Whiplash

It’s a pretty objective assessment that most Americans don’t give half a damn about foreign film. Hardly any imports make it into neighborhood cineplexes, and the films that do score a theatrical run in major cities are lucky if they make enough money to break even...

Before he made the Oscar-winning film Whiplash, writer/director Damien Chazelle made a short film called “Whiplash,” an excerpt from the feature script with the same characters, one of the same lead actors, and much the same story. J.K. Simmons, who won an Academy Award last week for his performance as the brutally abusive music teacher Mr. Fletcher, first played the role here. Miles Teller, who played ambitious drummer Andrew Neiman is MIA though; his part is played by Johnny Simmons from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 21 Jump Street, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

It was only a matter of time, really, but that doesn’t make this new Whiplash mashup video any less awesome. Some clever human beings have edited together footage from Whiplash with footage of Animal from The Muppets playing drums, obviously, and the results are super funny and super cute and absolutely wonderful.

It seemed inevitable, and there were some other great contenders, but J.K. Simmons has been awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor at the 2015 Academy Awards. Simmons took home the statue for his fantastic, unnerving role as Fletcher, the intimidating band instructor in Whiplash.

Ready for the Academy Awards this Sunday? Need help winning your Oscar pool? ScreenCrush Editor-in-Chief Mike Sampson and Managing Editor Matt Singer are here to help. Or potentially make things worse. Honestly, they’re not great at guessing the winners. But they’re going to try their best.

One of the best character actors of the past few decades, J.K. Simmons has always been one of the world’s most beloved ”that guys.” Everyone knows his face, but not everyone knows his name. However, the fact that he’s the current frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor at the 2015 Academy Awards for ‘Whiplash’ has started to change that, earning him a well-deserved moment in the spotlight and guest hosting duties on ‘SNL.’ Although much of last night’s episode saw him blending in with the rest of the cast, there was one big moment where he was called upon to poke fun at his work in ‘Whiplash.’ It was inevitable.

This past weekend’s ‘SNL’ installment with ‘The Voice’ coach Blake Shelton pulling double duty proved every bit as exciting as it sounded (read: not), but what better way to restore the 40th anniversary season’s tempo than with ‘Whiplash’ master J.K. Simmons himself? Watch Simmons and Kenan brave the cold and bitter loneliness in this weekend’s ‘SNL’ promos!

Okay, so there was a fair amount of disappointment around the 2015 Academy Award nominations. Everything was not awesome for ‘The Lego Movie,’ robbed of a Best Animated Movie nod, and David Oyelowo’s dreams of a Best Actor nomination vanished when Steve Carell and Bradley Cooper’s names were mentioned instead. ‘Force Majeure’ got snubbed for a Best Foreign Language Film nomination and ‘Selma’’s Ava Duvernay was robbed in the Best Director Category. I just keep looking at the list of nominations and playing “Sad Trombone” over and over again. It’s basically the official theme song of the 2015 Academy Awards.

James Gunn had a very busy 2014 with the release of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ Marvel’s superhero space opera, which went on to become one of the hugest films of the year. But even though Gunn was preoccupied with Marvel business, that didn’t keep him from seeing a lot of great films besides the one he directed, and the director has finally revealed his favorite films of 2014. Unsurprisingly, ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ is one of them.

I enjoy reading top ten lists, but I don’t particularly like making a top ten list—which does nothing as far as an explanation as to why I decided to do a Top 147 list (or Bottom 147 list, if that’s more your thing). I covered four film festivals in 2014, so I saw more than 147 movies, but these are the 147 movies I saw that came out in a theater this year. (I realize ‘The Interview’ is now not coming out, but, whatever, it’s on here too.) I am only one human being, so I didn’t see every movie that came out this year—Where’s ‘Noah’? I never saw ‘Noah’—but I think I saw quite a few! Anyway, here they all are. (I only wrote about a few of them because I am not a crazy person.)