The Matrix rumoured for a further sequel and 12 Years a Slave wins at the Indie Spirit

Tonight is Oscar night but we’re focussing on a less mainstream event. The Indie Spirit Awards tend to provide a more alternative view but this year’s results seem to be going the same way as the others.

Best Feature:

12 Years a Slave

All is Lost

Frances Ha

Inside Llewyn Davis

Nebraska

Best Director:

Steve McQueen – 12 Years a Slave

Shane Carruth – Upstream Colour

JC Chandor – All is Lost

Jeff Nichols – Mud

Alexander Payne – Nebraska

Best Leading Actor:

Matthew MacConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club

Bruce Dern – Nebraska

Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave

Oscar Isaac – Inside Llewyn Davis

Michael B Jordan – Fruitvale Station

Robert Redford – All is Lost

Best Leading Actress:

Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine

Julie Delpy – Before Midnight

Gaby Hoffman – Crystal Fairy

Brie Larson – Short Term 12

Shailene Woodley – The Spectacular Now

Best Screenplay:

John Ridley – 12 Years a Slave

Woody Allen – Blue Jasmine

Julie Delpy, Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke – Before Midnight

Nicole Holofcener – Enough Said

Scott Neustadter, Michael H Weber – The Spectacular Now

Best Supporting Actress:

Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave

Melonie Diaz – Fruitvale Station

Sally Hawkins – Blue Jasmine

Yolanda Ross – Go for Sisters

June Squibb – Nebraska

Best Supporting Actor:

Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club

Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave

Will Forte – Nebraska

James Gandolfini – Enough Said

Keith Stanfield – Short Term 12

The first Matrix film, 1999, was the biggest sci-fi game changer since Star Wars and subsequently launched itself to icon status. While massively profitable, its sequels were frostily received. Andy and Lana Wachowski haven’t quite reached those heights since, with the flop Speed Racer and the brilliant but widely misunderstood Cloud Atlas. Its now apparent that the brother/sister duo are negotiating a return to the series with a fourth, possibly fifth or sixth, instalment. Latino Review’s report doesn’t really suggest facts or speculation however stars Keanu Reeves, Hugo Weaving, Carrie Anne Moss and Laurence Fishburne have themselves become icons for their own performances as Neo, Agent Smith, Trinity and Morpheus say can we expect them to return?

The Matrix 4 – 2017?

12 Years triumphs at People’s Choice Awards and new Amazing Spider-Man 2 posters

After director Steve McQueen and star Michael Fassbender were snubbed for both Hunger and Shame, they’re finally getting award recognition for 12 Years a Slave, which won Best Film at the Golden Globes and People’s Choice and shone out at the Academy Award nominations. Here’s the full list

Best Picture

12 Years a Slave

American Hustle

Captain Phillips

Dallas Buyers Club

Gravity

Her

Inside Llewyn Davis

Nebraska

Saving Mr Banks

Best Actor

Matthew MacConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club

Christian Bale – American Hustle

Bruce Dern – Nebraska

Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave

Tom Hanks – Captain Phillips

Robert Redford – All is Lost

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine

Sandra Bullock – Gravity

Judi Dench – Philomena

Brie Larson – Short Term 12

Meryl Streep – August: Osage County

Emma Thompson – Saving Mr Banks

Best Supporting Actor

Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club

Barkhad Abdi – Captain Philllips

Daniel Bruhl – Rush

Bradley Cooper – American Hustle

Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave

James Gandolfini – Enough Said

Best Supporting Actress

Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave

Scarlett Johansson – Her

Jennifer Lawrence – American Hustle

Julia Roberts – August: Osage County

June Squibb – Blue Jasmine

Oprah Winfrey – The Butler

Best Young Actor/Actress

Adele Exarchopoulos – Blue is the Warmest Colour

Asa Butterfield – Ender’s Game

Liam James – The Way Way Back

Sophie Nelisse – The Book Thief

Tye Sheridan – Mud

Best Acting Ensemble

American Hustle

August: Osage County

The Butler

Nebraska

12 Years a Slave

The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Director

Alfonso Cuaron – Gravity

Paul Greengrass – Captain Phillips

Spike Jonze – Her

Steve McQueen – 12 Years a Slave

David O’Russell – American Hustle

Martin Scorsese – The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Original Screenplay

Spike Jonze – Her

Eric Warren Singer, David O’Russell – American Hustle

Woody Allen – Blue Jasmine

Joel and Ethan Coen – Inside Llewyn Davis

Bob Nelson – Nebraska

Best Adapted Screenplay

John Ridley – 12 Years a Slave

Tracy Letts – August: Osage County

Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke – Before Midnight

Billy Ray – Captain Phillips

Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope – Philomena

Terence Winter – The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Cinematography

