ENID, OK - One of the most talked about movies this year is La La Land starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a couple of Hollywood strivers who fall in love. Many people are saying it could win Best Picture at the Oscars.
-
The film has an Oklahoma connection as the executive producers are Michael Beugg, Quiyun Long, Molly Smith, Trent Luckinbill and Thad Luckinbill. The Luckinbill twin brothers are from Enid and have been active in producing movies over the last few years.
-
Thad and Trent Luckinbill were born April 24, 1975, in Enid, and they’ve since gone Hollywood and produced movies like, “The Good Lie” starring Reese Witherspoon.
-
Trent has a law degree from the University of Oklahoma and has an extensive legal and financial background. Thad took a business degree from OU and moved to California, where he went to work for a producer and studied acting. He’s best-known for his role as J.T. Hellstrom on the CBS soap opera “The Young and the Restless.”
-
- - - - - - - - - - -
Movie Reviews: La La Land
by Jeff Owens
-
There are moments of pure movie magic in La La Land. I’m talking about soaring moments that completely involve the audience and take them to another place. Unfortunately, there are only moments and I’m not certain I can speak as highly for the sum of the movie’s individual parts. It’s easy to identify them; they occur when Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone appear together onscreen. When they’re apart, La La Land drags and feels overlong.
-
You also must know that the movie is a musical… a good, old fashioned Hollywood musical (that happens to take place, and is largely about, Hollywood). Its opening scene is an energetically choreographed dance number where drivers at a standstill on a Los Angeles freeway exit their cars and proceed to bounce off them and around them like pinballs against rubber bumpers in an arcade machine while singing about the California sun. It’s terrific.
-
La La Land plays with time and uses it to both reveal simultaneous events and provide alternative futures. Both struggling musician, Sebastian (Gosling), and struggling actress, Mia (Stone), are on the freeway, but we follow only Mia as she goes to work at a coffee shop on the Warner Bros. studio lot, fails an audition, goes to a party with her roommates, then stumbles into a restaurant where Sebastian is playing piano.
-
With her gaze on Sebastian, we whiz back to the freeway and follow him through the day and events that take him to the same restaurant and encounter with Mia. The story is told in four parts that mirror the seasons, beginning with winter, and chronicle the romantic relationship between the two characters. Then there’s an epilogue of sorts that takes place during winter, five years later. This epilogue is utterly fantastic, evoking feelings of which the entire movie only aspires.
-
Buzz Score:
La La Land = 3.5 out of 5 
- - - - - - - - - - -
[styled_box title="Movie Buzz Guy" color="black"]
Jeff Owens
Jeff, a graduate of Enid High School, is the Managing Editor and Senior Movie Critic of Boom Howdy, an entertainment and web culture site featuring news, movies, podcasts, comedy and gaming.
Jeff is also the Movie Buzz Guy for Enid Buzz and a member of the Kansas City Film Critics Circle. Email Jeff Here or follow his Twitter Page.
[/styled_box]
-
See The Latest Movie Releases and Top Movies Here.
-
-
