading Actress:

Julianne Moore, Still Alice

Reese Witherspoon, Wild

Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl

Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything

Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night

Best Actor:

Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game

Steve Carrell, Foxcatcher

Michael Keaton, Birdman

Bradley Cooper, American Sniper

Best Supporting Actress:

Patricia Arquette, Boyhood

Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game

Rene Russo, Nightcrawler

Emma Stone, Birdman

Meryl Streep, Into the Woods

Best Supporting Actor:

Ethan Hawke, Boyhood

Edward Norton, Birdman

Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher

J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

Tom Wilkinson, Selma

Best Animated Feature Film:

Big Hero 6

Box Trolls

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Song of the Sea

The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Best Directing:

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman

Richard Linklater, Boyhood

Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher

Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel

Mortem Tyldum, The Imitation Game

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Jason Hall, American Sniper

Graham Moore, The Imitation Game

Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice

Anthony McCarten, The Theory of Everything

Damien Chazell, Whiplash

Best Original Screenplay:

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. and Armando Bo, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Richard Linklater, Boyhoo

Max Frye and Dan Futterman, Foxcatcher

Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel

Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler

Our Opinions:

Chloe “Coen” Catajan, Arts writer

Favorite Movie: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Ever since third grade I have loved to watch The Royal Tenenbaums. I have pined for a world like one of a Wes Anderson film. Anderson has a knack for tactfully capturing any world imagined, which was further solidified in The Grand Budapest Hotel. On the surface, everything is presented handsomely. The pastel palette perfectly colors inside the lines of each symmetrical frame. But The Grand Budapest Hotel proves more than just a pretty face, as it features myriad characters, all complexed by their pasts, yet empowered by personal quirks and wit. Though his signature style permeates his every film, Anderson consistently executes it with a grace and charm that makes me smitten all over again.

Overrated Movie: Birdman

First, I must establish that I certainly do have appreciation for this film and I do not doubt any of its acclaim. I admire the continuous shooting and believe that the storyline was solid. However, the movie left me with no feelings of personal involvement or attachment; I was not at all as moved as others seemed to have been. I also felt that Emma Stone’s portrayal of a misunderstood 20-something seemed a tad bit forced. And in all honesty, I felt like Birdman was just another Black Swan in the way that both are premised on psychological motifs and… birds…

Rashad “Hitchcock” Hurst, Arts writer

Favorite Movie: Nightcrawler

It was tough for me not to give director Gareth Evan’s Indonesian crime-drama The Raid 2: Berandal the best of 2014 (at least watch it once to see the best action choreography since its predecessor, which is in my opinion, Kill Bill), but Nightcrawler has the best performance of the year. Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, a sociopathic siren-chasing news-vulture, is played to the brink of its twitchy, creep-lordian limits (in a reversal of the blinky detective in Prisoners, he may not blink the entirety of Nightcrawler). Working in tandem with Gyllenhaal’s performance is the script of screenwriter/first-time director Dan Gilroy. Their script drags the audience with Bloom to these psychological limits, while mercifully (maybe too mercifully) not holding them culpable. While the satire on local news as a collection of psychos is heavy-handed, the calculated recklessness of Gyllenhaal’s performance makes the atmosphere an extension of Lou’s force of will to achieve, and makes Nightcrawler the most captivating character-study and film of 2014.

Overrated Movie: Under the Skin

Getting rid of nearly all conventional storytelling, using amazing actors and manipulating some of the best special effects of 2014 couldn’t stop Under the Skin from feeling forced. While I was initially thrilled to see an original film that shed all exposition except for bare essentials – a.k.a. Scarlett Johansson is an alien wearing a Scarlett Johansson skin costume and seduces men for their life force – it affected the pacing in a way that other exposition-less movies (like No Country for Old Men) don’t. If not for Johannson’s convincing performance, albeit, one that is an even more detached version of the same detached role she’s played before, and the soundtrack by Mica Levi, it would have been a complete dud. The best takeaway was that it felt like a densely-layered enough story that I could trick myself into liking it if I rewatched it multiple times.

