2015 Best Picture Nominees, Part 3 [Potpourri]

Before the Oscars delight and frustrate us this Sunday, it's time to look at the last two movies up for Best Picture. Since these movies don't have anything in common (besides generic crap like 'growing up', 'falling in love', and 'becoming a man'), let's just call this the Potpourri category. Before you read these, be sure to check out the reviews of the other six nominees HERE and HERE.

Now, on to Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel:

Best of 2013: A Year With Jennifer Lawrence, A Year Without Kristen Stewart

J Law: Bringing It.

Maddeningly (to me and no one else), I have yet to finish my "Best of 2013" round-up. I'm Richard MAD-den at myself. I'm Tyler Perry's A MAD-ea Christmas. I'm Mäd-chen Amick about my procrastinatory nature. So, in an effort to get this 2013 coverage rolling (and to stall a little longer), let's talk about a person who definitely won 2013. And that person is Jennifer Lawrence.

(I MADE THIS!)

Now, people in my head, before you yell at me for writing another post about a blonde lady, it was undeniably Jennifer Lawrence's year (along with fellow blonde lady Beyoncé). She starred in the highest grossing film of the year AND got some sweet accolades for her performance in American Hustle. She also dominated the public consciousness, seemingly popping up at press conferences and talk shows every few days

The Academy Awards: The REAL Winners and Losers

It was a weird night of television, and, as we predicted and despite a Best Director snub, Argo won Best Picture at the Academy Awards last night/this morning, and most of the other people who were going to win Oscars won Oscars. Instead of looking at the winners and losers, we're going to look at the real winners and losers, the people/trends that really stood out during the ceremony:

Film Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2

We couldn't bring ourselves to see The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2, because even saying the name makes us feel ridiculous, so we deputized Guest Blogger Bro-sie the Riveter to review it for us:

I read the Twilight books four years ago during Thanksgiving break of my senior year of high school. I bring this up because the book of Breaking Dawn is probably one of the most insane things I've ever read. There are weird no-sex-before-marriage and anti-abortion undertones mixed with the fact that an adult werewolf falls in love with a baby and it's okay. A third of the book is told from the pedo-wolf's (AKA Jacob's) perspective, because Bella is pregnant and no one wants to listen to a pregnant lady talk about her problems. So the fact that the producers take out that part, and then split the story into two movies leaves very little to piece together in this finale. 

The screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, tries to make this final movie into a concluding chapter of an epic. The one major flaw is that The Twilight Saga is anything but an epic. We establish that Bella is a vampire now, meaning she doesn't breathe, has amazing posture, and basically acts like a statue – Which gets rid of 90% of K-Stew’s acting style (i.e. heavy breathing, slouching, and having nervous tics like running her hands through her hair). But that just leaves blank eyes and her pretending to be an animal. She also hilariously almost kills some mountain climber who should probably die anyway because he's on a cliff in the middle of nowhere without any rope, but Edward stops her. So instead, she eats a mountain lion.

Bella's vampire sister-in-law, Alice, builds her and Edward an adorable cottage in the woods. It's basically a teenage girl's fantasy: post-marriage bliss, having a baby, and being a vampire allows you to have sex forever. I'm serious. This house is basically a sex house. After the most uncomfortable PG-13 foreplay ever, they quickly cut to Edward and Bella

Tableau Your Mind's 200th Post!

It took a little under two years to make it happen, but Tableau Your Mind has finally reached its 200th blog post. You're reading it RIGHT NOW! They say it only takes a person 16-21 times to make doing something into a habit, and it definitely feels like, after 200 posts, we have moved beyond "habit" and into "psychopathic fanaticism." Over these 200 labors of like, we have written about topics covering all elements of popular culture, including food, movies, music, television, and so much more. We've done posts on Hollywood "It" Couples, Hipster Babies, and Pedophilia in Film. We've compared the stars of Tangled and Salt and looked at what would happen if Mr. Feeny suffered a "Wardrobe Malfunction." We've doted on 30 Rock, Kristen Bell, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and Batman, and hated on Kristen Stewart, Slow Motion in Indie Movies, and Easy Mac. We've even learned how to pronounce Gotye, just in time for him to become culturally irrelevant. We really wouldn't believe that there were 200 posts if it weren't for the photographic evidence:

Halloween Costumes For The Pop-Culturally Savvy

Hello Tableau Your Minders,

It's been a while since this blog has seen any content. I've been busy with work, busy with life, and now I'm busily trying to survive Hurricane Sandy and all that the Frankenstorm has to offer.  But I shouldn't be taking that out on you. When parents fight, the children suffer, and when bloggers are preoccupied, the readers suffer. And on this spookiest of days, with branches rapping against my door and rain beating tirelessly against my windows, we turn to Halloween.

