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030 MAY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
COMING SOON Hitting the JB shelves in June
The Theory of
Everything
The fabulous Eddie
Redmayne received
an Oscar for his
performance as genius
Stephen Hawking.
Still Alice
The fabulous Julianne
Moore received a long
overdue Oscar for
her performance as
Alzheimer's sufferer
Alice Howland.
Foxcatcher
Steve Carell is incredibly
creepy and Channing
Tatum incredibly good
(seriously) in this true
story about the eponymous
wrestling team.
The Interview
Seth Rogen and
James Franco's
controversial comedy
that upset North
Korea. But is it worthy
of all the fuss?
American Sniper is one of those rare
movies about modern warfare that
actually made money at the US box
office – $348 million to be exact. It
succeeded where other films concerning combat in
the Middle East – like Stop-Loss, The Hurt Locker
and Green Zone – have failed miserably, though not
because they weren't any good. Indeed, The Hurt
Locker won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2010.
Conversely, where Kathryn Bigelow's film was
showered in awards, Clint Eastwood's biopic on
US Navy SEAL and decorated marksman Chris Kyle
won a single Academy Award for Sound Editing,
despite receiving nominations for Best Picture and
Best Actor. It's the latter category that the film
most deserved to win – Bradley Cooper delivers a
career-defining performance as Kyle, yet was beaten
by Eddie Redmayne's (equally) brilliant performance
as Stephen Hawking. While we all know that the
Academy loves a disability, could it be that to honour
Cooper would also mean honouring an American
military hero who claimed 160 lives?
There's a scene less than five minutes into
American Sniper – where Kyle's sights and trigger
finger are fixed on a child who may possibly be a
suicide bomber – that ensured it was never going to
get a look in by the conservative Academy.
It was a significant oversight not to acknowledge
Cooper's committed performance with an Oscar. So
the film's massive box-office returns will ultimately
have to serve as sufficient reward.
AMERICAN
SNIPER
DISC of the month:
One of the few people this
decade who will be able to
say that their brother and
love interest were the same
person, ShaileneWoodley is
finding no faults in her status
as a rising star.
For someone who started
out as an extra by the name of
“Little Girl” in a telemovie titled
Replacing Dad, Woodley has come a long way. “I fell
into this business by accident”, she muses. “It wasn’t
something I ever aspired to be – an actress. It’s my
hobby, one of the ways I express myself as an artist.
And the day it becomes a job, a career – I quit”.
Woodley eased into the industry with stints in
television series such as The District and The O.C.,
making a name for herself as a potential leading lady.
She eventually scored the lead in TV's The Secret
Life of the American Teenager, which follows the
story of a 15-year-old girl discovering she is pregnant.
Her big screen breakthrough role came in 2011,
when she starred alongside George Clooney in The
Descendants, winning the Independent Spirit Award
for Best Supporting Female.
Woodley's tendency to pair up with fellow rising
star Miles Teller began when the pair appeared side
by side in The Spectacular Now. They then reunited
for the adaptation of Veronica Roth’s Divergent Series,
withWoodley playing the leader of the rebellion, Tris
Prior. With two films already completed and two more
yet to come, the fence is the limit for this newYA
franchise and its young star.
Leaving Teller in Divergent and departing with her
onscreen brother Ansel Elgort, the actress also starred
in the critically acclaimed adaptation of John Green’s
The Fault in Our Stars – where Elgort andWoodley
are (literally) star-crossed lovers. The actress won MTV
Movie Awards for Best Kiss and Best Female Lead for
her lip-locking and performance, respectively, and the
film itself took out Movie of the Year.
Woodley will next appear in the Oliver Stone-
directed biopic Snowden, playing the girlfriend of
notorious CIA employee Edward Snowden (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt), who leaked thousands of classified
documents to the press. The film is currently
shooting and is tentatively set for release at the end
of this year.
The Descendants (2011)
The Spectacular Now (2013)
Divergent (2014)
The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
Insurgent (2015)
Shailene Woodley
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