Amanda “Spielberg” Ong, Arts writer

Favorite Movie: Boyhood

I’ve been a fan of director Richard Linklater since watching Before Sunrise so I definitely had high expectations for this movie and it did not disappoint. It was fascinating watching the main character, Mason, literally mature and grow right before my eyes. I love stories about childhood and adolescence, and to me, this movie beautifully captured all the angst and joy that comes from growing up. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it made me dig Richard Linklater even more than I already did.

Overrated Movie: Interstellar

Don’t get me wrong: I definitely enjoyed this movie and thought the special effects were gorgeous. But apart from solid performances from Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, I wasn’t really blown away by the acting or the story as much as I was expecting to be. The movie seemed to rely on its special effects to dazzle and entertain, which is totally fine. However, the movies that stick with me long after I’ve left the theater are movies that have interesting and developed characters, and to me, Interstellar lacked characters that I really connected with.

Jason “Scorsese” Pham, Arts writer

Favorite Movie: Boyhood

Cue for groans. Yes, yes, my favorite movie of 2014 is this year’s Oscar race frontrunner Boyhood. While I could’ve picked other favorites such the socially relevant Selma or refreshingly indie Obvious Child, Boyhood has everything to make it as one of my favorite films. It’s coming of age, raw, and incredibly entitled — essentially everything that relates to me on a deeper level. Shot over the course of 12 years (yes, I still think that’s cool), director Richard Linklater paints an incredible cinematic portrait that imitates one’s transition from blissful childhood, to confusing adolescence, to even more confusing young adulthood. From its Sheryl Crow-infused soundtrack to lead actor Ellar Coltrane’s pimply rebellious stage, Boyhood takes me back farther than any throwback Thursday ever could.

Overrated Movie: American Sniper

After coming out of the theater where seas of white people dabbed their teary eyes at Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, I knew American Sniper was going to be my pick for 2014’s most overrated film. Following Kyle’s four tours in the Iraq War where he served as a U.S. sniper and murdered over 150 people, director Clint Eastwood concocts the largest piece of pro-war propaganda since the invention of G.I. Joe action figures. Not only is the film racist, misogynistic and overwhelmingly Islamophobic, it also spends way too much depicting a buffed-out Bradley Cooper as a tortured American hero instead of the insane murderer Kyle actually was. But hey, at least we know Sienna Miller can do a decent American accent, right? I have a theory that that plastic baby circling the interwebs was used because they couldn’t get any real babies to stop crying on the set of this horribly uncomfortable Eastwood film.

Akira Olivia “Coppola” Kumamoto, Arts Editor

Favorite Movie(s): Birdman, Selma and Belle

I reserve the right to not be able to pick a favorite film, simply because I think all three of these movies were stellar and will likely be snubbed by the Academy. Alejandro G. Iñárritu is one of my favorite directors, and Birdman literally (yes, I mean literally) kept me on the edge of my seat for the whole length of the movie. If you’ve seen Selma, the film speaks for itself, which is important since I couldn’t see through my tears. Not to mention that it offers a socially relevant message in alignment with current national racial civil rights movement happening. Finally, Belle was a summer film that you probably didn’t see or hear about, but you probably should have because 1) it passes the Bechdel test, 2) because it features a complex woman of color (WHAT?! yeah man, we exist) and 3) because it has beautiful cinematography.

Overrated Movie: The Interview

It’s overrated.

If you would like to argue with any of these writers about movies and stuff and/or take a photo in Akira Olivia’s glasses because you probably look way cooler in them than she does, you can contact us at arts@theaggie.org.

Photos by Jennifer Wu.

12 local restaurants to go head-to-head for annual charity soup competition

Warm your hearts and stomachs, and head on over to Davis Odd Fellows Lodge on Sunday for 2015’s Souper Bowl. Hosted by Davis Food Co-op, the ninth annual charity competition pits 12 local restaurants against one another for who has the best soup in Davis.

