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The ceremony is still more than five months away, but the 2017 Oscars already have a frontrunner, and it stars Ryan Gosling as a tap-dancing jazz pianist in a colourful, musical version of Los Angeles.
‘La La Land’ stars Gosling and Emma Stone as Sebastian and Mia, two singing and dancing lovers who first cross eyes in the middle of a Los Angeles traffic jam and whose up-and-down relationship we follow over four seasons of the year. She’s an actress trying to catch a break; he’s a musician aching to follow in the footsteps of the jazz greats.
The movie has been a major hit at three big film festivals over the past two weeks: it started its rapturous run at Venice in Italy and continued its success at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals in North America.
It’s written and directed by Damien Chazelle, whose debut feature ‘Whiplash’ won three Oscars last year, so we’re now fully expecting an enormous amount of awards attention for the film in the run-up to the Oscars on Sunday February 26 2017. Both Gosling and Stone have been Oscar-nominated once before (him for 'Half-Nelson', her for 'Birdman') but neither of them have won anything.
We’ve seen 'La La Land', and it’s terrific. We challenge anyone who catches it when it reaches UK cinemas in January not to find themselves humming and tapping their feet for days afterwards.
‘La La Land’ opens in UK cinemas on Friday January 13 2017. Read our review here.
