On Thursday, this year's Oscar nominations will be announced, also known as national Gah! What Were Those Idiot Voters Thinking Day. We can't wait, so in the meantime, we give you this:
One of the best performances of the year was from the tiny lifeboat in Captain Phillips.
1. Marvel Films has become Taco Bell, with plenty of sour creamy, cheesy wrap-up menu items scheduled through 2021.
2. In 2021, Marvel Films will begin Phase 3, in which they ask the actors in The Avengers to change their name to their respective characters and begin a reality show called The Real Avengers.
3. Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost continue to be the one of the most refreshing filmmaking teams in modern cinema.
4. Practical effects = vinyl albums.
5. Zack Snyder made a movie once that looked neat, SO NOW HE'LL MAKE ALL THE FILMS BASED ON THE COOL THING YOU LOVED ONCE.
6. Jennifer Lawrence will be on some ballots for the next presidential election.
7. When all else fails, destroy New York City into shards of overblown CGI.
8. When all else fails, destroy the Golden Gate Bridge into shards of international orange.
9. When all else fails, Leonardo Di Caprio.
10. Several people who live with us on Earth saw to it that a sequel to The Smurfs was produced and released. Note: The tagline for the film was "Nice gets naughty."
11. We can't have a movie about outer space without real astronauts debunking it.
12. Everyone still hates Tom Cruise.
13. Elysium wasn't a film, actually. It was an hour-and-a-half, one-time recording of the actual future.
14. No one is working very hard to forget about the Jack and the Bean Stalk movie, Jack the Giant Slayer.
15. Sea World is hell.
16. James Wan, director of Insidious and The Conjuring, is really, really good at making pee-pants scary horror films.
Upstream Color is streaming on Netflix. FYI.
17. Jake Gyllenhall wasn't given and probably won't get enough credit for his unbelievably fiery performances in Prisoners and End of Watch.
18. Man, the Coen Brothers truly hate all people.
19. You weren't alone if you did the eye-roll during the trailer for Runner, Runner, the one about online gambling with Justin Timberlake.
20. Benedict Cumberbatch is a dragon now -- forever, OK?
21. Martin Scorcese isn't fucking around.
22. Adam Sandler is totally fucking around.
23. M. Night Shyamalan officially became the Willy Loman of Hollywood filmmaking.
24. For horror, creepy omniscient children are out. Hardcore, furniture-hopping possession is in.
25. Be careful Will Ferrell. Just...be careful.
26. "Listen, I'm the captain now," is one of the great lines of the year.
27. Robert Downey Jr. will be Iron Man until there are more Robert Downey Juniors.
28. Hugh Jackman will be Wolverine until he's President Hugh Jackman in 2024.
29. Vin Diesel will be Riddick until he says different.
30. "Indie filmmaking" is a meaningless term at this point.
31. Jurassic Park is still awesome.
32. Die Hard sequels need to die.
33. Whoa, whoa hang on, did I just see Jonah Hill's peni -- Oh, no, OK. Phew.
34. One of the best, most-overlooked performances of the year is that tiny lifeboat in Captain Phillips.
35. Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring got buried in major media for some reason. Go watch it. It's really good.
36. Upstream Color director (and former Dallasite) Shane Carruth needs to continue to buck the Hollywood machine.
37. Monsters University sucked; Frozen was awesome. Pixar and Disney have done some sort of Freaky Friday thing.
38. World War Z didn't suck, promise.
39. Neither did the remake to Carrie, directed by Kimberly Pierce (of Boys Don't Cry).
40. If J.J. Abrams quit and decided to be a park ranger, really cool movies would continue to be made.
41. After Bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy has become a typecast punchline.
42. The "cat strangling" phone sex scene in Her is the best scene involving technology in film of the year.
43. Gravity, in 3D, is the only film ever that actually needed 3D. OK, maybe March of the Penguins. BUT STILL.
44. At this point, everyone's fine with Phillip Seymour Hoffman being a hero hiding in the guise of a villain.
45. OK, fine, we'll go back and watch Spring Breakers.
46. Man of Steel was bad, but Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is really, really cool.
47. Louis CK makes everyone laugh, everywhere.
48. Vince Vaughn actually died somewhere after Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Every film since then has involved a Vince Vaughn robot.
49. Between Mud, Gravity, Her, The Bling Ring, Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle, Captain Phillips, 12 Years A Slave, Dallas Buyers Club, Inside Llewyn Davis, and 47 Ronin we had an incredible year. OK, just kidding about the last one.
50. Matthew McConaughey? What a year, sir. What a year.
Nick Rallo is a Dallas-based writer. Follow him on Twitter at @nickrallo. This story originally appeared in the Dallas Observer.
