Take my favorite musician/recording artist ever and add in my favorite movie of 2014 and you have a recipe for greatness. “Weird Al” Yankovic has teamed up with Oscar contender for Best Picture, Whiplash, to promote his upcoming world tour “Mandatory.” Whiplash is the story of a drum prodigy tested by his abusive jazz conductor college professor played by Oscar nominee J.K. Simmons. In Weird Al Gets Whiplashed, a video produced by College Humor, Weird Al stands in for Miles Teller’s character Andrew, while his patented accordion replaces the drums. The performer is excited for his upcoming world tour and is trying to get “perfect” with the help of Simmons’ Fletcher. While Simmons’s scenes from the film remain perfectly intact, this hilarious 4-plus minutes video has Weird Al voicing to Simmons what most viewers of the film wanted to yell at the screen.

You can check out Weird Al Gets Whiplashed as well as some of Weird Al’s other new videos here below.

After spending the last two weeks watching all 8 Best Picture nominees for The 87th Annual Academy Awards, I am now fully qualified to give you the lowdown, determine which ones are the best, and more importantly which one will win the big prize.

The crop this year includes the usual Oscars suspects: we have some historical/war films and biopics (Selma, Imitation Game, American Sniper); the movie about the person overcoming adversity (Theory of Everything); the quirky comedy (Grand Budapest Hotel); an original film by an international director (Birdman); a film by a long-admired Hollywood director (Boyhood), and the little indie that could (Whiplash).

There’s a secret to picking these things. You see historically, Best Picture films don’t win without their directors nominated for Best Director. Simple math dictates that that leaves only 4 movies that can win Best Picture. But before I tell you who will win, let’s focus on the much more important question: Which movie should win? Let’s count them down from 8 – 1.

Happy first week of February! BAADASSSSS! is here to aid in your Super Bowl weekend decompression process with the latest installment of The Digital Wire that is positively exploding with new announcements. How about that? Two weeks in a row. I’m guessing that January slump is pretty much over now that it’s no longer January. The coldest month of the year is upon us, but hopefully these impending releases will help keep your soul warm even as the temperature plummets. Among the Blu-ray and DVD release news are a pair of critical favorites, another pair of cult sci-fi outings, and more.

Below you’ll find info on several future home video releases complete with technical specs, release dates, and links to pre-order at Amazon. We would greatly appreciate it if you use those links to order because a small percentage of each order helps keep this website running at max power. The cover art for certain titles has yet to be finalized.

Whiplash
Directed by Damien Chazelle
Starring Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist
Blu-ray | DVD
Sony Pictures Classics
Theatrical Release Date: October 10, 2014
Home Video Release Date: February 24, 2015

In a key scene in Whiplash, the ferociously passionate music teacher Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), who is at once intimidating, forceful, powerful, and unapologetic, tells Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), the young, puckish stars-in-his-eyes wannabe-one-of-the-greats jazz drummer, that one of the worst things you can say to someone is “good job.” But with this film, which has been a critical darling paramount of some of the great films of all time in the modern age, director and writer Damien Chazelle has done much, much more than a good job. In fact, he’s done an eye-opening, jaw-dropping superb one.

2014 was a pretty amazing year for cinema. We saw new work by visionary filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater, David Fincher, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Bennett Miller, and Wes Anderson.

We witnessed incredible performances by Michael Keaton, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Carell, J.K. Simmons, Rosamund Pike, and David Oyelowo. And we were entertained and awe-struck by one of the best slates of summer blockbusters in recent history, including Guardians of the Galaxy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Edge of Tomorrow.

I saw 100 new releases this year. That’s a pretty low number, actually. To put it into perspective, The New York Times reviewed nearly 900 films in 2013. Usually, I see close to 200 new films a year, but this year I needed a break. Seeing 2-3 new releases a week can be great for a movie-lover, but doing it year after year can lead to burnout and an increase in overall disenchantment.

Luckily, I saw some truly great films that renewed my love for film and kept (most) of the cynicism and negativity buried beneath awe, joy, and optimism. Here are the films that did just that: 30 films that moved, inspired, and entertained me. Here are 30 reasons I love movies.