Tag / Frankenstein

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And The Oscar Goes To…

As they finish polishing up the statues in Hollywood for Sunday’s ceremony, it’s time to finish up our predictions with the major categories for the 98th Academy Awards.  So, without further ado, we begin with:

Best Picture

Bugonia
F1
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Train Dreams

I’ve actually seen three of these, so I’ll go with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners.

Best Actor

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Michael B. Jordan played two roles in Sinners, so that’s got to be worth something.

Best Actress

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia

I’ve only seen one of these, but I’ll take a stab in the dark and pick the one actress I’ve never heard of for this.

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And The Nominees Are…

Next Sunday, it will be time to play the music and to light the lights for the 98th Academy Awards.  Once again, my woeful predictions are back, despite not having seen, let alone heard of the majority of the nominated films.  But I’m not going to let that stop me, so, with less basis in fact than most years, here’s my uneducated predictions for the non-acting awards.

Best Original Screenplay

Robert Kaplow, Blue Moon
Jafar Panahi; in collaboration with Nader Saïvar, Shadmehr Rastin, and Mehdi Mahmoudian, It Was Just an Accident
Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Ryan Coogler, Sinners

I’ve heard of a whopping two of these films but only seen one, so I will go with Ryan Coogler and Sinners.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Will Tracy, Bugonia
Guillermo del Toro, Frankenstein
Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, Train Dreams

I’ve actually seen two of these films and heard of one other, so I’ll go with Bugonia.

Best Animated Feature

Arco
Elio
KPop Demon Hunters
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Zootopia 2

Taking a shot in the dark as I haven’t seen any of these and have only heard of two of them.

Best Cinematography

Dan Laustsen, Frankenstein
Darius Khondji, Marty Supreme
Michael Bauman, One Battle After Another
Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners
Adolpho Veloso, Train Dreams

Of the two of these that I’ve seen, I’m going with the more classic one.

Best Costume Design

Deborah L. Scott, Avatar: Fire and Ash
Kate Hawley, Frankenstein
Malgosia Turzanska, Hamnet
Miyako Bellizzi, Marty Supreme
Ruth E. Carter, Sinners

This seems like another win for Sinners.

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2025: The Year In Movies

The return of my annual long December vacation helped push up a weak first eleven months of the year, giving me my lowest total since last year.  I managed to watch 55 movies last year, my fifth consecutive year under 100, despite being home all day and not needing to bother with pesky things like a commute.  Or exercise.  Reading 66 books and watching game shows all day probably didn’t help either.

Here’s a look back at the first 50 movies I watched last year and what recollection, if any, I have of them. The films are listed in the order I saw them.

Queenpins (2021)
A pair of housewives create a $40 million coupon scam.

Blackwater Lane (2024)
A woman believes she will be the next victim of a serial killer.

MaXXXine (2024)
Mia Goth returns in this prequel to X.

Mothers’ Instinct (2024)
The friendship between two women is tested when one loses her son.

Blitz (2024)
A group of Londoners tries to survive during the German bombing during World War II.

Poor Things (2023)
Emma Stone plays a woman who has the brain of a baby transplanted into her head.

The Idea of You (2024)
A 40-year-old single mom begins an unexpected romance with the lead singer of the hottest boy band on the planet.

Back in Action (2025)
Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz star as retired CIA agents forced to come out of retirement to save their family.

Kinds of Kindness (2024)
Emma Stone reteams with writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos.

Y2K (2024)
Machines go nuts as the clock strikes midnight and the world enters the year 2000.

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Book 2 (of 52) – Frankenstein

Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

In 1816, Mary Shelley, her future husband Percy Shelley, John Polidori, and Lord Byron spent the summer near Geneva, Switzerland, where they had a competition to see who could write the best horror story.  Mary Shelley’s entry eventually became Frankenstein, published in 1818 when Shelley was just 20.

The Frankenstein story told in Shelley’s novel bears little resemblance to the one that has permeated pop culture over the past 200+ years.  There is no Igor, no sewn-together body parts from various cadavers, no electricity or lightning to bring life to the creature.  Instead, Frankenstein methodically builds his creature over two years and uses an unknown process to bring him to life.

This was not at all what I expected.  I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it.  All three main characters, the creature, Frankenstein, and Captain Walton, all seem to speak with the same flourishes so that it is hard to tell them apart if you aren’t paying close attention to who is telling whose story.  I guess I am glad I read it, from a historical perspective, but it has certainly tempered my appetite for future entries in this Amazon Classics line.

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Book 3 (of 52) – The Jigsaw Man

The Jigsaw Man - Gord Rollo

The Jigsaw Man – Gord Rollo

A homeless man strikes a deal to trade his right arm for $2 million, but quickly finds out that the whole thing is a rouse and is slowly turned in to a modern day Frankenstein’s monster.  Gord Rollo spins a tale that starts with the desperation of the homeless to make better lives for themselves and/or their loved ones and shows how a deal with the devil, in this case, a crazy doctor hellbent on rebuilding his son’s body, rarely works out as intended.  Mike Fox, the protagonist, signed up to give away an arm and ended up as a patchwork of many different pieces, with only his original head and spinal column in place.

I had never heard of Rollo before coming across this book, which I assume was available for free from the Kindle store.  It was an interesting tale, and I’m glad that I ended up reading it, but I don’t know that I’ll be checking out any of his other works.  It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the book, but I haven’t really spent much time delving into the horror genre lately.  Maybe some day in the future.