DTLA

I recently visited my brothers in Los Angeles. LA is so different from Boston in so many ways, I sometimes feel foreign when I visit. 

All in all, it was a great trip. It was so nice to spend time with my brothers, and it was the first time I visited when we actually were able to walk places! It was amazing! Walking in LA... what a concept!! Here are a few highlights from my trip:

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Botegga Louie

Groundwork coffee

Seeing my first polo match

Hiking in Santa Monica

Sprinkles

Manhattan Beach

Lemonade (Cucumber mint was AMAZING)

And of course, hanging with my brothers : ) Thanks for having me, boys! Now come home!

Click here to watch DTLA by A.J. Serrano.

AJ Serrano says...

AJ is back with his thoughts and picks for this year's Oscars. Please take a minute or two to check out his Tumblr, filled with some of his amazing short stories and thoughts on various subjects. Also be sure to find him on Vimeo, where you view his latest projects. But enough promotion, let's get to his third annual Oscar post... Enjoy.

Hello everyone! It’s me again, A.J., here to offer my annual Oscar predictions to Ashleigh’s dear readership.

Listen guys, I was just looking over my picks from the past two years and realized that I successfully picked 12 out of 15 major awards. That means I’m 80% more accurate at predicting the results of the Oscars than Harold Camping is at predicting the end of the world.

But this year’s award show might just shed a few points off that relatively decent accuracy rate of mine. I can’t think of a Best Picture race in recent memory where there were absolutely no clear-cut favorites. 

I guess you could say that Silver Linings Playbook is a favorite if only because it is produced by the Weinstein brothers and those two have a knack for swooning Academy voters into awarding their films with the golden statuette. The producing duo has taken home the coveted golden prize twice in the last four years.

On the other hand, some viewers have complained that the movie is too sappy. I still haven’t seen the film, which is strange because I usually make it a point to see each serious Oscar contender in theaters. I remember a few years ago I hopped on the barely-used Los Angeles subway system to take a 45 minute ride over to Universal City just to see Slumdog Millionaire while it was still in theaters.  I don’t know what it is about Silver Linings that is unappealing to me. I usually enjoy David O. Russell’s films (The Fighter Flirting With Disaster, I Heart Huckabees) but even Silver Linings’ positive reviews and ubiquitous TV spots have yet to convince me to dish out the $14 to see it in theaters. Still, I guess as long as the Weinstein brothers are involved, it has a good shot to win. 

But then you can’t ignore Lincoln, a critical darling since its release in November. Its producers have been preaching to Oscar voters about the film’s relevance to current heated political issues such as Medicare and gun control and how today’s leaders can learn a lesson from our sixteenth president’s display of courage and sensibility in the face of political adversity.

However, to borrow a quote from the film’s iconic director Steven Spielberg, “Everybody loves a winner, but nobody loves a winner.” Will Oscar voters overlook Lincoln because of its box office success and the fact that Spielberg has already won a Best Picture award for his masterpiece,Schindler’s List? Maybe voters will think the film’s twelve nominations are a victory in itself.

So we are left with Argo, this year’s Golden Globe winner for Best Drama. I saw it way back in October and found it to be a fun movie; even though it was less unexpectedly entertaining as Ben Affleck’s excellent 2010 film The Town. A friend of mine had an interesting and funny take on Argo’s surprising award season dominance.  He said “Hollywood is patting themselves on the back for making a movie in which Hollywood pats itself on the back.” That’s the type of ludicrous ego that drives the Hollywood system and started this whole awards-giving nonsense. Argo is a classic example of the type of film that Hollywood loves to award with its top prize. Let’s see what happens on Sunday. Until then, here are my picks:

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Spoiler: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables

Spoiler: Sally Field, Lincoln

Best Supporting Actor: Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook

Spoiler: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Spoiler: Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Spoiler: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom

Best Adapted Screenplay: Tony Kushner, Lincoln

Spoiler: David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Best Cinematography: Life of Pi

Spoiler: Lincoln

Best Editing: Zero Dark Thirty

Spoiler: Argo

Best Director: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

Spoiler: Michael Haneke, Amour

Best Picture: Lincoln

Spoiler: Argo

And the Oscar Goes To...

My super talented, brilliant writer of a brother AJ has supplied us with his Oscar predictions yet again this year. He brings up some great points, so enjoy!

Something big is happening in Hollywood. For an industry built on the noise and chaos of hype, illusion and celebrity, it seems almost contradictory that this small revolution within the film industry has arisen from a silent battle cry. Eighty-four years after the last silent film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, The Artist has positioned itself as the front runner to claim the golden statuette on February 26. Whatever you have to say about the film’s flaws (inconsistent tone, flat characters, its gimmick factor) pales in comparison to the fact that a silent film has achieved such critical and commercial success in an society that craves the conventional and demands instant gratification.

I had a feeling that this year’s Academy Awards were going to be unique after Clint Eastwood’s sprawling biopic J. Edgar was met with a quiet apathy by both critics and moviegoers back in October. In the past, Eastwood’s films have been greeted with lavish praise and numerous awards from the Academy. He has received the Best Director award twice in his career and four of his films have received Best Picture nominations. With an A-list cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts, and Judi Dench and a big studio budget, J. Edgar seemed like an obvious shoo-in for this year’s Best Picture race. That is, until no one showed up to see this snooze fest. The result: 0 Oscar nominations.

America’s silent treatment towards Eastwood’s films is a refreshingly rebellious act. Think of it as a middle finger to the old-fashioned Hollywood regime that thought they could release the same conventional schlock every year and that the audience was too stupid to notice or care.

It wasn’t just Eastwood who was pushed out of the pop cultural lexicon this year. Most all of the major studio Oscar bait failed big time with critics and audiences in the winter months. War Horse, Super 8 and Cars 2  all failed to live up to lofty expectations. Instead, the Best Picture list is dominated by small budget, intellectual fare (Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, The Artist, The Descendants). Average moviegoers started to talk more about Dujardin, Payne, Bejo and Malick and less about industry giants like Spielberg, Eastwood and DiCaprio.

When The Artist claims its prize for Best Picture of the Year next Sunday, that split second of silence before the applause is the sound of a resounding shakeup in the film world. The independent film has become mainstream.

My 2012 Oscar Picks

Best Picture: The Artist

Spoiler: Hugo

Best Director: Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Spoiler: Michel Hazanivicius, The Artist

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Spoiler: George Clooney, The Descendants

Best Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Spoiler: Viola Davis, The Help

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Spoiler: Nick Nolte, Warrior

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help

Spoiler: Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Spoiler: Asghar Farhadi, A Separation

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Spoiler: Aaron Sorkin, Moneyball

Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life

Spoiler: The Artist

Future Oscar Contenders

With the Academy Awards just a few days away, I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce two future Oscar contenders.

Yes I know I am extremely biased, being related to both of these talented gentlemen (they are after all, my brothers), but these boys can make movies! The two, A.J. and Alex, also known as Bubba, have been making movies together for as far back as I can recall. I have always been a little jealous of my brother A.J. because he has known what he has wanted to do since the age of 2 (I have video evidence in case you don’t believe me). His interest grew stronger when growing up as we did not have cable so we resorted to making our own movies to entertain ourselves. Now both my brothers are currently pursing their dream of one day becoming directors, and I’d say they are off to a great start. A.J. is out in Los Angeles studying film at the University of Southern California and Bubba is at Harvard doing the same.  I have a feeling that one day their hard work and passion is going to pay off, and we will see them at the Oscars. Until then, enjoy these Serrano Bros Productions on their YouTube page. Keep in mind, I never said they were normal…