The Souper Bowl, which benefits a different charity every year, will donate this year’s proceeds toward the Yolo County District Attorney Victim Services Courthouse Dog — an animal service that helps those who have been victims of crime rehabilitate.

Participating restaurants range from the Asian-infused Open Rice Kitchen to Tex-Mex inspired Dos Coyotes Border Cafe to the Davis Food Co-op’s very own Teaching Kitchen, which is currently the reigning champion after taking the title home last year for its vegan Thai sweet potato soup.

Other competing locations include Fat Face, G Street Grill, Jack’s Urban Eats, Osteria Fasulo, Stone Soup and Catering, Tommy J’s, We Cater To You at The Lodge and de Vere’s.

Calvin Liu, chef at Open Rice Kitchen, will be serving a traditional Asian noodle soup with slow cooked beef and a variety of oriental spices such as ginger and five spice.

“It was a favorite of mine growing up, so I wanted to share it with everyone,” Liu said.

Bobby Coyote, owner of Dos Coyotes, will be serving his restaurant’s hatch chile cheddar cheese bisque for the first time at the event. The soup, which is thickened with masa corn flour and topped with sharp aged cheddar cheese, is a twist on a traditional poblano chile soup. The poblano chiles are replaced with hatch chiles, a milder pepper found only in New Mexico. Although Dos Coyotes has been competing in the Souper Bowl for years, Coyote sees the event more as a way for restaurants and the community to give back to local charities.

“We don’t really look at it as a competition,” Coyote said. “It’s always been a really great charity event. We’re all about community. We always do whatever we can to give back to the communities that our business serves.”

Tom Jobst, chef at Tommy J’s, plans on competing for the first time with his Oktoberfest Stew, which brings together a combination of hearty ingredients such as German sausage, potatoes, onions, carrots and celery. Although Jobst echoes Coyote on the Souper Bowl’s philanthropic cause, he also sees the event as a way to enter into some friendly rivalry with his peers.

“It’s all for charity and it’s to have a good time, but of course every cook wants to win just to have bragging rights around town,” Jobst said.

In addition to soups, guests can also enjoy rolls, cookies, soft drinks, alcoholic beverages at the lodge’s bar and live music performed by classical guitarist Matthew Grasso and local jazz band Jonny Gold Trio.

Julie Cross, marketing director at Davis Food Co-op, came up with the idea for this event in a dream and thought it would be a good way for the community to celebrate local businesses in Davis.

“[This event] is great for Davis because it illustrates what great local restaurants we have,” Cross said. “We don’t invite chain restaurants to participate, so it’s a good opportunity to try all these local small [eateries]. It’s nice to get to hang out with your community.”

Doors open for Souper Bowl 2015 at 4 p.m. on Sunday at the Davis Odd Fellows Lodge. The event costs $12 for adults and $4 children 12 and under. Guests can register online before Saturday at davisfood.coop/events/item/758.

Graphic by CA Aggie Graphic Design Team

Author Garth Stein to hold book signing at the Avid Reader

Garth Stein has had an illustrious career; he’s produced an Academy Award-winning documentary and his last book, The Art of Racing in the Rain, sold over four million copies. Now he’s back with a new novel, A Sudden Light, which is about a family confronting its long buried secrets as it struggles for redemption and forgiveness.

On March 7 at 7:30 p.m., Stein will give a presentation on his latest book at the Avid Reader, located at 617 2nd Street, which will be followed by a book signing. MUSE had a chance to speak with Stein this past week.

MUSE: It’s been six years since you published your last novel. When writing A Sudden Light, did you ever feel pressure when thinking about the success of your last one and if so, how did you handle that?

