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Chico State's independent student newspaper

The Orion

“La La Land” scores Oscar nominations

Screenshot+from+the+La+La+Land+trailer
Screenshot from the La La Land trailer

The cast must be in La La Land after being nominated for 14 Oscars for the 89th Academy Awards. This ties “Titanic” and “All About Eve” for the most amount of Oscar nominations in history.

“La La Land” is a romantic musical that sings the tale of barista and struggling actress Mia (Emma Stone) and pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) as they fall in love in Los Angeles. The two have different goals in life: Mia wants to become a successful actress and Sebastian wants to open his own jazz club. Their lives are shown throughout the four seasons, each season bringing the couple new and different challenges.

The film had its share of musical numbers with a fantastic opening scene, weaving in comedy and plenty of romance. However, there was one small gripe about this movie.

Mia didn’t have much character development compared to Sebastian. Throughout the film, she was a struggling actress with little to no progress and even gave up to go back to her hometown in Boulder City, Nevada. She did eventually reach her dream, but her progress was not evidently shown. In the apex of her character arch, Mia performs in her final audition, but the audience never gets to hear or see the positive feedback from the casting directors.

Regardless, it was an adorable movie that lives up to the hype.

“La La Land” is nominated in some of the following categories: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Gosling), Best Actress (Stone) and more.

The Academy Awards will take the spotlight on February 26.

I give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Julia Maldonado can be reached at [email protected] or @theorion_arts on Twitter.

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