Emmannuel Lubezki – Gravity

Bruno Delbonnel – Inside Llewyn Davis

Phedon Papamichael – Nebraska

Roger Deakins – Prisoners

Sean Bobbit – 12 Years a Slave

Best Art Direction

The Great Gatsby

Gravity

Her

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

12 Years a Slave

Best Editing

Gravity

American Hustle

Captain Phillips

Rush

12 Years a Slave

The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Costume Design

The Great Gatsby

American Hustle

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Saving Mr Banks

12 Years a Slave

Best Hair and Make-up

American Hustle

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The Butler

Rush

12 Years a Slave

Best Visual Effects

Gravity

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Iron Man 3

Pacific Rim

Star Trek Into Darkness

Best Animated Feature

Frozen

The Croods

Despicable Me 2

Monsters University

The Wind Rises

Best Action Movie

Lone Survivor

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Iron Man 3

Rush

Star Trek Into Darkness

Best Actor in an Action Movie

Mark Wahlberg – Lone Survivor

Henry Cavill – Man of Steel

Robert Downey Jr – Iron Man 3

Brad Pitt – World War Z

Best Comedy

American Hustle

Enough Said

The Heat

This is the End

The Way Way Back

The World’s End

Best Actor in a Comedy

Leonardo Di Caprio – The Wolf of Wall Street

Christian Bale – American Hustle

James Gandolfini – Enough Said

Simon Pegg – The World’s End

Sam Rockwell – The Way Way Back

Best Actress in a Comedy

Amy Adams – American Hustle

Sandra Bullock – The Heat

Greta Gerwig – Frances Ha

Julia Louis Dreyfus – Enough Said

Melissa McCarthy – The Heat

Best Sci-fi Horror Movie

Gravity

The Conjuring

Star Trek Into Darkness

Iron Man 3

Best Foreign Language Film

Blue is the Warmest Colour

The Great Beauty

The Hunt

The Past

Best Documentary Feature

20 Feet From Stardom

The Act of Killing

Blackfish

Stories We Tell

Tim’s Vermeer

Best Song

Let it Go – Frozen

Atlas – The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Happy – Despicable Me 2

Ordinary Love – Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Please Mr Kennedy – Inside Llewyn Davis

Young and Beautiful – The Great Gatsby

Best Score

Stephen Price – Gravity

William Butler, Owen Pallett – Her

Thomas Newman – Saving Mr Banks

Hans Zimmer – 12 Years a Slave

Gravity has won the most awards with an impressive six wins but it’s 12 Years a Slave’s day as it picked up Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. American Hustle gained four wins while Frozen, The Great Gatsby, Blue is the Warmest Colour and Lone Survivor got two. I’m not going to do in depth analysis but I’m stilled surprised Her is being praised as an “original” and “fresh” premise as it has exactly the same plot as a Big Bang Theory episode where a lonely Raj (Kunal Nayyar) falls in love with his I-Phone’s Siri. I’m probably not the first to say it but I haven’t heard anyone else pick up on it.

The only other major piece of news is the stunning new poster for Marvel and Sony’s superhero sequel The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Marc Webb directs and Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Paul Giamatti, Sally Field, Dane DeHaan and Chris Cooper star but today’s focus is the hopefully terrifying new villain Electro, played by Ray, Collateral and Django Unchained’s Jamie Foxx.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – April 18th

New poster for Oldboy plus new roles for Emma Watson and Jennifer Lawrence

Oldboy is Spike Lee’s English language remake of Chan-Wook Park’s award winning 2003 thriller (also ranked 85th on IMDB’s Top 250 films of all time) of the same name. Ten years on, Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men, The Goonies) is the headline star with Samuel L Jackson (Jurassic Park, Avenger Assemble), Elizabeth Olsen (Like Crazy, soon to be Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Age of Ultron), Hannah Simone (New Girl) and Sharlto Copley (District 9, Elysium) in support. His character, Joe, is the centre of a plot that sees him seeking vengeance on those who imprisoned him for 20 years without a cause, as well as seeking answers and going in search of the mysterious girl with a yellow umbrella. The new poster for the film was unveiled yesterday, as was some fairly gruesome footage of the movie at The 2013 New York Comic-Con.

Moving on, two of the most popular young actresses of the moment have picked up new roles in completely unrelated films. First off, it’s Emma Watson. Out of the central trio of young heroes in the Harry Potter series, Watson has possibly been the most critically successful since the series conclusion . She cropped up in My Week With Marilyn, had a celebrity cameo in This is the End, will star with Anthony Hopkins, Russell Crowe, Logan Lerman and Ray Winstone in Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic Noah and had lead roles in the indie dramas The Bling Ring The Perks of Being a Wallflower. She could now be reuniting with her Wallflower director Stephen Chbosky for While We’re Young, although it’s becoming apparent that Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha) may be directing after all.

Adena Halpern’s novel 29 (which itself has a plot – the story of a grandmother who’s much more friendly with her 29 year old grandaughter than her 55 year old daughter and gets her wish of becoming the same age of her grandaughter again granted – similar to Zac Efron flick 17 Again – were an elderly man has his wish granted and is once again his young self at high-school) is the inspiration for this production. Amanda Seyfried (Les Miserables, Mama Mia), Naomi Watts (King-Kong, The Impossible) and Ben Stiller (Zoolander, Tropic Thunder) are already going to star. According to IMDB, Watson has just started filming While We’re Young and will make that her third film of 2014 (alongside Noah – March 28th – and Your Voice in My Head).

The other young star is one of The Hunger Games, X-Men: First Class, Winter’s Bone and Silver Linings Playbook fame: Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence. Katniss Everdeen, as we like to call her, was attached to star in The Glass Castle in April 2012, just after the release of The Hunger Games. Since then, there’s been a halt in development after her Oscar win and a tonne of other roles coming her way (including reprising the role of Mystique in X-Men: Days of Future Past, East of Eden, American Hustle, Dumb and Dumber To and The Hunger Games’ sequels). We can presume that she’s close to sealing her role in the film that now has Destin Crettin (whose new drama Short Term 12 is getting all kinds of acclaim at the moment) set to direct.

Oldboy – December 6th

While We’re Young – 2014 or 2015

The Glass Castle – 2016?