Stein: I think there’s always pressure. The Art of Racing in the Rain did very well for itself and following that up, there’s always going to be expectations. But I have to trust that the reader is going to trust me. A Sudden Light took me a long time to write, not because I was nervous of following up [my last book], but because it was such an extensive family history I had to realize. I wasn’t allowed to cheat on what I knew about the Riddell family [the family A Sudden Light is about], so I really had to explore it up to the 1890s. I have 100,000 words of pre-writing that I’ve written about the Riddell family that’s not included in the book that had to be done so I knew the family and understand the trajectory of all the characters.

MUSE: Do you believe that knowing little details about your characters is a crucial part of the writing process?

Stein: I think you have to [know]. When I was doing the play, I went down to LA to see what was going. One time I was at rehearsal and one of the actresses came over to me and she asked me, “What did my character have for breakfast?” It sounds like a funny question but what the character had for breakfast is going to inform how they’re coming into the scene. If she had a lumberjack special for breakfast she’s going to feel different than if she had a bowl of strawberries and yogurt. As writers, we have to know [metaphorically] what every character had for breakfast. How they’re walking into the scene, what their baggage is, what happened a year ago. If we don’t, we’re just pushing around little paper figures and it’s going to be false and readers are going to pick up on it.

MUSE: Your new book is based on a play that you did back in 2005, Brother Jones. Did you encounter any difficulties/challenges in using that play as inspiration for a much longer piece? What did you enjoy about taking your own play and making it into a novel?

Stein: There were definitely difficulties and things that needed to be worked out. Theatre is about the immediacy of the drama as it plays out on stage before our very eyes and a book has more time to go into the history of how we got to the now. The play couldn’t have all the backstory that the novel has so I was allowed to really explore the family to much greater detail. That involves quite a bit of work. I had to do a lot of learning about the Riddell family during the writing of the book.

MUSE: You worked as a documentary filmmaker before becoming an author. How does your documentary experience inform your writing and the way you go about writing or doing research for a piece?

Stein: I went to college and I was an English major and I always thought I would do something with writing but I thought going out and announcing that I was a novelist was kind of irresponsible considering the starting salary for a novelist is zero. But I got caught up with documentary filmmaking because I just loved the idea of telling a story using found objects and still making a compelling story. My documentary background was really useful because it gave me ballast and I met a lot of people and travelled around the world making films.

I like doing field research. I did do some tree climbing. I like to go out and experience certain aspects but for me, it’s about the integrity of the drama. If the drama is not true, it doesn’t matter how much research you’ve done.

MUSE: A Sudden Light is written from the perspective of an older man looking back at his 14-year-old self. What was interesting or enjoyable for you about writing from this perspective and playing with a narrator’s memory? Why did you decide to make the narrator an older Trevor looking back instead of a 14-year-old Trevor?

Stein: For a number of different reasons. I wanted a little bit of wisdom and perspective on this story. Old Trevor knows certain things that young Trevor doesn’t know. I also liked the idea of the lens of storytelling. The fact that we never tell the same story twice. We always embellish, change and modify. He’s embellishing certain conversations to make himself seem sharper and to dramatize certain moments and to skip ahead to other moments. He can tell the story more dramatically than if it happened in real time.

MUSE: You’re also involved in Seattle7Writers, a nonprofit collective of Pacific Northwest authors who support reading, writing and literacy. Why do you think it’s important to give back to the community?

Stein: The great thing about Seattle7 is that it’s not just getting young people involved in reading and writing. We work with people transitioning out of homeless[ness], people who have stories to tell and want to get those stories down on paper. It’s important for writers to remember that the literary ecosystem is very fragile. And there’s four components: readers, writers, librarians and booksellers. And if we lose any one of those arms, the whole system will go down. So we can’t stick our hands in the sand and say who cares. We need to take care of our bookstores, we need to support our libraries and we need to energize the reading public so they’re exciting about reading.

Stein will be at the Avid Reader at 7:30 p.m. on March 7 for A Sudden Light presentation and book signing. The event is free of charge.

Photo by Amanda Ong