One Category at a Time: Supporting Actress

For casual Oscar viewers, it's all about the acting categories. The chances to glimpse five famous faces squaring off against each other for a minute's worth of acting clips followed by a 45-second acceptance speech are often the only moments of excitement John Doe gets to experience over the course of a 3-hour telecast full of craftspeople he's never heard of and movies he's never seen.

But to those of us who actively follow the awards season in its entirety, the acting categories are usually the most boring of the night, whereby the winners are so firmly established before final ballots are even submitted that it hardly bears discussion.

Such is the case, as ever, in Best Supporting Actress, which has been dominated by one name and one name only since August! But even if the awards narrative feels stale and predictable by this point, at least we can find some satisfaction in the fact that the performance itself is actually quite an atypical Oscar winner, with the more "obvious" Oscar roles relegated to also-ran status.

Let's start with some of those "obvious" roles...

Mourning in the American 'Wild' and the Irish 'Sea': Double Feature Review

Late December is often a time of great celebration. No matter what your faith or customs may be, there's always an extra emphasis on enjoying time with our loved ones this season, as we prepare to close the book on one year and eagerly welcome another.

But, inevitably, the closing out of the year also becomes a time of solemn reflection, to remember what we've lost while cherishing what we still have. 2014 somehow feels like a disproportionately painful year for the filmmaking community; The tragic premature deaths of geniuses like Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman punctuating an already long list of cinema giants who finally left us after significant, fruitful lives.

Perhaps that's why it's been so much on my mind as I've frequented the movies this year. I don't want to be responsible for giving anyone a case of the holiday blues, but it's been impossible for me not to notice a similar thread running through a number of 2014's major releases; A thread about the way people deal with loss, process grief, and ultimately find closure; A thread about how mourning varies from individual to individual, yet is universally human.

A pair of distinctive and radically different films that are currently in limited release, Wild and Song of the Sea, suddenly seem like distant cousins when viewed through this thematic prism.

Top Ten Moments in Jurassic Park (Repost)

(This list was posted a couple of years ago as one of my Sunday Top Tens. With this weekend's 3D rerelease of Jurassic Park, now seems like an appropriate time to repost it. I'll definitely be giving it look. Will you?)

20 years ago saw the domestic release of Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg's exhilarating disaster/monster movie that smashed box office records, demonstrated the potential of CGI, and scared the living shit out of children who can now only look back on it with the greatest fondness. Never mind that the story has its imperfections and the characters aren't always drawn with much focus, because it's a film that's defined by its moments – those temporary sensations conceived by a few carefully made images and sounds. Here are my ten personal favourites.

Sunday Top Ten: Moments in Jurassic Park

18 years ago yesterday saw the domestic release of Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg's exhilarating disaster/monster movie that smashed box office records, demonstrated the potential of CGI, and scared the living shit out of children who can now only look back on it with the greatest fondness. Never mind that the story has its imperfections and the characters aren't always drawn with much focus, because it's a film that's defined by its moments – those temporary sensations conceived by a few carefully made images and sounds. Here are my ten personal favourites.