Halloween has always held a special place in my heart. I Trick-or-Treated for far more years than any child should. My costumes were often overly complicated and without fans. My stint as a cow hell-bent on the humans who'd done his family wrong was met with a trip to Principal Korn's office and mixed reaction from my Kindergarten class. My attempt at wry sports humor was tepidly accepted when I went door to door as a frostbitten, zombie Packers fan. And, in college, when I went as a Drug Attic (complete with needles, spiders, some siding, and an old rug), the general consensus was that I was trying too hard.

Well, I don't want you to be stuck in my situation, where high-mindedness gets in the way of candy, drunkenness, and whatever other debauchery passes your way.  So, here is a list of pop-culture costumes that are sure to delight, and they're simple enough that they won't confuse the random drunken lay-person who stumbles across your path:

Point/Counter Point: Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart Back Together

They are back together, apparently

Well, it's semi-official: Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are back together, just in time to renew our faith in love. Or, they are back together just in time to promote The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part II.  Is it true love or a marketing ploy? To find out, I, the main blogger here at Tableau Your Mind, am bringing back one of the most popular segments on the blog. That's right; it's time for a little Point/Counter Point with Guest Blogger Jennifer Love Bacon:

Let's hear Opening Statements:

Point/Counter Point: Kristen Stewart

Hello. I am the main blogger here at Tableau Your Mind (one of the few that make up the collective 'we'), and I am a pretty big fan of Kristen Stewart. I know it's not a popular opinion, but I don't care. However, I do realize that not everyone feels the same way as me, and I always want to at least appear to be a fair-minded person. In an effort to do just that, to present both sides equally, I have enlisted Guest Blogger Jennifer Love Bacon to present her different opinion of K-Stew alongside  my own. Presented below is a conversation that hopefully sheds some light on what makes her so maddening, so brilliant, so hated, and so loved [Editor's Note: this conversation occurred before Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson got back together]:

Jennifer Love Bacon: [looking at the picture to the left] Hahaha. She's heinous.

Tableau: She's amazing. She's so effed up. I love it.

JLB: She can't even make eye contact in the picture …she's a disgrace to celebrities.

T: I didn't realize we were going to get into the debate so quickly.

Bad Lip-Reading of Twilight [Best Ever]

The good people of Bad Lip-Reading, who have provided us with so many laughs with their ingenious lip dubs of politicians, movie trailers, and more, have finally hit the mother load with their newest video that endeavors to lip-read the stars and infamous low-talkers of Twilight:

Film Review: Snow White and the Huntsman

Let's Turn This Mutha Out

We've been ruminating on Snow White and the Huntsman for a week, trying to figure out how to accurately express our apathy towards this movie. When we first saw the trailers to Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror, we worried that the film's super-seriousness would be its downfall (Spoiler Alert: it is). The film tells the classic story of  Snow White with a twist, but it does so in a very long, dull way. Since we really don't want to delve too deeply into the strengths and weaknesses of the film, we're just going to share some of our thoughts on the film:

Despite the epically-long runtime, very little happens in terms of character development. From the first ten minutes of the film, everyone is already emotionally in place for the final battle. Charlize Theron's Ravenna is super pissed and heart-hungry, Kristen Stewart's Snow

Snow White: Fight to the Finish

The past week saw the release of both of the trailers for the competing Snow White epics currently in the works. There is Tarsem Singh's comedic Mirror Mirror, which looks absolutely ridiculous (in the best way) and stars Julia Roberts, Nathan Lane, Armie Hammer, and some pale person whose name I keep forgetting. And then there is Snow White & the Huntsman, the uber-serious film starring Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Stewart, and a slew of other people, including a 7 non-little-people as the 7 Dwarves.

So which to choose? 

Which is the fairest film of all? 

Let's judge solely on the trailers, shall we?

Mirror Mirror certainly has a lot going for it. It's directed by Tarsem Singh, who has made some of the most visually stunning and sumptuous films of recent memory (The Cell, the amazing The Fall, and the not-terrible Immortals).  In terms of fairy-tale magic, his version of