Thank you to everyone who came out for The Matrix, we had a good turnout, great discussion and of course, great food!
For the month of February I've decided to show a romance movie, and not only a romance, but a musical romance. We will be watching Damien Chazelle's wonderful La La Land.
La La Land is a 2016 American romantic musical film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist and Emma Stone as an aspiring actress, who meet and fall in love in Los Angeles while pursuing their dreams. Having been fond of musicals during his time as a drummer, Chazelle first conceptualized the film alongside Justin Hurwitz while attending Harvard University together. Moving to Los Angeles in 2010, Chazelle wrote the screenplay but did not find a studio willing to finance the production without changes to his design. Following the success of his 2014 film Whiplash, the project was picked up by Summit Entertainment.
La La Land was critically praised, especially for Chazelle’s screenplay and direction, Gosling and Stone’s performances, Hurwitz’s musical score, musical numbers, cinematography, and production values. It won every category for which it was nominated at the 74th Golden Globes Awards. It also received 14 nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, tying the record for the most Oscar nominations with All About Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997). It went on to win for Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Production Design. It currently holds a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Brian Tallerico writing for Rogerebert.com gave the film 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, “It’s easy to let the world get you down sometimes...It’s easy to think that dreams don’t come true, and that love only exists in movies. La La Land serves to remind us that movies can still be magical, and they can still provide the channel for us to see magic in the world around us. It’s not so much another day in the sun, as the characters sing in that opening number, but the dreams of the night before, the ones we wake up and try to fulfill, that keep us dancing.”
I hope you can join us for this excellent film! Hope to see you there!
Here's the trailer:
