Oscars 2015 Winner's Profile: "GLORY"

BEST ORIGINAL SONG WINNER:
 *the song's title links to its YouTube video

   Glory -Selma

     Rarely does a film contain social truths and human insights that transcend the four corners of the cinema's frame to speak to the lives of all who bear witness to the events there within contained. Selma is such a film, and even more so a rarity in that it doesn't speak, but sings to its witnesses.

Golden Globes 2014: A Happy Globes! -Commentary & Predictions (Original Score)

     Tonight at 8 PM EST, NBC will air the HFPA's 72nd Golden Globe Awards! After skipping out on publishing anything over the course of last year's awards season, Rodney&Roger's annual Globes' prognostications make their triumphant return with this post. Per usual, this post's intent is not to list what or whom I think should have been nominated, but rather to provide commentary on what films and individuals have indeed been nominated and to pronounce what should win out of the existing pool.

SFF Selections 2014: "Lies I Told My Little Sister"

Lies I Told My Little Sister * ½

      Imagine Tracy Lett's Pulitzer-prize winning August, Osage County as produced by the "Lifetime" network. Imagine Violet Weston's cancer being over-sentimentalized with sap lines like, "Anything could happen to anybody at any moment...", "She wasn't cast iron, no one's cast iron!", and the classic, "Every heart has its graveyard." Imagine Violet and Barbara's wrestling match taking place in the sand at a beach (looking like the actresses were in fear of harming one another) and ending in one straddling the other as they giggle. Imagine a romance cropping up mid-way to ultimately provide the story's emotional climax and conclusive resolution after grief, family reconciliation, and personal growth had been established as the plot's core themes. Imagine all these things and you will have a pretty clear picture of what sitting through Lies I Told My Little Sister is like.

SFF Selections 2014: Richard Ayoade's "The Double"

The Double * * * ½

     IT Crowd actor turned film-maker Richard Ayoade turns in his second directorial effort on the heels of official SFF selection Submarine's success with his deadpan Dostoevsky-inspired The Double. Jesse Eisenberg's Simon is easily the least noticed man on the planet. Working at quite possibly the worst-lit office of all time doing nondescript clerical work (either Tim Burton or a '40s-era private-eye seem primed to pop out of a cubicle at any given moment), in one scene he looks at a photograph of company-head "The Colonel" and it's notable that there's actually a reflection in the frame's glass. His own mother can't even pick him out in a television ad for his company, asking, "Which one was you?" Befuddled at how to reply, Simon bumbles, "I'm me!"

SFF Selections 2014: "The Congress"

The Congress * * * ½

     Having meticulously replicated the Wright-brothers' flying machines, real actress Robin Wright's fictitious son of The Congress brags, "I build in the world of jet planes and space ships." He is a living master in a dying field. Less a master of her own skill-set due to the "lousy choices" her agent incessantly references, the Robin Wright of The Congress is also in a dying field: acting. In the first of two scenes in which Wright's agent Al addresses her with a monologue -the camera transfixed as her face reacts (like in Birth's timeless long take or the newly minted classic shot of Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years A Slave), Wright's eyes silently expel tears as Al (a world-weary Harvey Keitel) says that the studio has only one more last chance to offer. This last chance is "scanning": the studio systems assumption that all actors are driven by money rather than artistry.